A personal note

Here at TGNM we're pretty much all business; this is a game development blog, after all. Today is different, however. You see, my wife is pregnant with our first baby, and we found out this morning that we're having a little boy. It's hard to describe how I feel today, probably because there's not a single word that would do it -- excited, scared, nervous, happy, awestruck. None of them quite work.

Things are certainly going to change for us, and soon, but rather than dwell on all of that, I'd like to take a moment to admire the first picture of my firstborn son.

The doctor says that's his spine. You can see it ... right?

Zen and the art of indie game design

Touch Arcade posted an article yesterday about the upcoming iPhone game Zen Bound. Besides looking pretty frickin' slick, Zen Bound is notable because it's aiming at the increasingly popular zen-influenced approach to indie gaming (There is no spoon).



I put this in the same category as other non-traditional games like Jenova Chen's Cloud and flOw, and, to some extent, Crayon Physics (though it's more of a traditional puzzle game). These games are all characterized by a deliberate attempt to avoid the traditional trappings of commercial video games (or even the general concept of gaming). They aren't violent or particularly goal-driven, and they don't present situations where winning something is the player's primary motivation.

Games like this are appealing to me from a design perspective because of their counter-cultural tendencies. What's the best way to create an interactive experience that explores more than the adrenaline rush of today's big-budget games? Make something that moves slowly and doesn't go anywhere. It's a distinctly indie thought process, and it works perfectly for small projects. The focus is on quality on a small scale, doing one thing well and for its own sake.

I don't know if any of these designers will ever strike it rich, but that's probably not the point. The point, I suppose, is that there is no point.

Real estate in Fable 2: an incentive not to play

I've been playing Fable 2 since late December, hoping that it would deliver on all the hype. After putting in quite a few hours and completing the main story line, I've decided that, like a lot of critics, I'm not quite convinced. Certainly there are impressive elements -- the graphics and visual style are suitably impressive, and the combat system manages to be simple, fun, and relatively deep.

However, as plenty of critics have said, the story is way too short, and ends abruptly without so much as a boss fight. The clothing system is pretty fun to play with, but there is an unfortunate lack of options for outfitting your character, and the only equipment that affects your performance is weaponry (which is also lacking variety).

Aside from all these issues, the one that sticks with me the most is the poorly balanced real estate system. On the surface, it's a neat system. You can buy property and rent it out to earn money. You can purchase furniture to improve the value of your properties and sell them for a profit. You can interact with the local economy to improve (or destroy) the amount of profit you get from your businesses. You collect rent every five minutes of real time, even when you're not playing.

As nice as it is to earn money when you aren't playing, the real estate system actually creates an incentive not to play once you get further into the game. After finishing the main story, you gain the ability to purchase Fairfax Castle for 1,000,000 gold. I didn't have close to that amount, so my strategy was to buy up as much valuable real estate as possible and then stop playing for a week until my bank account got fat enough. There wasn't enough content to keep me occupied in Albion until I had enough money, so I just switched to a different game. Call me crazy, but shouldn't game mechanics actually encourage people to play?

To make matters worse, now that I have more money than I can spend, there's no reward that seems worth the trouble. Apparently the reward for collecting all 50 silver keys, aside from an Xbox achievement is 50,000 gold? Seriously? After spending a million on a piece of property? Why would I spend hours collecting keys for chump change like that?

As much as I complain about Fable 2, my wife and my brother (who get the brunt of my complaints) would be quick to point out that I'm still playing. I can't really explain why, except maybe for my compulsion to collect obscure achievements.