So I've been thinking about what is so attractive about indie games and I narrowed it down to a few things.
1. Focused and fully realized gameplay ideas.
2. The variety of narrative themes and styles.
3. Experimental nature of the art direction.
These are some of the core elements that I believe you need to make good indie games. I always fancied being a bohemian-one-man developer of video games but the skill sets required to create awesome games need to be at least divided into three major categories. Programming, music and art.
I think, the best thing I can do, is focus on making the artistic quality be as best as possible. I do not think I'll be able to achieve the kind of creative freedom when it comes to music (I have little aptitude for music). Programming is something I'm willing to dabble more in because it has other applications and also, you can get pretty far with a simple 2d platformer. But that isn't what I want to do all the time. That is, to make simple 2d platformers; There's been a big trend of simple platformers since Jason Rohrer's Passage came out and I think that's a bit of a shame because part of the indie spirit is to create something new or give things a breath of fresh air.
Well I'm getting way off topic.
Anyways, hopefully you'll be getting along in your programming, so that we can truly collaborate on creating awesome games. I'll make sure that whatever we make, ends up looking fucking awesome as well. That is my mission.
Also check this out
LA Game Space
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lagamespace/la-game-space-a-place-for-re-imagining-video-games
Sportsfriend Compilation
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gutefabrik/sportsfriends-featuring-johann-sebastian-joust
I personally love the re-emergence of local co-op/versus games like these. I hope we can create something similar in the vein of the games we enjoyed so much. Smash Brothers, Roguelikes, Yugioh, and etc.
Yeah, I'm really trying to learn programming, because I feel that that is something we need to make our games. It's hard, but I'll make my best effort to do so. If anything, we can resort to using gamemaker studio or simpler game engine in the meantime to make our prototype. I will also see if I can get my programming friend on broad when we get things in motion.
ReplyDeleteI am really striving to make a game that encompassed our experiences when we played Brawl/Yugioh together. They say nostaglia is a bad thing and I agree. Picking up brawl and yugioh again is not the way to go. However, creating that experience is totally different in my opinion.
I can already program in Java and a little bit of C, but I don't have any experience programming games. I'm also familiar a little bit with the Android sdk in case we want to use Android as a platform. I kinda want to look into XNA. It uses C# and we can make games for the Xbox 360 and/or Windows.
ReplyDeleteWelcome aboard Quan.
DeleteI was wondering if you have any recommendations for books/resources regarding C?
As I am learning that as of now.
I know this is an older post, but I wanted to add my two-cents.
ReplyDeleteI want to caution against the over marginalization of talent when working on games. "Artists stick to the art" sort of thinking is bad for games. I think big game companies lose out on that polish, focus, and refinement seen in some indie games when they have art directors and programming teams all working independently. I think The Walking Dead game is a great example of a smaller game done really well. The narrative is great, but it's hinged upon the proper presentation of the art direction as well as the gameplay. So much of the story is told though sidelong glances between characters, pained expressions, great voice acting, that there must have been a lot of talk between what the "writers" imagined the story to look/feel like, what the artists imagined the story to look/feel like, and how the programmers wanted the game to look/feel like.
Also regarding the co-op/versus resurgence I think it's great and I don't think it has all that much to do with nostalgia. The big companies made a push for online massively multi-player games, but I think a lot of us miss simple party games, LAN parties, and co-ops. Games where "playing with friends" meant literally and physically playing with friends in the same room. I miss that too.
Yea with smaller teams we can more easily, than the large studios, share vision and make choices in art, gameplay, and narrative to create cohesive and pure experiences that triple-A games sometimes fail to deliver.
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