Reality Panic

I must say that I am quite impressed with the work of the IGDA’s Quality of Life Committee. They just launched their white paper, titled �Quality of Life in the Game Industry: Challenges and Best Practices�. It is a 90 page report that outlines all the crap and stupidity thats burning out all our best people. Better yet, it provides recommendations on how to make things better.

This is not trivial problem.

While maintaining quality of life is not easy (in fact, many of us willingly submit ourselves to the craziness as a test of our mettle), it will in the end help to produce better games. A happy developer is a good developer :)

I don’t think that unionization is the answer. Rather, just being smart about scheduling, management, business issues, HR, etc, etc could go a long way to improve things. Same goes for publishers, who need to stop putting on the total grind that in many ways forces studios to set unrealistic schedules and budgets…

Imagine when your dev team will be made up of mostly 10+ year veterans (certainly with some newbies to mentor, but I digress). No doubt, they’ll still make mistakes, but not the same ones every new batch of dear-in-the-headlights developers make each project…

Anyway, best you just read the paper!

I rather enjoyed a recent guest editorial at GameSpot titled “The Low, Low Bar of Being As Good As Television“. The author laments on the overall poor quality of writing and storytelling in games. Sadly, I have to agree. The most telling part of piece is the “quick poll” where over 71% of the 1300+ gamers responded:

“I’ve been waiting my whole life for a game that could move me as well as entertain me.”

Only 1% said: “I’m just in it for the action!”

I think it is further telling that so many games are still developed without serious consideration to the quality of writing/writer. This is compounded by the fact that many complain of the overall lack of creativity within the current mainstream game industry.

Like Noah Wardrip-Fruin at GTxA, I am glad more folks in the community are discovering the work of the Writing Special Interest Group of the IGDA. They put out a kick-ass guide to game writing a few months back.

(A little known fact is that it was the original guys from the SIG that lobbied for writing to be recognized in the Game Developers Choice Awards.)

Anyway, if the Princeton English department is getting involved, I have no doubt things will improve :)

I often get asked about the current state and/or the future of mobile gaming. Sadly, I have to admit that I am not terribly knowledgeable about mobile games and don’t follow the space as closely as I should.

One area, however, that I have been keeping tabs on (and talk about quite often) is “location-based” mobile games, or what I and some others refer to as “proximity” gaming. In fact, I would go so far as to say that proximity or location-based games are the future of mobile gaming. I bring this all up because Wired just posted a nice article about these kinds of games. Journo gadfly Justin Hall has also covered proximity gaming (with some really cool screenshots).

As many great game designers say, You need to design to the inherent strengths (and differences) of your platform. Until we do, mobile gaming will never REALLY take off…

Matt Sakey’s latest Culture Clash column on games and religion really resonates with me. He covers the often hypocritical nature of peaceful religions and violence in the name of that same religion. What’s further interesting is that much of the backlash games take comes from those acting from a (supposed) higher morale standing…

I went to see The Passion of the Christ and thought it was an excellent film. Very intense. Very violent. It had an authentic feel to it (certainly the Aramaic script helped). Yet, despite the gruesomeness, the extreme violence only scratches the surface of what is described in the Bible. Oddly enough, my father refuses to watch the film as he does not want “Hollywood explosions” to interfere with his personal interpretations of the Passion - or at least, how the local church has nicely described it. Odder still, I got church spam encouraging me to “take your family to watch this film and discuss” and pointing me to a Passion outreach site…

I could go on about games, religion, violence, but should probably stop…

In related news, a recent Wired article trumps all the above by describing a tech/game project that will bring peace and/or Armageddon to the world. Crazy stuff.