It\u2019s weird how it\u2019s polarized: in one hand, mobile and social games succeeding at abusing players with psychological exploits, on the other hand AAA games that developers want to think as pieces of art that can\u2019t be dissected on why they fail to make an impact. <\/p>\n
Gamasutra\u2019s huge philosophical article<\/a> from last week generated 156 comments. Ian Bogost pretty much argues that to expand the medium, we should just do whatever we want in games, experiment etc. He somewhat opposes Raph Koster and Daniel Cook, who think that there are methods, systems, things that we can grab and tighten up in the game design process, leading to a road map to follow for success and long term viability.<\/p>\n Useless debate. Daniel and Raph are arguing that in the real world of making games for a living, you don\u2019t go for single-player story-driven games because it\u2019s extremely hard to do something good as it\u2019s unnatural for games to be formatted this way and furthermore, people play more multiplayer games anywa. It\u2019s in the blood of what games are. Ian argues that there shouldn\u2019t be \u201ca way\u201d to make games. These statements are not mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just a matter of absolute or non-absolute and that annoys me a little bit because it\u2019s debating for nothing. I think it pushes a lot of game developers out of design discussions, creating some kind of elitism that is not good for the game development community. <\/p>\n I feel more connected to Daniel and Raph stances. Gamasutra people are usually making a living, or trying to by making and designing games. Arguing that it\u2019s totally fine to do what you want, like a huge single-player story-driven game is a very wrong message.<\/p>\n Again, if you don\u2019t want to make a living, please do exactly what you want to do. I guess you can get any risk you want. But if you need to make some bucks, sustain yourself with your work, you will study markets, smell trends and try to minimize risks, at least a little bit. Multiplayer games with short play sessions etc. Today it seems to be the way to go. It doesn\u2019t mean you want to exploit people. There are games out there which despite using \u201ctrends\u201d, are respectful to players, like Realm of the Mad God<\/a>. <\/p>\n Heavy Rain\/Alan Wake are good examples of what is pretty much impossible today: being supported by a gigantic corporation like Sony or MS to do a game like these. These games failed at so many levels. High production value hiding game design shallowness. L.A. Noire is the last one in the series and didn\u2019t do well. It doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no market or demand for that kind of games, it means for developers that it\u2019s highly risky or suicidal to go this way. But I\u2019m sure a lot more can be done with these story-driven games, starting by much better, stronger stories and characters (Heavy Rain\u2019s Madison<\/a> \/o\\).<\/p>\n Debating on the design front of what to do is really useless. We know we\u2019re free to do whatever we want but we also want to kind of make money too, don\u2019t we? Indies as big publishers (even more so, years of development to cover first).<\/p>\n And yet people get butt hurt with Raph\u2019s views that single player games are doomed, despite having him explaining that he just looks around and doesn\u2019t condemn or embrace the trend. They fear that he\u2019s probably right so they say he\u2019s almost insane.<\/p>\n People, just make your game and prove him wrong by making a single player game with as much impact socially and culturally than games like Go or WoW if you like challenges. I mean, it\u2019s never been as opened as it is today to make games. I think Jon Blow might be able to pull a nice one off with The Witness<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s so tiring and exciting at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s weird how it\u2019s polarized: in one hand, mobile and social games succeeding at abusing players with psychological exploits, on the other hand AAA games that developers want to think as pieces of art that can\u2019t be dissected on why they fail to make an impact. Gamasutra\u2019s huge philosophical article from last week generated 156 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}