Plan for Jeremy Alessi
by Jeremy Alessi · 07/30/2005 (3:51 pm) · 3 comments
Whenever I get a new issue of Wired it always makes my brain go into a tizzy. Today is no different!
I just got done reading an article about the last 10 years and how they changed the world so much because of the Internet. It's a pretty fascinating article that ultimately describes what we've all created as "The Machine". Basically, the ultimate machine ... one giant computer which in the article gets compared to the human brain in how it "thinks" ... since everything is hyperlinked and cross referenced.
I'll spare everyone the detail of the article which should be read by anyone who uses the web. The thing is, where's it all going? We're all here on Garage Games to make games (ranked as the #1 use of the Net according to this article). We were all probably influenced by Atari, Nintendo, and many of the early PC success stories. We want to learn programming, physics, art, etc... so that we might entertain people in the hope that they'll pay us so we can live comfortably.
I think that's the general notion anyway. To me it's very simple. I have many different visions of what I might do ... or visions rather of the varying degrees of success I might have. What I really want to do is be responsible for a game that draws a crowd in a similar manner to Halo 2 or the Harry Potter books ... everyone waiting in line all pumped up to check out the newest chapter in their favorite series ... that would be an amazing thing to experience!
The thing is that everything is changing ... even now it is evident that many people are more concerned with what they can create rather than what they can experience. It's obvious that gaming isn't what it used to be ... there are hundrends of thousands of us already if not millions who are more interested in making games than playing them ... and are more interested in buying tools to make our ultimate game rather than buy a game.
Sure the larger majority still plays games but by 2015 ... will more people actually be making content than consuming content? If so ... what will be the benefit of making content? I guess it's something to do ... and it's a wonderful way to gain a deeper understanding of life in general but if you cannot be a breakout success because you are part of a majority or plurality of people making games ... would you still do it?
The honest truth is I'm not sure I would. Right now game developers are still a fairly small niche but with the Internet being mostly used to play games and with the symmetry of consumers/producers switching ... one day it won't be ... being a game developer loses more of it's distinctiveness every day.
We all love games but for what reasons? I initially loved games because as a child it let me do things that I normally couldn't do, be a race car driver, a fighter pilot, or just a hero in general. Games let me escape my bedroom and achieve a level of control I could never have in the real world.
As an early teen I loved games for social reasons as well as for the freedom they presented ... I had skills and could whoop anyone at my local 7-11 in Street Fighter 2 which would earn me props with my friends. I also at that time started to care about the technical side of games and saw them as a way for me to learn ... I studied the specs of different hardware as if to validate my love for them with real world knowledge.
Toward my late teen years I began to forget about the freedom games allowed me. Afterall I could drive anywhere I want and talk to anyone I wanted in the real world. I didn't need games to give me a sense of control anymore. I still used games for social reasons ... nothing could brighten up a stormy weekend then 4 people bashing the crap out of each other in Super Smash Bros. and I still valued my skills ... although I was also starting to learn the value of toning it down and even losing on purpose sometimes to make other people feel good. It was also at this time that the technical interest came about even more and I started programming my own games on a calculator. I started to see myself as a potential Nolan Bushnell or Shigeru Miyamoto. I started to think of games as a living ... something I wanted to make money with. I mean why not right? Other people were gaining distinction and making millions I wanted a piece of that.
That's about the time I jumped into a Computer Science program and started making my own computer games. After about 2 - 3 years I started to see myself as capable of making a living from games. Not just interested, not just learning, but capable of making a game people would buy. This ultimately ended up manifesting as Aerial Antics the first game which fullfilled some of the visions I had of myself as a teenager.
Enter a new stage ... a mid twenty something gamer/ game developer. Some of my interest in playing games has returned ... I played more games from start to finish in my 25th year than I had in years. I tried to go back a little and figure out again what I wanted and maybe what I missed ... because I don't make my living soley from game development ... I climbed the hill only to realize I made a mistake somewhere ... or perhaps the hill is just part of a bigger mountain and I didn't realize it when I first began.
It seems apropos that my next attempt in this saga is called "King of the Mountain". That's what I've wanted to be all along. When I first played games I wanted control, I wanted to be the hero and games gave me that. When I was an early teen I wanted recognition for my skills socially ... I wanted to beat all the older guys at my local 7-11 at Street Fighter and get props from my buddies who just didn't have what it took to win but felt somehow better that they were friends with the kid who could. When I was getting close to graduation I wanted to prove that games had redeeming value I wanted to show people that I could learn more from games than perhaps they had learned from college. When I began making games it was the same story ... I wanted to out pace the people in each community I took part in ... I wanted to learn whatever tool or language and make a game worthy of recognition and hopefully hit the walls of whatever tool I was using so that I could move on to the next challenge.
I won't lie about it ... I like games from playing them to developing them because I like to be distinct and I like to win. I want to be the best there's ever been. However, throughout all of this games in themselves have been a niche something somewhat distinctive. If production begins to outpace consumption would I still be interested in making games ... or would I move on? I won't know until the moment strikes me. Perhaps it's the destiny of any gamer to move from player to producer to tool provider. If the numbers keep going the way they are though it would seem that the next place to make an impact would actually be in the 'god tools' department not in the 'playground' department. Perhaps though ... these stages I experienced will always exist for different age groups. Maybe now is just the first time we have witnessed the metamorphosis of a whole generation from player to provider as they grew from children to elders and in the future it will be possible to cater to any stage of the game successfully.
Aside from anything else though ... what brought others to games in the first place? What took you from gamer to producer? And, if it has occured ... what took you from producer to provider?
I just got done reading an article about the last 10 years and how they changed the world so much because of the Internet. It's a pretty fascinating article that ultimately describes what we've all created as "The Machine". Basically, the ultimate machine ... one giant computer which in the article gets compared to the human brain in how it "thinks" ... since everything is hyperlinked and cross referenced.
I'll spare everyone the detail of the article which should be read by anyone who uses the web. The thing is, where's it all going? We're all here on Garage Games to make games (ranked as the #1 use of the Net according to this article). We were all probably influenced by Atari, Nintendo, and many of the early PC success stories. We want to learn programming, physics, art, etc... so that we might entertain people in the hope that they'll pay us so we can live comfortably.
I think that's the general notion anyway. To me it's very simple. I have many different visions of what I might do ... or visions rather of the varying degrees of success I might have. What I really want to do is be responsible for a game that draws a crowd in a similar manner to Halo 2 or the Harry Potter books ... everyone waiting in line all pumped up to check out the newest chapter in their favorite series ... that would be an amazing thing to experience!
The thing is that everything is changing ... even now it is evident that many people are more concerned with what they can create rather than what they can experience. It's obvious that gaming isn't what it used to be ... there are hundrends of thousands of us already if not millions who are more interested in making games than playing them ... and are more interested in buying tools to make our ultimate game rather than buy a game.
Sure the larger majority still plays games but by 2015 ... will more people actually be making content than consuming content? If so ... what will be the benefit of making content? I guess it's something to do ... and it's a wonderful way to gain a deeper understanding of life in general but if you cannot be a breakout success because you are part of a majority or plurality of people making games ... would you still do it?
The honest truth is I'm not sure I would. Right now game developers are still a fairly small niche but with the Internet being mostly used to play games and with the symmetry of consumers/producers switching ... one day it won't be ... being a game developer loses more of it's distinctiveness every day.
We all love games but for what reasons? I initially loved games because as a child it let me do things that I normally couldn't do, be a race car driver, a fighter pilot, or just a hero in general. Games let me escape my bedroom and achieve a level of control I could never have in the real world.
As an early teen I loved games for social reasons as well as for the freedom they presented ... I had skills and could whoop anyone at my local 7-11 in Street Fighter 2 which would earn me props with my friends. I also at that time started to care about the technical side of games and saw them as a way for me to learn ... I studied the specs of different hardware as if to validate my love for them with real world knowledge.
Toward my late teen years I began to forget about the freedom games allowed me. Afterall I could drive anywhere I want and talk to anyone I wanted in the real world. I didn't need games to give me a sense of control anymore. I still used games for social reasons ... nothing could brighten up a stormy weekend then 4 people bashing the crap out of each other in Super Smash Bros. and I still valued my skills ... although I was also starting to learn the value of toning it down and even losing on purpose sometimes to make other people feel good. It was also at this time that the technical interest came about even more and I started programming my own games on a calculator. I started to see myself as a potential Nolan Bushnell or Shigeru Miyamoto. I started to think of games as a living ... something I wanted to make money with. I mean why not right? Other people were gaining distinction and making millions I wanted a piece of that.
That's about the time I jumped into a Computer Science program and started making my own computer games. After about 2 - 3 years I started to see myself as capable of making a living from games. Not just interested, not just learning, but capable of making a game people would buy. This ultimately ended up manifesting as Aerial Antics the first game which fullfilled some of the visions I had of myself as a teenager.
Enter a new stage ... a mid twenty something gamer/ game developer. Some of my interest in playing games has returned ... I played more games from start to finish in my 25th year than I had in years. I tried to go back a little and figure out again what I wanted and maybe what I missed ... because I don't make my living soley from game development ... I climbed the hill only to realize I made a mistake somewhere ... or perhaps the hill is just part of a bigger mountain and I didn't realize it when I first began.
It seems apropos that my next attempt in this saga is called "King of the Mountain". That's what I've wanted to be all along. When I first played games I wanted control, I wanted to be the hero and games gave me that. When I was an early teen I wanted recognition for my skills socially ... I wanted to beat all the older guys at my local 7-11 at Street Fighter and get props from my buddies who just didn't have what it took to win but felt somehow better that they were friends with the kid who could. When I was getting close to graduation I wanted to prove that games had redeeming value I wanted to show people that I could learn more from games than perhaps they had learned from college. When I began making games it was the same story ... I wanted to out pace the people in each community I took part in ... I wanted to learn whatever tool or language and make a game worthy of recognition and hopefully hit the walls of whatever tool I was using so that I could move on to the next challenge.
I won't lie about it ... I like games from playing them to developing them because I like to be distinct and I like to win. I want to be the best there's ever been. However, throughout all of this games in themselves have been a niche something somewhat distinctive. If production begins to outpace consumption would I still be interested in making games ... or would I move on? I won't know until the moment strikes me. Perhaps it's the destiny of any gamer to move from player to producer to tool provider. If the numbers keep going the way they are though it would seem that the next place to make an impact would actually be in the 'god tools' department not in the 'playground' department. Perhaps though ... these stages I experienced will always exist for different age groups. Maybe now is just the first time we have witnessed the metamorphosis of a whole generation from player to provider as they grew from children to elders and in the future it will be possible to cater to any stage of the game successfully.
Aside from anything else though ... what brought others to games in the first place? What took you from gamer to producer? And, if it has occured ... what took you from producer to provider?
About the author
#2
As for "King of the Hill," this was a really interesting blog reading. It reminds me a lot of the documentry "American Movie" about a guy struggling to make a film and find "the American dream." The film he makes ends up saying more about him than the things portrayed in the film. So it's interesting to correlate what "King of the Hill" says about you and your competitiveness and drive to be #1. (I wonder what Shelled says about me?)
What brought me to games? Loved them as a kid, loved them as a teen, love them as an adult. Gamer to producer? Nothing more than the realization as an adult that games are an art medium and not just a fancy electronic toy; I've been making art my whole life, just never considered doing it in the form of games before. Cheap game engine technology (read: Torque) was what bridged the gap: I didn't need $10,000 to make a game. Well, actually that ended up not being true, just that I didn't need $10,000 for the engine. :)
Again, great read. Always a pleasure to read the personal side of game-making.
07/30/2005 (11:17 pm)
I hate to over-simplify, but production will never outpace consumption. Sure there will be more producers, but you forget that there is also a whole new generation of people playing them. I saw a middle aged woman playing tetris on her cell phone the other day who looked like it could be the first video game she's ever played. Technology will enable more producers, but it will also bring more players as well.As for "King of the Hill," this was a really interesting blog reading. It reminds me a lot of the documentry "American Movie" about a guy struggling to make a film and find "the American dream." The film he makes ends up saying more about him than the things portrayed in the film. So it's interesting to correlate what "King of the Hill" says about you and your competitiveness and drive to be #1. (I wonder what Shelled says about me?)
What brought me to games? Loved them as a kid, loved them as a teen, love them as an adult. Gamer to producer? Nothing more than the realization as an adult that games are an art medium and not just a fancy electronic toy; I've been making art my whole life, just never considered doing it in the form of games before. Cheap game engine technology (read: Torque) was what bridged the gap: I didn't need $10,000 to make a game. Well, actually that ended up not being true, just that I didn't need $10,000 for the engine. :)
Again, great read. Always a pleasure to read the personal side of game-making.
#3
personally though if you asked me why i don't really play games... its because i've played all the good games to death and new ones just aren't comming. and if i don't make the gaood games then who will? you have to set an example and raise the bar, then everyone wins. at the end of the day its the question of why you are making games... is it to create something inspiring, or is it to line your pockets... as long as your drive is fueled by even a fraction of the latter games will be bad especially as the cost of producing games keeps moving upward. there appears to be a direct positive correlation between the lack of substance in a game and the cost of producing the game. games were better in the famicom days when it wasn't such a momentous affair to produce a game. since then games might have more stuff, but the thought just isn't in them. maybe in the old days people did it it out of love and curiosity... i dunno, but as to what is driving the direction of content these days it definately isn't minds. i guess my greatest dissapointment is the intellectual is no longer considered a target demographic. not that there isn't plenty of pretentious content out there, but that is a nother story. content doesn't have to target the intellectual, it only needs to be palletable. classic games did that... games these days though appear only to cater to a primitive audience... an audience which apparently the industry feels is easier to please and easier to pull their chains. as long as the game format is considered the realm of idiot play i will try to do what i can to produce titles which would challenge that mold and set an alternative example. but to get started complex games require complex tools which do not currently exist so that is what i work on for now.
oiiii, wasn't expecting so much hot air to seep out.
sincerely,
michael
PS: your email address is rejecting my mail so i can't reply to that last letter... have you payed your aol bill? want a gmail account? -michael
EDIT: for an answer to your question though you can check my last post or the one before in my only forum thread. oh and why not some impressive KOTM screenshots for those of us without a beefy internet hub. -michael
07/30/2005 (11:29 pm)
the thing is games right now are really bad experiences that are on the whole probably unhealthy for society. 'games', or as i would prefer to refer to them as 'experiences', encompass every creative aspect of our existence, but also beyond this, due to the immersiveness of the format much more raw energy is required to get a 'game' off the ground. it takes a lot of people to produce a game, especially doing it the brute force way that is popular at the moment. the most hardcore gamers all want to work with games if they can and there is no reason why a gamer and a producer cannot be one in the same. in the future hopefully people will exchange 'experiences' as a profound form of communication. however until that point giving people that sort of power at their finger tips will require a lot of cooperation and selfless acts to get the ball rolling. until then though the residue of greed and ruthless power will seep into your game content. personally though if you asked me why i don't really play games... its because i've played all the good games to death and new ones just aren't comming. and if i don't make the gaood games then who will? you have to set an example and raise the bar, then everyone wins. at the end of the day its the question of why you are making games... is it to create something inspiring, or is it to line your pockets... as long as your drive is fueled by even a fraction of the latter games will be bad especially as the cost of producing games keeps moving upward. there appears to be a direct positive correlation between the lack of substance in a game and the cost of producing the game. games were better in the famicom days when it wasn't such a momentous affair to produce a game. since then games might have more stuff, but the thought just isn't in them. maybe in the old days people did it it out of love and curiosity... i dunno, but as to what is driving the direction of content these days it definately isn't minds. i guess my greatest dissapointment is the intellectual is no longer considered a target demographic. not that there isn't plenty of pretentious content out there, but that is a nother story. content doesn't have to target the intellectual, it only needs to be palletable. classic games did that... games these days though appear only to cater to a primitive audience... an audience which apparently the industry feels is easier to please and easier to pull their chains. as long as the game format is considered the realm of idiot play i will try to do what i can to produce titles which would challenge that mold and set an alternative example. but to get started complex games require complex tools which do not currently exist so that is what i work on for now.
oiiii, wasn't expecting so much hot air to seep out.
sincerely,
michael
PS: your email address is rejecting my mail so i can't reply to that last letter... have you payed your aol bill? want a gmail account? -michael
EDIT: for an answer to your question though you can check my last post or the one before in my only forum thread. oh and why not some impressive KOTM screenshots for those of us without a beefy internet hub. -michael
Torque Owner Samuel Lopez De Victoria
For me, I want gaming to be another form of artistic expression, while not taking away the fun :-)