Comments on: Lost, The Wire, Game Design, Meaning, and Brian Moriarty

By: jordy

jordy — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:06:54 +0000

Yea, hopefully you will be among the first to succeed. Thinking about it a bit, I think the game that came closest for me doing this is the flash game Canabalt, somehow the gameplay sucks me in a bit and I can remember the first time playing it I was thinking how it would be running there :).
But unfortunately repetition is an fearsome foo in this case. Ofcourse there are more (indie) games that got me thinking a bit, but I think Canabalt really excelt in it by doing it by the gameplay itself mostly.

By: checker

checker — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:27:03 +0000

I agree 100%, and I don’t think it was a vague rant at all, I think it’s what a growing number of game designers are trying to do: really make gameplay/interactivity primary, and see what kind of emotions and meaning are possible.

By: jordy

jordy — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:14:50 +0000

I think it would be great if games transfer a certain feeling an emotion. But by the gameplay itself, rather then by the art or story behind it.
Art and story telling are great features in games, and I especially like some indie games for it, but it doesn’t sink really deep.

Sometimes if I watch a good movie, I get a certain emotion or feeling that got “transfered” from that movie to me, I think games should try to do this as well, but by there gameplay instead of there “features”. Cause in the end that is were gaming is all about. And no matter how much money you’re throwing at an expensive game for cinematic shortcuts and story scripts in the end a movie does the job better.
Ofcourse you can try to combine story and gameplay, but I really think the gameplay should be the vocal point of it all. How does it make you feel, besides that you enjoy it.

So I think for you game it would be really great if you can bring that feeling of anxiety, fear perhaps, concentration, to the player, perhaps by a level that he himself starts to think by himself how it would be like if he would be put in some kind of similar situation.
Altho that has never really happened to me, and I have no clue how to archieve such a thing, but I do think art, storytelling, etc. are secondary to gameplay in archieving it.
Perhaps also it has something to do with the player “forgetting” about to goals he has, wich is to win, cause this might distract him from the momentum of the gameplay. There is a small, tho I think for quite some time, a tradition in some art/indie games to leave out the goals in the gameplay and just trying to immerse you into the gameplay itself.

Alot of vague rant perhaps, but let’s say that is cause of my limited english ;).

Anyways goodluck.

By: checker

checker — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:04:44 +0000

> Just out of curiosity what group would you put yourself in?

Well, I’m currently wearing all the hats, but I normally think of myself as programmer-designer. I can do art at a passable-but-not-great quality, though, which is also hugely useful (even just having an eye for visual aesthetics as a programmer is imporant). I wish I knew how to make music! You occasionally get people like Kyle Gabler and Casey Muratori who are programmer-designer-artist-musicians, they can make cool video games on a desert island out of a pile of palm fronts, coconuts, and sea shells!

By: Ron

Ron — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 14:16:57 +0000

I definitely get what you mean about using the crossover to have what you’re developing talk to you.
I am in the artist-programmer subset, and this has led to many interesting developments that really couldn’t have been created unless I was both.

Just out of curiosity what group would you put yourself in? Programmer-Designer/Designer-Developer/etc.