Games and gamers are a pretty self-involved bunch. We make games that are impossible to play without a couple years practice, games with communities that are hostile to “outsiders”, and games that talk, sometimes literally, about themselves. Are we still so insecure that we’re afraid to explore other fields or audiences?
Games are different. Unlike most other creative media, the consumer is required to do something, and the game is required to do something back. A game asks a question, “What do you want to do?” and a player answers. As you can imagine, this interactivity introduces a whole lot of complexity into crafting a game’s ‘experience’. A game’s author(s) can’t lay out the experience as they can in a book or movie, because no two players will put in the same input or receive the same feedback. This leads to that Important Question: “What does authorship mean for interactive media?”. After reading Clint Hocking’s recent post about authorship, I started thinking about where precedents may have been set in other media. And what else requires input from its consumers? Talkback Radio.
This is part two of a dev diary for a game I’m making in a month with Robert Yang, for the Super Friendship Club’s second pageant. The theme was mysticism, so somehow we decided to make ‘Cult Tycoon’ (still no real name). For the first part, take a look here. Onwards!
This dreary September,Robert Yang and myself are taking part in the 2nd Super Friendship Club’s pageant. These pageants, open to all, give you a month to make a game surrounding a theme. This time around the theme is Mystism. Stretching that slightly, we are making ‘Cult Tycoon’ (working title), where players must recruit cult members and make as much money before Judgement Day, while keeping the FBI off their backs.
As the ‘programmer’ on this game, this dev diary will go over code techniques and structures I’m using, and some of the lessons and tips I’m learning, in the hope it will help, or at least be of interest, to somebody. It will mostly cover basic practice, but may delve into more advanced stuff if I end up going that way. Also, since this is a somewhat different breed of game than what I usually make, I’m coding it almost entirely from scratch, so I’ll be experimenting as a go along. For more up-to-the minute progress reports, see our thread on the Club’s forums.
We seem rather fond of ‘immersion’ don’t we? Good games are often equated with immersive games. See this ’Most Immersive Games of 2010′ list, which may as well be ‘High metascoring games of 2010′. But what do we mean by immersion? And why do developers and the public lust after it?
Why are there so few funny games? Recently we’ve had Portal 2, possibly the biggest release to have comedy as such a central intention. Aside from that however, we get some one-liners and a couple of comic relief characters. Why such a lack of games that make you laugh? In what is fundamentally a playful medium, we seem so desperate to make “serious” games. Read the rest of this entry »
One problem I’ve found with working with games all the time, is that I’ve become jaded and even bored by many releases. My brain is so tired of seeing screenshots I don’t even register them anymore. Here’s a picture from Skyrim of a lovely young lady in a shop. Then a picture from Oblivion of a lovely young lady in a shop. I’m not complaining (in this post anyway) about the subjects being more than similar, I’m complaining because they’re both pretty. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s one question that we as devs don’t bother asking, don’t know the answer, or choose to ignore it, “Why should my game be made?”. All of us have a stake in the success and advancement of the industry. All of us have a passion for games, because we’re definitely not in this for the money (as I type this I’m at the glamourous day-job that supports my very un-profitable indie dev career). So why don’t we ask why? Read the rest of this entry »
So, I tried my hand at the NYU Game Centre branch of the Global GameJam. Essentially, it’s a challenge to make a game in 48 hrs, about a theme that is only given out at the start of the jam. In theory, this is meant to encourage teams to stretch their imaginations to produce something that they may not produce normally, or at least make something interesting.
While the production values of the games that came out of the Jam were surprisingly high (beyond my submission at least), I was disappointed that they shared the same irrelevance that AAA titles seem to enjoy. The theme of the game, or even a message, was put on the backburner behind aesthetics, or the strange contruct known as ‘gameplay’. We know how to make engaging games. Show us something unexpected. I respect the work that goes into the games at GameJam, some of these games have serious talent behind them, but remain frustrated at the almost complete lack of statement in the games produced.
Games can be such a powerful medium to convey theme/statement/meaning/whatever, something beyond mere diversion in any case. When given a theme to make a game about, we shouldn’t be happy with a simple reskin of some nostalgic arcade game from the late 80s. We should demand that the mechanics and art direction work together to convey whatever meaning the author(s) intend.
Perhaps I’ve just become a disillusioned pessimist, resigned to the fact that the medium I love seems to be content with mediocrity. Perhaps I’m just whining that we didn’t win the NYU GameJam. In any case, Robert Yang and I worked together to make one non-digital and one digital game. You can harshly judge Polymer and Goldblum in their submitted state here, but we’re cleaning them up to make them presentable for re-release in the next month or so.
Over the next couple of months, I’m going to be spending a significant amount of time on trains. While I will spend most of my time wistfully gazing upon poor peoples’ back gardens, at some point I should really get some work done.
I have stupidly got the idea in my head that I should try making a game on a train (fake working title : Train Game: Aim, Maim, then Explain) It will be an ugly game, full of bugs, and probably not so great, but maybe I’ll learn something? Maybe I’ll end up throwing my laptop out the window?
I’m tossed up between another Source mod, Flash ala Flixel (as in Canabalt) or Unity…
