Thanks for the feedback.  While I understand the things you said, such as the lack of feedback, and the difficulty of finding a place to drop a bomb, all these things are there for a reason.  The game is meant to show why groups resort to suicide bombings, and I can assure you the ease at which you can blow yourself up, the lack of direction, etc. all have significance in proving the game's point.

Thanks, I will be waiting for the game to become more of a full game before I add a real menu system.  I was actually thinking that maybe instead of a level editor, it would be neat to totally do away with the premade levels.  What do you guys think of a system where all walls in the level are placed by the player?

Definitely not for everyone...but apparently opinions are. 

I don't think it will help bring games to artistic maturity to actually spoon-feed the player the meaning, however.

Exactly, like I said, there is a big difference between openly spoon-feeding the player meaning, and writing something that accompanies the game and perhaps provides a bit more insight.  For example, many people dislike Jason Rohrer's artist statements because he tends to overexplain everything...almost if if he is telling you why it is art.

What I'm trying to get across is that's it's ignorant to simply apply a black & white filter to this.  Simply saying "I like/dislike artist statements" is a generalization, as all statements will interact with the game's content in different ways.  I agree that a game should not require an artist statement, but in some cases, a well crafted statement can increase the value of the game.

Then expect politicians and lawyers to walk all over you, that's how things work.

I take it you never took acid or any psychedelics.  They are the opposite of escapist drugs.

I'm taking it more than half the people here who are expressing overly negative opinion of drugs have never tried them. 

The game industry is asking for it. Maybe if they spent their time making good games that can show the artistic value of the medium, and stop shitting out crap to capitalize on holiday sales, more people would take them seriously.

While I agree with the fact that the industry puts out crap to make money, I don't think this is the reason they are scrutinized.  The issue here is reactionary idiots who are trying to make political careers for themselves.  Video games are an easy target to pick on, and for somebody, be it a lawyer or politician, to make themselves known for doing something, and piss as few people off as possible.

The real solution here is for both the industry and the consumer to act together on a political level to prevent people like Lee Yang or Jack Thompson for attempting to use the game industry as a stepping stool.  Most gamers aren't very political, and this is something that is going to have to change if we ever want to gain mainstream acceptance as a medium. 

Do to [insert game] what BAZ did to Bomberman.

So you want us to completely fucking ruin a game? 

Nor was that.

Was that?  I can't tell.

An exception I'll make is if you're being crucified because of how people see your game (e.g. Super Columbine Massacre RPG). That creator's statement exists with good reason.

I have actually just recently experienced this, as I just made Resist!, a game about suicide bombing.  Normally I do not write statements for my games, but with such a tricky subject, I felt obligated to clarify a bit.  Statements exist to clarify, while in many cases, they serve as a crutch, in other cases they can be almost necessary.

If games were a fully, or even mostly developed art medium (oh no! I said "art"!) I could see more foundation for the argument that games should not be accompanied by artist statements, but in a society where much of the medium's own community does not consider it art I think they can be immensely helpful.

My thoughts exactly.  Video games are something that are still not often considered art, and statements help to clarify things in the game that might not have been obvious.  In about 10 years, once video games have matured a little as a medium, I can see the lack of a need for statements, but right now, I believe that sometimes they are a necessity.

I am surprised that nobody has really mentioned the fact that statements do vary in quality.  There is a huge difference between attaching a statement that says "hey, this is why this game is art" and making your statement actually assist in provoking thought on the subject matter.

Download Resist!(Windows)

Resist! is my attempt at making a game about suicide bombings that is more than the lame 2D Flash game that exists now.  More about it can be read here on my blog.

I'd like to point out that the game's name is completely immemorable and unpronounceable, i.e. very bad.

The name is actually the only reason I played it, as I know what australopithecus is.  However, I fear I may be one of the few that does. 

The best way to monetize a free game is to charge for it.  The quality of freeware on the internet has risen tremendously in the past few years, and it's gotten harder to make money off of free games.  If you want to make money, I suggest you spend some time making a commercial game.

Putting ads up on your game's website is probably the best bet for making money off it.

Ads are worthless nowadays.  Unless you have a website that is getting thousands of hits a day, you probably won't even get accepted into an ad service.  There's always Google Ads, but those make even less, and you probably wouldn't even make enough to reach t he minimum payout amount.

A little too difficult for my tastes, but I appreciate the Modest Mouse reference.  Neat game.

Engineer has been updated.  You can download the new version at the same download link in the original post or (here).  This is not the huge game changing update I had planned for, but it does fix the issues that made the game seem unpolished.  The next update will focus solely on the difficulty curve and that aspect of gameplay.

Here's a list of changes:

- Fixed movement.  You will now slide along walls instead of the jerky stopping movement.
- Fixed player mask.  Animation will not affect collision.
- Modified shooting.  Keys can be held to repeatedly shoot.
- Fixed selection.  Pressing the 1 and 2 keys when selecting items is no longer weird.
- Fixed money bug.  Money no longer goes to -7.

To the majority of people "art games" and probably video games in general will never be more than just pretty things to look at.  It's no surprise that some douchebag that writes for the New York Times can't look past this.

fuck the art world.

More like fuck the mainstream media.  From Jason Rohrer's Esquire article to this...whenever a major media outlet picks up indie games in any form, they ruin them.

Possible scenarios:
- We don't have 360s.
- It's not what it's all cracked up to be.

Both in this case.

I play Catan here....They have Carcassone, too.  It's all Java based, so you can play right in your browser.  The interface is a little wonky at times, and there aren't really instructions, because the games are blatant ripoffs, but still worth playing.