What Games Are

Can Games Be Radical? [Art]

I believe that games are an art form that defines the twenty first century. However, compared to some other art forms, they are somewhat conservative. They may be loud and violent, or quiet and serene, yet the kinds of worlds and roles that they offer are often recognisable and safe. Rarely do we see games that confront society as well as being fun to play.

Instead they tend to play it straight, focusing on the authenticity of escapism, the rewards and the gameplay. Their role, it seems, is to escape existing culture rather than define it.

Can games define new culture? Are they able to be edgy? Can we foresee a day when the ideas within a game cause discussion and debate much as a controversial play might? Are games capable of radicalism?

Weird Controls, or Reinventing the Wheel [Indie Games]

Experimenting with new interaction is important. Without it, we would never fully explore new interfaces. And yet, new ways of controlling games often feel forced.

The developer reinvents how to jump by tying it to the release of a button rather than pressing it. She crafts a system for issuing orders to units through complicated gestures rather than selection and clicking. Weird controls turn perfectly natural actions into arcane ones, forcing players to re-learn skills for no good reason.

Developers (particularly indies) seem to assume that clever interaction is the key to making great games. Sometimes it is. Mostly it's the opposite. Standardised interfaces form over time for a reason, and running counter to them is usually bad game design.

Why Investing In Games Creates A Company-or-Product Paradox

Investors aren’t interested in products, they’re interested in companies. A startup is a company in search of a business model. Metrics, customer acquisition and processes are really important. Consider China, location markets and smart TVs. It’s not them, it’s you. Do you really need investment?

These were some of the many messages that came out of an event called Games Invest. It’s very Silicon Valley led, thinking of any business as startup, transition and exit opportunity. Find your business model, raise money at the right time and then grow or sell. Fail fast and validate through tests.

And yet even if you do all of these things, I still think you wouldn’t get funded by people who invest in games. While the investor community wants game companies to think like the Valley, investors themselves still think that ‘product’ and ‘business model’ are different things. It’s paradoxical thinking foisted on game developers that leaves developers justifiably confused, and it needs to change.

Fun: Simple to Explain, Hard to Accept [Constants]

Game developers ask ‘what is fun?’ and academics often answer that fun is seemingly simple but actually fiendishly hard to explain. Everything is potentially fun and trying to encompass it all in one statement is impossible.

When any debate becomes so wide, the intent of the original question is lost. Developers are not really asking ‘what is fun?'’ in the universal sense. They’re asking why does their game suck. Pragmatically then, fun is:

The joy of winning while mastering fair game dynamics.

However the idea that fun can be reduced to 9 little words is just the sort of thinking that makes some people angry, because it sounds like (and is) a hard limit on what games can be.

Belief Engines [Thauma]

Martin Robinson of Eurogamer writes about how the greatest game story he has ever experienced came from playing Pro Evolution Soccer 6. He and two friends elaborated their game around a particular team way past the point of obsession into outright fantasy. It’s an experience, he notes, that more sophisticated football games never managed to capture for all their glitz.

The characterisation of this experience as ‘storytelling’ is wrong but forgivable because we still tend to legitimise the art of games in terms of other arts. What he’s actually describing is a brilliant example of what I call thauma.

You Need A Niche [Marketing Stories]

Traditionally, labelling a game niche is a sideways way of implying that it’s trapped in a ghetto. It invokes a sense of smallness, where games that are strictly for hobbyists struggle to survive.

In an industry that used to want to eclipse Hollywood, maybe that was a justifiable attitude. However in the age of single-franchise publishing, niches are really important. They are where tribes of engaged players come from, and if you want to change the world then a niche is where you need to start.

Windows 8 Plugin Woes [Questions]

First Apple refused to let Flash onto the iPad. Now Microsoft want to nix all plugins from Internet Explorer. Browsers, it seems, want to leave plugins behind. They want HTML5 to do what Flash used to, and from a certain perspective it makes a lot of sense. Even Adobe seem to realise that Flash is done and offers tools to recompile apps built in Flash for HTML5.

However, specifically for Flash social games, Java games, some Unity projects and some other more obscure plugins this is a really big deal. HTML5 is perfectly capable of being used for video and rich content sites, but does it really stand up for games? So far the consensus from the game development community seems to be ‘no’, but if the Windows default browser won’t support them then they instantly lose at least half of their market.

So where does this leave browser based games? Has Microsoft just announced their doom?

The Next Wave: Local Games?

Your MMO guild members may be good friends but they’re scattered all across the world. Your mobile games steal your attention away from talking to people. Your social game hassles you to bug your friends for gifts, but otherwise you play alone. Your co-op sessions of Portal 2 tend to be played with mute strangers.

Most innovations in digital gaming tend to produce solitary experiences. This is fine most of the the time, but players don’t always want to be solitary. They like to gather to play, to participate and hang out. Social contact is healthy, and games have always had an important role in helping to bind communities together.

Video games have not really tapped into that spirit yet, but it feels to me like that’s the next wave. Local games are coming.

Is Syndicate a Broad Franchise? [Marketing]

A firm fan favourite, the 1993 tactical strategy game Syndicate regularly features on lists of games that should be remade. It seems EA are finally about to grant fans their wish. Well, sort of. While it shares a setting with the original game, the new Syndicate is a first person shooter, sounding like a mix between Deus Ex and Left 4 Dead.

Personally, this makes me dubious as to its prospects. Publishers often fool themselves into thinking that their franchises are applicable to any kind of game but this is rarely true. More commonly the result is disappointing, both for the publishers and for the fans who just wanted to see their favourite game reborn.

Find Games For Your Players [Marketing]

A post from Nicholas Lovell yesterday on how to market your indie game highlighted three possible approaches: (1) Launch-focused publicity, (2) metric-driven advertising and (3) permission marketing. The third reminded me of a quote by Seth Godin:

Don’t find customers for your products
Find products for your customers

The idea of permission marketing is to build a following by finding a cause that early adopters care about. Then build a platform to share your ideas about that cause, the gift of which gains their permission to talk to them some more. Then gather customers together to form a community and build products that speak to the community’s needs but which also push the envelope of their expectations. So the community will act as your marketing channel to the outside world.

That’s the general idea. Does it work for games?