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[Superb Joe]

Re: socalism, I'm not aware of any socalist system that has produced any artistic expression of note, usually that is the first thing to go.

virtua fighter announcer yelling "excellent"

[Superb Joe]

it's a masterpiece in the eresian tradition. i'm still thinking about it

[fluffrabbit]

About the rain thing: Let's say you have a 10% chance of rain when you go outside. It's still a good idea to take a shower because it probably won't rain. But you have a 99% chance of failing hard in indie games, so whether or not you take a shower, you'll be covered in blood and shit by the end of it.

[alvarop]

1. Don't start this shit. There are no fucking activists here, and if there are, I don't want to meet them.

 

coward

[fluffrabbit]

You looking for drama or something?

[Superb Joe]

I'm saying I would like a system where games like the eternal classic NoTimeToExplain aren't just freak successes, but rather the systems we use are more deliberate about what makes it. When we give in to "its all just random, the universe will have its way: to powerful to master" we have given up in general. Why shower in the morning because rain is random, there is no point. The weather cannot be predicted.

In terms of "the next minecraft" its mostly just a fantasy for me personally to make something mainstream. Generally I focus on what I can control: making my stuff fun and bug free and easy to enjoy, but when I design I think of a wide audience just in terms of accessibility because I like that challenge. I have designed stuff that is targeted at niche audiences too, for my own process I like to be inclusive just b/c that's who i am as a designer. But yes, I would love to make a game that is a kiss to the whole world even if that may be doomed to failure. I guess its quixotic but whatever.

Re: socalism, I'm not aware of any socalist system that has produced any artistic expression of note, usually that is the first thing to go.

as i understand it you're arguing for there to be some kind of meritocracy involved in the success of video games.  may i ask whether in this case your metric of success is ultimately informed by financial reward or critical appraisal? i ask because attempts to centralise and give basic meta-analysis of reviews of games and movies have resulted in, essentially, the estrangement of criticism and analysis in order to boil things down to a number, and has resulted in a separate kind of tyranny of the algorithm where the worth of a game/movie has become a very mildly obfuscated net promoter score with a slightly shifted scale. and under this system, especially in film, we see that the main beneficiaries are to no surprise the pinnacle forces of capital like disney, and this unbiased approach tells us that black panther is the best movie of all time, because of the number.

so, in my opinion, while a meritocracy is a fine idea, i struggle to think of being able to implement it in a way that would not simply recreate the capitalist structures in which success for an independent developer depends largely on some kind of unintended fame. instead of tinkering around the margins with methods of curation that will almost certainly be gamed by those who can afford to, i think it's probably just easier to advocate for a positive restructuring of society where people's basic needs are met to an extent that free time and self expression for its own sake can once again exist, so it doesn't matter if your puzzle game wasn't wildly successful because you didn't have to take a $200,000 loan to be able to get enough time to work on it.

[fluffrabbit]

If there were no financial incentive, I would probably be making a retro time travelling erotic stealth shooter. Society won't change for the arts; the arts are secondary to more important things, so if you're trying to crack the casual games market or some perceived absurdist/abstract indie market, you're already a cog in the wheel, and I salute you for contributing to society.

[Superb Joe]

Society won't change for the arts; the arts are secondary to more important things

i agree. i hope one day to be playing your retro time travelling erotic stealth shooter and will consider it the final and resounding victory of labour over capital.

[Daid]

If there were no financial incentive, I would probably be making a retro time travelling erotic stealth shooter.

I'm intrigued, tell me more.

[michaelplzno]

@joe a meritocracy with even tyrannical critics would be better than THE ALGORITHM just allotting you however many impressions you get. I view criticism as essential to the artistic process. One fault with metacritic is that it has no integrity and a numerical scale means nothing. To me, the red letter media critics are the current A listers in film but games are in the dark ages. I like dunkey but he only really covers big stuff.

Really I'm probably proposing something closer to feudalism: I'm an indie and I want even a postage stamp to call my own and continue to make the kinds of games my small fiefdom wants made.  

Pure free expression is the highest ideal but it's conceivable that the sense of self would be impossible if we were truly free, so that sort of becomes academic.

[Superb Joe]

i suspect what you yearn for is more collectivism than feudalism

[fluffrabbit]

RLM gave Pain and Gain a bum review, but it looked like exactly my thing, so I went and watched it and loved it. They're not artsy/weird/postmodernist enough for my tastes in film. The medium of film can be moulded into whatever the fuck you want it to be. There are no serious technical challenges anymore; it's almost a pure art.

Games are different. I've been consulting with a prominent figure in the open source gaming scene, and he recommended I do Cave Confectioner over my other ideas because it's

1. 2D

2. iterative

I can add to it over time, I can market it to normal people, it's family-friendly, etc. I'm not confident enough in my skills as a programmer to know that I can pull off the projects I have started. Confec has a better chance than the retro time travelling erotic stealth shooter, not just of doing well, but of getting done. Games are hard.

[Superb Joe]

Pure free expression is the highest ideal but it's conceivable that the sense of self would be impossible if we were truly free, so that sort of becomes academic.

i disagree, in fact i think that if more people were truly free they would be able to progress to self actualisation, whereas we have at present pretty much an entire generation of young people stalled at the "safety needs" step of maslow's hierarchy of needs because of the precariousness of their situation

[fluffrabbit]

It's more than just one generation. I see plenty of left-brained robust women in Gen X fight tooth and nail for their backstabby desk jobs, I know some baby boomers who are on the edge of total financial collapse, and I don't know how Gen Z is doing, but it seems to depend on the town. The important thing is to stay positive.

[Superb Joe]

i'm going to be the most well educated and reasonable member of the wasteland once the current economic model of losing fucking absurd amounts of money to microloan out some shit that sucks to people who cant afford to breathe stops working

[fluffrabbit]

Once the actual value of goods and services is realized, we could have isolationism followed by war. No wasteland, just more ghettos.

[Superb Joe]

i actually happen to think that we can find a way to equitably distribute resources to meet peoples needs

[michaelplzno]

Just to get semantic: I see self-actualization and freedom as different goals. Typically self actualization requires a lot of imposed structure. For example, finding a partner is one of the steps on the Maslow hierarchy, however, the constraints of having someone in your life are not exactly freeing.

I see the trend with kids these days to be making everything political, which to me sort of robs the kids of their childhood. People have time to argue politics when they are old farts, its sad that kids are arguing about all this stuff in movies and games as if the fate of the world lives and dies based on which games make it. And I guess I'm sort of guilty of pushing things in that direction: I did a political game before it was cool and now that I look back on it I'm not sure it was such a good idea.

However, I don't really know how dystopian things are for the next generation. Sure it seems every child is raised as a tiny political pundit, but I wonder how these kids are when they aren't online.

[Superb Joe]

Just to get semantic: I see self-actualization and freedom as different goals. Typically self actualization requires a lot of imposed structure. For example, finding a partner is one of the steps on the Maslow hierarchy, however, the constraints of having someone in your life are not exactly freeing.

I see the trend with kids these days to be making everything political, which to me sort of robs the kids of their childhood. People have time to argue politics when they are old farts, its sad that kids are arguing about all this stuff in movies and games as if the fate of the world lives and dies based on which games make it. And I guess I'm sort of guilty of pushing things in that direction: I did a political game before it was cool and now that I look back on it I'm not sure it was such a good idea.

However, I don't really know how dystopian things are for the next generation. Sure it seems every child is raised as a tiny political pundit, but I wonder how these kids are when they aren't online.

to be clear because i think we have different conceptions here, when i envision people being "truly free" i mean in the sense of having the basic safety needs assured as a baseline level of existence, freedom from that need to dedicate all of your time and energy to making sure your cv looks good so you don't die.

as for making everything political, i mean politics really is everything. electoral politics fundamentally is about the apportioning of resources according to priorities which are informed by values and ideologies, encompassing the social side of things. nothing can really be apolitical, even children.

[fluffrabbit]

Electoral politics is about appointing a mascot to lead the freak show. It has nothing to do with allocation of resources. Resources are poorly managed because humanity is retarded and our economics are fucked in any hypothetical situation. The thing about staying positive is that maybe, if we each do our part, eventually we can pull out of it, each nation rising above poverty and providing gainful and rewarding employment for all who need it, public and private.