The Seriously Un-Fun Economics of Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 16, 2010

This Escapist’s publisher, Alexander Macris, strikes a note that is all too familiar to many veteran gamers. He’s feeling left behind as a gamer, and explains the simple economics of why this is the case. Why they aren’t makin’ ’em like they used to anymore. While I’m not sure his numbers are entirely accurate, they do paint a pretty sobering picture of why games have adapted the way they have…

The Escapist: E for Everyone, Except Me

Bottom-line: Using educated guesswork and math, it looks like a top-tier (“Triple-A”) game in 1994 needed to sell about 16,000 copies to break even. A top-tier game today needs to sell closer to 2 million copies to break even.

That is A Lot.

Now, I suspect the numbers are a little off. I entered the mainstream games biz in 1994, at 16,000 was a pretty dismal failure back then, too. But 500,000 copies was definitely considered at least a minor hit, and a million (or more) sales was definitely hitting one out of the park (which I was proud to be a part of on multiple games.  Of course, not all those sales were at full original retail price. .. )

There are a couple of elements at work here.

First of all – Macris complains that he wants games that are both state-of-the-art and in his niche.  And he fully recognizes the conundrum and why this can’t be.

Except it could. If niche hobbyists were willing to fork over the big bucks for their games. This market exists in many other industries, allowing state-of-the-art product development in a small market of early adopters.

But of course, for digital products, the expectation is to pay less for a niche product than more, because the perception of quality is so tightly tied to the production values. This has been experimented with a few times, and has already caused a storm of words with none other than Matrix Games, referred to in this article. Command Ops: Battles From the Bulge has a price-point that’s significantly more than your average Triple-A mainstream games today, at $80 for a digital download and $90 for a physical copy.

It’s an obvious approach. If a game costs $X to make, generates Y sales at a price Z, then to not LOSE money Y x Z must be >=X. Now, if these numbers were completely independent of each other, it’d be just that simple, but most people realize that both price and quality have an impact on the number of sales.  But within a niche market that doesn’t grow much, Y may not be too dynamic in the positive direction.

Another problem is that there is such an amazing gulf in sales numbers between mainstream and indie games. I remember my naive approach when I thought about going indie. If a massive failure like Daikatana could still sell 200,000 copies, I thought, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume a little indie game could sell maybe 10,000 copies? A twentieth of that?

Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s reasonable, and yes, there are games that sell that many (especially casual games – at least in the past – but that became a mega-niche a few years back, almost a branch of mainstream gaming). But for a niche game of non-cutting-edge production values, it’s still a dang high number. Jeff Vogel notes, an average game in an established, reasonably well-known franchise for him sold a little under 4,000 copies in over a year. Even with my jaded, indie-veteran experience now, I would have guessed two to three times this number.

After a few more years of sales the game may double that figure, but that’s still far, far below what’s even considered a “total failure” in the AAA realm. He, too, has found that he needs to price his games a little above the conventional indie price point in order to survive in that niche.

The curve of sales between niche and top-tier mainstream is pretty friggin’ steep. And that is why there seems to be little room for niche or experimental games anymore in the “AAA” games industry, and why those that do make them have to play so very far from the cutting edge of production values.

My recommendation to Mr. Macris is simple – come join the rest of us grumbling old-school gamers and get over the stigma of games that are somehow less that cutting-edge. The weather’s fine, the games are awesome, and we can have fun and watch our niche thrive and grow while the mainstream industry burns itself out in a painful transition from adolescence into adulthood.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 15 Comments to Read

Cute Knight Kingdom Expansion In the Works!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

I dunno how I missed this – I’ll find someone to blame later (I thought it was only a “deluxe” version!)- but Georgina is mentioning work on an upcoming Cute Knight Kingdom expansion in this blog post… about a lingerie outfit.

And no, it’s not quite as titillating as it sounds.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Avadon – The Black Fortress Interview

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 15, 2010

Jeff Vogel took some time to be interviewed by RPG Codex about his new game and new series, Avadon – The Black Fortress:

Avadon: The Black Fortress Interview at RPG Codex

Filed Under: Interviews - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Activision’s Indie Contest: Indies Need Not Apply?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Tom Buscaglia, the “Game Attorney,” took some time to read through the rules for Activision’s independent games competition. To be honest, this thing was always something of a head-scratcher for me, and after reading Tom’s take on it, I’m not sure I’m much closer to understanding the contest.

Tom Buscaglia: Some Thoughts on the Activision Indie Game Contest

What it really seems to me is that the competition is really not for anybody who has any business being an indie.  I mean, yay Activision for having this kind of contest and it *not* being particularly onerous. And the money being offered for the first round of competition is not chicken-scratch for your average indie.

But the contest is almost a subversion of all things indie. To win the contest you need to not act like an indie. You have to send them an incomplete game idea and then depend upon publisher approval in order to finish your game? Huh? Activision gets first right of negotiation, which is actually reasonably cool.

But as far as I can tell, the one most likely to win the competition is an experienced game dev (experienced enough to create a competent GDD, schedule, and budget) who for some reason feels the need to hitch their wagon exclusively to Activision’s for the duration of the competition in expectation of winning. All I can figure is that this may be some place an indie might send a back-burnered project. I’ve got a couple of those. Winning the competition would just bring it to the front-burner. The whole nebulous “round two” thing is just more head-scratchery.

Okay – clue to those new to the indie scene: Indie is pretty much a “do it yourself” ethos. That doesn’t mean indies are lone-wolves, or don’t end up going through publishers at all. What it means is they are independent of all those processes and artificial barriers imposed by publishers. This contest pretty much rewards the indies for re-introducing those barriers.

Does that make it an “anti-indie contest?”

Not that enterprising indies can’t figure out how to do what they want to do and use the rules to their advantage. I can think of 175,000 reasons to try and do just that.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Story and Consequences

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 14, 2010

Craig Stern of Sinister Design asked several indie game developers about the role of narrative in games in an article entitled, “Why Have Narrative In Games.”  Now, they were all RPG developers, which is traditionally a very story-heavy genre, so the answers were perhaps unsurprising. My own answer is probably the biggest outlier, as I feel that “good” narrative and “good” interactivity are highly competitive masters to serve. But hey, I’ll let you read it and come back:

Curiously enough, as much as I denote the problem of narrative in games, it’s a big part of what drives me to play.  If you’ve been around here long enough, you know that one of the most influential game series for me was the Wing Commander series.  What was Wing Commander? Basically an arcade-y flight sim (well, space combat…) with a story welded onto it. It worked well.

In fact, in some ways, the first game worked better than the second, which many people considered the “best” of the series. In the first game, the story was more … optional and background-y. And it would change. Characters would die. If they died, there’d be an empty chair marking where they would have participated in a conversation.

I’ll tell you – when I let Spirit die in the original game, it was a lot more poignant than her self-sacrifice in the sequel. It was precisely because she wasn’t supposed to die – because her story was supposed to continue – but her death had been my responsibility. In the sequel, the game designers had arbitrarily decided to punch her clock, and it was abundantly clear that there was nothing I could have done about it. It was forced.

From a narrative, storytelling perspective, her “canon” death was “better.” It wasn’t a random shot from a Kilrathi blaster, but a conscious decision of sacrifice on her part. But it sucked. It was the one that felt lame and cheap by comparison.

Maybe it’s just me.  I expect most players simply re-loaded the mission and played again in Wing Commander when they lost a wingman. After my first or second play-through, that’s what I’d do. Heck, I’d re-load because a single Kilrathi ship managed to get away.

In fact, that’s why the far more interactive structure of the first game was abandoned in favor of the more linear story of the second. The developers found that most people never played the “losing” branch of the campaign.  At all. And, by going to a linear storyline, they could actually make better use of tried-and-true storytelling methods to tell A Better Story.

It probably was. And again, people seemed to prefer the second game over the first.  So I’m probably the weirdo outlier.

Granted, if we could have the best of both worlds, I’d be all for it. But where they come into conflict (and they almost always do), for  me, interactive consequences seem to trump the use of superior storytelling techniques in a game.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Prince of Persia Movie: It Doesn’t Suck

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 12, 2010

Color me surprised!

We ended up seeing The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time movie last night after the showing of The Karate Kid we intended to see was sold out.

And – surprisingly – I enjoyed it. Really. No, it’s not going to be one of my favorites (though the acrobatic action was a lot of fun), and it was tough to figure out what was going on with the Hassansins most of the time. But for the most part, it was pretty fun and enjoyable.

A videogame-based movie that didn’t suck! Imagine that!

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Supreme Commander 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 11, 2010

Took advantage of a Steam sale and picked up Supreme Commander 2 last weekend.

It’s changed – a lot – from SC1 and Total Annihilation. A lot more streamlined. I kinda miss the gazillions of units that came with TA + Core Contingency, though.

But it is still very much a slugfest, though. And that’s not a bad thing.

Filed Under: Strategy Games - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

GOG.COM Weekend RPG Promo

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

If you are in the mood for yet more RPGs this weekend, haven’t played these, and you are already done with Eschalon: Book II and Din’s Curse already…

GOG.COM is having a weekend RPG sale for 30% off.

Darn it, I coulda had Arx Fatalis for… uh… $1.80 less than I paid for it. 🙂

Also for sale are the Realms of Arkania trilogy, the strangely-named Divine Divinity, and Warlords Battlecry 3 – which I never played and always considered more of an RTS than an RPG, but anyways…

Cheap entertainment!

Filed Under: Deals - Comments: Read the First Comment

Frayed Knights – It’s Not What You Do, But How You Do It

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

Time for another li’l update on Frayed Knights – that indie RPG that more than  6.5 BILLION PEOPLE have never heard of.

One of the dangers I face on this blog, where I occasionally criticize aspects of games that I feel were done poorly, is that I leave myself open to the same criticisms of my own work. And deservedly so. The pure critic has it easy – they can rip on other people’s stuff with relative impunity without ever having to produce anything in return other than the occasionally clever prose. But I not only realize that I have the potential to be savaged by the very standards I apply to others, I also recognize to my chagrin where my own deficiencies are occurring, and I doggedly continue down the same path of weakness and failure.

I’m finding myself making the same mistakes others have made (and I have criticized), and allowing myself to live with certain weaknesses and limitations of the engine and game system  that I’m not particularly happy with.  But the thing is – if we had to get it perfect, we’d never release a game. By “we” I mean pretty much everybody, indies and mainstream developers. But in the way of the alternative lay madness. And Duke Nukem Forever. The tough part is knowing where to draw the line – what battles to fight, and on which ones to yield the field.

So with that in mind, I read this article about choice and consequences in RPGs, and immediately began kicking myself for what could be yet another failure of Frayed Knights. I love those big, melodramatic decisions that have real long-term consequences. My immediate thought was, “Gah, that’s one more thing Frayed Knights isn’t doing right!”

A little reflection reminded me of two things:

#1 – Frayed Knights isn’t that kind of game. I want to make games like this, but Frayed Knights isn’t one. I’d probably wreck the game if I tried to force it to be that kind of game.

#2 – Actually, it does have some of this. Just … not at this kind of level.

Now, there are some decisions that may or may not come back to haunt you later in the game.  Like the choice in the pilot on whether or not to rescue the girl. The party makes a very sensible case as to why that might not be such a good idea in the pilot. They aren’t wrong. It’s not a big deal, either way (or in similar situations later in the game) – it won’t radically change the game – but you won’t necessarily receive an immediate congratulations and acknowledgment of whether or not you made the “right” decision.

Most conversations in Frayed Knights do not have decision points. You don’t choose whether to be a good guy or a jerk in conversations.  There are plenty of optional quests and locations to visit in the game, but the story and progression is at least somewhat linear.

But as I was inspired by “old-school” CRPG and pen-and-paper RPG design, I have ended up leaving a lot of the decisions not about what you do, but how you do it.

As an example:  a theoretical plot. There’s a bad guy living in this castle across a lake who has been a real jerk.

As a player, the only “decision” I instinctively think of is whether to take a boat or march around the lake to go to the castle to kick the bad guy’s deserving keister.

Standard computer game design is to put a bunch of obstacles – either physical or plot-based – that you must linearly overcome in order to plant your boot in said bad guy’s armor-plated rump. And locked doors. Your character may be able to demolish entire cities with the force of their will, but one locked door baffles them.

Okay – now I’m not entirely getting away from that in Frayed Knights. I’m committing my fair share of this crime, too. But I’m still making some efforts to allow the player to act on his basic instinct, and make a beeline for the bad guy. It will probably end up with the player receiving the bootprint on his butt, but it’s possible. I’ve always admired the games that allowed this – Oblivion, Fallout, etc.

The pilot episode of Frayed Knights included an (inadvertent) example of this.  You could make your way straight to the statue room, bypassing most of the dungeon. However, by taking the long way, you:

#1 – Pick up some better equipment and extra potions to help you on your way.

#2 – Don’t have to worry about attracting attention while you pick the lock of the portcullis.

#3 – Have an easier battle with the high priest, Kraltic Barg, as you don’t have to suffer waves of reinforcements from all the rooms you neglected on the way in.

Not all quests / adventures are like this, but I am trying to follow this as a general principle where it makes sense. They aren’t big, earth-shattering consequences that radically change the entire flow of the game.  And the game world isn’t organic enough that I can simply set quest objectives and allow emergent behavior and gameplay to provide a bunch of alternate paths for me.

But I hope that players will feel the game does provide some interesting options and room for choice in how they go about accomplishing their objectives.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Reason # 371 Why PC Gaming Is Better Than Console Gaming…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 10, 2010

A high-quality fan-made free mod for Left 4 Dead (the original):

I Hate Mountains

I played it a little last night. Died in the second chapter to the horde. But I had fun, and was pretty impressed with what they’ve done with things. I particularly liked the fireflies in the first chapter.

Filed Under: Free Games - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Molyneux on RPG Evolution: Translated Into Old-School Gamer English

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 9, 2010

The contention that mainstream games are “evolving” immediately raises my hackles. Not that I’m against change and true improvements – not at all – but contending that the newest games are the product of evolution in gaming from past efforts  is about like saying reality shows are a product of evolution in performance media  from Shakespeare. Yeah, sure, they certainly make more money and draw bigger audience than Shakespeare would have ever dreamed, but is that evolution?

No, I’m not saying old classic games were Shakespeare. But there’s a lot of marketing time and money being spent to convince us all that the direction the mainstream biz is taking us is The One True Way. In spite of evidence to the contrary. Call me a nutcase, but I tend to think more variety, experimentation, and open-mindedness is the key to any real evolution.  I have the bizarre belief that the existence of Mass Effect 2 doesn’t preclude my enjoyment of Eschalon: Book 2.

So my comment on Twitter was that this interview with Peter Molyneux brought up some good points, but it made me feel kinda greasy afterwords. I couldn’t figure out why, other than that “evolution” thing, until I ran the interview through a Marketingspeak-to-English translator. Tuned to the snarky old-school gamer dialect. Here are the results. Errors are the fault of the translator, not me. Really:

Gamasutra: Not only is Fable “evolving,” but we’re seeing the RPG genre as a whole changing.

Molyneux: It is, it really is. We feel like the entire industry’ s kind of evolving, itself. Assuming a definition of “evolving” meaning “chasing the most profitable fad.”

Suddenly, there’s a lot of money in social gaming, and we really want to make the kind of money that Zynga is making. The new motion controllers are great gimmicks that help people forget that they are mostly playing the same re-processed games that they’ve been playing for the last decade. I think that’s all evolution. And since much of the gaming media isn’t old enough to remember anything before the Playstation 2 anymore, they aren’t complaining about lack of innovation anymore. As far as they know, this is the way it’s always been!

You know, if you don’t suck up to the lowest-common denominator as much as possible, you won’t be able to sell your game in quantities that justify these gigantic development budgets that are needed to make lots of bloom effects and to pay my bar tab. And then you die.

So we need to push ourselves and change the RPG genre and the industry. Just like eating a fine meal at a fancy restaurant, it’ll be fascinating to see what comes out the other side.

Gamasutra: So is this change because of the kewl technology in today’s hardware?

Molyneux: I think everyone is beginning to understand that it’s not about fancy graphics or better gameplay – it’s about getting players to fork over three times as much dough online as they’d ever pay for a game by itself. With out last two games, we knocked ourselves out trying to figure out how to get every XBox 360 owner in the world to buy the game twice to justify our production costs, but now we’ve hit on the secret. Make ’em keep paying for the game they are already playing!

We’re calling this a “digital relationship.” You pay us money, and we’ll have a relationship with you. Yes, I know, there’s another word for people who do that kind of thing, but we’re calling it a “digital relationship.” The best part is that we don’t even have to make it all ourselves – we can let players create the content for each other, and pay us for the privilege!

This is all Evolution. Games aren’t even going to resemble games in a few years. We’re turning these consoles into Skinner Boxes that better allow us to treat our customers as wallets with legs.

Gamasutra: You are talking about things that sound complicated. Isn’t your goal to dumb down games more so they insult everybody’s intelligence?

Molyneux: Well, yeah. So we’re making room for all this new stuff by getting rid of complicated things like “gameplay” and control schemes. It’s all about getting people into the virtual shop to spend more money. They already know how to do that, at least.

Gamasutra: Oh, yeah, learning how to play a new game really sucks. Remember when we had to do that, back before all games were identical?

Molyneux: Totally! We’re working on a control scheme that’s pretty much, “Push button to do things. Push button faster to do things more quickly.” Anybody with a pulse can do that, although we’ll dumb it down more if that proves too complicated for the imbeciles who play our games.

Gamasutra: Good, because the industry has always assumed that “complexity equals depth.”

Molyneux: Hah! I spent a ridiculous number of years making classic games that have proven the test of time and garnered tons of praise for their depth and awesomeness. And now I finally realized that there’s not nearly as much money in making those games as the ones like this that basically amount to pushing a feeder bar over and over again. Silly me!

Gamasutra: This seems to be the direction a lot of mainstream games are taking right now.

Molyneux:  They all stole the idea from me – from my Fable games. But it’s Evolution!

Gamasutra: I love the changes that dumbed-down Final Fantasy XIII that fans and many critics are complaining about. Did you do the same thing?

Molyneux: Maybe. I used to love the old Final Fantasy games, but I hate them all now. I’ve evolved. I haven’t played the new one, though, so I couldn’t possibly be stealing any ideas from it.

Gamasutra: It’s extremely simplified. You can pretty much play it in your sleep. It’s all very Evolved, you see. Except the turn-based combat. Turn-based is not on the approved Evolution list. But they make up for it by doling out the gameplay at a lethargic rate.

Molyneux: Oh, you know, that’s interesting. That reminds me of World of Warcraft. Those guys make craploads of money, too, did you know that? I want to make craploads of money like them.  But in World of Warcraft, I discovered that gameplay didn’t matter – it’s all about that feeder bar of rewards.  That inspired me.

Gamasutra: You said, “I don’t care how tedious this is; I just want the reward.” Chris Hecker spoke about the fact that, that if we keep giving rewards for actually tedious gameplay, we’re going to create a situation where gamers expect rewards and slog through tedium to get to them.

Molyneux: Yeah. Grinding is good, but you have to disguise it so people won’t realize they are totally wasting their time with your game.

Gamasutra: Didja know that sometimes RPG fans like different things at different times? And, like, we RPG fans like to explore and see new stuff while we’re grinding, just to mix things up.

Molyneaux: Duh.

But, you know, we’ve just barely figured all that out. It’s New and Evolved. Back in the old days nobody understood those things. Really!

Gamasutra: It’s like … you need some dull parts to make the action more exciting. Like how good can’t exist without evil and stuff.

Molyneux:  Did I mention we have a really evil bad guy in Fable III? No shades of gray! But then we have a twist at the end. It’s cool. It’s Art.

Gamasutra: You talked about how dumbing down games makes you sound more commercial.

Molyneaux: Duh.

I want to sell more games. I want to make it easier for anybody to play ’em so they’ll buy more of ’em. What’s wrong with that?

Gamasutra: I think people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to commercial impetus.

Molyneux: People are stupid that way.

Gamasutra: Probably because much of the time being more commercial means pandering to the lowest common denominator and in so doing scrub out the very things that made games cool and unique and loved by gamers in the first place. But, uh…. we’re totally not doing that as an industy as we Evolve. No way.

Molyneux: Oh. Right. We’re totally not doing that. Because we’re Creative and stuff.

Gamasutra: Yeah. Creative is cool.

Molyneux: Um, yeah. We’re not totally governed by market research and trend following. That would suck, right? Heh. Heh.

Filed Under: Biz, Interviews, Mainstream Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Dungeon Siege 3 Announced, But…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 8, 2010

So apparently there’s going to be a Dungeon Siege 3.  For consoles and PCs.

Sadly, I can’t get enthusiastic about it. I have both of the previous games. I’ve played them both. Well, part-way. There’s nothing I hate about them. Every once in a while I look over at the DS2 box and think, “Gee, I should re-install that one and give it another chance.” There was no reason I quit playing it. They were very pretty games with some nice ideas and reasonably fun diversions. We enjoyed playing the first one multiplayer a little bit. It was pretty much like playing Gauntlet: Legends. Fun, but forgettable.

They were nice games with some interesting ideas that were designed to be really easy to get into. Maybe too easy. That might have been part of the problem: They were kinda boring. I never found myself really engaged by either game. I was loosely aware of the plots, found myself kinda-sorta restricting my actions to help force my character to develop in one direction or another, spent the requisite amount of time tweaking my equipment and spell loadouts, and otherwise played it like any other arcade game. Er, with RPG elements, which almost always improve any arcade-style game they belong to (see? That’s how old-school I am. I still use the term “arcade style” and “arcade game”). They just don’t hold my attention for very long.

Now, with Square Enix involved as publisher and Obsidian helming it, maybe the third time really will be the charm. We’ll see.  In the meantime, forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed with enthusiasm.

Filed Under: Mainstream Games - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Lone Wolf or Party Animal?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 7, 2010

Okay, RPG fans, here’s my question for you:

In CRPGs, are you a lone wolf, or a party animal? Do you prefer to play RPGs where you control only one character (though maybe you have a henchman or something to help you out), or do you prefer the kinds of games where you control a full party of 3+ characters?

And why? Do you prefer the tactical possibilities of a party of characters? Or do you prefer being able to focus in on playing a single role in a single-character RPG?

Let me know what you think!

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 24 Comments to Read

My Take on Alan Wake

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 4, 2010

Okay, not that I have much time even for playing games lately (a side effect of FK momentum increasing – YAY!), but I picked up Alan Wake this week and am a little ways into it – only chapter 3 so far.

I dig the story. I dig the lighting. I dig the mood. The characters are – well, they are okay. The game mechanics are… well, interesting, at least, which is nice. Overall, I’m enjoying playing it, and my wife actually wants to sit and watch me play – something she hasn’t really done since Final Fantasy VII.

But Alan Wake basically a movie where you have to go through some little action / puzzle sequences to watch the whole movie.  At first I thought that was only an issue with the introduction, but by this point it seems to be the whole game. You travel along the path, pick up another page of a manuscript, or run across a radio or TV or character that fills you in a little more with What’s Going On, and then you run another action sequence to find out more.

Oh, they change it up. Sometimes they have you walk around WHILE an NPC is talking to you. So you can still be doing something. Except if you are facing away from them, their voices fade to half-volume so it’s easy to lose what they are saying. So instead, I end up standing around facing them and doing very little so I can hear what they are saying. because, like I said, I’m kinda digging the story.

Now, I’m not a huge console gamer, but the games I have don’t typically go to quite this extreme. It has some theoretically interesting game mechanics involving the use of light to “burn away” the invulnerability of enemies, but really – the basic gameplay feels a little like playing a mandatory round of Space Invaders between cool stuff.  Space Invaders with cool extra challenges, survival-horror limits on ammunition, and really horrible camera action.

This seems like it would have been a pretty cool adventure game, but they don’t make those anymore if they have to sell to mainstream audiences. And hey, I kinda like Space Invaders in moderation.  Sans horrible camera action.

So I guess, when all is said and done, I do like the game thus far.  But it does remind me of a joke Chris Crawford once told at a talk I attended at GDC many years ago about interactive storytelling. “You get a little bit of interactivity, followed by a little bit of story, followed by a little bit of interactivity, followed by a little more story, and if you repeat that enough very quickly, it sounds like an interactive story, right?”

Filed Under: Mainstream Games - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Avadon: You Work For Bluebeard…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on

… Except his name is Redbeard.

Jeff Vogel has begin his developer diary series on his new game / trilogy / series / franchise, Avadon: The Black Fortress.  His first post is on where his idea came from:

Avadon Developer Diary #1 – Where Ideas Come From

In this case, it came from an opera. Read it and enjoy.

Filed Under: Design, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Read the First Comment

A Love Note to the Hardcore PC Gamers…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 3, 2010

The mainstream games biz has abandoned us. Many indies have abandoned us for casual / social games or the iPhone. But Cliffski still loves us.

Why Harcore Gamers Are the Best Customers

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article



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