I was very excited to see a new blog post! At first I thought you were being sarcastic (Michaël Samyn congratulating linearity?), but I totally agree with the idea. I think that if a game chooses to be linear then it should devote itself entirely to that path, taking advantage of the devices that a linear narrative offers (emotion through character and irony are good examples, as you pointed out). I agree with the nongamist consensus that the interactive medium is suited better to other forms of storytelling, but it is important to recognize that with some care evocative linear games are possible. The best examples of this in my opinion are games such as Heavy Rain and Snatcher.

Maybe Oblivion?

Right, voxels are "volume pixels," they're essentially same as 2d pixels but with a 'z' coordinate. Are you suggesting rendering voxels as polygon models? That's certainly possible, but the point of using voxels is to be able to render everything based on its voxel constituents.

The limitations you mentioned are why voxels are typically used for terrain and little else, ordering and animating objects made of many tiny elements is complicated.

Procedural 3D always makes me think of voxels, look here to see why.

Hi! This forum seems to be filling up with awesome indie games people

Heh, I guess I got the wrong impression from some of your posts. Sounds good, thanks for the welcome

I love procedural generation! Unfortunately it is seldom employed in games to create things more interesting than dungeon and height maps, so I like hearing these ideas.

axcho, your post has me imagining some sort of constantly shifting alien terrain that "ripples" as you talk to it. That would be an interesting world indeed!

(imagination can also be used to reduce programming complexity and asset creation because you basically make the player a co-creator)

So can procedural generation, although programming an artist might be more painful than just hiring one 

I completely agree about the power imagination has in games. This kind of reminds me of the art revolution in the twentieth century - the camera made representational art pretty pointless, so artists turned to more abstract works. In gaming, today's technology allows one to create realistic worlds and simulations (light, physics, particles, etc.), so to move forward as a medium game mechanics and graphics need to become more inspirational than representational.

Hey everyone! This site somehow made its way onto my bookmarks bar and I thought that I'd check it out; needless to say I'm very interested in the discussions you have here. I might be somewhat of a misfit among you guys in that I love traditional videogames (you know, those violent and immature slaughter-fests), but I've been becoming more and more disenchanted with the mainstream industry... I've recognized that most popular games these days are extremely derivative and rarely bring anything new and interesting to the table. So for that reason I've been learning about the "notgame" and "artgame" movements, and I look forward to talking to you about the former!