Why is this effort treated as being difficult? Pack three indie game developers in a capsule for 100 days. They'll hardly talk with each other, and by the end of the trip, they'll complain to mission control they only just got their compilers working for their games' scripting languages!
As one of the lucky finalists, I'd like to share our success story. Last year we submitted The Witch's Yarn as a beta and got totally snubbed. Fortunately we finished the game, shipped it, improved it several times and submitted it again. Yea us, but seriously, don't hesitate in your quest for fame, fortune, and whatever. Our double charm was, it's our second placing as a IGF finalist. Flagship Champion was picked in 1999.
Great, All Fem Gamers are HOT CHICKS!
on
Getting the Girl
·
· Score: 1
After scanning the article and reading the summation, it looks like the greatest majority of women gamers have been completely ignored. Look again, Ms. Flower, look at the casual market and find that women over thirty five represent nearly half of ALL computer gamers. It's not like there's a lack of positive women role models presented in games. They're just not easy to find, because the gaming industry is still sucking up to hard-core players. (for which I'm actually half grateful, because I want more RPGs) Fortunately, mobile games and casual games are just starting to turn big heads like EA, MS, Sony, and Nintendo.
I have been designing and building computer game interfaces for 10 years. Each required iterative design between the coding and mock-ups. Each is influenced by the other so heavily that the final UI cannot be considered either art or code. The idea that some artist draws an interface that some programmer implements is so unrealistic, pig farmers could make feather beds from all the stock flying around their barn.
The UI I'm talking about is not the button. It's not the window. It's the strategic methodology to perform complex tasks. UI people are continually working with metaphors, for example: desktop and rooms. They use individual components (buttons,viewports,...) to craft these metaphors, like artists experimenting with brush strokes, to paint their canvas. UI is inverse poetry, taking advantage of an audience's experiences to enable that audience's expressions.
And for self-argument sake, I can actually remember user interface art that was was intended to provide a frustrating UI. Remember the Infocom game, Bureaucracy, by Douglas Adams? So my quick good/bad statement should be considered a 'technical' use of good and bad...:-)
If that were true, all of the interfaces designed for a specific purpose would look pretty much alike. So many people restrict art to the basic five senses, Consider user interfaces as kinematic art. The way in which you operate a game can be as much as an emotional experience as the visual and audible components. Frustration is bad UI art. UI that fosters light bulbs above heads, and the commensurate feeling of accomplishment and confidence is good interface art.
As an independent game developer who just released a new kind of adventure game, I disagree that art and code are always distinct. Our game introduces an incredibly accessible user interface for controlling adventure games. I personally believe that user interfaces are an art form, yet UI is ultimately expressed in code. Consider that one example of code as art.
Over the last twelve years, I have worked as a software engineer for Sierra Online, Digital Pictures, Stormfront Studios, and 3DO. Everyone of them had killer crunch times, but the one factor that made those 80 hour weeks bearable versus intolerable was the way management motivated its staff. The bigger ones said, 'work or die'. The smaller ones said, 'if you can'.
Whenever I was the (fool?) one who decided to work my ass off for the company, compensation never offered, I felt very proud to have given my all. For those who emotionally whipped their employees, I took the next boat out. There was always a job offer with more pay waiting, until the dot bomb crushed game careers in its wake. Instead of swimming against the current with the rest of the salmon, I smelled the waters. The game industry is teetering over its own success. Too much emphasis on big budgets. Too much emphasis on retail and seasons. Too little emphasis on expanding the type of games produced. EA is swimming faster and faster to keep in place. Obviously, the employees are suffering because of it.
Board games are going through a renaissance. The market for internet, downloadable games is growing faster than the PC retail market. The console market is starting a new cycle with more expensive hardware sold at a greater loss with software expected to make up the difference. Mobile oriented games are gearing up to blow everything else away (in numbers of sales only). The great thing about mobile and downloadable games is, these games are profitable ONLY with small budgets. That means, the independent scene is a fabulous place to be looking for work right now! Small companies are exploding across high-tech nations to build tiny, fun games. Oh, there's still crunch time, but on a game that has a $10,000 budget, and three months of one engineer working, crunches are short and exciting! Just don't expect, ever, to get rich.
This is where I ended up, building my own titles. I still work on games, and I am very thankful that I still love it.
Over the last twelve years, I have worked as a software engineer for Sierra Online, Digital Pictures, Stormfront Studios, and 3DO. Everyone of them had killer crunch times, but the one factor that made those 80 hour weeks bearable versus intolerable was the way management motivated its staff. The bigger ones said, 'work or die'. The smaller ones said, 'if you can'.
Whenever I was the (fool?) one who decided to work my ass off for the company, compensation never offered, I felt very proud to have given my all. For those who emotionally whipped their employees, I took the next boat out. There was always a job offer with more pay waiting, until the dot bomb crushed game careers in its wake. Instead of swimming against the current with the rest of the salmon, I smelled the waters. The game industry is teetering over its own success. Too much emphasis on big budgets. Too much emphasis on retail and seasons. Too little emphasis on expanding the type of games produced. EA is swimming faster and faster to keep in place. Obviously, the employees are suffering because of it.
Board games are going through a renaissance. The market for internet, downloadable games is growing faster than the PC retail market. The console market is starting a new cycle with more expensive hardware sold at a greater loss with software expected to make up the difference. Mobile oriented games are gearing up to blow everything else away (in numbers of sales only). The great thing about mobile and downloadable games is, these games are profitable ONLY with small budgets. That means, the independent scene is a fabulous place to be looking for work right now! Small companies are exploding across high-tech nations to build tiny, fun games. Oh, there's still crunch time, but on a game that has a $10,000 budget, and three months of one engineer working, crunches are short and exciting! Just don't expect, ever, to get rich.
This is where I ended up, building my own titles. I still work on games, and I am very thankful that I still love it.
First, Ron Gilbert deserves a lot praise for his explanation of the lost way of 2D games. I worked three years for Sierra Online, porting 10 titles to the Macintosh. He's right on. More recently, I've been working on a 2D adventure game that should go gold, next week.
Thank Mr. Gilbert for observing that there are many other routes than his traditional approach. But this is the computer game industry, and tradition applies mostly to last week. The route we've taken is to design a game specifically for the women segment of the downloadable audience. They are largely unfamiliar with adventure games. For that reason, we hope to stand out among the billion puzzle games.
Building 'The Witch's Yarn' cost, out of pocket, $10,000, including legal fees for the distribution agreement. That does not cover the principal developer's salary, but it did pay for the art, animation, proofreading, testing, sound engineering, and music licenses. Guerrilla developers can make real products (mac, pc, linux simultaenous) on real tight budgets. (the trick was to build a text adventure game that looks like a 2D adventure game - think comix)
Now, $10,000 is all one should spend to build a game for the downloadable market. The biggest game portals charge the most money to sell your game, even more than the retail channel! Fortunately, you don't have manufacturing costs. A good selling game, might earn a developer $100,000, but less than $50,000 is more likely.
But when it asserted that all interactive fiction was operated by verb/direct-objects controls, I had to put it down. There are other metaphors for controlling a branching narrative. Midnight Stranger let you control the main character's emotions, allowing him or her to react based on the player choice of emotion.
Another game to break the verb/target type of adventure game is The Witch's yarn. Instead of controlling the character, the player controls the environment.
The Witch's Yarn is written in Python and PyGame. The code ports without modification between Mac and PC. There is no reason it shouldn't run on Linux, but the developer (me) doesn't have a Linux box. Anyone? (I live in the SF bay area)
Unfortunately, it's not a game for the slashdot crowd at large. It was written with middle-age and younger women in mind. So, let your girlfriend/mom/older-daughter judge it, before rolling your eyes at all the community/relationships/self-empowerment content.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this effort treated as being difficult? Pack three indie game developers in a capsule for 100 days. They'll hardly talk with each other, and by the end of the trip, they'll complain to mission control they only just got their compilers working for their games' scripting languages!
As one of the lucky finalists, I'd like to share our success story. Last year we submitted The Witch's Yarn as a beta and got totally snubbed. Fortunately we finished the game, shipped it, improved it several times and submitted it again. Yea us, but seriously, don't hesitate in your quest for fame, fortune, and whatever. Our double charm was, it's our second placing as a IGF finalist. Flagship Champion was picked in 1999.
After scanning the article and reading the summation, it looks like the greatest majority of women gamers have been completely ignored. Look again, Ms. Flower, look at the casual market and find that women over thirty five represent nearly half of ALL computer gamers. It's not like there's a lack of positive women role models presented in games. They're just not easy to find, because the gaming industry is still sucking up to hard-core players. (for which I'm actually half grateful, because I want more RPGs) Fortunately, mobile games and casual games are just starting to turn big heads like EA, MS, Sony, and Nintendo.
I have been designing and building computer game interfaces for 10 years. Each required iterative design between the coding and mock-ups. Each is influenced by the other so heavily that the final UI cannot be considered either art or code. The idea that some artist draws an interface that some programmer implements is so unrealistic, pig farmers could make feather beds from all the stock flying around their barn.
The UI I'm talking about is not the button. It's not the window. It's the strategic methodology to perform complex tasks. UI people are continually working with metaphors, for example: desktop and rooms. They use individual components (buttons,viewports,...) to craft these metaphors, like artists experimenting with brush strokes, to paint their canvas. UI is inverse poetry, taking advantage of an audience's experiences to enable that audience's expressions.
And for self-argument sake, I can actually remember user interface art that was was intended to provide a frustrating UI. Remember the Infocom game, Bureaucracy, by Douglas Adams? So my quick good/bad statement should be considered a 'technical' use of good and bad... :-)
If that were true, all of the interfaces designed for a specific purpose would look pretty much alike. So many people restrict art to the basic five senses, Consider user interfaces as kinematic art. The way in which you operate a game can be as much as an emotional experience as the visual and audible components. Frustration is bad UI art. UI that fosters light bulbs above heads, and the commensurate feeling of accomplishment and confidence is good interface art.
As an independent game developer who just released a new kind of adventure game, I disagree that art and code are always distinct. Our game introduces an incredibly accessible user interface for controlling adventure games. I personally believe that user interfaces are an art form, yet UI is ultimately expressed in code. Consider that one example of code as art.
Whenever I was the (fool?) one who decided to work my ass off for the company, compensation never offered, I felt very proud to have given my all. For those who emotionally whipped their employees, I took the next boat out. There was always a job offer with more pay waiting, until the dot bomb crushed game careers in its wake. Instead of swimming against the current with the rest of the salmon, I smelled the waters. The game industry is teetering over its own success. Too much emphasis on big budgets. Too much emphasis on retail and seasons. Too little emphasis on expanding the type of games produced. EA is swimming faster and faster to keep in place. Obviously, the employees are suffering because of it.
Board games are going through a renaissance. The market for internet, downloadable games is growing faster than the PC retail market. The console market is starting a new cycle with more expensive hardware sold at a greater loss with software expected to make up the difference. Mobile oriented games are gearing up to blow everything else away (in numbers of sales only). The great thing about mobile and downloadable games is, these games are profitable ONLY with small budgets. That means, the independent scene is a fabulous place to be looking for work right now! Small companies are exploding across high-tech nations to build tiny, fun games. Oh, there's still crunch time, but on a game that has a $10,000 budget, and three months of one engineer working, crunches are short and exciting! Just don't expect, ever, to get rich.
This is where I ended up, building my own titles. I still work on games, and I am very thankful that I still love it.
Whenever I was the (fool?) one who decided to work my ass off for the company, compensation never offered, I felt very proud to have given my all. For those who emotionally whipped their employees, I took the next boat out. There was always a job offer with more pay waiting, until the dot bomb crushed game careers in its wake. Instead of swimming against the current with the rest of the salmon, I smelled the waters. The game industry is teetering over its own success. Too much emphasis on big budgets. Too much emphasis on retail and seasons. Too little emphasis on expanding the type of games produced. EA is swimming faster and faster to keep in place. Obviously, the employees are suffering because of it.
Board games are going through a renaissance. The market for internet, downloadable games is growing faster than the PC retail market. The console market is starting a new cycle with more expensive hardware sold at a greater loss with software expected to make up the difference. Mobile oriented games are gearing up to blow everything else away (in numbers of sales only). The great thing about mobile and downloadable games is, these games are profitable ONLY with small budgets. That means, the independent scene is a fabulous place to be looking for work right now! Small companies are exploding across high-tech nations to build tiny, fun games. Oh, there's still crunch time, but on a game that has a $10,000 budget, and three months of one engineer working, crunches are short and exciting! Just don't expect, ever, to get rich.
This is where I ended up, building my own titles. I still work on games, and I am very thankful that I still love it.
Thank Mr. Gilbert for observing that there are many other routes than his traditional approach. But this is the computer game industry, and tradition applies mostly to last week. The route we've taken is to design a game specifically for the women segment of the downloadable audience. They are largely unfamiliar with adventure games. For that reason, we hope to stand out among the billion puzzle games.
Building 'The Witch's Yarn' cost, out of pocket, $10,000, including legal fees for the distribution agreement. That does not cover the principal developer's salary, but it did pay for the art, animation, proofreading, testing, sound engineering, and music licenses. Guerrilla developers can make real products (mac, pc, linux simultaenous) on real tight budgets. (the trick was to build a text adventure game that looks like a 2D adventure game - think comix)
Now, $10,000 is all one should spend to build a game for the downloadable market. The biggest game portals charge the most money to sell your game, even more than the retail channel! Fortunately, you don't have manufacturing costs. A good selling game, might earn a developer $100,000, but less than $50,000 is more likely.
Of course, who knows what'll be true next week.
But when it asserted that all interactive fiction was operated by verb/direct-objects controls, I had to put it down. There are other metaphors for controlling a branching narrative. Midnight Stranger let you control the main character's emotions, allowing him or her to react based on the player choice of emotion. Another game to break the verb/target type of adventure game is The Witch's yarn. Instead of controlling the character, the player controls the environment.
The Witch's Yarn is written in Python and PyGame. The code ports without modification between Mac and PC. There is no reason it shouldn't run on Linux, but the developer (me) doesn't have a Linux box. Anyone? (I live in the SF bay area) Unfortunately, it's not a game for the slashdot crowd at large. It was written with middle-age and younger women in mind. So, let your girlfriend/mom/older-daughter judge it, before rolling your eyes at all the community/relationships/self-empowerment content.