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. Continue reading
Tagged with game design …
I want ugly
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. Continue reading
Why?
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? Continue reading
On Meaning in Games…or at least something…
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.
Motivation Go!
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…
