The Importance Of Being A Bit Pretentious

In my previous blog post, I talked about the importance of opening channels for independent development and driving down development costs for the advancement of our industry from and artistic standpoint. Shortly afterwards, I read this interesting piece on Beyond Good & Evil. My first reaction was negative - I just couldn't understand why we would need to examine a fun game in the kind of depth shown there.

It was then that I realised that I was becoming part of the problem.

Opening channels and driving down costs for independent developers could do two things. Firstly, it could allow independent developers more room to experiment and come up with exciting new ideas. Secondly, it allows games to reach new, less hardcore-gamer-skewed markets. What it doesn't do is promote discussion and study of game design.

Open up X-Box community games. There's plenty of innovation to be seen there, but how many of those games will be discussed at the GDC next year? Also, how many of those games are experimenting based on currently accepted theories on gameplay design?

Only by examining our own work and the work of others in a style and with a depth that has, until now, seemed pretentious and annoying, can we reach a structured, solid concept of game design. By opening up channels of such discussion, we can hopefully force new developers to consider their designs in such a fashion, and/or provide direction for designers just starting out in the industry.

It won't be easy. Personally, I have a very low tolerance for pretention and (if you'll pardon the french) bullshit. I imagine by trying to promote this kind of discussion, I will, at times, as one great philosopher once stated, "Feel like punching myself", but once you see the importance of it, I hope you'll understand.