Im recouping from GDC... im in love with my peers and motivated by the industry as a whole!
I had a great time and especially loved my intimate interactions with my new fav indie devs, Reagen, Daniel, Petri, Cactus and Anna. you guys have refilled my faith in the indie scene.
Danielle took like 200 photos of the event.. here are some.
Getting ready for the mochi's and GDC... im disgusted by peers and let down by the industry as a whole, what will the week have in store? im guessing socially retarded nerds with BO talking about stuff that doesn't matter... and im not just talking about myself!
Aether and Coil are both up for Mochi's (flash game awards). its nice that there is finally a real awards show for flash games, and its great to see this platform get some support.. but at the same time i cant help but watch this vid and cringe at how horrible some of these games actually are. That said there are still quite a few awesome ones.
Im actually part of a panel at the summit the awards are taking place at. The panel is about "how to make a hit game". this is something ive been mulling over in my head for weeks now and am becoming increasingly frustrated by it.
The flash scene is saturated by derivative, manipulative (see my post about AVGM) and greedy garbage that has little or nothing to offer when it comes to game design, and the worst part of this is the fact that its games like these that do well.
the first response of any designer who employs these tactics is always "well if it does well, then that's what people want so that makes the game good".
I cant help but want to scream "fuck you, your fucking shit up for the rest of us who are trying so hard to push game design as an art and bring some respect to what we do"... i mean shit, am i wrong here? i want the art of game design to be respected. my ideal future is one where game designers are looked at as artist and respected as much as musicians and film makers, is this a ridiculous thought?
At this point in time video games are still viewed as childish craft by 99% of people, but with things the way they are i can understand why.
We have such a long way to go, i just hope other artist like me arnt turned off by the fight ahead.
I dunno, maybe im just in a weird place...
Whatever, it will be interesting to see what comes out at the summit, the event is currently sold out.. but if you have a ticket ill see you there.
