Recent comments about people disdaining actual players in their games when the creator's only goal is to have fun creating something they will probably never finish trigger this little bit of text...
I'm not much of a game player myself, really. Not very good at games and can't play something for long before I just want to create something like it rather than play it. This being how I ended up at BYOND.
But there are a few points in my life when game playing has been important. Typically this has been during depressing periods of one sort or another...when I've been depressed, games have been a support for me. I played X-Wing fighter obsessively for a while, every night when I got home until I went to bed, and I think it saved my sanity. It gave me something to do. It was fast, distracting, and fun, until I could get to a point where I could deal with the real issues in my life, having to do with my career at that time.
At another such point during a long vacation I stumbled onto Command & Conquer and Internet gaming. Again I obsessed over it, playing 12 hours a day or something, getting a chance to be distracted from bad circumstances, and this time to meet people online at the same time.
I played Myst obsessively just because it was a beautiful game that sucked me into a world and taught me new things about how to look and listen to my surroundings.
From my experience, people play games to better their mind, or to pass the time, or to be distracted from their life, or to meet people. Sometimes two or three of those items at once, which is when Internet gaming really shines. When I say people here, I'm not including 12 year olds who play 24 hours a day in order to crush other players. I was never one of them and I don't understand what drives them, though no doubt something does.
All this leads me to see the conscientious game developer as a bit of a witch doctor. He or she waves shiny things and dances around a lot, distracting people at a time when they need it and giving them something to hang on to. I can think of no more satisfying thing than someone who needs some distraction finding DragonSnot or Living & Dead, enjoying it intently for two hours, then never coming back.
That's the playing side.
Now for the creating side.
Given that most or all of us here are not trying to make a living off the games we create, there are a few basic reasons to create games. One of the best is what Kurt Vonnegut describes as "making the soul grow". By creating, you make your soul grow. And I suspect that's what leads people to say that they create games with no consideration for anyone playing them.
However, I see another side to that. For the first 32 years of my life, I have started dozens or hundreds of projects, and never finished one of them. I have tried to write stories, create plays, create computer games, do performances of magic...in all these areas I never finished a damn thing. In fact, when we roll out DragonSnot, that will be the first personal thing in my life that I have ever finished.
And I think I know why I never finished anything. It was out of fear. Fear of criticism, ridicule for my work, and particularly fear of my own verdict of myself.
One of the things I've learned is that there is only one way to overcome that, and that is to finish something. But the closer you get to doing so, the harder it gets as you contemplate actually putting something out there that people can criticize. In my case, that means I think of big new plans for the project, plans that I can never possibly finish, to ensure that I will never have to face the crisis of success or failure.
The only way I've found to overcome that is to focus on the concept of someone playing the result, and to focus on one project to the exclusion of all else. That has to be my goal. Anything that gets in the way of that goal has to be sacrificed.
Ultimately, and I've seen this over and over in many art forms, if you are not creating for an external audience, then you are not creating. You might be messing around, you might be exploring what you can do, but you are not a creator, and you have not proven yourself to yourself.
People without audiences and without constraints become detached from reality. They become Howard Hughes. They become the guy who sat in his apartment all his life painting bizarre architectural constructs which reflected his mother and the fact that he wasn't having sex.
It's not a pretty sight.
Treasure your players, because without them you are not a creator.
ID:154538
 Jun 12 2001, 6:55 pm
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On 6/12/01 11:32 pm Spuzzum wrote:
But I disagree when you say "without them you are not a creator". What about Copernicus? Copernicus didn't use isolation to say "Hey I'm just doing formulas for myself so I don't need to finish them. Hey I think I'll go eat a banana." | |
Copernicus didn't use isolation to say "Hey I'm just doing formulas for myself so I don't need to finish them. Hey I think I'll go eat a banana." I never said I don't need to finish my games. Is this what that was all about? What I mean is that I don't need to adhere to anyone's schedule but my own. Completing my games is something of a personal goal to me and me alone; I have no desire to listen to anyone else tell me when I should do something and when I should not -- I can listen, granted, and I might even pay some attention, but if I don't like what I hear, I won't continue, unless I can get in serious personal distress if I don't. The games are designed to entertain me, and to a lesser extent others, and the thrill of completing them contributes to that entertainment. I can meet deadlines, yes. But in my case, I don't have a deadline. My deadline is whenever I darned well please, and assuming I want to do everything I want to do, that deadline is a ways off. I suppose you might say that I'm a classic "rebel without a clue". That fits me like a speedo, and I'm not about to switch to trunks. Slightly related: If I were striving to make a living off of my games, my views would be radically different. I would rush to complete my games as quickly as possible. After all, without the aid and support of my players, I wouldn't be alive. But I'm not striving to make a living. Once I graduate from school, I'm getting a career, hopefully as a software engineer, though I'm willing to settle for less. As I've said before, BYOND is my hobby. Let's take yet another thinly-veiled reference; if I were making a model airplane as a hobby, I would make it as good as I could. I wouldn't build it as fast as possible so I could get to the next model. | |
On 6/12/01 11:52 pm Spuzzum wrote:
if I were making a model airplane as a hobby, I would make it as good as I could. I wouldn't build it as fast as possible so I could get to the next model. I guess I have to wonder how much you ultimately learn about making airplanes if it never flies. Anyway, I'm certainly not willing to spend time being a passenger on such an airplane! | |
On 6/12/01 9:55 pm Deadron wrote:
Treasure your players, because without them you are not a creator. I disagree. I'll take the dictionary definition of creator over the poetic one. You generate something that wasn't there before, you've created, end of story. Whether making something only for yourself can be as fulfilling as making something for other people is another argument. I believe they are separate things and each has its own different and distinct fruits. Sometimes it's vital to do things only for yourself. Other times, awareness of others is what matters. Z | |
On 6/13/01 12:23 am Zilal wrote:
Other times, awareness of others is what matters. And knowing when that is is a good thing. | |
Wow! I didn't know there were two games called Myst! The one I played was just some crappy, second-rate text adventure with still scenes painted over and little half-dollar sized movie clips superimposed hither and thither. The puzzles that everyone talked so much about consisted entirely of figuring out which password written on a wall somewhere went with which password entry mechanism. All in all, I'd rate it about the third best game that could have been made by a middle school student using Macintosh HyperStudio.
On 6/12/01 9:55 pm Deadron wrote: Recent comments about people disdaining actual players in their games when the creator's only goal is to have fun creating something they will probably never finish trigger this little bit of text... | |
Holy spatula! Did you really think it was that bad? I loved the immersiveness of Myst, though the whole concept seems rather naive compared to today's games.
Of course it was nothing without the graphics, which may say something. .s On 6/13/01 8:20 am LexyBitch wrote: Wow! I didn't know there were two games called Myst! The one I played was just some crappy, second-rate text adventure with still scenes painted over and little half-dollar sized movie clips superimposed hither and thither. The puzzles that everyone talked so much about consisted entirely of figuring out which password written on a wall somewhere went with which password entry mechanism. All in all, I'd rate it about the third best game that could have been made by a middle school student using Macintosh HyperStudio. | |
Hum de dum dum...
Popping your post into Word and hitting wordcount tells me that your post used 3,691 characters. That's 3,688 characters more than you actually needed to answer your question. Need a hint? Starts with an "f" and rhymes with "pun." I'm also inclined to disagree with your sentiments that true creation relies on work made for others. I fancy myself somewhat of a creator, and when I get really, REALLY into a project--a rare phenomenon--I'm working strictly for myself, doing nothing but experimenting and seeing just how much I can do. Inevitably, of course, I'd end up sharing the project when I felt it was done (particularly often those projects that were based off of assignments from school, but sadly, not often enough.) What vital essence does this last step actually contribute to one of these projects' status as a true creation? I hold that it's just as important--actually, I'd say moreso--to create for yourself as it is to create for an audience. Living your life doing all one or all the other is about equally likely to get you really screwed up. | |
On 6/13/01 9:28 am Leftley wrote:
Living your life doing all one or all the other is about equally likely to get you really screwed up. Which would be exactly my point. Without attempting to create something with the idea people are going to use it (specifically without finishing it) there is a huge amount of learning and value you will not get in just creating half-finished experiments for yourself. Ultimately, it's EASY to create for yourself and never finish things. That's the path of least resistance. Sometimes you gotta take the other path though, or you are missing a big part of the forest. | |
On 6/13/01 8:20 am LexyBitch wrote:
Wow! I didn't know there were two games called Myst! The one I played was just some crappy, second-rate text adventure with still scenes painted over and little half-dollar sized movie clips superimposed hither and thither. The puzzles that everyone talked so much about consisted entirely of figuring out which password written on a wall somewhere went with which password entry mechanism. All in all, I'd rate it about the third best game that could have been made by a middle school student using Macintosh HyperStudio. Fortunately for the creators, a few million people experienced it differently. And since no one else was able to replicate their success with knockoffs, it seems pretty clear there was something special about what they were doing. (Something that even they failed to achieve in Riven...for reasons I won't bother to get into.) | |
On 6/13/01 11:44 am Deadron wrote:
On 6/13/01 9:28 am Leftley wrote: Right, sometimes. Just remember that those half-finished experiments have an equally huge amount of learning and value you'll never get simply by catering to what everyone else wants. And waitaminute, half-finished experiments? The experiments I do for myself are just about the only things I ever get done. | |
On 6/13/01 11:59 am Leftley wrote:
And waitaminute, half-finished experiments? The experiments I do for myself are just about the only things I ever get done. Good for you...so maybe I was aiming that at someone else... Let me add some imagery to this... I can't count the number of times I was at some Science Fiction convention in a room full of writers, and someone would come in and start talking about the book they'd written. Then you'd ask them about it, and well it wasn't a book. They had it mostly written though. Well not really. They had an outline. Well, actually they had this idea... Anyway, as we're currently going, I foresee a BYOND hub filled with unfinished, unplayable games...hopefully some moderating of the hub will help alleviate that, and enough people will come along with the interest of providing games people can actually play. | |
On 6/13/01 11:46 am Deadron wrote:
On 6/13/01 8:20 am LexyBitch wrote: Specifically, that something special about what they were doing was that they were doing it first, so that by the time everyone else came up with clone games most of the gamers realized they had paid forty bucks for a mediocre quality text adventure with a pretty slideshow attached. (And don't tell me I just didn't give it a good enough try, because I played it through to the end trying to find each and every last little detail in the game before I realized it.) It was like the designers took all the best qualities of the combined storytelling media of books, movies, and videogames... and tossed 'em in the garbage. It is, above all, a testament to the fact that gameplay is a fundamental part of a game's immersiveness; tedious gameplay breaks suspension of disbelief very quickly, no matter how groundbreakingly detailed a world is. | |
On 6/13/01 12:05 pm Leftley wrote:
Specifically, that something special about what they were doing was that they were doing it first, so that by the time everyone else came up with clone games most of the gamers realized they had paid forty bucks for a mediocre quality text adventure with a pretty slideshow attached. I've never talked with a non-gamer (the majority of the Myst purchasers) who felt this way. Actually the failure in Riven which could have been fixed was not constraining you in your movement. You could get to the entire world from the beginning, which removed the progression that existed in Myst. Given that Myst sold extremely well until very recently, I don't buy the "they just did it first" argument. If true, then word of mouth wouldn't have kept it selling as one of the biggest games for half a decade. [edit] By failure of Riven, by the way, I mean artistic failure. It was a huge financial success, being one of the best selling games in history. So apparently not too many people felt gypped. I was in a store once when a woman came in to buy a second copy...her husband had accidentally taken one of the CDs in his laptop on his business trips, and she couldn't stand not being able to play it. If only we could all create such failures... | |
My one-line review of the game goes like this: "Myst is pretty, but it can't type." It appears to be a game made exclusively to impress, to show people what computer games can do, without doing so much that it confuses people. This gives it great mass-market appeal. There's no commands, you just click on things. Can I, a discriminating gamer, enjoy something like that? Well, I can... just because I've read Shakespeare doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good trashy novel... but if I'm expecting Shakespeare and get handed a trashy novel instead, I'm going to be a little more critical.
Basically, I could have stood back and enjoyed the stunning vistas, ignoring their static state the way I ignore most things that could interfere with suspension of disbelief... I could've let my mind similarly gloss over any other technical shortcomings or shortcuts that were taken... except for the puzzles. The puzzles, that I had been told were the point of the game, were mostly "password puzzles". There was no spatial reasoning, no movement games played against the computer (which are usually a mathematical puzzle at its heart), no riddles... nothing to do but walk around the island and see the writing on the walls. Lots of promise, little delivery. Honestly, there were a couple of other similar promises that fell short... you send power to the rocket... so you can get the door open and be transported through time? What? You don't show somebody a rocket and then send them seamlessly through time! But basically, the puzzles were weak. If they were in any way engaging, I would've been engaged. But they weren't, and so I had no reason to bother suspending my disbelief. As far as Myst's success... I have to say that yes, I think it is because they were first. The fact that they kept things simpler than those who came after also helped, but I don't think we can ignore the "see the elephant" principle. People who've never seen an elephant will pay money to see one, and yes, they most likely will go away satisfied. Will they ever want to see an elephant again? Maybe, but it won't be as impressive, and they won't pay as much. Still, they'll be eager to tell their friends that they've "seen the elephant," and that's where you get your word-of-mouth. On 6/13/01 12:10 pm Deadron wrote: On 6/13/01 12:05 pm Leftley wrote: | |
On 6/13/01 12:02 pm Deadron wrote:
On 6/13/01 11:59 am Leftley wrote: This just emphasizes the importance of running with ideas. It doesn't have to do anything with having an audience or not. There's plenty of examples of artists and writers widely regarded as being among the truly great, most or all or the best of whose works were not known to anyone but the creator until after their death. What you're describing is a completely separate pitfall, and yes, a dangerous one which I fall into from time to time. It's so much easier to dream of creating than it is to create. What does this have to do with the scope of your audience? | |
Anyway, as we're currently going, I foresee a BYOND hub filled with unfinished, unplayable games...hopefully some moderating of the hub will help alleviate that, and enough people will come along with the interest of providing games people can actually play. That's why I put everything I do in the Projects section... I thought that's what it's there for. I think a "Testing" section, for the Games Live! page would be great, so you could tell which games are ready to play and which ones just need people to come in and walk around. Invitation-only games would also be good for this. You could put a game up only for people you know to be good debuggers/testers, and not worry about a whole zoo of people asking why everything doesn't work, or saying, "You mean there's going to be more?" (I'm not sure which annoys me the most. Except when I know the second one isn't being asked seriously.) | |
On 6/13/01 12:33 pm LexyBitch wrote:
As far as Myst's success... I have to say that yes, I think it is because they were first. The facts just don't line up with that. You don't get almost half a decade of being the NUMBER ONE GAME because people want to say they played it. And then you don't sell a zillion copies of the sequel too. I see this a lot in the gaming industry. 99% of the industry is dedicated to created games for a very small subset of people, which is fine...but at the same time they try to ignore the fact that among the top 10 selling games of all time, most of them are mainstream appeal games with little or no violence. They try to explain it away because it's not a game they want to play, and it's harder to understand the appeal. Anyway, Myst was there, it sold more than any of the rest of them put together, it's sequel sold more too... Say it's because people were fooled or egotistical if you want, but maybe, just maybe that's missing a couple of elements... | |
Even though your post was addressed generally, I just know that you're directing at least a little bit of it towards me. =)
I'm not trying to get rid of my players. I would never do anything of the sort. The only chance in Hades that I would have of getting rid of a player is to make it more fun for myself and the other players. Which is, if that particular player was being a nuisance, striving to cheat in every way, and bothering other players even when asked to stop.
I enjoy socialising. I'm human. What I don't like is having to deal with anti-social humans; the ones who sit in their basement all day, playing games to idle away the time that they could be spending productively. (Actually, that fits my description, but not exactly in that way.)
Without players, I can still have fun. Just not the same kind of fun. Other players bring in cleverness, ideas, and their views on life. I do the same for myself; I think up of neat things, I make up philosophy to drift off to sleep, and I scheme, plan, and scheme again within my own mind.
Sure, I might sound either schizophrenic, insane, or a little of both, but as I feel it, I am my own best friend. Other people can hope to be good friends at best.
With players, they fill in that 'good friends' gap. I have one 'best friend' (that being me), and he keeps me company. Whenever I'm among my 'good friends', my best friend can take a break. He'll still act behind the scenes, giving out my creativity to entertain others, but I don't need to entertain myself when I'm among others. (Unless I think one of my jokes is REALLY funny. ;-)
Do you see what I'm getting at here...? Software development, art, music, game design, humour, philosophy... all are just the tools for my own entertainment. If someone else is entertained by my own designs and whims, then so be it, I'm glad for them. Each of my multiplayer games has an NPC interactive element (so I can entertain myself) as well as multiplayer support (so others can entertain me and themselves). I'm looking a little at both, so I can both have fun, and feel better for myself. Meantime, players can share in what I feel life is all about. I don't need players, because I can entertain myself, but if I have players, that's all the better. If they think something I did was "cool", or "funny", then so be it, that'll make me feel even better.
What I'm trying to say is that my time and resources are not being wasted, regardless of who thinks otherwise. Players give me that additional satisfaction that what I did was worth it, but, as an example: I'm not about to climb a tree to fetch their kite unless I'm the only one who can do it, or I want to do it. Not to mention that I already have the satisfaction that what I am doing, and what I have done, is worth it.
But I disagree when you say "without them you are not a creator". What about Copernicus? He created some grand theories, and people wanted to kill him for being a Pagan (one of the reasons why I dislike religion). After being shunned by the scientific community, he could care less about his audience; it was what he knew to be true. While his information has been verified to be subtly flawed in today's world, his theories, among many others', paved the way for our ways of thinking.