The level at which Raigan cares about there being better art in the world gives me hope that there will always be creative people striving to make good stuff.
Thank you for this conversation. Oh but I have so much to comment on! Generally, I am very critical but optimistic. I am quite excited to see games evolve further in the (hopefully near) future but, honestly, the current pace is fine. Discussed in this video, the negative experiences related to specific genres, tropes and individual games felt quite irrelevant. I play both effortless and challenging games. I played ~10 hours of original N around a year before N++ was released and then I only played that a little bit. For me, N++ was a background to the music. You could make the levels ridiculously easy or hard and I would still enjoy the audio-video-tactile-feedback experience without putting any thought into what I'm actually doing in the game (though, of course, I did try beating the levels and using my mind as well). And I think that's a totally valid thing to _design for._ And it's not necessarily escapism or a shallow candy crush game. Some "cameraman" games are like this... most are not, unfortunately - I agree that many of them could've been better movies than video games. A good positive example you mentioned is Journey, of course - I didn't engage in it deeply or even put much thought in but it's a good game. This isn't counter to what was talked about but I feel something like this was missing. I follow Raigan on twitter and definitely noticed the Cinco Paus compliments but wow - didn't think it was such an obsession :D I actually asked around about it and played a few more hours before writing this comment... well, I still don't like Cinco Paus. I generally dislike permadeath games because I have to keep playing level 1 when I want to try level 4 (or some other major difference as you spend more time in a "run") - I think that by itself is not great design. I also just dislike zugzwang-prone parity dancing so it might be not for me. But the thing I want to say - I find the _system_ incredibly interesting but the _game and my experience_ is poor. It felt like exploring a mathematical construct rather than a place where people are. Little self-expression, no catharsis, no socialisation, no insight into other minds/crafts/areas, _no changes to my worldview_ (unfortunately, this is true for most video games and entertainment altogether, even though I consider it to be the ultimate goal of art itself) - that's my impression so far. I did enjoy Into the Breach immensely, I want to mention. I like droqen's creations. I have more in my mind but it concerns RTS and otherwise not particular to this conversation so I'll probably come back in an another comment section - maybe it will already be addressed...
The versatile nature of this game provides players with an interactive world which frees you to explore its web of challenges. Embrace your inner ninja.
Totally random nitpick on a specific thought (I loved the talk as a whole): 2:05:00 I don't agree that games writing is not up to the caliber of novel writing. Not to say I think games writing in general is great - it's not - but that general writing in the novel world is about as bad as games. And novels as a medium have a big problem with curation where no one seems to know what good writing looks like, so it's very hard to find the good stuff. With video games I feel like writing curation is a little better.
It is true that the general level will always be at best mediocre compared to the highlights - but I would wager that most games have, at best, decent novel or movie writing. No games have good game writing. The distinction is in the medium, aka how the writing is delivered and experienced.
the term “game” is pretty hard to follow, but Raigan has some interesting opinions about them. It’s not surprising that modern games are so story reliant now. It’s always been about maximizing fun, and stories do a good job of that. The technical aspects of interacting with a world is often lost simply because properly enjoying and exploring it involves a motivation to do so beforehand, which the average consumer wouldn’t have. Though, I don’t find this as much of a tragedy as he does
I haven't had fun playing story-driven games purely because it's not about gameplay most of the time. Maybe you can elaborate on how you think stories "maximize" fun?
@@Pr0nogo I mean in the sense that game companies are trying to maximize fun for the casual market. As such, they stick to what they know is most popular, and that happens to be the formula of a story and some gameplay
I was moved by Dear Esther almost entirely because of the pacing at which level geometry that was so much more interesting to look at than it "needed to be" was revealed, and hated Gone Home almost immediately because of the amateurishly incorrect scale of the architecture and objects.
I'd disagree that indies are the fore-front of creativity, I can only name 2, maybe 3 games from last year that were good, so it's definitely not a booming creativity market. I'd also recommend Raigan to check out Quake and CS:S defrag and bhop modes respectively. The unintended consequences of these game's movement systems gave way to really interesting emergent design, that is, unfortunately, largely unexplored since most people making maps for these modes don't take it very seriously.
2-3 good games per year seems about average/not terrible IMO -- I have a list of about 100-150 games that I consider great, and almost all of them are indies *or* from the 80s-90s when AAA team sizes were still indie-scale (eg Ms. Pac-Man, Super Mario World, Katamari Damacy). When you consider that this spans about 40 years, that's only ~3 good games per year on average. In terms of exploring game design and mechanical experimentation, I don't think you can argue that AAA is providing this more than indies -- especially not if you average the results "per capita" (ie divide the number of great games on each side by their collective budgets). Some recent indie games to check out which IMO are doing something interesting: Rift Wizard Bonfire Peaks Babble Royale Beast Breaker SNKRX I'm sure I'm missing a few, those are just ones I can remember from the past year or so that stood out to me as exploring game design in a fun way. And like I said, the volume of releases means that there are probably at least a couple great indie games from the past year that I'm completely ignorant of! ;-; Whereas I can't think of a single large-team AAA post-2000 game that is as mechanically interesting (wrt the game's rules/systems, and the implications which fall out of them to produce the magic) as, say, Cinco Paus, Starseed Pilgrim, Baba Is You, etc... big teams are not even trying to operate in this space! They're doing stuff that involves mo-cap, not exploring game design qua game design; I could go on forever. Even AAA gems like Tetris and Portal, brilliant games, IMO owe their brilliance to their indie-esque roots (ie not the product of a giant team, they're made by a small group (or even a solo dev)).
@@raiganburns2457 You severely overestimate what I mean by "good" game. A good game by my book is a game about which I could mindfully say "check this out". I have to lower my bar that much. There is a reason why my great game list hardly reaches 10 games. But anyway, my point originally was less about that and more about the fetishizing of indie games. It's becoming sort of Stockholm Syndrome by this point, where people would praise indies, even though they're for the most part copying AAA games now. I see generic indie games daily, and knowing the ease of game development, that's not unexpected, but what I have problem with is those games are still exalted, mostly due to being indie, as if they're very creative and cool and whatever.
@@Nors2Ka oh yeah, I'm not talking about the "average". I agree that there are more bad indie games than AAA, but like you said this is simply a function of the comparative number of teams (thousands of indies, dozens of AAA), and the typical duration of indie/AAA dev cycles (months vs years). I'm talking about the high water marks though, which IMO is what matters more: who is hitting paydirt? What are the most profound achievements? The numbers alone mean that indies are favoured here, without even considering the conservative nature of large multinational corporations. It's not even AAA vs indie, to me it's 100 devs. Also I would disagree that indies are copying AAA -- for one thing, most teams simply couldn't do so, even if they wanted to! They don't have teams of animators and riggers, global server infrastructure, mocap studios, etc. I guess it depends what you mean by indie; if you look at itch.io, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that more than a very tiny minority are operating in the same genres/spaces as AAA (eg most are 2D). I don't think any of the indie games I deem great are exalted because they're indie, more like they're exalted because their design is novel/fresh/interesting, which is (IMO) enabled by their indie development context. Here's a list of indie games I would consider worth playing, which are doing something interesting. I'm not fetishizing their indie-ness, these are simply games that I felt were worth the time I spent playing them, which left me wanting more, or at least appreciating what they were doing and the new terrain they were exploring: Cinco Paus Desert Golfing DoomRL Freeways Imbroglio JIGGLY ZONE Pancake - The Game Pigments Probability 0 qrth-phyl Serpentes Starseed Pilgrim Urban Dead Really Bad Chess DoomRL Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy Dream Quest Hyper Light Drifter Teleglitch Kero Blaster Cave Story Minit Disc Room Baba Is You Spelunky 2 Wilmot's Warehouse Lonely Mountains Downhill Rain World Tumbleseed Six Match Everyday Shooter Uurnog Brogue Desktop Dungeons (the freeware version) Dig-N-Rig Unity of Command Every Extend (freeware version) Fish Fly Chesh Flywrench Tennnes Half-Minute Hero Quarries of Scred Roguelight Save The Date Neptune's Pride/Subterfuge Star Guard Tower Of Archeos World of Goo Loot Rascals Super Crate Box Luftrausers Hotline Miami Unexplored Nidhogg Enter The Gungeon Nuclear Throne Downwell Mini Metro Snakebird Holedown Stephen's Sausage Roll Broforce 1001 Spikes vvvvvv Necrodancer Elasto Mania No Brakes Valet Water's Fine Hero Core Piloteer A Good Snowman is Hard to Build Monster's Expedition Untitled Goose Game Noita Dicey Dungeons
Totally agree with you about indies. They are mostly just smaller versions of AAA these days. Is there anything better you're aware of? Or are my fears correct that where's just not much creativity happening in games at all? At least in terms of gameplay. There's plenty of experimentation in visuals, sound, even some in narrative, but nearly no gameplay experimentation.
We're on Spotify now: open.spotify.com/show/5DDTJZytcZYfoizAj1LKNw
The level at which Raigan cares about there being better art in the world gives me hope that there will always be creative people striving to make good stuff.
Oh man, this get better and better the more you watch. Thank you for this interview, I'm a fan of this dude so much now. Indie til death.
This was an awesome listen, loved the philosophy and ideas that were brought up in this! And yeshhh, Cinco Paus rules. c:
We are big fans of Raigan, even moreso after this conversation. We'll have him back any time!
Thank you for this conversation.
Oh but I have so much to comment on! Generally, I am very critical but optimistic. I am quite excited to see games evolve further in the (hopefully near) future but, honestly, the current pace is fine. Discussed in this video, the negative experiences related to specific genres, tropes and individual games felt quite irrelevant.
I play both effortless and challenging games. I played ~10 hours of original N around a year before N++ was released and then I only played that a little bit. For me, N++ was a background to the music. You could make the levels ridiculously easy or hard and I would still enjoy the audio-video-tactile-feedback experience without putting any thought into what I'm actually doing in the game (though, of course, I did try beating the levels and using my mind as well). And I think that's a totally valid thing to _design for._ And it's not necessarily escapism or a shallow candy crush game. Some "cameraman" games are like this... most are not, unfortunately - I agree that many of them could've been better movies than video games. A good positive example you mentioned is Journey, of course - I didn't engage in it deeply or even put much thought in but it's a good game. This isn't counter to what was talked about but I feel something like this was missing.
I follow Raigan on twitter and definitely noticed the Cinco Paus compliments but wow - didn't think it was such an obsession :D
I actually asked around about it and played a few more hours before writing this comment... well, I still don't like Cinco Paus. I generally dislike permadeath games because I have to keep playing level 1 when I want to try level 4 (or some other major difference as you spend more time in a "run") - I think that by itself is not great design. I also just dislike zugzwang-prone parity dancing so it might be not for me. But the thing I want to say - I find the _system_ incredibly interesting but the _game and my experience_ is poor. It felt like exploring a mathematical construct rather than a place where people are. Little self-expression, no catharsis, no socialisation, no insight into other minds/crafts/areas, _no changes to my worldview_ (unfortunately, this is true for most video games and entertainment altogether, even though I consider it to be the ultimate goal of art itself) - that's my impression so far.
I did enjoy Into the Breach immensely, I want to mention.
I like droqen's creations.
I have more in my mind but it concerns RTS and otherwise not particular to this conversation so I'll probably come back in an another comment section - maybe it will already be addressed...
The versatile nature of this game provides players with an interactive world which frees you to explore its web of challenges. Embrace your inner ninja.
Everything he says about Michael Brough is true. Best game designer of our generation, possibly.
Totally random nitpick on a specific thought (I loved the talk as a whole): 2:05:00 I don't agree that games writing is not up to the caliber of novel writing. Not to say I think games writing in general is great - it's not - but that general writing in the novel world is about as bad as games. And novels as a medium have a big problem with curation where no one seems to know what good writing looks like, so it's very hard to find the good stuff. With video games I feel like writing curation is a little better.
It is true that the general level will always be at best mediocre compared to the highlights - but I would wager that most games have, at best, decent novel or movie writing. No games have good game writing. The distinction is in the medium, aka how the writing is delivered and experienced.
Saw a designer tweet a recommendation for this episode so I watched and tried to absorb a lot about this interesting man's backstory.
Loving the interviews, keep em’ coming!
Will do!
"It's like a conversation that you're having by yourself that's only mediated or facilitated by the game" This segment at the segment 1:47:40
This is what I need
the term “game” is pretty hard to follow, but Raigan has some interesting opinions about them. It’s not surprising that modern games are so story reliant now. It’s always been about maximizing fun, and stories do a good job of that. The technical aspects of interacting with a world is often lost simply because properly enjoying and exploring it involves a motivation to do so beforehand, which the average consumer wouldn’t have.
Though, I don’t find this as much of a tragedy as he does
I haven't had fun playing story-driven games purely because it's not about gameplay most of the time. Maybe you can elaborate on how you think stories "maximize" fun?
@@Pr0nogo I mean in the sense that game companies are trying to maximize fun for the casual market. As such, they stick to what they know is most popular, and that happens to be the formula of a story and some gameplay
@@aabho Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.
Poggers
I was moved by Dear Esther almost entirely because of the pacing at which level geometry that was so much more interesting to look at than it "needed to be" was revealed, and hated Gone Home almost immediately because of the amateurishly incorrect scale of the architecture and objects.
I'd disagree that indies are the fore-front of creativity, I can only name 2, maybe 3 games from last year that were good, so it's definitely not a booming creativity market.
I'd also recommend Raigan to check out Quake and CS:S defrag and bhop modes respectively. The unintended consequences of these game's movement systems gave way to really interesting emergent design, that is, unfortunately, largely unexplored since most people making maps for these modes don't take it very seriously.
2-3 good games per year seems about average/not terrible IMO -- I have a list of about 100-150 games that I consider great, and almost all of them are indies *or* from the 80s-90s when AAA team sizes were still indie-scale (eg Ms. Pac-Man, Super Mario World, Katamari Damacy). When you consider that this spans about 40 years, that's only ~3 good games per year on average.
In terms of exploring game design and mechanical experimentation, I don't think you can argue that AAA is providing this more than indies -- especially not if you average the results "per capita" (ie divide the number of great games on each side by their collective budgets).
Some recent indie games to check out which IMO are doing something interesting:
Rift Wizard
Bonfire Peaks
Babble Royale
Beast Breaker
SNKRX
I'm sure I'm missing a few, those are just ones I can remember from the past year or so that stood out to me as exploring game design in a fun way. And like I said, the volume of releases means that there are probably at least a couple great indie games from the past year that I'm completely ignorant of! ;-;
Whereas I can't think of a single large-team AAA post-2000 game that is as mechanically interesting (wrt the game's rules/systems, and the implications which fall out of them to produce the magic) as, say, Cinco Paus, Starseed Pilgrim, Baba Is You, etc... big teams are not even trying to operate in this space! They're doing stuff that involves mo-cap, not exploring game design qua game design; I could go on forever.
Even AAA gems like Tetris and Portal, brilliant games, IMO owe their brilliance to their indie-esque roots (ie not the product of a giant team, they're made by a small group (or even a solo dev)).
@@raiganburns2457 You severely overestimate what I mean by "good" game. A good game by my book is a game about which I could mindfully say "check this out". I have to lower my bar that much. There is a reason why my great game list hardly reaches 10 games.
But anyway, my point originally was less about that and more about the fetishizing of indie games. It's becoming sort of Stockholm Syndrome by this point, where people would praise indies, even though they're for the most part copying AAA games now. I see generic indie games daily, and knowing the ease of game development, that's not unexpected, but what I have problem with is those games are still exalted, mostly due to being indie, as if they're very creative and cool and whatever.
@@Nors2Ka oh yeah, I'm not talking about the "average". I agree that there are more bad indie games than AAA, but like you said this is simply a function of the comparative number of teams (thousands of indies, dozens of AAA), and the typical duration of indie/AAA dev cycles (months vs years).
I'm talking about the high water marks though, which IMO is what matters more: who is hitting paydirt? What are the most profound achievements? The numbers alone mean that indies are favoured here, without even considering the conservative nature of large multinational corporations. It's not even AAA vs indie, to me it's 100 devs.
Also I would disagree that indies are copying AAA -- for one thing, most teams simply couldn't do so, even if they wanted to! They don't have teams of animators and riggers, global server infrastructure, mocap studios, etc.
I guess it depends what you mean by indie; if you look at itch.io, I think you'd have a hard time arguing that more than a very tiny minority are operating in the same genres/spaces as AAA (eg most are 2D).
I don't think any of the indie games I deem great are exalted because they're indie, more like they're exalted because their design is novel/fresh/interesting, which is (IMO) enabled by their indie development context.
Here's a list of indie games I would consider worth playing, which are doing something interesting. I'm not fetishizing their indie-ness, these are simply games that I felt were worth the time I spent playing them, which left me wanting more, or at least appreciating what they were doing and the new terrain they were exploring:
Cinco Paus
Desert Golfing
DoomRL
Freeways
Imbroglio
JIGGLY ZONE
Pancake - The Game
Pigments
Probability 0
qrth-phyl
Serpentes
Starseed Pilgrim
Urban Dead
Really Bad Chess
DoomRL
Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy
Dream Quest
Hyper Light Drifter
Teleglitch
Kero Blaster
Cave Story
Minit
Disc Room
Baba Is You
Spelunky 2
Wilmot's Warehouse
Lonely Mountains Downhill
Rain World
Tumbleseed
Six Match
Everyday Shooter
Uurnog
Brogue
Desktop Dungeons (the freeware version)
Dig-N-Rig
Unity of Command
Every Extend (freeware version)
Fish Fly
Chesh
Flywrench
Tennnes
Half-Minute Hero
Quarries of Scred
Roguelight
Save The Date
Neptune's Pride/Subterfuge
Star Guard
Tower Of Archeos
World of Goo
Loot Rascals
Super Crate Box
Luftrausers
Hotline Miami
Unexplored
Nidhogg
Enter The Gungeon
Nuclear Throne
Downwell
Mini Metro
Snakebird
Holedown
Stephen's Sausage Roll
Broforce
1001 Spikes
vvvvvv
Necrodancer
Elasto Mania
No Brakes Valet
Water's Fine
Hero Core
Piloteer
A Good Snowman is Hard to Build
Monster's Expedition
Untitled Goose Game
Noita
Dicey Dungeons
Totally agree with you about indies. They are mostly just smaller versions of AAA these days. Is there anything better you're aware of? Or are my fears correct that where's just not much creativity happening in games at all? At least in terms of gameplay. There's plenty of experimentation in visuals, sound, even some in narrative, but nearly no gameplay experimentation.
@@raiganburns2457 fantastic list, thank you