Notgames Forum

Something I have been thinking about lately is if the notgames (and experimental videogames in general) scene has the problem of trying out too many things. It is extremely common to make a game with some kind of play-style and then when it is done jump to a project about something completely different. I think this might be highly problematic.

First of all it is the main problem with software in general:  Starting over is hard and takes time. You need to create most (if not all) of your code and  resources (sound, model, textures, etc) from scratch again if you are starting on something completely new. This means that the new game takes a lot of time and also that it becomes more prone to have problems (due to doing things the first time and due to having harsher time constraints).

Secondly, the medium is in a state that any new direction probably has tons of more stuff to explore, and by moving on to new projects that potential will remain unharnessed. Sure there might be other people who pick it up, who can learn from past mistakes and have the prior work as starting point. But then they are still lacking the code base, resources and inside knowledge (that comes from actually making something). Even worse, the intial idea might not have shown its potential enough for people to feel the need to latch onto it or simply not gained enough attention for others to note it.

I agree that there is a lot to explore and that because of that it feels uninspired to just stick with the same kind of experience for several projects. But my fear is that we are just skimming the surface this way and not getting deep enough to where we really want the medium to go. I also understand that it is not always very tempting to do "the same thing" over and over, but I think it might be needed in order to improve your work. Video games are very hard to make and has so many components that need to come together that it is hard to to get it all right at the first try. Some kind of iteration is needed and to have the hindsight of a similar past project can be vital to really get where the game "needs" to go.

Important to note that I am not saying that the next game should be a complete copy of the previous ones. What I am saying is that you can reuse a large part of the basic mechanics, high level design, etc (just stuff like reusing the menu system can be of great help!), and then focus on changing and/or improving a subset of the videogame.

I am aware that I am quite biased here, having sort of made the same game for 10 years. By this I do not mean that I have consciously made the  right decision or anything like that. For every project that has been completed I have been set on doing something completely different, but only some other factors (mostly finacial) keeping me from not doing so. It takes so long time and effort to complete a videogame that there is a large lure to do something different, a feeling I have felt a lot. I think that I have been very lucky with this and been forced to remake the same game over and over, and that the games I have had part in creating have been able to be much better because of it.

That does not mean I am correct of course and am very interesting what everybody else think of this.

Someone said that all great artists had one idea and they were iterating on that idea for their whole life. But if you do not have that one idea, you are in trouble

So I would say, there is nothing wrong to do the "same" game over and over again. I would say that David Lynch made the same film 10 times and getting better at it.

On the other side with videogames. They have this mechanical aspect, gameplay or game mechanics. I would think that they need to change from game to game. I am planning to do a historical game, a historical drama almost, and it will be wrapped around a simple strategy game. I am trying to explore some more aspects of representation in that game, which I did in my last work too. Some stuff I will reuse, but some parts change drastically.

So, I would say that game mechanics is our oil paint or our oil color which we put on the canvas. You can iterate on your idea, but occasionaly you want to change colors, no?

Yeah, of course, not all ideas are worth iterating. But the problem is that it might not be apparent in the first iteration and might be hard to judge subjectively). Might be a tough call to make at times, but showing your work in a forum like this might be a good start! Also, even if you do not like the totality of the work, there might some bit worth preserving and taking further.


I would say that the ways we tweak the components of our game is our choice of color. Changing the mechanics in any larger manner is to me more like going from canvas and oil to photoshop and a wacom tablet, if not even more.

or maybe going from oil to coal or pencil.

Isn't that what a sequel is? Isn't putting out the same game with minor tweaks and sticking a "2" on the end exactly what the AAA developers have been doing?

I did think of AAA sequels, too. But I don't think that's what Thomas was going for. But you could make the point, that AAA studios are smart in that they do not start from scratch with every new project.

sometimes it is really important to itereate, if you want to go deep.

I do not think a sequel is intrinsically bad. For example Silent Hill 2 is a very good game and came be because it was able able to build upon the first one.

Also iterating an experience does not need to imply a sequel. You use the same basic mechanics as one videogame and take it thematically in a totally different direction.

I think this has a lot of sense.

I do feel that for every game idea there´s a massive work to be done, if counting only the graphics it a huge amount of work already. I´ve been thinking seriously too about starting a series of games to explore some ideas I have and keep the same visual style between them, so I can reuse everything and acumulate elements as if constructing an alphabet.

Then of course, I tend to have very diferent ideas and many will need a diferent focus, and doing something new is always more encouraging.

But I think you a right, it´s hard but worth trying. Little steps are not enough. There are few people who seem to be doing a "research" in their field, it´s certainly interesting when you see someone´s work evolving and you can only wander about what will be the next step.

I think we came to realize this through the dual prototype project we've been involved with over the past 18 months. Both projects started out as being experiments with new types of interaction, one of them even with a completely new type of content. I think this "curiosity" started even earlier with Fatale and Vanitas, both of which deviated quite a bit from The Endless Forest, The Graveyard and The Path.

When the prototype for Cncntrc was done, we felt that we had failed to deliver on its concept. One of the reasons for this we found was indeed that we were moving to far away from what we had discovered to be our strengths. Something similar was happening with our other prototyping project as well: we were experimenting with alternative "2D" interfaces (initially driven by the desire to reduce production cost). Luckily the failure of Cncntrc has helped us realize our mistake. We've thrown out all the earlier prototypes for The Book of 8 and are now creating a new one that is very much an extension of our older work: exploration of a 3D scene with a character, based on a story.

I'm glad to hear that Thomas thinks there is artistic merit to this (as I'd feel a bit guilty to only be "sticking to what I know" for comfort).

One of the writers of Assassin's Creed said something interesting about this during a symposium I attended last weekend. He said that during the original game, design and engine were developed simultaneously. This lead to ongoing problems of artists not knowing what the engine could handle and engineers not know what they needed to program for. It was only in the sequel of the game, that the designers got a chance at implementing all the ideas they had developed during the development of the original.

Makes me wonder what it would feel like to iterate on somebody else's game. What if Tale of Tales did a remake of Dinner Date? Or of Loop Raccord?...

Please, that would be fantastic! Let´s remix each other´s games!

I bet we´ll learn a lot from the experiment.

Thomas, maybe all that's needed is just hanging out with types of developers you don't usually hang out with.

Try to meet some kids into mobile that just want to iterate on existing designs. Or some Flash portal devs. Or some casual devs.

I don't know, maybe it's just my own environment, but I feel like there's plenty of everything going on, both brand new things and iterations and cloning and everything in-between.

You seem to be calling for refinement, and that's something Chris Hecker has really been championing. And Jon Blow too I guess. Chris gave a "finish your game" talk about how too many game jams can lead to only making game jam games and never fully exploring a design. He thought there should be more indies doing 3 year-long projects.

And the 12-principle Jon Blow/Marc talk included Completeness as principle #2.

Maybe what's missing is that the developers who tend to want refinement are often mainstream-focused, as in wanting to do more traditional games?

Yeah, pretty is pretty much it. Football simulators, match-3, hidden-objects, and other more "gamey" (and mainstream) videogames have been doing this for a long time.

I just have gotten the feeling over the years that much of the more experimental game makers do not tend to stay with a specific game for too long. And yeah, I saw Chris Hecker's mini talk on this (which I think is the one you mentioned) and I agree. Braid is a good example, although I think it might have been possible to go even further with it (especially how the texts can relate to the actual gameplay and whatnot). It might have been more interesting if Blow made refined the 2D time-design instead of making a first person 3D project. Braid is perhaps not the best of examples since it is still very traditional it's approach (levels to complete, evident goals, all interaction are directly connected to completing goals, etc)

I understand there is a very fuzzy line here, but I the general gist is that when it comes to more nontraditional types of play for videogames, we have not explored the depth at all. Action games, puzzle games, etc have explored this for as long as video games have exited (around 40 years) and also build upon a foundation set in sports and traditional games (cards, boardgames, etc). Therefore I think that specializing is of extra importance, because there might be a lot that we are missing out on that cannot be grasps during the first attempts.

Yeah, I think I got ya. To use the wild west model, there are explorers and builders, but fewer pioneers in the middle. Maybe the explorers haven't aged enough yet.