The other day I was playing Hearthstone and the Sword & Sorcery LP on my iPad and it hit me; games, as a bizz and as a cultural phenomenon, loose out so much on negating the artistic potential and merit it has. Right now, games are sort of measured like drugs as in ”how much happy-chems its reward/interaction system can generate. Very rarely what sort of emotions it may stir.
And this is the thing, if you want to compete for success in games you can do so through this reductionist, analytical approach. Like a scientist would, which makes sense since most folks in games are either entrepreneurs or engineers (architypal, as such). But alas, the soft artistic values and their potential are being totally squandered through this approach and left forgotten when considering an endevour into making games. If you creat something that is interactive, balanced in friction and offering an atmosphere and/or emotional stimuli that is unique to its experience, then the game (no pun intended) completely changes.
Just wanted to chip those 5 cents in as a positive note to the grim ”games are cooked” take that you are nurturing ;)
I always get sidetracked, or perhaps abit blinded, by my idealistic view on meaningful occupation, and forget that you are talking about this in a more bizznizz-oriented way. But some healthy polemic is never to underestimate, I guess.
So yes, starting a new bizz in games is alot more volatile than, say, back in 2010.
Seeing as there are no comments here, I'd like to add my two cents. I think this time your tendency to hyperbolize got the better of you, Jeff. "We haven't seen its like before" sounds rather dubious when you take into account titles like Retro Game Crunch or Last Call BBS, the latter having literally the same premise: a fictional piece of hardware with a bunch of games for it. Maybe in terms of quantity, yeah, UFO 50 is unique enough, but calling it remarkable is a bit of a stretch. I wouldn't even call it good.
For one, UFO 50 doesn't really sell its core idea. When I played Last Call BBS, it truly felt like going back in time: the humming of the hard drive, the interface, the modem sounds, the painfully slow speeds at which the packages are downloaded - everything reinforced the impression that it's the 90s all over again. On the contrary, UFO 50 doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's, well, just a game. You're not putting a cartridge into a console, you're merely choosing an option from a menu.
As for the games themselves... I tried a dozen, and dropped each one almost immediately. Why? Let's take Mortol as an example. Yes, it's got a neat idea: sacrifice your peeps to overcome obstacles. Okay. What has it got besides that? Structurally, it's a run-of-the-mill platformer. Narratively, it's a dud. There's no plot to speak of, so my only motivation to push forward is provided by a vague sense of duty. Like, "don't you want to challenge yourself?" Well, I do, but there are better challenges out there. I need something to keep me interested: if not story, then graphics; if not graphics, then innovative mechanics. "People as ammunition" gets old really fast.
To conclude, I'm not saying you're wrong to like UFO 50, but putting it on a pedestal and declaring it "the level of competition" may have the opposite effect than intended: if *that* is what one has to compete with, I think aspiring game designers can sleep easier from now on.
In Mortol, per your example, there are ways to clear a level with over +10/+15/+20 lives. There are tricks, and tricks, and tricks. The 'people as ammunition' and 'run-of-the-mill platformer' were layered on a deep and challenging puzzle game that you didn't find. To get the 'cherry' completion, you have to end with something like +70 lives. So, as with many of these games, you can stumble/grind through a level, or keep peeling back the layers for a fairly deep genre/themed experience. And as discussed in the blog post, as soon as the experience has reached the natural end of its progression, it, well, ends. Which is nice.
Another example of this is Magic Garden. You can play conservatively and grind through dropping off 200 slimes, or you can play for score, learn a few tricks, and then the game really opens up.
As with the Nintendo era, a staple of that era in game design was 'mastering' the game. Thus the cherry completion standards throughout UFO50
I love Zachtronics (as someone who has 100% Spacechem and completed TIS-100 and EXAPunks), but Last Call BBS felt very much like an attempt to drop off the remaining game concepts/demos they had and would never fully flesh out as a love letter to long term fans (I bought it as one of those fans).
Another dichotomy is that Zachtronics games are all variations on the same 1-2 themes (either assembly programming or spatial programming...I guess also competitive solitaire lol). UFO50, although there are some overlaps, are attempts to capture a very broad selection of game genres in the style of classic Nintendo era gaming, including some modern game genres that were never really captured during that era. The fact that the collection was created by an entire group of very talented game designers shows.
This has been done before, thrice in fact.
Look up the Japanese games Gamecenter CX ("Retro Game Challenge" in the West) for Nintendo DS.
Granted it's not 50 games (more like 10 or so) but same concept.
The other day I was playing Hearthstone and the Sword & Sorcery LP on my iPad and it hit me; games, as a bizz and as a cultural phenomenon, loose out so much on negating the artistic potential and merit it has. Right now, games are sort of measured like drugs as in ”how much happy-chems its reward/interaction system can generate. Very rarely what sort of emotions it may stir.
And this is the thing, if you want to compete for success in games you can do so through this reductionist, analytical approach. Like a scientist would, which makes sense since most folks in games are either entrepreneurs or engineers (architypal, as such). But alas, the soft artistic values and their potential are being totally squandered through this approach and left forgotten when considering an endevour into making games. If you creat something that is interactive, balanced in friction and offering an atmosphere and/or emotional stimuli that is unique to its experience, then the game (no pun intended) completely changes.
Just wanted to chip those 5 cents in as a positive note to the grim ”games are cooked” take that you are nurturing ;)
Just to be clear, I don't think video games themselves are cooked. It's an incredibly vibrant creative field.
As a place to start a new business, however ...
I always get sidetracked, or perhaps abit blinded, by my idealistic view on meaningful occupation, and forget that you are talking about this in a more bizznizz-oriented way. But some healthy polemic is never to underestimate, I guess.
So yes, starting a new bizz in games is alot more volatile than, say, back in 2010.
Seeing as there are no comments here, I'd like to add my two cents. I think this time your tendency to hyperbolize got the better of you, Jeff. "We haven't seen its like before" sounds rather dubious when you take into account titles like Retro Game Crunch or Last Call BBS, the latter having literally the same premise: a fictional piece of hardware with a bunch of games for it. Maybe in terms of quantity, yeah, UFO 50 is unique enough, but calling it remarkable is a bit of a stretch. I wouldn't even call it good.
For one, UFO 50 doesn't really sell its core idea. When I played Last Call BBS, it truly felt like going back in time: the humming of the hard drive, the interface, the modem sounds, the painfully slow speeds at which the packages are downloaded - everything reinforced the impression that it's the 90s all over again. On the contrary, UFO 50 doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's, well, just a game. You're not putting a cartridge into a console, you're merely choosing an option from a menu.
As for the games themselves... I tried a dozen, and dropped each one almost immediately. Why? Let's take Mortol as an example. Yes, it's got a neat idea: sacrifice your peeps to overcome obstacles. Okay. What has it got besides that? Structurally, it's a run-of-the-mill platformer. Narratively, it's a dud. There's no plot to speak of, so my only motivation to push forward is provided by a vague sense of duty. Like, "don't you want to challenge yourself?" Well, I do, but there are better challenges out there. I need something to keep me interested: if not story, then graphics; if not graphics, then innovative mechanics. "People as ammunition" gets old really fast.
To conclude, I'm not saying you're wrong to like UFO 50, but putting it on a pedestal and declaring it "the level of competition" may have the opposite effect than intended: if *that* is what one has to compete with, I think aspiring game designers can sleep easier from now on.
In Mortol, per your example, there are ways to clear a level with over +10/+15/+20 lives. There are tricks, and tricks, and tricks. The 'people as ammunition' and 'run-of-the-mill platformer' were layered on a deep and challenging puzzle game that you didn't find. To get the 'cherry' completion, you have to end with something like +70 lives. So, as with many of these games, you can stumble/grind through a level, or keep peeling back the layers for a fairly deep genre/themed experience. And as discussed in the blog post, as soon as the experience has reached the natural end of its progression, it, well, ends. Which is nice.
Another example of this is Magic Garden. You can play conservatively and grind through dropping off 200 slimes, or you can play for score, learn a few tricks, and then the game really opens up.
As with the Nintendo era, a staple of that era in game design was 'mastering' the game. Thus the cherry completion standards throughout UFO50
I love Zachtronics (as someone who has 100% Spacechem and completed TIS-100 and EXAPunks), but Last Call BBS felt very much like an attempt to drop off the remaining game concepts/demos they had and would never fully flesh out as a love letter to long term fans (I bought it as one of those fans).
Another dichotomy is that Zachtronics games are all variations on the same 1-2 themes (either assembly programming or spatial programming...I guess also competitive solitaire lol). UFO50, although there are some overlaps, are attempts to capture a very broad selection of game genres in the style of classic Nintendo era gaming, including some modern game genres that were never really captured during that era. The fact that the collection was created by an entire group of very talented game designers shows.