What makes Ludum Dare special, indie RPG combat mechanics and abandonware on today’s Indie Links.

Indie Corner (RPGamer)
“Greetings, and welcome to the newest RPGamer column, Indie Corner. This is not a weekly column, but will instead be a sporadic look at the indie RPG development scene. And again, it’s not a typical column. Instead of directly reporting about indie RPGs, we’ll be bringing in the actual creators to talk about development and other aspects of the RPG scene. Interviews, in-depth discussion, talk of inspiration, and other editorial content directly from indie devs will be highlighted here. To start things off, we’ve gotten a few RPG devs to share how they feel about combat and battle systems. We talk about the most important aspects of a battle system, their inspirations, and what combat pitfalls they most worry about falling into and how best to avoid them. Today, we talk with AckkStudios, Sinister Design, Breadbrothers Games, Muteki Corporation, Zeboyd Games, Eden Industries, and Experimental Gamer.”

Surgeon Simulator 2013: death in your hands (VG247)
“Surgeon Simulator 2013 is a strange, almost morbid game that proves VG247′s Dave Cook should never be trusted with a person’s life under any circumstances. Get disturbed here.”

Unfinished Business: Super Hexagon creator reveals his abandonware (Joystiq)
“This Vine represents eight of VVVVVV and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh’s unfinished projects – the first of three like it recently posted to the game designer’s Twitter account.”

Thomas Was Alone review: Mastering the inverted fall (Joystiq)
“On the surface, Thomas Was Alone appears unremarkable. It breaks platforming mechanics down to their most basic levels, quite literally, replacing characters with colored rectangles and environments with precarious arrangements of black rectangles. To reiterate: Thomas Was Alone is a platformer starring a cast of little, colored blocks.”

Indie Pleas: Indie game crowd funding roundup for April 26, 2013 (IndiePub)
“This week’s Indie Pleas include: A.N.N.E., a metroidvania pixel art adventure; Rex Rocket, a retro sci-fi adventure; My Temple, a fun iOS fitness game; and Ghost of a Tale, where you play as a mouse in a medieval world.”

Andy Schatz talks Monaco’s delay and fan reactions (Edge)
“Last week, Andy Schatz, founder of Pocketwatch games, found a bug in the Xbox 360 build of his game Monaco that caused players to consistently get dropped from multiplayer matches. As a result, he decided to delay its release mere hours before it was slated to come out. We talked to him about the aftermath and how player reaction shapes his development process.”

Piracy or baiting? The thorny legal question of Game Dev Tycoon’s honeypot (Ars Technica)
“Earlier this week, the developers at Greenheart Games distributed a crippled version of its new game Game Dev Tycoon disguised as a “cracked” version of the full game. The little Internet experiment served as an ironic and humorous poke at software pirates and a smart way to call attention to the challenges indie developers face with piracy.”

Here’s what makes Ludum Dare so special (Gamasutra)
“Whether you’re an indie developer or not, you’ll likely have heard of the Ludum Dare 48-hour competition and game jam. Three times a year, hundreds of developers come together online to create games based on a set theme over a single weekend, and subsequently vote for a winner in the weeks after.”

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Links Round-Up: Grandfather Clock

Recently, the Path of Exile open beta launched, and my friends —ever eager to migrate on to the next free-to-play game, convinced me to give the game a shot with them. After all, they argued, at the very least I’d have a bad experience to write about. I scanned over the Path of Exile website as the client downloaded, not really impressed with what I was seeing. The game looked like a stock Diablo 3 clone, and still being slightly bitter at Blizzard after paying $60 for their one-shot linear 4-level slaughter-fest, I just wasn’t too excited to sink any amount of time into Path of Exile. So, with the odds of my favor already against the game, I loaded up Path of Exile and created a Shadow (aka a thief-class) and named him Shrat.

Two Acts, probably around a half-dozen hours, and a few thousand dead zombies, monster-bears, squid-beasts, and enraged monkeys later…I am having a blast with Path of Exile.

The first thing I noticed about Path of Exile is how smoothly the game runs. Cranked up to the highest visual level, I checked the in-game FPS-counter (F1, for those interested) and I was dancing safely over 100 frames-per-second. With that said, the game doesn’t look bad at all. I don’t know how Grinding Gear Games did it, but Path of Exile looks super crisp, plays incredibly fluid, and is hardly taxing on my system. Granted, my PC was built for gaming, but all of its hardware is 2-ish years old…hardly spearheading any PC-gaming technology race.

The controls and interface are what I expected to find in a top-down Action-RPG like Path of Exile. While hardly innovative, this is not necessarily a bad thing, as I knew relatively instantly where things were and what buttons to press for the different attacks. The only awkward interface design choice I ran into was that by default, players must hold the left-ALT key in order for dropped loot to be displayed on screen. However, with a simple look-through of the key-bindings in the options menu, I noticed that by simply pressing ‘Z’ the player can turn loot-labels on and off, at will.

While I’m on it, the loot system could use some tweaking. Now, I understand that Grinding Gear Games wants the loot-system to be a cut-throat experience, and while I do think that is a strange design choice, I applaud them for not bending under pressure and changing something they feel, in the end, adds character to their game. Currently, the way the loot system works is that when something is killed, loot explodes over the ground like a loot-pinata. All of the gray “trash” loot is free for all, but the rarer items are assigned to specific players…but only for a few seconds, and then it becomes free-for-all. If you’re playing with a group of friends, this isn’t really a big deal and you can go by the honor-system, like my friends and I did…leaving the loot that wasn’t dropped for us, and pointing out things that dropped for someone else if they’re not in the area. That works, and it’s no big deal. But if you plan on playing online with strangers, you will want to be paying attention to the loot as it drops, because there will probably be greedy ninjas about.

Aside from the arguably unfair loot system, I was hard-pressed to find anything else to take issue with. The “pay-to-win” fear that hovers over every free-to-play game is absent from Path of Exile thanks to what Grinding Gear Games calls, “ethical microtransactions”. There are no skill boosts or one-price-unlocks-all bonuses that people can buy to achieve greatness faster than anyone else. Instead, things like added account features (extra stash tabs and character slots), pets (frogs, bugs, lizards, etc.), cosmetic effects to weapons and armor, skill effects that change the default effect to something much cooler, and character animations (time to /dance) are all available for purchase. And the prices are not too bad either, where else could you get a pet frog for roughly $2.50?

The amount of detail in the environments in Path of Exile is stunning. Every zone looks incredible, and some of the levels are straight-up spooky. From the foggy ship graveyards, to the claustrophobic torture dungeons tucked deep within the mountains, Grinding Gear Games‘ level designers did an amazing job. Also, the lighting effects in Path of Exile put the game’s contemporaries to shame. In the darkest of dungeons, the only source of light comes from your character and the occasional explosion he or she might cause by using spells. This single source of light casts perfectly dynamic shadows on everything, creating a spectacular effect when there are multiple characters on screen at once.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Path of Exile is something I would never have expected to enjoy as much as I am: the gem system. In short, your attacks come from the gems you find. Players have to strategically place gems in their gear, as most items have a color coded slot that only a matching gem can go into. Anyone can find any type of gem, but obviously the Witch would have more use for a fireball gem, than a Shadow would. However, there is nothing stopping that Shadow from equipping, and using the fireball gem. The “talent tree” that is the staple for most character progression systems in RPGs, has been replaced with what I like to call a “talent forest”, which is to say that all of the character’s talent trees are connected, and no character is limited to one set of abilities. As a Shadow, if I spend enough points, I can work my way across the talent forest and fill in all of the Witch’s talent points. The only limit is the number of talent points you have, and you get one per level, and some are given as quest rewards.

Path of Exile is the first free-to-play game that I feel compelled to support. Sure, I bought crate keys in Team Fortress 2, but that’s because the weapons inside came with new abilities. In Path of Exile, you are given the game in its entirety, and Grinding Gear Games oh so politely (and most importantly, ethically) asks that you spend a handful of dollars and support them. Throw down $15 and buy a pet frog and a glowy helmet, support these guys. Because this is how you do free-to-play.

The wonderful thing about modern technology is the ability to maintain a level of connectivity with your audience. The dev diary allows the chance for a creator to provide a unique perspective on a project before, during and sometimes after the product is out on store shelves. A while ago I featured a few blogs, but there’s so many out there I figured it was time to visit a few more and see what’s going on out there in the wide world of game development from those who devote their life to it.

Let’s start with Red Knight Games, a young studio who are currently developing the platform game Grapple Knight. The team has had been making many an alterations to how the game looks and plays over the last few months and their blogs are a perfect insight into how that development has shifted their focus.

Suddenly changing everything you know, especially on something you’ve put a lot of time into already, can be a difficult process. That’s especially the case if it means literally throwing out your existing results and starting over. But the latest blog by the team proves that some times change can be for the better, in this case shifting from a modern visual presentation to a more pixelated, retro art style. It makes for interesting reading, a chance to see things from another point of view from a developer who clearly loves what they do and isn’t afraid to put in the hard work or try something they haven’t done before in order to get it right.

From working on an upcoming game to reflecting on how it all went. Pub Games released their iOS and Android game Blastpoints recently but came across some interesting hurdles along the way, especially when developing the Android edition as their current blog update explains.

“There are well over 1500 unique Android devices, all with different hardware specifications, from different manufacturers and different video chips,” the team explains, going into great detail on the kinds of problems were brought up when developing Blastpoints. They went so far as to break things down into 9 different performance types based on what product the game is playing on at the time and creating an option for players to change that level within the game itself.

There’s the promise of more insight into the development process over the coming weeks, along with reactions and opinions by the team on Blastpoints success and issues post release. Again, it’s great to read such a candid and open opinion not just on how the game went, but what went wrong and how the team are devoted to fix the issues they came across.

Finally we come to the video blog, the opportunity for a dev to show more than just a few words or a screenshot or two. Now I realise that the Firemonkey’s team aren’t as indie (in name) as they used to be, being an Electronic Arts studio these days, but there’s still a great level of independent development in Real Racing’s blood. The below developer diary video is just one of a few the team has uploaded so far, detailing the work put into the newest race tracks within the game:

One of the dreams I had growing up with video games was to visit E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a part of the biggest event in the industry, where surprises and big names are there for all to see? Unfortunately as dreams go, they aren’t always that easy to attain in real life (I live a long, long way away, for example). So imagine my delight to see EB Games, the Australian division of GameStop, create the next best thing in the EBExpo. It’s a chance for Australian gamers to get in on the act and get some hands on time with the biggest names, and I’m going to be there!

This is the expo’s second year in action, shifting from last years debut in Melbourne to Sydney this time around. It brings with it a host of massive titles that everyone can’t wait to get stuck into, familiar faces such as Assassin’s Creed III and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, many of which are playable for the first time anywhere. But there’s another new element to the expo’s schedule that has me far more excited, one that I’m sure many of you will be keen to know about.

The Home Grown Gaming exhibit, which has its own area within the rather large and well planned out Olympic Park (former home of the Sydney 2000 Olympics), will play host to a number of local Australian talent in both software and hardware development. Not only will it act as a showcase, but it could very well open the eyes of many gamers who are yet to taste the indie gaming world.

Many of these companies you may not have heard of, but soon you will know all about them. Take Blunt Instrument for example, a small studio based in Sydney who are working on two soon to be released mobile and PC titles, Missile Control and Ignite The Skies. Or Epiphany Games, who are hard at work on the ambitious RTS Frozen Hearth, the first part of an expansive and ongoing series. That’s just two of many hard working and respected studios who will be at the show, mixing it up with the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Electronic Arts and Activision.

The exhibit will also play host to a number of e-sports events and the opportunity for local fans to check out some of the newest gaming hardware developed down under as well up and coming items of worth. But the chance for new and young developers to show off their work will be of special interest, especially with a sell out crowd of near 17,000 (and counting) over three days of action.

As a fan, a gamer and a lover of all things indie, you can be sure I’ll be there taking it all in and meeting some of the talented artists and devs right in my own back yard. I’ll be getting the lowdown from all of them, so you’d better keep it logged to IGM as the event kicks off this weekend!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – IGM Headed To The EBExpo 2012 Australia

Hello, I am Petey A.M., or Peter Mascio, if you prefer my real name. I am a writer for IGM and now have been named Marketing Director for IGM to oversee our PR and reader relations, as well as inform you, the reader of our ongoings. I also would like to introduce you to our new approach to you, the reader. We have redirected our focus to becoming the first site where the user is just as, if not more important than the writer and staff. The goal is to make a site where you feel at home, know each and every writer, and can communicate with our writers and staff openly and honestly. Ahead is a tentative plan for how we intend to make your experience with us a memorable one.

1. Featuring Reader-Submitted Work: Once a week we will feature a reader-submitted editorial on the front page of the website. The winning user will be awarded a fantastic free indie game code, as well as having their photo (if requested) on the front page of indiegamemag.com. The work must be fully original and never have been posted on any site, blog, or other print media. If user submissions are abundant enough we can begin the feature next week, featuring the articles on each Thursday. If you have an article you would like to submit, send it to editors@indiegamemag.com with the title “Community Submission.” So get writing, as we look forward to hearing from you. Note: Devs are more than welcome to submit articles too.

2. A Staff with Whom You Become Familiar: Here at IGM we are pushing our staff to be as friendly as possible. Not that our writers are not already friendly people, but they will focus more on fostering a community for our readers. When we say we want to know you by name, we truly mean that. Our forums, comment boxes, and Twitter accounts are all great ways to interact with a staff which wants to know who you are and what you think. In the same way we are social on the site, we are approaching our social media as social beings. Sick of following some big shot writer of whom there is little to no chance of interacting with or getting a follow back? You will not find that here. Our writers are social beings who love fans of indie games and the devs who make them. Also, we will feature a weekly article which will interview one of our staff members. Below is an awkward picture of myself which should help you understand how committed we are to being open with our readership:

I Didn’t Have a Date

3. Commitment to all Devs: Many sites are particular about what they show on their site. They only bring in the biggest of indie titles, which are mainly the games which will bring in the most views. We are fully committed to releasing information on each and every dev which contacts us, regardless of their game’s perceived value in page views. The indie community is not about page views, but rather about showing off indie titles worth seeing. We refuse to break our commitment to the devs who are supporters of the indie scene, as there work is vital to the survival of indie gaming. We want to cover things both big and small.

4. Listening to Your Opinions: At IGM we invite criticism and recommendations. We feel that as you are our loyal readers, you deserve ample credit and attention for your opinions on the site and articles. Our writers are active with opinions in the forums, our articles are open to commenting, and our Twitter is now run by a living-breathing human being. All of us are writing and working because we love the community, so please bring your discussion hats. It is a rare opportunity to have open discussion with writers, which is why we are making it a point to respond to each and every one of you. So be active and we will be too!

Those are our four main goals moving forward, with our usual commitment to fantastic content. It is important to us that you are included in the goings on of our site and we are glad you are onboard with us. Please check out our forums to discuss random topics with our writers and comment below with suggestions for how we can make our site a better overall experience for you. Thanks so much for you time. We will create a better indiegamemag.com together!

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The New IGM Initiative: A Site Committed to Community

Often players are limited to the set functions of the surrounding world. There are those nagging realities of gravity, physical limitations, an inability to traverse intergalactic distances by the snapping of fingers.  Even if one of these limitations is taken away, we are then subject to the limitations of which limitations are not given to us. Make any sense? No? Well, the traditional linearity and limits of the world around us are obstacles to which 3 Core Studio do not make themselves vulnerable with Pulse Shift.

In Pulse Shift, a 3D puzzle platformer, the players are given one goal, which is to reach the arrow at the end of the stage as quickly as possible; however, the way to get there is entirely up to the player. Players are given the tools to manipulate physics to reach a destination.  The world becomes a physics play toy as players reduce the affects of gravity, turn the world, visualize the invisible, and reverse or freeze time. Players can thus conquer levels through these different means.

Enemies in Pulse Shift are more environmental than they are true physical enemies. Lasers and falling pose the most serious of threats, but are avoided through the manipulation of time and space. If players do happen to fall or hit they must reverse time so as to avoid death. The time reversals are limited though by a regenreative bar in the upper left hand corner of the display. If the bar is not full players cannot reverse time and if that fateful moment comes as the player is plummeting into infinity, then the level must be restarted.

Pulse Shift promises to be a mind-warping 3D puzzle platforming experience and you can check it out at multiple places. First of all, look at 3 Core Studio’s official website. Second, go to Desura and download the alpha demo. Then if you dig it purchase the alpha version for 6.99 (30% off).  For future info on Pulse Shift, as well as all your indie gaming news, reviews, editorials, and interviews keep your internet dial tuned in to Indiegamemag.com. What’s that? There are no internet dials? Then use the remote.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Pulse Shift’: Screw Physics, Let’s Platform

I have a buddy who describes Super Meat Boy in three letters. The three letters stand for the essence of what Super Meat Boy is at the core. The three letters are ABS, which is quite the acronym. It stands for “always be sprinting”, which is essentially the attitude of Super Meat Boy. It eats what we traditionally know as a genre and vomits it out unabashed at the grotesque nature of the genre’s reincarnation. That is some heavily gruesome imagery, but Super Meat Boy tends toward the gruesome in a genre full of color and joyous scenery. Likewise, Team Meat, vaunted developers of Super Meat Boy,  used it to flip nearly all other platformer conventions into fully new ideas, which shines a light onto what the modern gamer is drawn towards.

There are a smattering of platformers available right now. Go ahead, pull up Steam or Desura and search for platformers, then proceed to marvel at the billions. There is no problem with that; however, I would not bargain to guess that anyone has either heard of them or that they have seen any significant amount of success. Surprisingly though, Super Meat Boy hit it huge. Rightfully so, because it is a fantastic, addicting, and innovative game, which is instantly accessible. It also says something about the modern gamer as compared to the gamers of the 90′s; the setup is all about immediate payoff in an age of the attention deficit gamer whereas old games required the player to work and persevere for success.

Just think about the modern teenager. Everything is accessible to that teenager through their phone, internet, television, and tablet. There is no longer a need for the modern teenager to work for anything. The modern teenager should see no reason to sit down and play an engrossing 100 hour RPG, when they can play 3 levels of Super Meat Boy in a matter of 5 minutes. That is not to say that those 100 hour RPGs are not successful as Skyrim exists, but its obvious that gamers crave ease of accessibility. Even Skyrim is a walk in the park for the majority of gamers. The switch is to a casual style of gaming which is always rewarding the player instead of punishing the player.

Super Meat Boy is a near perfect example of the modern casual game and even though it is challenging, still manages to never truly make the player wait or suffer. If a player dies in Super Meat Boy they are instantly reincarnated to make another run at the level with no load screen or punishment. Players can beat Super Meat Boy‘s main story line in the first sitting if they ignore all the optional Dark World and Warp World stuff. Could you imagine beating Contra in a night?  Super Meat Boy even eliminates enemy interaction because every enemy must be faced in the same way; by avoidance. Super Meat Boy becomes a casual game by streamlining the whole platformer process, most specifically the time required from a single sit-down.

Old style platformers all operated on similar conventions and the most successful template was from Mario series. Mario contained a myriad of long and difficult levels with no check points and limited lives. Players would have to take long periods of time to battle through these levels, and spend nights trying to learn the structure of each stage. I would argue that Mario would struggle to make it in this day and age abiding by that same style. It would still be successful, but not the mega hit it was in the 80′s and 90′s. Super Meat Boy requires much less time, attention, and commitment from the gamer. A player of Super Meat Boy can turn it on and play for 30 seconds and make similar progress percentage wise as a Mario player could in a half hour. But that is the thing. This is what players have begun to crave. Our attention spans have shortened, and our tolerance of difficulty has gone down.

Do not get me wrong, Super Meat Boy is a lovely game. It is cheeky and fun and definitely deserves your time. You can pick it up on Steam or on supermeatboy.com.  I just think the community’s love affair with it goes beyond its fun. It is timely in a world which now has 1000 means of entertainment and is fully up for a quick thrill, even in gaming.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Why of Indie Games: ‘Super Meat Boy’

The last few weeks have been packed with news about Steam’s new peer-to-peer approval service, Greenlight. Though meant to help indie developers bring their games to a larger market, the service has criticized left and right by consumers and developers alike while Valve have been steadily tuning the outlet to their liking. Everything from changing the text on rating buttons from “Like” to “Would you be interested in this game if it were on Steam” to more major  actions such as censoring certain games for sensitive content has been done at this point, but nothing seems to have struck a cord as much as their most recent change.

Since being announced as a free service accessible to all developers, Greenlight has been met with a flood of submissions. While mostly from legitimate developers, many have come from trolls and civilians submitting the works of others, somewhat diluting the legitimacy of real Greenlight entries. To remedy this, Valve decided to institute a mandatory $100 dollar donation in order to submit ones project; their way of keeping submissions true to Greenlight’s intended purpose.  When word of this mandatory donation reached the public, it was met with mixed commentary from the public as some felt Valve were going back on their promise of a free chance for all indies to make it on to Steam.

The subject especially interested us here at IGM, so we decided to sit down and get our opinions out to the public. We have asked writers from around the office as well as a wide net of developers to present their stance on the Greenlight fee and this is what we’ve come up with.

IGM Staff

Dominic Tarason - Senior Editor

There’s nothing quite like a $100 fee to make people stop, read the rules, and then question whether you’re serious about trying to get this game marketed and on a major storefront. The clever twist here is that Valve aren’t pocketing the money themselves, but rather forwarding it to the Childs Play charity. In theory, time-wasters get filtered out, and some sick kids get happier.

Personally, I’m in favour of it, with some small reservations. The number itself can be argued to hell and back, but it’s not a figure outside any serious commercial developers reach. I poked around for a point of reference, and the price for an indie press table (the smallest you can get, with no additional promotional materials) at the San Diego Comic Con is $500. While there’s some grumbling on Twitter about the chosen figure, it does bring us back to the purpose of Greenlight: It’s a system whereby established indie developers can forward their existing audience to a voting page in order to fast-track them onto Steam, where they have a good chance at making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you’re not sure that your game has a market to begin with, and you’re unwilling to put $100 on the line, then there’s nothing stopping you from releasing via Desura, the Humble Store, directly to your audience or via one of a hundred other routes and raise some money that way. Steam is the biggest and most high-profile store, but it’s not always the first and last step. Even indie classics like Aquaria started out selling direct to fans before getting a larger distribution deal.

In the end, the simple fact of the matter is that something had to be done. It’s not unreasonable to say that the majority of submissions to Greenlight were from people who either failed to read the rules to begin with (lots of people putting their favourite non-Steam AAA titles up), or were trying to market games that never would have had a chance to begin with. No shortage of ‘my first game’ projects using FPS Maker or similar drag-and-drop toolkits. Personally, I think this should stop the worst of it. If it manages that, it’ll have done its job.

Alex Wilkinson - News Editor

Valve had to change some policies regarding the Greenlight project as when it originally launched it was far too open to abuse from people submitting ridiculous ”joke” ideas. In small numbers, this can be vaguely funny, however with the continued string of absurd titles being placed on Greenlight, Valve needed to create some barriers to entry. The $100 entry fee is a suitable interim solution as it will stop most people dead in their tracks and so will solve the problems, however this is not a good long term solution. It does slightly alienate a lot of new developers of course $100 is not a great deal but I feel Valve would be remiss if they do not consider better development of the Greenlight project beyond what they have already produced.

Gareth Kay (the developer from Vineland) did sugest to me on this matter that Valve should reduce the fee and instead have a valid website and company name to have to prove authenticity. This i feel is already a better idea that would work for the medium to longer term, although it is anyone’s guess where Valve will end up on the Greenlight project I have every faith it will work out, hell look at Steam when it first came out compared to now!

Jamell Brown - Editor-in-Chief

While I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague’s, I think I’m going to play somewhat the devil’s advocate on the subject. Honestly, the idea of a fee — or mandatory donation — seems like a quick and easy way to incentivize developers to take a more serious look at their product before moving to that outlet. With no barriers to entry, what reason do I have to not throw the Pacman-esque flash game I just created on Greenlight? Worst case scenario, it sits there and I’m no worse off, best case it gets on Steam and I make tons of money! What I think most people are more upset about is how sudden and random the institution of this fee seems.

Valve is a pretty big company with plenty of experience in the digital distribution market. Greenlight is far from the first channel developers have had to go digital, Desura, the Humble Store and others like them have shown that there are tons of indies out there looking to jump into a larger market. As seasoned as Valve is, it seems like they would have observed these markets and known that there would be  a lot of people trying to get onto Steam right away, thus giving them a reason to institute some barrier from the offset to stem the tide entries. By starting off as a free service and then hastily throwing a fee into the mix, Valve virtually promised every Steam hopeful the world before shutting the doors in their faces. Greenlight has gone from an attempt at equal representation to a $100 lottery ticket over night, and in that sense, Valve has somewhat let their community down.

What I would prefer to see is Valve pocketing the money instead of hiding behind this “donation” as a way to try and offset some criticism. If the money could provide incentive for Valve to put more resources behind moderating the content and comments on Greenlight, the overall quality of the service would improve and more people would actively scout the games there, increasing everyone’s chances of getting on to Steam. Whatever Valve decides to do next should be carefully planned and calculated, hastily throwing out solutions is only going to make their audience more irritated.

Developers

Sergey Mohov (@krides)

In my opinion, Valve did what was best for Valve in all regards. Greenlight is not a charity system, it’s not meant to help anyone per se, it’s only there because the old Valve’s review process could miss some of the potentially lucrative titles (and god knows it did: Offspring Fling was first rejected, and we all know that story). Now, I personally don’t think that there’s something wrong with this situation: acting in your company’s best interest can hardly be a reason to blame anyone. On the other hand, I think that we, as developers, should also act in our own best interest, or at least that is what I am going to do.

I am not ready to pay $100 for an objectively thin chance of getting published: whether this money goes to a charity, to Valve, Microsoft, Apple, US government or Willy Wonka. I just don’t have $100 to throw away to be a member of this elite club. Fortunately, paying the XBLIG and AppStore fees still means that you get your game(s) published and is likely to stay this way. Clearly, Valve believes Steam to be superior than all the other platforms, and, to be fair, in a way it is. I just don’t believe that it can work miracles. As far as I can see, publishing still doesn’t automagically mean profit, so what you are really buying when you pay the Greenlight fee is a chance to get a chance to sell a game, which is of course not exactly money well spent.

For now, I will stick to this belief and see how Greenlight develops. So far, everything already went wrong in it, and, hopefully, Valve will come up with a somewhat more feasible system to banish trolls from the system rather than building a dollar bill barrier. The good news for me is that I’m not forced to pay for Dédale, since it’s already in the system. As for my next project, I am beginning to think that, for all of its flaws, Windows 8 is a more indie-friendly environment now.

Phil Charlise (@zoombapup)

I think the $100 thing is a red herring. What concerns me more is the quality of the comments on games. Not very mature. Ultimately paying $100 to be hurled abuse at like I just posted a puppy video on Youtube is not my idea of good business.

Craig Stern (@sinisterdesign)

The amount is excessive, and will disproportionately hurt small developers barely scraping by on their sales. Weeding out fake entries is a good idea, but there are other ways of doing it that don’t hurt small indie developers. At the very least, they should make it a deposit that gets returned when a game is found to be a legitimate entry. If they’re really concerned about discoverability, though, they need to fix their interface and implement smart sorting. Charging an arbitrary fee just to be considered is a lazy way of trying to boost discoverability.

Cale Bradbury (@netgrind)

If the game is really good enough for Steam and your completely strapped for cash you could probably find someone to cover it. People need to stop worrying about Steam in the early, still concept games, just build cool shit.

Michael Louisseize (@micleee)

We think it’s great, it insures that all the projects on Greenlight are from actual serious developers. If you can’t put down $100 on your game, you aren’t serious enough about it.

As you can see, there are as many sides to the argument as there are people to argue the point. Since the first wave of games moved from Greenlight to Steam, most people are really beginning to see Greenlight in the more positive light I believe it deserves. What do you think about the matter? We want to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment in the area below, or head to our forums to strike up a real conversation. If you want to check out some of our favourite Greenlight projects, keep an eye out for IGM Limelight every Friday afternoon right here on IGM.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Problem With Greenlight – An IGM Roundtable

I am so very young and my knowledge of this world is limited. So then is my knowledge of the human being equally as limited. Everyday I meet people who I assume details about. I look at them and project a past of which I know nothing. They could be someone who would become a lifelong friend, a love interest, or a critical teacher; yet, they are instantaneously projected by my mind to be something less. They are humans too; ones who have lived full lives and experienced life entirely different than I. If I could only see their past maybe I could better understand their present and fall in love with their perseverance, convictions, and passions. Kan Gao takes this notion and challenges the gamer to open their mind to another’s life in To the Moon and in doing so challenges the notion that the human being can ever be fully understood, no matter what we know.

In To the Moon, we join two doctors, Dr. Watts and Dr. Rosalene, as they help a dying man named Johnny fulfill his final wish of going to the moon. To do so they must travel back and navigate through Johnny’s life to attempt to plant the idea of being an astronaut into his memory. The concept teems of sci-fi ridiculousness, but it is far beyond the point of the effort. As the doctors travel back through time, they learn about Johnny’s life and relationships, only to find an understanding of Johnny which none of the people close to Johnny, nor did Johnny even have. To the Moon is an exploration of the human life, through an exploration of one fictional dying man’s life. The exploration poses life lessons throughout the 4 hour experience.

One of the more important lessons I was able to take away was how To the Moon posed Johnny’s most important memories. Through backtracking our player experiences the critical moments of Johnny’s life, of which 90% center around his relationship with his deceased wife. I never knew of Johnny’s job, nor had I thought about what Johnny or his wife did for a living until long after the credits rolled. To the Moon made me reflect on my fondest memories and reminded me that love stands out distinctly amongst other experiences. I have been strongly affected by many moments in my life, but likely none more than love and love lost. Johnny is no different and love not only affects his life, but holds it steadfastly in place. It is idealistic, I know, but the love is realistic and imperfect all the same, which adds a needed aspect of realism.

The realism comes in that Johnny’s love is flawed and never understandable. I could not tell you why Johnny and his wife were in love nor could I tell you why they were initially drawn to each other. Despite viewing Johnny’s past openly and without restraint I could still not understand his emotional draw towards this girl. Surely there was reason, but I could not truly know why, and I think that is an important lesson to take away from To the Moon. We can know and judge others based on their actions, but unless we truly understood their reasons and emotional state we truly know nothing about them. That is why it was impossible to understand the draw between Johnny and his spouse and too impossible to understand why people do what they do. This led me to come to the conclusion that I could never understand the characters. I could not understand their decisions, loves, hatreds, and wishes and I was not meant to. I was meant to learn but never understand, because people are a complex and distinctive animal with depth beyond any of our capability of understanding.

To the Moon constantly questions the depth of the human being. To the Moon posed a story, but not a simple one; it was a complex narrative which challenged the way we view of strangers. That which we assumed about every character was not necessarily true and it reminded me I need to work harder to get to know those I love without assuming things about those I do not know. It taught me that video games as a whole can be moving and thoughtful, while being direct and full of conviction. To the Moon was linear, so I assumed nothing because all I could know was given. The game strictly unwavered from its story while keeping details about the characters abstract, in a way starkly and beautifully contrasting itself. Most importantly, it taught me that no matter how much I truly want to know or even come to learn, I can never understand why another human being does what they do. Despite all of this, I know now that I want to learn more about everyone, because it helps, even though I will never truly understand. This alone can free me from trying to understand, and rather accept the beauty of what I know of a person. I will carry that lesson with me for the rest of my life.

Go check out To the Moon when you get a chance. You can find it on its official website and on Steam and be sure to look at what Freebird Games is up to on their official website or on Twitter. Stay tuned next week for another The Why of Indie Games, where I will cover another indie game’s importance to life or to gaming. For all your other indie gaming news keep with Indiegamemag.com.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – The Why of Indie Games: ‘To the Moon’

9/11 is a time for reflection and in that reflection reminds us of the sheer magnitude of the world around us. It is also a day which reminds us that there are always current events happening, and that we often are uninformed on worldly tragedies. I am probably projecting, but that is how I judge myself to be often ignorant of world events. Instead of reading a newspaper or online news I spend my time writing about and playing video games, as many of our readers do. To rationalize with my choice and reflect upon my reasons I have been thinking about why we as a community, game.

One of my first true memories of why I game was on September 11. I remember where I was when it happened, but that is not all that important; rather what I did when I arrived home from school sticks out in my mind. I was really young when the tragedy occurred and I believe that although I hate the date myself, I was in 5^th grade. I came home from school and found my mother crying, and I could not help but be confused because although the tragedy was announced, I was too young to truly understand what had happened. Seeing my mother in tears brought me to tears and I recall a brief period of time where I simply sat down baffled. I eventually got up and the day went on as normal, with the news on in the background.

Me. Around 5th Grade

The story seems mundane and it is nothing heartbreaking, but I would imagine 99% of Americans my age have a similar story; except their story may have ended with a different coping mechanism. I went into my basement and popped on my PS2. I played Tekken Tag Tournament (TTT) for a solid 4 or 5 hours that night and never stopped to watch the news or learn anything about the attacks, I immersed myself in the TV and pulled myself away from the real world.

Today, I still game with a similar fervor to my past self and still play as a coping mechanism. Gaming is, as most things in life are not just for the plain purpose of having fun. We are too evolved for that to be the end reason for playing video games. I played 4 hours of TTT that day because I was too young to face the crisis. My brain was nowhere near mature enough to know I should have comforted my mother so I did what was safe; I gamed.

Over time I have grown as a gamer and I now game for different reasons. I no longer game because it is safe, but rather because it helps me grow as a human being. I have played video games to help deal with breakups, to come to terms with family loss, to learn, to be amazed, to participate in a community, and for so much more. Gaming is so versatile and fosters such a tightly knit community that figuring out why we game is important to not only our growth as a gamer, but to our growth as human beings.

We could grow our being through other means, but we do not. Every day we choose gaming over everything else life has to offer. Sure, we have hobbies outside of gaming but we choose gaming as one of our main activities. We do so because it offers an experience individualized to each and every gamer. We each can take different qualities out of the same experiences, and more importantly are able to interact with another person’s artwork, which they may feel fully different about than we do. We each game for different purposes, but I refuse to believe we game with no deeper purpose.

I game for so many reasons that I could not possibly list them, because many of the reasons I play video games are still unknown to me. I know I game for comfort, for coping, for exploring, for  interaction, and for philosophy. But why do you game? Why do you choose gaming as an activity over other possible pastimes? Please comment below and we can discuss and learn from each other.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Gaming As An Integral Part Of Life: Why We Game