Notgames Forum

I thought it polite to post an introduction here. I make games and I also make what I think might classify notgames!

My Things

Here is my latest game/notgame, The Legend of Elkanah (http://kittylambda.com/elkanah_help).

I've known about this forum for awhile but not participated. I thought that Elkanah might be of particular interest to people who hang out here, and I'm interested in what other ideas are bouncing around as well.

Here is my website. (http://kittylambda.com)

My Dev blog (http://kittylambda.com/dev_blog) that I work very hard on.

A Bit About Me

I live in Calgary, Alberta and work half-time as a web developer. I like my paying job, the rest of the time I am spending on a game called The Real Texas. This is a more traditional game but I think it has a lot of interesting ideas an imagery in it. I ride bikes a lot, am married and don't own a car. I think it's fair to say that I am, in some sense at least, anti-car. There are a lot of reasons for this and I won't go into them here.

Here's a random smattering of my thoughts about the current state of games:

- Computer games can already do a lot of really interesting things, but there must still be many not-well-explored avenues. Many of the same times of games are made over and over. I think this is quite natural and human, however. There is nothing wrong with making another platformer, in the same way as there's nothing wrong with singing a song that has already been sung! Well, that's a nice analogy...

- Thinking like a player (or notplayer?) is very difficult. User testing is important and incredibly insightful, but requires a certain amount of humility.

- The "thematic" or story elements of a game/notgame is very important in determining the appropriate type of mechanics. I think this is a case of form follows function. Allowing for intuition and trying not to over-think, if you want to tell a story, then your story is functional. Choose or design gameplay mechanics that support what you are trying to tell. Think in spatial terms, as well as social terms when you consider what choices are important. On the other side, you can also start with gameplay mechanics and have those be functional, then create a story or framework that fits around this. But I think it's usually not very convincing to have the two at odds with themselves. I see a certain pattern lately of tying all kind of stories and feelings to platforming mechanics, which doesn't make much sense to me.

- Accessibility is important for game designers. Design with people with disabilities in mind. There was a great post somewhere on this recently.

- Try to be easy going!! =)

I hang out at The Games Collective (http://www.thegamescollective.org) and TIGSource (http://forums.tigsource.com). I lurk a little bit at NeoGAF (http://neogaf.com). NeoGAF has a terrible reputation but I think it's a great community with a lot of interesting ideas, well worth paying attention to for game designers.

NARCISSISM END!

Hello PsySal! :)

Thanks for the introduction.

Hi ^_^

Had a chance to play your game. It was all right, and interesting to experience the story in this way.  I think the walking sounds hurt the overall feel of it.  My favorite part was the non-text visuals.  Very consistent direction despite the roughness of the production, so I think it works.

My biggest interest is in your usage of the source material.  I look forward to seeing more. :)

Hey, I have had notgames forums on my bookmark bar since I posted this but sort of neglected participating! So I just saw the feedback now, thank you. Anyhow I'm going to try and participate...