What Games Are

Beware the No-Brainers, Part 1 [Morons]

A phrase that I keep hearing is no-brainer.

What it's referring to is a game or business idea that is so obvious that you can't think of any reason why you wouldn't do it. It is the idea that literally requires no thought to explain. Some investors (and other powerful figures) love no-brainers. For many, they are in fact the only kind of idea that they really want to hear about. No-brainers seems to fit into a strategy, to be the perfect cog for the golden machine, and so all their problems are solved without the mysterious and complicated hair-pulling exercise that is most game development.

These people are, not to put too fine a point on it, being morons. 

Beware the No-Brainers, Part 2 [Morons]

This is the second part in a light-hearted series about no-brainer games and the inner moron. In the first part I talked about what moronism is, and started into a list of questions that you could be asking to vet your ideas, to see if you are in fact being a moron. This article continues that with four more, including a reference to elephants!

 

Techthulhu [Games and Future Fantasy]

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." - H.P. Lovecraft

A common meme surrounding games is that they are supposedly in their infancy, that the reason game stories don't really work very well, or that players don't really participate in games as heroes is a problem of technology and technique.

What the meme is actually trying to say is that games should be unlimited and that they should not accept constraints because one day the tools and techniques will exist to craft the perfect world. This ideality will offer meaning and gameplay, players will become heroes, and finally games will take their rightful place at the head of all media tables.

In his house at R'lyeh, dead Techthulhu waits dreaming. The meme is beautiful. It's also wrong.

There is No Secret Sauce [Lean vs Clean]

(with thanks to Chris and Kevin)

A couple of months ago, at Games Invest 2010, I attended a morning of presentations. The real stand-out speaker, predictably enough, was Phil Harrison.

His talk concerned the next generation game company. As a would-be game investing venture capitalist, Harrison expressed that he felt uncomfortable with the old school software development and business model used for games. He wanted companies that could be flexible, who could use metrics and agile development to create minimum viable products and test their assumptions. His ideal, as he explained it, was a company that could potentially add or remove game dynamics quickly from its games, be able to measure user behaviour immediately, respond to audiences, and do so at low cost with the prospect of high profitability.

Harrison was advocating a message of customer validation, low cost, and iterative process as the secret to game development in the 21st century. This is a whole school of thinking that the Silicon Valley people call the lean startup.