screen rant getting over it with bennett foddy

Is this your email still? I put up the video, with a quick note about A good and thoughtful thread resulted, and I've included it here, with permission. Of course, I think wacky ideas are great, but I don't think there's a shortage of them in the game industry right now, while there is a shortage of games that explore ideas deeply.Īfter the rant I wanted to check in with Cactus, since I wasn't able to clear it with him before I went on stage. We don't need more wacky ideas and shallow games shipped on time. I end the talk with the following statement: I think Spore failed to fully explore the mechanic of what we called editor consequence, and even though I worked on that game for six years, I would have worked on it longer if we could have made it the game it should have been. I also use Spore as an example of how it's not time-on-task that's important, it's exploring the mechanic. SpyParty was actually an idea from Indie Game Jam 4 that I didn't quite get working at the jam, but that I felt was strong enough to spend (a lot) more time on. This is totally true and is a great thing, I just want people to take the ideas that are worth pursuing, and actually pursue them further. I should point out explicitly, as a post at mentioned, that sometimes ideas will come from jams. I hope to dive to these same levels of depth with SpyParty. I strongly feel that game mechanics have a kind of natural depth and value, and it is our duty as developers to follow a mechanic to its logical and aesthetic extent. I use the example of Braid versus a giant pile of the Indie Game Jam games, and I think Braid has more value because it explores its mechanic to the depth the mechanic deserves. See below for my discussion of this topic with Cactus himself. But, I do worry about him and a lot of these younger indies, and if I had an orbital mind control laser, I would use it occasionally to make these guys more deeply explore some of the awesome mechanics they discover with their quick prototypes. I want to be clear, I think Cactus is really cool and creative, and I'm insanely jealous of his productivity. I also talk about Cactus in the rant, using his page with all of his zillions of games listing their development times. On the indie side, I worry about the fixation on game jams and compos, for which I feel at least partially responsible. I'm much more aligned with that statement. There's the famous Miyamoto quote:Ī delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.

' I dunno, I think shipping a bad game is a greater crime, not to mention killing your employees, or a whole bunch of other things I can think of. On the corporate side, I reference this article where Kojima says 'There is no greater crime as a game developer. My rant is about how I'm worried about the fixation on development time these days, both in the indie community, and in corporate games. She couldn't make it to the GDC this year, so she sent me a video of her acceptance speech. A gentleman in the audience was nice enough to video it for me:Īt the start, we present Heather Chaplin with the Duct Tape Award for her awesome 2009 rant. My rant at the 2010 Game Developers Conference was titled Please Finish Your Game.

Screen rant getting over it with bennett foddy