Bob&Bob, one of the global game jam game we did in Paris was part of the indie games blog best of! The mechanic was fun from the beginning, in a more conventional way than with Waltz2D but super efficient nonetheless. Really cool news!
But the meat today is the Project Horseshoe reports. Like the Global Game Jam, this event is gonna be huge in the next years. It’s a game design think tank and according to an interview of Harmonix founder, kids don’t dream about being rock or DJ stars (two games on the subject are coming: Scratch Ultimate DJ and DJ Hero, you can go puke now).
They dream about making games.
First, about the Development Team: stop talking about programmers as opposed to artists I’m so sick of this. They’re, we are ALL designers! A game designer making proper sentences in a document is coding it and a coder doing visual effects is an artist, don’t they? This is all the way from the beginning to the end a DESIGN process, a blend between high technology knowledge, aesthetic and ergonomics, all trying to nail the FUN. What is hard to understand, why doing some stupid pyramidal shit with people “doing” and people “saying”? It’s hard enough man, cut the crap.
“Make the prototypes with the smallest team possible to save time and resources.”
The smallest and the largest at the same time: prototyping only with coders will end up with a coder game focused on systems. If it’s with a graphic whore, mechanics are going to be weak etc. The prototype should be design with input from all designers, visual and sound and game and code to ensure that global quality (they do that in Japan you know). Think about cooking, sauces etc. You don’t do that with two ingredients, adding two others one hour later do you?
If we’re always trying to use old words and old definitions of our roles, we’re gonna have hard times to change and make ourselves better. Project Horseshoe doesn’t seem to adress this problem. We are damn slow.
“Games differ from music or dance in that the game designer does not orchestrate the experience in a top-down manner, they provide for play experiences through the creation of rules.”
This is wrong! Music is not experienced in a top-down manner, it’s only ONE of other cases (classical music). The music played today IS a play experience (live) through rules (songs). It’s called a jam, it’s called playing in a band.
And when you consume dance music you don’t do it passively. It’s meant to make you groove so you shake your ass actively! You can do so on every rhythm patterns, not just the kick drum.
Music is for me really the closer thing to games. It’s a fucking game itself, duh.
“Two milestones rang true for us: when a game designer wins a Macarthur Genius Grant, and when the Pulitzer Prize includes a set of categories for games. Can you see this happening during your career?”
No. Because it’s elitism, elitism requires some easiness in the production process (like writing a book), something we don’t have and can’t afford -and never will I guess- in the game developement. Also because it’s a generation problem, my parents (50s childs) play the Wii and feel guilty about it while they do think that reading thriller books with stories totally expected is something they can almost brag about because it’s REAL culture (well I think it ain’t worth shit compare to experience a good gameplay). They didn’t grew up with computers. I’m from the very first generations in Europe fueled with the digital stream from the birth. This generation gap must be filled in a way or another because if not, culture is going to dump us. It already did.
Now look at Japan. Toshihiro Nagoshi, before and yesterday. Look a their game designer “superstars”, like this one:
Goichi Suda aka Suda 51
He’s well known in the game-o-sphere since 2005 and Killer7, already “superstar”. Because he has a nickname Suda51 like an artist signature -an old trend in japanese game production set to avoid copyright problems-, he has a star background –a totally unexpected one-, he’s wearing cool stuffs, his company feels the cool and arty, etc. In FOUR years he managed to go from unheard to well known. With an army of Suda, the media world would listen to us.
No need for prizes & false statements. Just less dorkiness, more gym and healthy life for game developers.
We in the western world are terrible at being I don’t know, fresh AND digital. We lack that consistency that Suda and others have in every way. We don’t have that because imho overall we don’t believe in the gameplay experience, we believe in having a cool job so cool that a lot of people in the industry sink into nostalgia. We don’t do games. We FAKE it.
And if you fake it, your nose will grow. It does, ask Eidos.