Carving out the Underground
That Patrick is definitely on to something (and perhaps on something :D). Punks are where its at. Punks are what's happening. Let's rebel against convention. Tear down anything we can. Graffiti anything we can't. Groupthink drains the vitality of life. Color outside the lines and make a difference. Many more cliches besides. To really feel it though, you gotta find and participate in vibrant community of like minded people. A few punks jamming in their basement is cool, a concert invigorates the soul. So where are the groups of game making punks, cranking out games to express themselves. Oh the punks are out there, Super Columbine RPG!, flow, and the rest of usual suspects, but why does it feel so scattered. It feels like they are justs blips of brillances, I want a whole damn guitar riff of crazy games to blow my friggin mind.
There are attempts in the right direction, but they all seem to fall short somehow. Slamdance might have worked but it pull a courted game because of fear of backlash, the exact opposite of what we need. Manifesto has got the right gusto but somehow it feels too commercial for what I'm talking. They're going to be important distributor and marketer, functioning like indie record label, but that's only part of the puzzle. I'm talking about a community that'll be cranking out game to piss people off that Manifesto will be clamoring to put on their page.
TIGSource is closest thing actually. I've looking at the Indiegamer forums, frankly they are just oo insular for my tastes. Actually, you what's closer, the community of game design + theory bloggers. The problem with them (us? Do I posses the hubris to count myself among them?? Alas no...) is that they don't produce enough. Lot's of great ideas but very little experiments. They don't need to be complete, 40 hour games. Hell, they don't even have to be polished casual games. Just games with a lot verve and ideas.
There was a website, called Bestgameever.com I think, where they wanted to make a game every week roughly. A bit extreme, but that's the kind of thing I thinking of. Creativity should be busting people at the seams just trying to get out. We shouldn't be afraid of putting up incomplete works. We probably should be against sharing some code or designs neither. Sharing is caring! Seriously, though, some collaboration would be cool.
There's more to this. Developing our own aesthetic that's our medium's, the way noir developed for film (yes I know noir was inspired by novels but inspiration is okay, the point is the the style as whole). One besides retro please. And yes, pixel art does not automatically make a style retro. Some other ideas, but hey, who likes long winded blog posts.
Not me.
Man, I really hoped to end this post on some sort of inspirational note, telling everybody to go out and break something or be an individual. I really mucked that up.
There are attempts in the right direction, but they all seem to fall short somehow. Slamdance might have worked but it pull a courted game because of fear of backlash, the exact opposite of what we need. Manifesto has got the right gusto but somehow it feels too commercial for what I'm talking. They're going to be important distributor and marketer, functioning like indie record label, but that's only part of the puzzle. I'm talking about a community that'll be cranking out game to piss people off that Manifesto will be clamoring to put on their page.
TIGSource is closest thing actually. I've looking at the Indiegamer forums, frankly they are just oo insular for my tastes. Actually, you what's closer, the community of game design + theory bloggers. The problem with them (us? Do I posses the hubris to count myself among them?? Alas no...) is that they don't produce enough. Lot's of great ideas but very little experiments. They don't need to be complete, 40 hour games. Hell, they don't even have to be polished casual games. Just games with a lot verve and ideas.
There was a website, called Bestgameever.com I think, where they wanted to make a game every week roughly. A bit extreme, but that's the kind of thing I thinking of. Creativity should be busting people at the seams just trying to get out. We shouldn't be afraid of putting up incomplete works. We probably should be against sharing some code or designs neither. Sharing is caring! Seriously, though, some collaboration would be cool.
There's more to this. Developing our own aesthetic that's our medium's, the way noir developed for film (yes I know noir was inspired by novels but inspiration is okay, the point is the the style as whole). One besides retro please. And yes, pixel art does not automatically make a style retro. Some other ideas, but hey, who likes long winded blog posts.
Not me.
Man, I really hoped to end this post on some sort of inspirational note, telling everybody to go out and break something or be an individual. I really mucked that up.
