Links For March 22, 2015

Punk Games

“Crappy work” is also a concept that has been pretty narrowly defined despite being highly subjective – both with punk music and alternative video games. There’s a pressure in the indie space to create products that use similar metrics of success to big budget games, to prove to no one in particular that we’re just as good as the triple A blockbusters. However, the values we automatically embrace as “good” should be questioned.


#altgames is the no-fault divorce that indie games needs

No one wants a civil war over what “indie” really means, or a witch hunt over who is authentically “indie” or whatever. We all have different relationships with games and that’s okay as long as you’re not promoting hate speech or something. At the same time, it’s ridiculous to pretend that I’m not bored out of my mind during countless GDC conversation(s) lingering on advertising revenues and Indie Fund deals and sales figures.


Long and Winding Road

But rapid prototyping presupposes that prototyping is rapid. The design of Gorogoa has always depended on complex, highly constrained nuances of visual and spacial design. For most people who like the game, including myself, narrative and aesthetic choices are as important as mechanical choices, so prototypes made of gray boxes aren’t sufficient. Trying ideas has proven to be very expensive. And when I have taken the time to think things through in advance, the results have been much better.


Theatres should look beyond one-night stands

That’s because a consistent diet of short runs is bad for audiences and bad for artists. If a show comes to us for one or two nights, its audience know they are going to attend before the company even arrive in Bristol. In other words, the company is preaching to the converted because short runs do not give the company or the venue any time to encourage word of mouth to spread and to access new audiences.


Starships - a multifandom space vid by bironic