Mindset really is everything in indie gamedev: Platform choice is entangled around the reachable audience, ecosystem added-value e.g. using Facebook APIs, or the current showpiece value of HTML5 and methods of monetization. The potential of the technology is low on the list of concerns. Technology and art style are easily ...
Excellent article. I think player personalities are an easier-solved problem than the intrinsics of the game design as modelled by GNS and MDA because we have the existing psychology literature to draw upon, but even so, it's striking how often people arrived at the same four core types. In my ...
I would concur that production management is also a challenge even as an solo or small-team indie developer not because there's a people-management problem, but because it's dangerously easy to slip into the wrong mindset as you start building and your view of things becomes increasingly distorted. Shipping is not ...
I lost interest in the game quickly. The building, digging, procedural and dynamic elements don't feel as meaty as their equivalents in DF or Minecraft, and they mostly end up serving as a way to stretch out the combat-oriented content. But the combat isn't great either...
I agree. This series tries to be unconventional and hit a different focus from most games, which comes hand-in-hand with it not needing to be legitimate in the way a AAA game might be. Actually recognizing this, and pulling away from the trope of the legitimate, is one of the ...
I think we should be countering gamification by pushing another positive word, one that begs the audience to ask what good game design is, rather than simply shouting the gamifiers down, which is what we're being asked to do with terms like exploitionware. The term that comes to mind off ...
A video game breaks through a significant barrier of previous games: it can incorporate other mediums at will. This is why we've taken to calling them art so readily if games can be seen as a superset of other media, adding or subtracting interactivity as desired, there has to be ...
I think there is something very key to this argument that demands further discussion. The sublime art definition requires the art to capture and freeze a moment of the sublime - as if the sublime were a microwave dinner, just heat and serve. However, we can experience the sublime within ...
On the last point, there's an enormous library of C64 games produced between 1987-1991 most are European, but titles from EA and Origin also make the list. If you were talking about the Atari 8-bit line I would be in agreement, as substantial production of new Atari games nearly disappeared ...
This piece is based on the idea that you can easily maintain a franchise through many iterations. The game industry is built largely on novelty, and while it's usually possible to make improved sequels, genre exhaustion tends to set in after a few years. Tadhg has conveniently ignored that it's ...
