You know, I agree with you about the maturity thing: I know there's so many gamers these days that wont touch "cartoony" games or "kiddie" games as they put it. But I look at alot of the blasted brown & grey "edgy" shooters, and what I *dont* see is maturity. It's more like, oh, we need to be mature when designing this game, but we're not going to think about it all that hard, so instead of character depth or things like that we'll just have it be bloody and dark! That's not "mature" to me. Well, it might be mature to some young kid that's trying to pretend they're an adult, but to me, no, it's not.
Not to mention that I dont have that bizarre lack of confidence that alot of people have. If I want to play something like a damn Kirby game, which is the opposite of dark and gritty, then I'll play a damn Kirby game. If others think badly of me for doing so, well... TOUGH. I'm a mature adult. I'll play what I want. And I dont have a constant need to reaffirm or prove that maturity.
Something like Splatoon had real creativity. The developers did what THEY wanted to do. They didnt have to try to follow stupid trends, other than making sure that they were following Nintendo's usual "make sure the game is for everybody" thing. They wanted to have transforming squids that shot ink everywhere, so dammit that's what they made. I respect that. It's the same with something like Overwatch... you know, originally I'd railed against that game a bit, but then I recognized... hey, this is a little like Splatoon in that it's actually CREATIVE. The devs arent obsessed with being all dark and gritty. Maybe I might like this. Picked it up, and yep, pretty much the same experience as with Splatoon; it's fun, the characters and setting are actually interesting... all of that. I'm glad I decided to try it.
Though, that's not to say that the communities for games like Splatoon and Overwatch are super mature. I've seen tons of whiny jerks and trolls in BOTH communities. There's just no escaping some things, eh?
As for making a game, hah, the game already released. It can be seen here, this is the store page for it:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/410820/
I havent mentioned it all that much on the forum. Felt kinda self-serving if I did that.
The game came out in January. It's a bullet-hell Roguelike. Similar in alot of ways to Binding of Isaac. I was brought into the project because of my knowledge and mastery of the "shmup" genre... the bullet-hell games I've played so very much of. The developers, who I've done testing and such for for years now, wanted to have the complex sorts of bullet patterns for enemies and bosses that are often seen in bullet-hell shmups, but it was very much NOT their area of expertise. They couldnt design the patterns, and they couldnt balance them, and they very much believe in bringing in outside people to help with aspects like that, that are outside of the norm for them. I am the only one that could have made something like that, and they knew me well at that point, so they offered me a contract. My second time being contracted by them, actually, not my first. I'm responsible for all of the boss designs except one, and alot of enemy designs, a few item designs, some balance things (which I need to spend some time working on and testing here today), and I'm responsible for keeping the blasted room designs in check. I'm also responsible for creating the game's difficulty; I often tell people that my job is to make sure the game kills the player alot. The two higher difficulty modes are entirely done by me, as opposed to the base difficulty that's balanced by everyone. There's Normal (and two easier ones below that), Hard, and the next one up is amusingly named Misery, and it's like, the fourth time there's been a mode in a game by this developer with that particular name. If a difficulty mode has that name in one of their games, it means I had something to do with it in some way. It's always the highest difficulty.
It was quite the experience, I tell ya, the development process. What I expected when I went into it was, you know, I'd ask what they wanted me to do, and they'd say okay, do this and this, and then do this bit here. What ACTUALLY happened was me asking "Okay, so what should I do next?" and the answer was generally "Well what do you think would be best to do next? Do whatever that is." I ended up having alot of control over the project and generally decisions I made were rarely questioned (which remains true now as well) as I know what I"m doing with this type of game. The game came out, and got alot of very good reviews and response from people. It didnt sell very well though... it's VERY hard to get indie games noticed right now. Alot of developers are having trouble, and plenty have outright gone under because of this. Even when those developers have made fantastic games; it always angers me to see this happen to one of them. But regardless, this game still came out very well. The game's harshest critic is typically... me, actually. If anyone's going to complain a whole bunch, it's usually me doing the complaining. This may seem stupid, but I do tend to be extra harsh towards any sort of things that I myself have done (I have this same sort of thought process when doing my cosplays that you've seen, actually). The head developer finds this endlessly entertaining.
Development is ongoing, as this developer is known for long-term support and updates on their games. Right now I'm working on stuff for a special Humble Bundle themed update that'll be hitting the game in a couple of months (or sooner, not entirely sure), and aside from that there's stuff to do for an expansion that'll be later down the line.
The whole thing has been very fun, and I enjoy actually playing the game alot (which I think is important; if someone that worked on a game DOESNT genuinely want to then play it, it kinda says maybe they didnt do such a good job...) yet at the same time I've gained alot of understanding about the sort of crap that alot of developers have to go through. I cant even imagine the sheer stress and frustration that must plague the big guys. *shudder* And to think, there was a time when I wanted to pursue a proper CAREER doing that sort of thing. AAA game development. Ugh. I feel like I dodged a few thousand bullets here. I'm so freaking glad I ended up NOT doing that. I get stressed out enough even with the more easy-going development of this one. Hell, I remember just after the game came out when we were watching someone stream it on Twitch, and they get to a boss that I'd only just finished and activated in the previous update, and I'm thinking "Okay, cool, gonna get to show that off". Boss fight starts, aaaaaaand... the accursed thing just SITS there. During a stream. I'm pretty sure I launched some object or other at the wall at that point. I cant even express just how irritating that was. Stupid glitch was ONE freaking typo, too. Uuugh. And that's just on a game like this... cant imagine the utter hell that must be what the BIG developers go through after release, when screwball bug reports and such come pouring in, angry customers everywhere...
Enough of me rambling about that though.
As for the Nintendo thing, I very honestly cannot see them doing something with a controller that's JUST a tablet. Nintendo can be quirky, but they're not stupid. One way or another though, I'd love to see some more details about the thing. Normally I dont follow that side of the industry much... Sony and MS are bloody boring, really.... but Nintendo is different. I follow what those guys do. I'm definitely interested to hear more about the NX; I've heard so very little about it as of this point.
You know what might be interesting with Splatoon though? Some sort of spinoff. I mean, think about it: It's like Mario or whatever, they've created this big, elaborate universe with an overall story to it, and there's all sorts of directions they could go with that. With Mario the MAIN games are all platformers... but there's been plenty of "side" games that arent, and it's really worked out well for that franchise. Splatoon's world has alot of openness to it, alot of room for them to get really creative with what they want to do. But if they do that, the main games should remain like the first one. Cant go wrong with that formula, I say.
Whatever they do though... Callie and Marie need to remain a part of it. It just wouldnt be the same without those two around, would it?
01 Jun 2016, 8:46 pm
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