And Alec, not every one who posted about IGF 'conspiracies' even entered games into the IGF. I don't see why you have to start a thread like this with such a negative tone.

The constant talking down and insults and name calling against people who have concerns about IGF is very ugly and drains any kind of decent discussion that could be had. (alec, glaiel, lith).

This was pretty much my opinion upon seeing this thread. It seems totally unnecessary and a bit of a "fuck you" towards people with legitimate concerns about the IGF. It's also flamebait, and an implicit acknowledgement that Alec doesn't really care about what dissenters might think about this anyway so he might as well just see it play out. At least, that's how I'm reading it, not being aware of much of the history behind this.

And I know that there are a lot of crazies who say that this is a scam or TIGs is a scam or whatever, but those people can be easily ignored. There is a clear separation between those people and people like Speeder in this thread who bring up valid concerns that many people don't seem to want to acknowledge. In general, I think there needs to be more of an interest in giving people a fair chance to talk about these things without a blanket dismissal.

I haven't read much of the thread, so I apologize if this is redundant.

I see the term "art game" as an attempt to label a game with a different focus than having just fun gameplay, like expressing a particular idea or feeling. Of course the label itself is problematic because it introduces the whole "what's art and what isn't" debate and brings along all the bullshit that comes with that. But as much as we want games to be seen as "legitimate", and as much as many games provide tangible emotional experiences, games are clearly nowhere near the same level of expression, or speaking to the human condition (to use a term Jonathan Blow does), or whatever else you want to call it as other mediums. I think the the existence of games that attempt any level of that is vital.

The label itself is a bit attention-grabbing and unnecessary, but I can understand the reason for wanting to self-consciously adopt it if you're doing that kind of game. Maybe something like "experimental" is a more accurate, if less attractive, way of describing these games.

ella guro:That one was a bit hard. But it was a very nice touch to have the ending screen be identical to the beginning screen.
Not very clear on what kind of atmosphere you're trying to create.

I was mainly just trying out a bunch of gameplay mechanic ideas. There isn't really an atmosphere to speak of. I think I'm going to do try to do a more atmospheric level next, because I liked Kuppo's space station level a lot.

ok, so I might've gone a bit too far towards challenge and skimped on the atmosphere, but here's my level. I tried to at least pace it decently (for example, there are no save points until the 5th or 6th screen, when stuff starts to get harder). I kinda subvert that, though.

My original concept was to make the player have to die to beat the level, but then I found out that you have to touch the checkpoints for them to activate, which made the idea impossible. I was really bummed out about that. But by the time I figured that out I was a few screens in so I decided to finish anyway. Congrats to anyone who makes it through without getting frustrated.

edit: sorry for the billionth edit, I just wanna elaborate on what I was thinking with this level.

The first screen is one of those "see the end of the level from the beginning" scenarios that I've seen other people do and I really like because at the end of the level it's kind of a reward to be on the other side. The second screen gives you two options for places to go, I'm assuming that most people will move right, which leads to a little jumping puzzle and then, abruptly, to death on the next screen. I thought it would be a good idea to trick the player early on, especially because you tend to expect death to be coming on the next screen when you've just been through a little jumping puzzle. It's a bit mean of a trick early on in a level, but it can be avoided...I mostly wanted to reward the person who decides to go left, since that's a less common choice.

After going left, there's one longish jump on the first screen and then a leap of faith on the second screen. This is the first time that you have to take a leap of faith without knowing what's coming next so it's followed with a little break: two screens of what the player previously saw, this time on top of the level. I chose to just let both of those have no jumping puzzles so the player could either see that they were rewarded for going left, or to finally be on the right track and see their previous failure. Both of those screens also have weird pseudo block art in them that I wish I could have found more space for after that.

On the fifth screen, there's a few descending jumps, and then you have the choice either go right or jump left. If you go right, unless you go left quickly you get stuck and have to fall down a pit and die. If you go left, you discover for the first time that you can jump above the blocks to get to the next screen.

The sixth screen has the first save point, but you have a choice to go to it or try to do some jumps. The jumps let you shortcut another frustrating screen that you have to go through if you get the save point, but there's also a risk of you dying and having to start the level over again instead of from the save point. So here, there are two choices and both of them are acceptable. I like this part a little better than what I did previously, just punishing the player for going one way.

Once again, you need to take a leap of faith to the next screen, and another leap to get to one side of the screen to the other. This begins the last major jumping puzzle. I let you save there because this part is harder. The first side of the screen involves jumping back and forth from one screen to another to get to the top of a structure. You can also do this without having to jump from one block to another, but I thought it would be reasonable to give the option of using the blocks on this first puzzle. Once you're through there, you go to the next screen which is just a column 1-thick wide of blocks with a save point. Here, you don't have any blocks and you have to jump really carefully to get to the top. This part is frustrating, but it's the last jumping puzzle and there's a save right there so there's less punishment for screwing up.

Once you make it through that puzzle, you have to walk above the level once again, this time for a whole screen. The walking takes you back to the first screen and sends you right down a slide to the exit. You can choose to jump over the part with the slide and walk back to the beginning of the level, but there's little point in doing it. I just thought it would be a nice little easter egg to have it be possible.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I went into way too much detail here, I'm just trying to explain my thought processes because I thought it might be interesting to someone. Hopefully it is.

Was listening to: Guided By Voices - Under The Bushes, Under The Stars. They're playing here in a week. I can't wait.

My first experience designing a game was doing Wolf3d levels when I was around 12-14. I had this epic 42 level add-on that I started and finished during that period (I think it's still online somewhere). During that period I was really, really committed to doing that game and I think there are a lot of things that are still quality in it. There are bugs and some dumb levels, but overall I still really like a lot of the designs. I liked designing Wolf3d levels because it was so technically easy, but it was always a challenge to make a design that was actually interesting and distinctive. I tried to get into DOOM levels after that but was kind of intimidated at the time...I might download DOOM Builder now and try it again.

I also made mario levels on my TI-86 calculator in highschool, sometimes during class . I tended to do I Wanna Be The Guy type levels where you had to do everything precisely right in order to keep going. I also programmed a couple psuedo-text adventures for a programming class, but those were kind of dumb.

That's about the extent of my game design experience.

I've never played any of their games, but I found this interview with Russian games studio Ice Pick Lodge really interesting:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/03/rps-interviews-ice-pick-lodge/

I apologize if it's been posted before.

hey everybody! My name is Liz. I'm a musician/composer who's trying to get into doing game music. I have done remixes on OCR (ocremix.org) in the past, though under a different name (I really wish they'd change it already). My music tends to be "experimental" or "unique" according to other people. I also would like to design games. I used to design levels for Mario and Wolfenstein and found it immensely fun and rewarding, though I don't have any other real experience. Ultimately I want to pick up things at my own pace and experiment with different ideas until I can come up with something truly fun and original, even if it's in a very limited scope.

I'm also interested in writing game criticism/journalism. I have a blog I just started recently here, though I'm reevaluating what I want to do with it.

Some of my favorite games are Mario 3, Deus Ex, Silent Hill 2, Anachronox, Earthbound and Duke Nukem 3D.

I look forward to hanging around here more often!

holy shit do I feel dumb. I kept wondering "why are all these spambots getting through but I keep getting errors when I try register?". And then I realized that I answered one of the registration questions wrong continually. I kept putting "games" instead of "gaming". It only took about 20 tries!