Today was spent divided between the Independent Games Summit and the new iPhone Games Summit. I’m going to summarize my short notes from the talks today, though I’m pretty tired. It’s rare for me to be tired at this hour, but it always happens when I’m on vacation and have to walk any significant amount. I think this is what’s called “normal”.
Indies and Publishers: Fixing a System That Never Worked
Traditionally, when indies get money from publishers, publishers give much more than they need, and as a result expect more of the reward. Back then, publishers controlled distribution as well, so there was an expectation that they were owed more. But realistically, indies need less and can handle distribution on their own through various services like Steam, XBLA, Direct2Drive, etc. As a result, something called The Indie Fund has been created to fund promising indie projects. contact@indie-fund.com
Abusing Your Players Just For Fun
I thought this would be a tongue-in-cheek title, and assumed the talk would be about ways to present interesting challenges to the player. But no, this talk was pretty much exactly as the title implied; no deeper meaning whatsoever. The presenter just presented various Hollywood directors and game makers who make wacky, nonsensical movies, plus some he just thought were cool. His slides were gratuitously seizure-inducing, with flashy backgrounds just for the heck of it, following his overall theme.
He showed an example of a mercilessly punishing modded Super Mario Brothers level which essentially breaks all the game design lessons we learned over the past 20 years. He unapologetically talked about the fun of punishing players and not caring about them, but rather just enjoying watching them suffer.
I’ll continue this later. I need to sleep.
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