In this post:
1. Special guest contributor Joe Salina’s take on last week’s NYU indie game design pow-wow!
Instead of immediately going into part two of my monthly rundown of what’s going on in the world of video games as a whole (for those who might have missed it, here’s part one)… Remember my mention of an NYU game design symposium that I wasn’t able to attend last week, but which Joe Salina was able to? Well, at long last is Joe’s report! Take it away Isfet!
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Last Thursday night was absolutely freezing in New York City.?Much worse than anything I could remember in recent history.?The weather, coupled with an absolutely horrible sinus headache, made me reluctant to do much of anything that night.?But a friend, indie game designer Anna Anthropy, along with her shy and subtle concubine, Daphaknee, was in town and ready to give a talk at NYU?s Tisch Center.
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I arrived around 6:05, just in time to catch the beginning of the show, but just late enough to miss all the free food that had apparently been provided to the audience.?I found Daphaknee (which was easy enough as her outfit seemed to have been created from a rainbow?s afterbirth) sitting in the middle of the rows and took my seat.
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After exchanging hellos and having my Mega Man Pumas made fun of, the show shortly took off.
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Anna, also known as dessgeega and also known as Auntie Pixelante, depending on who you?re talking to, was also in the company of designers Messhoff and Cactus, two fairly-well-known guys in the ?scene? who have made these kinds of rounds before. The topic of discussion??Well?themselves, essentially.
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The discussion/talk seemed, in some ways, to be a ?beginners guide to indie gaming,? with each participant taking about ten minutes to show off some work that would encapsulate who he or she is.?Messhoff and Cactus went the route of the compilation video:? eight to ten minute videos that showed off an array of games, all released, unreleased, scrapped or barely alive.?Anna decided to go through each game individually, giving some narration behind the ideas that fueled or inspired each game.
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These introductions were fun to watch, but probably not necessary; everyone in the audience seemed to be pretty in tune with these guys or at least indie games as a whole.? But regardless, it?s always fun to see footage of Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist on a big screen whenever possible.
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A Q&A session led by moderator Charles Pratt soon ensued.?The questions all seemed rooted in one main concept:?why indie game??Why play them, why create them and where are they going??Some participants were more forthcoming with these answers than others, but one idea seemed to permeate throughout each response:?a desire to create.?The road to creation, though, is probably the most interesting and diverse for each designer.
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Messhoff claims that a control scheme is absolutely critical at the start of any one of his projects.?From that point on, the game maker and MS Paint jobs start and begin to fill in the gaps of ?game? around his control idea.? Playtesting isn?t necessarily something he worries himself with, focusing primarily on whether or not the game is playable.?If the game is hard, he keeps playing it until he can beat it.
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For Cactus, the concept, design and controls all come together at once.?If he can?t complete a game within a certain amount of time, he dumps the game, never to be touched again.? Cactus enjoys the fact that he?s achieved a decent amount of success in this field, but, generally he doesn?t care if people actually like his games.?What?s more important to him is that he ends up with a product that meets his own expectations.? Which in all fairness, isn?t that bad of a goal if your tastes seem to be meshing with what people consider ?fun.?
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Dessgeega goes games that concentrate on pushing a concept, whether literal or metaphorical.?The game might have incredibly difficult platforming, but it?s not a coincidence that S&M themes are prevalent throughout.? Graphics that recall the NES or TG-16 are meant to put the player at a kind of ease, but also to use a kind of video game vocabulary that most people are used to.? For instance, spikes = death.?Plus, Anna adds, ?I really love spikes.?
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The usage of graphics in each designer?s games are totally deliberate:? in some ways, they?re meant to disorient (see:?Messhoff) and in others they?re meant to casually nudge the player?s sense of nostalgia.? It?s a part of the design process that each designer considers fully before releasing a game into the public eye.? Super Mario Bros. would probably lose something if the graphics were replaced with white lines and boxes.
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One question, or idea, that seemed to dominate the night, however, was a somewhat inescapable and harsh reality for anyone in any indie scene:?how do you make money?? DO you make money?
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There were no real answers here.?Each designer would, of course, love to make money from what they do, but the current avenues aren?t totally compatible with how they design games.? Flash, steeped in advertisements, seems to be the easiest way to go about it, but it requires a knowledge of Flash, a language that most of these Game Maker designers describe as less than friendly and less than interesting.? Cactus has dabbled with the idea of designing games for Xbox Live, but Microsoft?s restrictions and taxation don?t make the proposition too inviting.? Messhoff tried charging money at one point, but found that the profits barely made a dent.? Anna was the least resistant to the tyrant known as Flash and, for anyone familiar with ?When Pigs Fly,? has used the language to create some pretty decent stuff.
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So once again, the designers are left with love.? Without the love of creating, there isn?t necessarily much to be gained in the world of indie gaming.?Even a guy like Cactus, curiously described by Pratt as the ?rockstar of the indie gaming world,? needs a day job.?It?s clear that working for a big game company isn?t something that they?re after, but the pioneers in a relatively new domain are still in the process of figuring out exactly what they have and what might work.
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Even the presentation of these games is something that no designer is sure of.? Art galleries have been known to show off indie games (chosen seemingly at random), but the typical response is one of confusion.?So the question is, how can these games, especially games by designers like Anna and Messhoff who have created multiplayer-only games, be presented publicly and effectively.?Can the indie game resurrect the arcade??Or at least put it back together in a weird, decrepit, cyberpunk kind of way?
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… Unfortunately, Joe was not able to attend that aforementioned indie arcade the following night, despite it being a few blocks away from his apartment, due his sinuses acting up. Though it’s a once a month deal, apparently, so next time it’s up in action, both of us should be able to check things out and file a report shortly afterward.
