changing the mechanics

or maybe going from oil to coal or pencil.

Someone said that all great artists had one idea and they were iterating on that idea for their whole life. But if you do not have that one idea, you are in trouble

So I would say, there is nothing wrong to do the "same" game over and over again. I would say that David Lynch made the same film 10 times and getting better at it.

On the other side with videogames. They have this mechanical aspect, gameplay or game mechanics. I would think that they need to change from game to game. I am planning to do a historical game, a historical drama almost, and it will be wrapped around a simple strategy game. I am trying to explore some more aspects of representation in that game, which I did in my last work too. Some stuff I will reuse, but some parts change drastically.

So, I would say that game mechanics is our oil paint or our oil color which we put on the canvas. You can iterate on your idea, but occasionaly you want to change colors, no?

I tried the lite version of Games Factory (which is coming from the Multimedia Fusion company). I like it, but I don't think that it speaks to the creative side of the brain... Instead of using a programming language, you use a GUI, but you are still trying to solve logical problems. You are still coding. I would think that there is not much difference to programming.

Actually, I have the feeling that I can be more creative when programming. Also when programming there are way more possibilities for unknown things happening.

Also, MMF and GF are great for platforming games (like the stuff what Nifflas did). I wonder if there are too many restrictions for doing other stuff...

I might need more practice to get fast with it... reminds me a lot of Wario DIY for the NDS. You could make very easy micro games. It got tedious when you wanted to implement a certain feature, but the components, the software bricks were not flexible enough, so you had to use a lot of invisible helping objects to get your logic done.

I do not know if anyone is familiar with the film work of Maya Deren. I just discovered her work recently, and I watch a lot of films and read some stuff on film, but somehow I did not notice her work. So it might be new to you as well.

This is her most known work: Meshes Of The Afternoon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9NM-bOl4b8

When you watch this, you might notice the influence she might have had on David Lynch. And this short film was made in 1943! I would say that she was 40-50 years ahead of her time. She gained some recognition, but she did not break through. So she made her films for a fairly small audience and circle. The thing is that her studies and work prepared the ground for what was going to happen in film far in the future. I would say this defines the term "avantgarde".

I don't expect to get rich with my work or to even get some sustainable income from it. But that's okay. Most creative people can't live from their work, so they take jobs and lose a lot of time (that's actually not okay).

Of course, we all strife for recognition and widespread recognition, but without compromising our work. Sometimes you have to admit, that what you are doing is not for your own generation, but might get recognized later down the road and might have some influence on other creators.

And let's not start to talk about Hollis Frampton (at least not now, maybe later).

So enjoy the film, and let us strife for truth and meaning in our work.

thanks! now I get it, I have to compare those 2 movies and set them in relation, before I can proceed. I thought I was supposed to manipulate them all at once. Nice work! I like that you use archieve.org I am also a regular "customer" at their site... love it!

I use Visual Studio 2008 Express and Dark Basic SDK (a C API) for my PC projects. I am pretty fluent in C and C++, so there is almost no obstacle for creating any kind of software. I use the SDK as an abstraction layer between me and DirectX, I had to learn some OpenGL for my IPhone/IPod applications/games.

So I am in the position to get things done pretty quickly, but it is still tedious to start a new project. I haven't done much 3D yet, most of my ideas can be done without 3D.

I used to start thinking about game mechanics first. But this lead only to game games... so I wasted a lot of time to get to the conclusion, that I have to start from a concept or an idea, about what the game should be about. The game mechanics should be part of the overall theme. Mechanics as a starting point resulted in meaningless games, like mechanical clockworks. They function, but there was no meaning. They were for amusement only (nothing wrong with that occasionly).

So now I take an idea, and think about, how to explore this idea in a game or let the player/user explore this idea with my software.

Hello troshinsky,

I noticed raccord when I checked last years IGF finalists. Then I read this Greenaway reference on your site as inspiration. Great!

I downloaded raccord immediately, and started it up. Unfortunately, I can't wrap my head around it how to use it. It looks like I can only manipulate one of the movies, how can I manipulate the other movies, and when is it finished? Occasionly I get a Perfect or Good Raccord, but I don't know why...

Hi,

I am a software developer for a commercial company. In my spare time I do some game programming. Some of my games can
be found on itunes, but I am going to concentrate on PC more.

Mission statement: Games should be more than entertainment. Let's change the perception about what games are and what not.

This is my GDC/IGF entry for 2012

http://labyrinth.nstweb.net/


cheers,
George