Thanks Matthew, for sharing your numbers! I'm struggling to get pygame apps wrapped in Apple's app store packaging.

I think everyone is taking the Less Talk, More Rock article a little too seriously. The article isn't saying "Text bad, pictures good." What it's saying is, "Don't use text to communicate what an interactive visual could communicate better."

...unless you can't afford all the interactive visuals it would take to communicate all the writings required for a particular game. (nearing 50 stories in arcada mia, with hundreds more to write :-)

 + Writing award. There are two kinds of writing, dialogue oriented and prose oriented. ie words written to be spoken. words written to be read. sometimes they overlap. My games were written to be read. I'd have to re-write them for voice acting. Contrast Pulitzers with Writers Guild awards. Indies aren't currently making lots of voice acted games. A story award would overlap audio and graphics, as it's common to tell stories with all three! Stick to a prose award.

- Feedback. Well, it was great while it lasted, but I agree with Andy.

+ Honorable mentions! The main reason I kept submitting DHSGiT to the IGF was, it consistently got great feedback. So I could imagine that it might have 'just missed' in past years. With the honorable mentions, I know that wasn't the case.

I just tested 'arcada mia' on a casual gamer, for the first time. She did well, and she enjoyed it. But I don't think she enjoyed it enough at the start. Must improve the initial experience!

One man's wrong way is another's path to nirvana. Like two ships in the night, I bumped into Python when it was headed where I was going, but that was never its destination. So no specific criticism from me.

It's a sad tale of tears and intrigue, a lady in white waiting on a the shore of a colonial port in africa. Some mail in a cargo that might not reach desination, sealing the destinies of two countries.

The captain had orders to rendezvous with the French colonial steamer, but those orders revealed too much. He swore by the salt in his blood, this underwater boat was the future of Germany. The plot to kill a Austrian prince was merely a spark compared to the beaming glory of Kaiser Wilhelm. The future rule of all Europe steamed into his periscope's sights.

Also, the Python language is headed in a direction I don't care for.

Really? Like what?

One man's wrong way is another's path to nirvana. Like two ships in the night, I bumped into Python when it was headed where I was going, but that was never its destination. So no specific criticism from me.

Here's a different suggestion. I've made three commercial games with Python. (okay, 'arcada mia' has a few months before it ships...) They run on Mac and Windows, and I'm sure it would be trivial to get them working on Unix. But as mentioned, the mobile space is growing, and it has lots of opportunity for indies, but Python isn't ready for mobile. Also, the Python language is in a weird transition, headed in a direction I don't care for.

I just found CoffeeScript, which is an interesting wrapper on JavaScript. Haven't committed yet, but it looks like two good things. A clean replacement for Python language, and a potential way to pick up JavaScript. JavaScript JITs blow Lua out of the water, and JavaScript is EVERYWHERE.

CoffeeScript Site (barebones but very informative)

Here're the first finalists for the IGF. More to be announced in January.

http://igf.com/2010/12/nuovo_award_finalists_revealed.html

Well, in the OP, you said:

Fate oriented media embeds the notion that lives are predetermined.

For clarification, here's an example of what I mean. As soon as an editor submits an author's work to be printed, the lives of the work's characters have been determined. Therefore, before the reader can read it, the character's lives has been predetermined. The reader knows this, of course. I believe that knowledge, over centuries has affected culture, as well as specific stories about fate. In the case of a work about choice and consequence, the medium conflicts with the message.

Now, as Captain_404 says, this is a writing board. Let's explore how writing can be crafted with choice and free will supported with underlying gameplay or other interactivity. I've mentioned my current experiment. I'll describe that more as further user testing supports or demolishes my attempt.

Seth and RCIX, excellent points. But my main point isn't that the protagonist in those stories doesn't consider the consequences of their choice. The reader has none. Readers interact with their own perception. Readers are powerless to change media of fate. Turn pages fast or slow. Watch a movie standing on your head. It doesn't change the book or movie.

We all know that people will have individual reactions to a work. That just means an author doesn't have as much control as she thinks she has. The only control authors have is over the fates of characters in that kind of media.

I start with describing the experience I hope the player will have. Distill that down into a sentence or two, and stick with it. In creating arcada mia, I tried three other core mechanics before settling on 'back and forth tactics', to drive the experience of 'living in an Edward Rutherfurd novel as successive generations through history.'

While working on the game, lots of features spring to mind, and I write them down, but if they don't support the experience statement, they get iced. Others get iced simply because I can't fit every appropriate idea into a game and ship it. Already I feel like I'm tackling too much. Three major features and several minor ones remain to do on the main list. Then there's the six pages of tweaks and nuances... we'll see.

Refining a vision means identifying that vision and creating it but no more.

The implicit stories of a system, ala sim city, dwarf fortress -- perhaps those are better suited to expressing free will in games without still feeling arbitrarily constrained.  I feel like maybe there's an under-explored space between these two methods though.

I wholeheartedly agree. 'arcada mia' will be using a simple method of choice that determines small scope stories. Which of these small stories appear is based on how the game is being played. So your play invokes small stories, and then you make a choice about how they resolve. Sometime this choice will impact later stories, but that is not the common case. It's an experiment that seems to be working well in user testing, but I won't claim any major breakthrough. It's a fun, novel system. Once the whole thing is written, I hope it'll set a small stake in new fertile ground.

How they got there is something the player (or even the writer) doesn't necessarily have to know.

I think the writer should. It's another way of perceiving the world of your creation, if anything. More importantly, NPCs with rich backgrounds can feel more real. Everyone you know has a hundred backstories, interwoven in a way that is unique for each. More backstory helps to makes higher quality characters and a higher quality experience. But there is a cost, and sometimes you can't afford it.

I'm not about to start a debate about the difference between 'choice' and 'free will'. I used the term, in the classical sense of Fate vs. Free Will more because it sounds grand than because of any supernaturalism associated with it.

The current thread 'fatalistic railroading' brought some of my stewing thoughts to a boil. This must have been discussed elsewhere and/or long ago, but I'm not familiar with earlier considerations of this idea.

Interactive entertainment is the medium of free will. All other media, previously are fate oriented. Okay, a few exceptions like interactive theater and CYOA books, but they largely did not exist before computer games. They're just shadows of our craft.

Fate oriented media embeds the notion that lives are predetermined. Sure, many individuals disagree that their lives are predetermined, but human culture has been shaped by linear storytelling. Every story turns out the same way, every time. How many times have you seen this plot device, 'it happened because it was fated to happen'  or 'because a particular thing happened previously, the ending was happy or tragic'? These are devices that sell and keep selling. Shakespeare is incredibly popular because he was so good at surprising the audience with clever inevitabilities of fate, and also foretelling fate for characters powerless to prevent it.

Fate devices work just fine in computer games, but one significantly different ending changes everything, when it's a choice the audience can make.

I look forward to a world changed by media of free will. It won't necessarily be better, but if human culture emphasized more responsibility for actions and choices, people might feel that they are individually empowered rather than individually entitled.

Computer game indies could be the leading edge of this change in humanity. My favorite thing about TIGSource is, after the newbie figures out he can't just waltz in with a 'great idea' for someone to make they either disappear or learn how they can make their idea come to life.

The quality of NPCs is directly proportional to the amount of time you want to spend creating them. Good ones should have rich backstories. They should act/live in the world, instead of standing around waiting to talk to players. That said, they might pause in their 'rounds' when the PC's nearby, so she don't have to chase them down. They should also change, especially after a quest for them is completed. The change can be minor or dramatic, but they shouldn't be the same, minus that quest. Many, many, other things can make NPCs feel more real and alive.

All of that quality takes time. Plan for it.

I'd like to contrast the above, excellent example, with a couple 'fun' characters. Sten in Dragon Age, and Minsc from Baldur's gate. These characters are enjoyable. One has a stoic cold logic that is both humorous and unsettling. The other is a hilariously written dumb strong type.

However, I suspect I would find the above horse more interesting. It lives and breaths and acts, and has a credible personality. Bioware characters talk the talk and fight. They rarely change as a result of the story, except when they fall into evil, or repent from it. Been there a few too many times. Still enjoyable characters are better than boring characters.

Here's the first interview on the site:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/efm2i/indie_interview_on_new_indie_coop_game_portal/

Please help out and mod up the link. Cliff Harris of Positech is the main dude that's making this happen.

Not great trailers, but I like how these turned out:









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuiaAOUtzSQ


The voice-overs were really fun.

London, by Edward Rutherfurd.

Epic tale of a couple family lines from the early Roman occupation to the modern streets of London.


very cool.