Can D.I.Y. Supplant the First-Person Shooter?
November 15th, 2009This is an interesting article about independent video game developers. I enjoy stories about people who figure out how to hack the system in innovative ways. If you do too, you might want to check this out—whether you ever play video games, or not.
Via: New York Times Magazine:
These game designers, a self-described indie scene, form a tightly knit group with a do-it-yourself culture and a rebellious spirit — something like a ’zine movement for video games. New and cheap technologies have enabled the movement’s rise. New tools for production and distribution — through smartphones, over the Web and via downloadable services on PlayStation, Wii and Xbox consoles — now make it possible for individuals to conceive, develop and publish their own games.
This reminds me of the modding community that sprung up around the original Deus Ex, courtesy of the dissemination of a software development kit, and the popularity of the game. It culminated in, “The Nameless Mod.”
http://thenamelessmod.com/
I feel to see what the big deal with “Braid” is, aside from the fact that a small entity developed it rather than a large. It still induces some people to spend hours of their time in a fictional realm created by other people, which, come to think of it, is something perpetuated by all media.
You also have to love the slogan, “Live in your world, play in ours.” When one surveys the rapidly diminishing and heavily regulated choices that constitute “play,” it comes as no surprise that people flee into fictional realms where they are allowed more freedom than they are in the mundane world. However, the irony lies in the fact that the people who create the fictional realms are cut from the same cloth as the people who create the reality we all have to contend with, hence the predominance of military and espionage games, the latest innovation being the adoption of the role of criminal in the Grand Theft Auto or Hitman series.