The coolest thing about this stuff is how weirdly motivated I feel now. “Connected,” that’s how I feel. Everything feels richer, I care more about indie news and shit. Why? Because it immediately feeds into my idea for the game, which seems so much more real now.
One of the major concepts behind my game is that the iteration cycle is motivating. A player does something then learns from it. I think the first thing I wanted to change about games, ever, was the following: I don’t want games to be too easy, or shallow. I want depth and challenge, depth and challenge, all the time! Rare a game provides you with this, and continuously provides you with it.
There are these key moments when you’re playing Half-Life or CS, or Mario, or whatever, and you just zone in. Everything is open to you and you think on 12 different levels simultaneously. You think about your own life, about the world around you, and you conclude that it is awesome and that you rule. That is the zone. You are in it, and I hate it when I can’t go back to it because I have to pay attention to some particular thing, or I’m tired of some repeated element, or action I have to perform, or music track etc. Depth and challenge: these two things combined let you get in the zone and stay there, and then go magical. Fuck, yes.
So the game, it is a thing. In it players grow. The whole game world exists to help players grow. That is how it is constructed. It is like a personal tutor, and its mission: get you fucking good at this game. … Then on top of that we get the stuff that lets a player express.
How does this connect with the iteration cycle, with connecting to other people? I’ll show you later. Peace for now, brothers. God speed. … what?
ps.
Content that inspired me in the last few hours, related to this post:
Playing games makes you cool.
from TIGTumblr: http://tigsource.tumblr.com/
God I love Cave Story.
from Derek Yu: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/44181247500/making-it-in-indie-games-starter-guide
Hah. Felt that one? Sometimes it’s scary being this way. What do we have that gives us our identity? Our self-confidence? Interesting.
Why does this content matter? You’ll see. At some point we’ll all share in a collaboration process that takes our inspiration and merges it into a continuous stream, from which a design and game will emerge. I’ll show you how.
One more. I’m watching a talk by Jon Blow, about things he was naive about as a programmer before he started Braid – his first big (finished) personal project: http://www.myplick.com/view/7CRyJCWLM71/CSUA-talk. I haven’t thought about game programming for a year about. I was too focused on either design or other programming. I forgot how exciting it is.
the Game 