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[Riley Adams]

Then he registered in the forum and I banned his account, the reason being that this forum is FOR INTELLIGENT ADULTS WHO HAVE A BURNING PASSION FOR VIDEOGAMES -- all of which are qualities which he obviously utterly lacks.

  an outstanding display of maturity by this INTELLIGENT ADULT WITH A BURNING PASSION FOR VIDEOGAMES.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

its not that its bad (no im gona be honest i dont like them at all)
gimmicks are just marketing fuel to claim ur game as som kind of innovative bullshit when its just something boring as teleporting in a bland platformer or moving some crates to climb shit

you know its a gimmick when the fun lasts for 10 seconds and then you realize, oh its just a platformer but replace this mechanic with this, and end up playing a 10 hour tutorial

that makes no cents, what makes you think that is true -- i don't know anyone who is like 'well i'll just add a gimmick of teleporting to my platformer so that it'll sell more copies and be more famous!' it's more like 'platformers are boring, what would make it a little bit more interesting? maybe teleport! let's try it and maybe it'll be fun'

[mcc]

One way I might put what I think eva is trying to say is that gimmicks can distract from fundamentally shallow gameplay. It's worth asking, whatever little tweak this game has to differentiate itself from every other platformer (or whatever)-- if all the other platformers already did it this way, would it still be a fun game? And sometimes a game's fans/creator can be so distracted by the gimmick, they never bother to ask that question.

But I can't tell if this has anything to do with icycalm/rohrer's discussion because I cannot decipher icycalm's English

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

but isn't there value in novelty? no it wouldn't be good if every single platformer had teleporting, but it might be good if that particular platformer had teleporting.

for example, vvvvvv: it used a gravity mechanic as its gimmick. but if every game used that mechanic it wouldn't make every game better because it'd get old, but if it's focused on in that particular game it's good.

so we can say that a gimmick is something that uniquely adds to one game (or a very small set of games), but would not add to most games

[bento_smile]

Random issue... the problem with any icycalm argument on art games is that his foundation is lacking. :/ It's hard to take it seriously when he bases an argument on designers hating games and having no industry experience, which is obviously not always the case. (If people hate games, why would they make them?) If he wants to make it a war against some invisible enemy, then fine... XD But it's kind of strange.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

oh, there's a lot of factual matters icycalm gets wrong about art games. for instance, he claims that art games are all about "message" and that the entire point of art games is to insert a message into a game artificially; but that's the opposite of what most art games do and what most people who make art games believe. even jason rohrer doesn't believe that you should just tack on messages to games, he strongly believes the opposite, that the message should arise out of the game mechanics.

[eva_]

but isn't there value in novelty?

novelty lasts like i said 10 seconds. if you're relying on this gimmick to sell than all im getting is all style n no substance

for example, vvvvvv: it used a gravity mechanic as its gimmick. but if every game used that mechanic it wouldn't make every game better because it'd get old, but if it's focused on in that particular game it's good.

no it'd only be bad if the game is bad.
if people can play vvvvvv and say its a good platformer than it succeeded as a good platformer, it relied on a gimmick but there was a "good game"(source: this site) underneath

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

nobody is saying that you should *just* have a gimmick and no game though. just that gimmicks make a game distinctive. if vvvvvv had jumping instead of flipping, and had the exact same graphics and similar quality of level design, it'd be a worse game because there would be less novelty. novelty lasts more than 10 seconds; maybe not 10 hours, but more than 10 seconds. i'd say... 3 hours (which is about as long as most gimmick games last anyway)

[Landshark RAWR]

I have now sorta come to a conclusion that "artgames" could be regarded as slam poetry in the form of a game, but the main issue is the name "artgame" which as people have discussed is inappropriate

I mean a short game based off

cold be seen as an "artgame" sorta i guess.


I say we figure out a better name and have a compo for these poetryish games to get a word out.



and the fact that there are famous trolls on the internet makes me a saaad panda

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

he's not a troll though; if he were he wouldn't have a forum of hundreds of followers who believe everything he says and argue for his ideas whenever they can. or at least, even if he is a troll and doesn't believe what he writes, hundreds of people *do* believe what he writes. he's more of a cult leader than a troll. and i've never seen any evidence that he doesn't actually believe the things he says.

[Melly]

So he's just a giant douchebag.

[Jonas Kyratzes]

What the hell does "gimmick" even mean in this context? The gravity-reversing in VVVVVV is not a tacked-on element of the game, it is the game.

[Melly]

I'm pretty sure nobody knows what the hell a gimmick is supposed to be.

[Ntero]

I don't want to put words in Eva's mouth, but it seems like gimmicks are features that are tacked on to a currently shallow game.  The new and exciting feature doesn't redeem the shallow game.  I see a disconnect though in Eva talking about the game relying entirely on the gimmick as an add in, and others talking about the game design as a whole being based around the gimmick and supporting it(of which I personally find more examples).

Although personally I have trouble thinking of a good example, because I tend to forget them.  I played a time modifying FPS a while back but I can't recall the name.  It was generic shooter with time grenades.  The time grenades didn't make the crappy gameplay any better or more fun.  If I could remember it's name I think it would be a good example of add in gimmick.

Although my personal thought on the word gimmick brings to mind examples like Portal or Braid.  Games where they could be described as "A ____ but with _____" (ex Braid is a platformer but with player controlled time".  The Gimmick added in is supported and explored through the game design.  And in those situations I think that any features outside Pong could be considered gimmicks(Breakout is just Pong with a single player wall gimmick). 

Many sequels are however better described as "A better _____" (ex Left 4 Dead 2 is a better Left 4 Dead).  While the second one is generally looked down on(especially in some more indie circles), refinement is just as important as innovation.  There is an important place for both ideas, so long as they are good .  Although personally it's a little disheartening to see that the main stream industry is going 90+% refinement with little innovation.

And in the end a Gimmick is just a new, in-testing Feature for future games.

[jwk5]

for instance,

he said that sequels which refine a good formula endlessly aren't a bad thing, just as it's not a bad thing to make basketballs year after year similar to previous basketballs. rohrer thinks this is a bad thing because copying the past leads to less change and innovation, and or less movement towards his particular goal (a sort of chriscrawfordian situation where we have games about prostitutes with a heart of gold and interact with them through natural language, and where games make you cry). is refining a good game by making it even better bad? if not, why does rohrer dislike it? or is it only bad if the industry focuses entirely on that and nothing else?

I think they are both right. Progress is pretty much equal parts of innovation and refinement of innovation. You get one game that sets the standard and then dozens of games just like it that refine the standard (each making small improvements to give them an edge over the original or their competitors) which in turn creates a basis for which a new innovation will be applied to create the next standard. This process is really evident in the established genres (FPS, RPG, Fighting Game, etc.). There will always be creators who create completely original works outside of established bodies of work, but I think the refinement process of other creators is equally as important to the art (or whatever you believe games are) as a whole.

I'm pretty sure nobody knows what the hell a gimmick is supposed to be.

In Ninja Gaiden (Sigma) 2 Ayane's breasts pretty much trippled in size from the first Ninja Gaiden (Black/Sigma) and in Soul Calibur 4 Ivy's breasts grew bigger than her head. Those were sales gimmicks. They weren't added in for any real game-enhancing purposes they were added in under the theory "bigger boobs = more $$$". Pretty much any pre-order bonus or "special edition" bonus you can get for a game are sales gimmicks (the only purpose they serve is to increase the odds you're going to give the company your money or more of your money). Gimmicks (in any media) are tools for advertisement (like the shaving razor that must be better because it has seven blades instead of six!!). Gimmicks go way back to the days of the snake oil salesman.



As for IceyCalm (now that is an ironic name for him), anything logical or relevant he may have had to say pretty much got thrown out the window with "artfag" as far as I am concerned.

[GZ]

Just to touch on the gimmick end of things, I think the word choice means a lot. Typically I associate gimmick with something that is shallow or cheap that doesn't do much to enhance the actual product. An example being the Wiimote controller when it was first introduced, many people labeled it as a gimmick and I got the impression based on elaborated reviews it was generally meant in a derogatory sense. Speaking of something like Portal however, reviewers would call the gravity gun / portal mechanic innovative or revolutionary instead.

That's the impression I always got.

[Dragonmaw]

[moshboy]

So he's just a giant douchebag.

Have to agree with this from the things I've read.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'd prefer just calling him a narcisist; i had a discussion with dragonmaw in irc today over whether or not he's intelligent; my position is that he is. but we both agreed that he lacks critical self-evaluation. like most of religion, he never doubts his own position, and that leads to believing many things wrong. i think nietzsche would have a thing or two to say to him about too much faith in your own belief system:

"The will to a system is a lack of integrity." - Nietzsche

in fact, i think these nietzsche quotes also apply to him:

"Art is the supreme task and the truly metaphysical activity in this life."

"Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. It is not only pleasant and agreeable images that he experiences with such universal understanding: the serious, the gloomy, the sad and the profound, the sudden restraints, the mockeries of chance, fearful expectations, in short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, the Inferno included, passes before him, not only as a shadow-play—for he too lives and suffers through these scenes—and yet also not without that fleeting sense of illusion; and perhaps many, like myself, can remember calling out to themselves in encouragement, amid the perils and terrors of the dream, and with success: 'It is a dream! I want to dream on!' Just as I have often been told of people who have been able to continue one and the same dream over three and more successive nights: facts which clearly show that our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and joyful necessity."

"The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art."

hmm... nietzsche is beginning to sound like an artfag...

[mirosurabu]

yeah, since when did 'gimmick' become a bad word in game design? it's a good word, the more gimmicks the better, gimmick just means a small invention

Is it?

In marketing, gimmick is a special and usually quirky feature of a product that is useful in marketing the product, but is of little to no relevance to the product itself.

Bullet time in Max Payne is a gimmick. It's an optional fancy feature that is heavily disjointed from the core gameplay. It was useful in marketing the product though.

Is that good? No.

In VVVVVV, gravity flipping mechanic is a quirky feature but not a gimmick simply because it's central to the game.

Quirky features are not gimmicks.