What Games Are

5 Million Copies Later [Minecraft]

Just over a year ago, I wrote a well-received article about Minecraft, an indie game that few in the ‘proper’ games industry had even heard of that sold a million copies. This game-mixed-with-sculpture garden had broken all the rules. It was hard to get into, was (at the time) selling in a bare alpha state and hadn’t even had the decency to put together a proper website with a nice shop window. Instead, the developer had just thrown up a PayPal button and that was that.

Many at the time said it was lucky, niche, a kind of fringe market reaction. That, yes, a million copies meant something but not necessarily compared to a Zynga. Meanwhile Minecraft has continued to grow. Just this morning, in fact, Jens Bergensten tweeted that the game is but 500 copies away from 5 million sold. Most ‘proper’ games never sell that many.

I’ve always maintained that Minecraft is a symbol of something resonant in the games market, a deep shift in how it works that changes everything. It is yet further proof that we’re not really in the business of packaged goods and experiences any more, but of services, communities and emergent worlds. The question is are you willing to see that, or can you only see the world in terms of ‘proper’ and ‘fluke’?

GDC Meetings

For the first time ever I’m going to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which happens between March 5th and 9th. I’m really looking forward to it, and also want to make as much use of the time as possible to meet people, see the future and generally hang out. I’m currently planning my schedule for the trip, so I thought it would be good to put out a quick post to any readers attending the conference that might like to meet up and talk about games, their latest projects and etc. 

So drop me a line if you’re going to San Francisco. Hope to see you there!

Noble Failures [Double Fine and Notch]

Not only has Double Fine raised $1.8m from its Kickstarter campaign, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson of Minecraft has suggested that he would pay the $13m required to develop Psychonauts 2. But why?

Psychonauts is the archetypal example of a noble failure, a game that fans believe failed due to publisher incompetence, but which if it had had its fair shake would have done much better. This interpretation is almost always wrong, and leads me to think that a Psychonauts 2 is a mistake.

The Difference Between Actions and Verbs [Game Design]

When designing games we often describe interactivity in terms of actions and verbs. We do so casually and interchangeably, but there is actually a difference between the two. It’s the difference between causing change within a game versus the physical inputs you use to make that happen.

Here’s what I mean:

The Narrative vs Mechanics Circus

Last month I contracted what seemed to be a simple cold which progressed into a bronchial infection combined with asthma that knocked me out for three weeks.

It was really bad timing because around the same time, Raph Koster posted a blog bombshell when he said ‘Narrative is not a game mechanic’. A fair few commenters arose in support or ire. Posts flew about whether the meaning of narrative was too broad or limited, whether this was really about a limited formal view of games versus their possibilities, and so on. Exciting stuff, but I couldn’t really get into it.

I’m still recovering, but being ill has given me the chance to reflect and remember that there’s a reason that I don’t normally use the phrase ‘mechanics’. There's also a reason why I tend to dismiss broad narrativism. It’s because both of them are part of a pretend debate over correctness, and each – in their own way – is just circular flame-bait, an ever-burning meme that goes nowhere.