I want to talk about this Manifesto Games thing. (Here’s some more. Oh, and this, and this. Maybe some of this, but only if there’s time left over after Q&A.)

Boy, he sure did generate a lot of press!

I have the greatest respect for Mr. Greg Costikyan and his inciteful writing. When I was on my own, and struggling to try and make something out of nothing in the games industry, his direct, take-no-prisoners style writing and clear thinking about what makes games games kept me warm through the long dark night.

But…

Okay, so as far as I can tell, the pitch here is that the games industry sucks, and that the way out is for Mr. Costikyan to incite revolution (with a new company that he has announced very publicly) that will change the economics of games in a way that gives more money to the creators.

Foundational to this idea is the notion of Scratchware, a term he coined (watch out for popups on that link), which is defined as follows:

“The phrase scratchware game essentially means a computer game, created by a microteam, with pro quality art, game design, programming and sound to be sold at paperback book store prices.”

I would like to respond to the assertion that Mr. Costikyan and his brave revolutionaries are going to generate a whole new industry, filled with scratchware, and free himself (and other oppressed creators like him) from the shackles of The Man.

*ahem*

• PopCap Games
  • - Insaniquarium
  • - Zuma
  • - Heavy Weapon
  • - Bejeweled 2
  • - Chuzzle
  • - Feeding Frenzy
  • etc.
  • PopCap also has a Developer Program which allows you to use the PopCap Games Framework for free.
• PlayFirst
  • - Diner Dash (this game is AWESOME)
  • - Oasis
  • + many more
• Retro64
  • - Platypus
  • - Cosmo Bots
  • + more
• Digital Eel
  • - Strange Adventures In Infinite Space
  • - Plasmaworm
  • - Dr. Blob’s Organism
  • - Big Box of Blox
  • - Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space (coming soon! yaaaay!)
• Kraisoft
  • - dozens of games
• Sigma Team
  • - Alien Shooter
  • + lots of Alien Shooter expansions (yaaay, shooting aliens!)
• Moonpod’s Starscape
• Wik & the Fable of Souls
• War World
• Alien Hominid
• RAKEINGRASS’s Jets’n'Guns (w00t! blow shit up!)
• NinjaBee

• Outpost Kaloki
• Void War

• WildGames

• Fate

• Ashen Empires

(Well, hell. I guess I’ll just have to include them all.)

• Game Tunnel (the Independent Underground)
  • - Top 10 Indie Games of the Year (2004)
  • - August 2005 Indie Roundup
  • - Action games
  • - Adventure games
  • - Arkanoid games
  • - Puzzle games
  • - RPGs
  • - SIMs
  • - Sports games
  • - Strategy games

…

WTF is he talking about??

I finally fixed the sidebar on this here website. Of yore.

See, here’s the thing. When you’re constructing a website, there’s a tendency to imitate what you have seen. That is, to try and put stuff on the site that your “customers” (that’s you) might find interesting, in a “trying to guess what people who come to this site might like” kind of a way.

This is, of course, completely fucked.

Because, see, it’s a website that’s all about me. If you’re reading this, it has nothing to do with you looking for something interesting to buy or link from or surf to or something. It’s because I amuse you. You’re looking at my Web Face, and if it gives you a chuckle every now and then, and maybe moves something around in your head once in a long while, maybe you’ll stick around.

So the sidebar: what you see is basically my quick link bar in my web browser.

I’m not putting it there for you, so don’t get all weird. See, this way, if I’m away from my desk and on someone else’s terminal (if, say, I were sneaking into your house to log onto your WoW account and send all your WoW gold to my character. I’m not naming any names, “Druid”.), well, lo! My link bar has followed me into that there terminal, hasn’t it?

This is the strange conversion that is creeping over me these days. I call it “the Google Effect”; I find myself wanting to put everything I have onto Google’s servers, so that I can get it from any terminal anywhere in the world. I know that Microsoft thinks this is dumb. That’s okay. They’re dumb. Neener.

I have this dream: over the next ten years, the personal computer will undergo a kind of devloution, shedding a whole bunch of stuff that has become largely extraneous. Like, Windows.

If Google gets their way, all I’ll need is a web browser, an input device, and a display of some kind, and I’ll be able to do everything. “Fuck those Microsoft guys,” I’ll say as I ride off into the happy sunset on my horse (Trigger), “what have they done for me lately?”

Nothing. That’s right, nothing.

That’s my dream. As I am 50% cynic, I have a healthy dose of skepticism that it will ever come to pass. But…

Boy, it almost seems possible…

[ p.s. This post gets the Most Random Change Of Topic Mid-Stream Ever award. ]

WOW!! An interesting section of CNN.com!!!

Which sci-fi character are you?

Normally, I don’t go in for this stuff. But, hey. When they’re right, they are right.

Thing The First: The Revolution Controller.

It’s nice to see Nintendo finally take off the gloves, and just admit it.

“We admit it,” this controller says. “We admit that we’re tired of you guys not getting us. We’re tired of having to invite you guys to all of our parties. We just want to have some fun, you know? Fun? You remember fun, yeah?

“So, here’s the deal: from here on out, we’re going to make all of our own games. Yeah, that’s right. Turns out we don’t need any of your ports, because, well… our games are all better than yours, and it’s… frankly… getting kind of embarassing.

“So. From here on out, we’ll make the system, all the games, and you guys… well… just try and keep up, okay?”

About a year ago, Nintendo’s new prez-guy Saturo Iwata gave a talk or two in which he laid out in some detail the analysis that was (and is) driving Nintendo’s recent seemingly bizarre design decisions. In short:

The appeal of new technologies in display will become less and less important over the next decade. Thus, as a whole the gaming industry needs to figure out what it will look like once (say) we can create worlds that are indistinguishable from reality, and can no longer innovate with more polygons. Nintendo believes that part of the solution is changing the interface with each new iteration, to provide a springboard for new ideas that will seem fresh to the consumer.

…

You know, he just might have a point there.

Thing The Second: Final Fantasy: Advent Children leaked to the web.

Yeesh. It’s very strange, living with the dawning awareness that the longer I stay in this here games industry, the more folks stealing the work of entertainment professionals is starting to bother me.

I haven’t reached the “passing judgement” phase yet, but it does raise a certain amount of ire. This, unfortunately, puts me squarely in the “uncool” division of media consumers. *sigh* And, I was so cool before now.

I had this moment a while ago: there’s this kid I worked with at [--titanic game company's name deleted to create false air of secrecy--], name of [--names have been erased to protect the innocent--]. Brilliant engineer, and a hell of a nice guy. Turns out his dad was one of the orignal founders of the games industry, an early entrant into the biz. This one day, I mentioned to him the idea that he could just “borrow” a copy of a video game to see if he liked it, and his reaction pretty much permanently changed how I thought about that practice. He laughed and said, “No, no, I don’t steal any video games. Every dollar I’ve ever had in my entire life came from video game sales, so, as much as I can, I want to give other people the opportunity that I had, and let them make a reasonable living off of the sale of their work.”

I kinda sat there for a while, just a little stunned, and mulled that over. And, see, now I don’t steal my entertainment.

*sigh*

So, when I saw that FF:AC had been leaked, I clicked to the site, read through some of the comments to see what was going on, and then left. My main emotion was (and still is) sympathy for the folks still working on the title. It is, perhaps, one of the unfortunate side effects of my time in the industry that I’m getting all creaky and unsympathetic about this topic. C’est la vie.

But, I will say that it is nice to hear that people like the film, at least.