Fear or Faith? What motivates you to do what you do?
When you sit down to work, do you feel confident in yourself and assured that you will eventually create something that you and others will appreciate? Or do you feel intimidated at the prospect of all the external forces that will eventually judge you and your work?
I’ve been dwelling on this difference for some time, because I alternate between experiencing both of these powerful motivators.
Continued after the break…
I want to take some time out from working on “Marian” and getting ready for the “Aquaria” soundtrack release to talk a bit about what indie games can be, and how they are made.
What are Games?
We all believe we know what games are, although our definitions probably vary greatly. I would argue that “games” are a new form of multimedia, that combine existing mediums with the new element of interaction. They’re not specifically only about interaction, they’re also not specifically about their individual components. What is truly interesting to me about games is how all the different components work together as a unified whole.
This definition of games opens up interesting possibility, for example: making a game that has limited interaction for a specific purpose, or creating a game that has no visuals or no audio but still works as a whole.
Instead of picking apart games and ranking them based on their individual components, let’s think about games as whole. Let’s look at the connections between the different mediums.
This (rather lengthy) Rant is Continued after the Break…
As you may or may not know, I’m down in Austin to be part of the first “Independent Game Summit” ever held here. The IGS has been a staple of San Francisco’s Game Developer’s Conference for three years now, and the organizers wanted to make this new IGS pretty special.
I decided to propose a talk about something that had been on my mind for a long time – stories in games.
I have a bit of an unconventional approach to indie game development, and its not one that’s easy to defend.
The ideal way for most indie developers to start a game project is to prototype different core gameplay concepts until a really original, fun idea pops out. Once the wild gameplay has been captured, its mined into a full game with appropriate visual and audial dressing and a narrative structured around the gameplay.
I can’t argue that this is probably the most efficient and proven way to discover and develop a new game concept, especially for a small team.
Unfortunately, I always start by imagining a character and the world in which they live. Then I build a basic narrative and gameplay mechanics around who that character is, and what I would be most interested in experiencing from inside that character.
The thing is, I have a hard time – as a player – connecting to game ideas that are purely gameplay motivated. I love games with good, deep, responsive gameplay, but the experience hits a whole other level of immersion when fused with a compelling atmosphere and narrative.
