Yeah, you beat the crayons out of his school bag!

You totally pwned that 11 years old! Like, kicked his ass real hard. I'm so proud of you.

I hate hate hate the fact that games made with it seem to become super huge super quick, and the initial loading process for some GM games i've played was downright unacceptable.

Nah, that's just bad coding, not GM's fault. Keeping resources external makes even content-packed games have small exes that load pretty much instantly.

Its a auto side-scrolling run & gun game. 2D with pixel art. The enemies will work off pre determined paths as opposed to AI. Kind of like a platformer-rail-shooter. I envision the pace of the game to be very quick, with lots of projectile dodging. Parallax Scrolling layers for the background.

I don't know much about Construct, but I'm sure that both GM and MMF would have no troubles with powering such thing. So just pick the one you feel is more convinient for you.

Okay, I added it to the post on the blog.

Thanks, mate.

So I kind of see it as a bad idea to make more of what already exists. If 99% of games already are just entertaining, why add more to the pile? They already have a lot of other options.

While I think it's something a bit different from what the initial discussion was about, it's an interesting and powerful argument.
However, I would like to point that while 99% of games try to be just entertainment, most of them fail end up and being overhyped abominations bloated with unnecessary features and technical excellence. Not much fun though. Gems like Mario Galaxy happen too rarely, considering the size of the industry.
The reason I (and probably many of us) first came to indie games is that they provided the simple joy that the big titles lost somewhere. I wouldn't want all the indies to suddenly go the art and meaning of life road. Where would I get my simple shmup or hardcore strategy fix then? There's definitely a value in good entertainment and indies are free to provide it to niches that big publishers wouldn't ever think of.

Besides, some people are great artists and others are great entertainers. And these people will always do what they are best at. Othwerwise their creations wouldn't be good anyway. No 'duty' or 'imperative' of making meaningful games is going to change it. People will always make and play what they want. And that's great.

I would just like to add few things, as Paul was the one who wrote the article, and he obviously wrote it from his point of view. He definitely tried to be fair to what I said, but I feel he missed some points I had in mind (unintentionally).

My point wasn't that games shouldn't change the way people think. I think they should, but I also think the people should be the ones to make the choice if they want entertainment or enlightment.
The discussion was spawned by speculations if a casual game should feature death and other heavy topics that might be unpleasent but ultimately thought-provoking. I claim that people should be able to just have fun if they want to.
One of the analogies I used, was that if in the Indiana Jones movie Indy would suddenly die during a chase, people would feel cheated, unhappy and guilty about enjoying the chase scene. And all they wanted was to spend a nice evening.

Though, I also believe people should be able to pick Bergman's Seventh Seal over Indiana Jones. Thought provoking art should definitely be there, but I feel no one has the right to impose it on people who just want to have fun. Enjoyment, in my opinion, is equally important and a value in itself.

So yeah, please, do bring more Psychosomniums and Graveyards. Just don't make my Kratos or Bejewelled diamonds suddenly preach me about the meaning of life.

(Rinku, could you quote this in the OP. I feel honored that you considered conversation with me discussion worthy, but I would like to have my own voice included there. Thanks.)   

the black screen I experienced when talking to the toilet

  :D

Say no more. Please.

And then it got large, unbalanced and bloated with unnecessary features (something has to come with the expansions). Just like any other MMO. Was fun while it lasted  .

Luckily I haven't gotten that far yet. I still have the vanilla Guild Wars. I heard that Factions and Nightfall were still pretty good but that Eye of the North really stunk the place up.

Each of the expansions were pretty good on it's own merit. It's them all combined, along with general updates and changes, that made the game less and less fun. It was a slow process, I definitely couldn't name one things and say: "This. This killed Guild Wars".

I would really like to know what people don't like about the Diablo series.

Well, to me it is just a pointless grind.

The "carrot on a stick" (/level up + 'phat lewt') trick.

The core gameplay is just not fun to me, and adding better items and tougher enemies doesn't improve it one bit.

For example: I would really like to know what people don't like about the Diablo series.

I can't talk about Diablo I, I played it too much time ago and I liked it. But Diablo II is really bad mostly 'cause of the repetitive gameplay, the excesive reuse of enemies and places, and being way too long. Also the always increasing size of the enemy waves starts boring. In the last episode the enemies are still pushovers, but they choke you with their corpses.

Thanks.

[...]I think I would just like to lump them all in together as generally shitty games (with the exception of Guild Wars)[...]

What has Guild Wars different from other MMORPGs? I've heard of it, but nothing specific.

First of all, Guild Wars had no level grind and 'maxed' level and items could be gotten in about one day of playing. It even allowed you to created maxed out characters for PvP only.
Second, it allowed you to change your character on flight any way you like (except your main class), with skills system being more like building a deck for MtG rather than RPG character development.
Third, it had really good PvP modes making it a bit like MtG + CounterStrike + DoTA. With interesting strategy element and skill-based gameplay that actually attracted lots of competitive players and pro-gamers. It also had some cool co-op PvE content for those who prefer it that was pretty much skill-based too.
Fourth, you could jump into the game for twenty minutes, play few arena matches, have fun, jump out.

And then it got large, unbalanced and bloated with unnecessary features (something has to come with the expansions). Just like any other MMO. Was fun while it lasted  .

It would be cool if you, guys, would post at least few sentences on why you hate your picks. It could be quite interesting to read, especially for games that are widely considered great. Who knows, maybe some surprizing game design insights could come out of this? Otherwise it's just: "-I hate oranges! -And I hate apples!" thread.

For example: I would really like to know what people don't like about the Diablo series.

Can't wait to see Soul Calibur five's Ivy.

In Soul Calibur 5 Ivy won't be a character. She's going to be an arena!
 

I really disliked Kingdom Hearts, but I played through the whole thing because my girlfriend wanted to watch it.  The only thing I thought was interesting about the game was building Gummy ships.

Anyway, she asked me to play through Kingdom Hearts 2 for her.  Dear God, I hate that game so much.  I would rather eat my own face than play that piece of crap again.  It is the most sappy, insipid piece of fan-service garbage ever to be vomited forth by Square.

Ah, the horrible things we do in the name of love  .

Nethack I hated too. It was just unfriendly (even for a RL) and stupid.

I also hated the idea of Final Fantasy X-2. I haven't played the game. It might be actually well designed for all I know, but I still just don't like the fact it exists. I got used to milking franchises and cheap spin-offs -- companies are there to make money after all. But for some reason this one is just too much for me.

I didn't liked God of War at all too. I can see it isn't really a *bad* game, but I just can't stand it personally. Go there, kill stuff, do a quick time event, then go there, kill more stuff, more quick time events... and then few more. All while watching your completely unlikable protagonist go all: "Hey look, I'm a badass! Rarrr! Isn't that what turns you on, teenage nerds?!". Also, why such simple game uses so many buttons?

HOLY SHIT GUYS BUY WOW GOLD

[Dentist Pr0n]

Hi, guys! It's me, your old pal TeeGee.

Now that we know each other a bit, I would like to tell you something I think is very important for us all...





...












UNLEASH THE DRAGON IN YOUR PANTS!!!


Check Prices of Dentist Pr0n


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I           I          E
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G          L           I
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I figure a design doc certainly wouldn't hurt the chances of it actually getting made.

I would actually argue with that. So many great game ideas end up as a design doc and no game at all. My take is that you don't really need a detailed and sophisticated documentation for a small game you're making yourself.
Especially when you don't have too much experience in game making. It's easy to bloat your game design doc with loads of cool-but-impossible-to-make ideas (or just plainly bad ideas that work well on paper).

Jumping straight into making the game gives you something to work on in the future at least, as opposed to a huge text file full of stuff that makes you feel tired and discouraged just by looking at it.

 

 

I need to ask and this seems like a good place to do so...

What the hell is going on with this new pokemon avatar meme? 

Yes. And you can convince your old friend from the times when you were human that you are not you but her pet turtle. She even says sorry that she flushed you in the toilet. She thought you were dead.

Well, I only see two people there being suspicious, so it's not that bad . Anyway, signed in, joined the team and looking forward to loaning some money in the near future. It's a very cool idea.

Yeah, I loved Bloodlines. I finished it three times already - with Ventrue, Malcavian and Tremere. Tried a Nosferatu then, but got bored of the constant need of sneaking. Malcavian dialogues and Dementation lines are awesome. Also, walking through the city in pimp clothes, with a huge rainbow-hued tophat, and axe.

It's a very good game, imho. Very moody, fun, with diverse quests and good dialogues/voices. Wait till you see the later city locations - their modern gothic atmosphere would make the Batman feel jealous .
For me it's like the Black Isle/Interplay RPGs of old, but with all the joys of modern games. It resembles the original Fallouts in many ways too. Which is not that surprising as it was made by the makers of Arcanum, which was made by the makers of the original Fallout . It's a bit on the easy side, though.

I've found the stories of its buggyness to be exaggerated. There was one crash bug, but it's fixed in one of the patches and I had no other problems through my many hours of playing.

 

pa paaa... pa paa...

pacchonbo-mo-inoinoi chakaretapatton pankorakettonto-n
no-ra churere-rotton poraporapetton pu-rorattantan
pappu-ra mo-inoinoi chakaretapatton pankorakettonto-n
o-ra poruketthi-no poporattantanso-
kokoreccho pie-nto-ra ma-nima-ni ungarafoccha-ra de-ra
totora-pethiton totora-pothiton senekiniko-se-pon
kokoreccho pie-nto-ra ma-nima-ni ungarafoccha-ra de-ra
totora-pethiton totora-mathisi-po-n

Aye, we were initially going to submit ArcMagi this year, but decided against it in the end.
It's not a game where you can try to polish the gameplay, make one level and say: "the rest is similar, only there's more content". Here the content pretty much equals the gameplay and I didn't want to sumbit a dismembered cripple of a game and hope the judges will see the potential. Next year it is.

Cheers to everyone who missed this year and are going to make the next IGF awesome.