On The Untapped Potential Of Abstract Videogames

Thanks to the IGDA for their 'Ivory Tower' column discussing why abstract graphics and gameplay are often unfairly ignored when making today's videogames. The writer notes that: "Quite a few classic board games are fairly abstract in design, including Chess, Go, Scrabble, Checkers, and so on... it's what's at the core of the game that matters." He goes on to argue that "the figuring out of a game can be made as interesting as any puzzle the appears within the game itself", and references newer titles such as Rez and Frequency as carrying on the abstract aesthetic pioneered by games like Tempest and I, Robot.

Comments

Abstract is from venus, realism is from mars.

[eyeball]

You know, now that I think about it, with few exceptions, all the women I've ever known have always been really into abstract games, while all the guys I've known have been into realistic games. (Case in potint: I just finished a marathon 20 hour session with the Lineage RPG, while my wife was playing all kinds of weird flash games all day.) It would be interesting to see if tapping the abstract game market also resulted in reaching the female demographic.

nethack

[scrytch]

It's hard to get any less representational than nethack ... in some ways it's not all that abstract though, given all the distinct objects with clear and obvious effects, unlike the more nebulous forms of board control in Chess or Go. Abstract would be the D&D combat system. Really abstract would be ProgressQuest.

I really wish I could still get excited about roguelikes though. I had this idea a while back to make a roguelike game using unicode characters to expand the tile repitoire without having to be an artist, but I just can't imagine anyone besides myself playing it. It's not for some idea of popularity or glory, it's that I'd really like to entertain and interest people. I guess unless I come up with something that totally breaks the mold instead of advancing the art, it's just never going to fly without 10K+ man-hours in 3D art at least..