Indies

Original MySpace Post

For those of you that didn't know, I brag to you now that my name has appeared in a video game manual for the first time! This happened back in October and being of the non-gloat-y persuasion, I haven't really sensationalized it (as is my predisposition), but that all changes TODAY. Here's a trailer for the game in question, "Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun":



I think my official title was "Game Design Assistant" or something along those lines. I can't take too much credit as my involvement was sort of a right-place-at-the-right-time thing; I happened to know the professor whose responsibility it was to "build" the game (read: write the 600-pg design document) and he knew of my literary and game design interests and allowed me to proofread those uber-secret pages for spelling/grammar issues and logic coherence. Lucky? Hell yes I am! Opportunities like that don't always present themselves and when they do the adage "It pays to know people" proves truer than ever.

I am struggling right now to stoke group interest in a class project, a game design document for which I have yoked myself with "Lead Designer" responsibilities. To augment the 3-4,000 words I've bled into it the rest of my seven-person team has added MAYBE 200 words in sum total. I'm thinking that this is the way that teams of any kind must work in all areas of the world; when assembling a team it seems like you have to account for massive effort failure beforehand, like when the project idea is barely nascent. As a leader it seems like you have to steel yourself against apathy and be prepared to compensate at great personal cost for myriad shortcomings for which you can only blame yourself. Sure, writing a design document is a great experience, but probably the most valuable experience is this "team" atmosphere. Learning how to persist in the face of unexpected shit is what I will take away from this experience and what I've taken away from all of my group project experiences.

Am I jaded? No. It may sound like a lot of bitching and whining, but quietly I understand that this is what it means to want something a little more than my peers and that the weight of the work that I put in now equals the value of the experience I earn in the end. At least that's what I'm telling myself. ;)

I've been keeping up with GDC '08 (Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco) via a dazzling array of gaming websites, notably Kotaku, 1up, Joystiq, and Gamasutra. A lot of interesting things have been introduced this year, the most interesting of which (at least to me) are both the game I mentioned last post (Aquaria) and Fable 2. These games represent advances in interface design that theoretically should improve a game's immersive quality, reducing the "gamey" feel of titles that adhere to these new philosophies. Essentially what excites me here is that these developers are exerting effort toward validating games as a more mature form of entertainment. Major advances in film such as adding actors' voices and converting from black-and-white to color had similar effects on that industry as movies that were released after these improvements generally benefitted from them (as evidenced by ticket sales spikes and studios' gradual profit increases over the course of the industry's history). The same should prove true in the game industry and even though interface improvements might sound like dorky little reason for me to jump up and cheer, I am actually cheering about the promise that some day a person with no programming or art skill (to speak of) like me will find work like screenplay writers have as their industry matured and expanded enough to accomodate them. Yay ulterior motives!

Oh, and I can't decide if the following video bothers me or leaves me pleased. This upcoming game, "Fez", has borrowed a page from the Wii's "Paper Mario" design and is plainly less pretty, witty, etc. The character's kinda cute, and the gameplay is novel, but just like Paper Mario, it feels like a suicidal improvement; these developers have created a really cool dynamic that blows its entire load early (as novelties are prone to do) and defeats further innovation in the 2D/3D gameplay arena. Why does this bother me? Why does it feel like a red herring, a development dead-end? I guess I can think of at least one cool thing that can be done with the technology which doesn't involve platforming (hopping from platform to platform), but is there more meat here? I fear that there may not be. Compare!







Update


I have developed a new respect for Phil Fish's "Fez" since last mention of the subject. This has little to do with the game itself but more with an interview with Fish that I watched and another that is transcribed over at Arthouse Games. Apparently "Fez" cost nothing (save time and a nominal IGF entry fee) to develop and netted him $20k. That's nearly 20,000% profit, yo. This game and "Aquaria" (among others) represent a very cool segment of the industry which by virtue of HOW MUCH FUN these games are deserve the attention of all three seventh-gen consoles. Disturbingly, I've heard that Microsoft is halving royalties paid to indie developers hoping to distribute via XNA or XBL. Does anyone else smell self-destructive, bottom-line enhancing policy here? Will the host of poor indie developers shafted by Microsoft look to Nintendo's Revolution or Home as more pocketbook-friendly outlets for their work? 35% sure would set me to reevaluating my options...


until next we meet...



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