I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say here.

[xyzzysqrl]

I'm feeling kind of icky today, so I may or may not get some play time in or I might just screw off and play some pinball on the PS3. But I want to talk for a minute anyway about unfinished games. I want to talk about bad games, and good games, and how thin the line between the two can really be. Mostly I want to vent some things that have been kinda building up for a while.

Y'see, there's a nice little comment here about some of the stuff that just didn't make into Rise of the Argonauts, and that's always a heartbreaking thing to see. No development studio starts off production of a game by writing "blah blah blend recent popular movie with gameplay mechanics we swipe from industry giants and sell extruded game product". (I mean, I hope not.) Every title out there starts off with somebody's big ideas behind it.

In the past, I've played a game where the devs released a patch literally as the company was shutting down and then proceeded to support the game themselves on their own free time. I've played a game released in 2005 where only a few days ago the the fan project dedicated to reassembling all the content trimmed out so the game could make its abnormally rushed release date finally launched a final version. Hell, I've played a game that, on release, would reformat your hard drive if you ran the included uninstaller. These are all heartbreaking things to me. They show a need for more time, more energy... but you have to ship someday, you know? Eventually you have to release and hope you can pay people.

To switch tracks a little, part of why I write like I do when I'm doing those moment-by-moment breakdowns is because I'm not filtering my thoughts at all. I'm valuing honesty over neat formatting and editing. Everything you see in one of my writeups is my honest impression at the moment I'm writing it. If it's bent towards hilarity and weirdness, that's because that's how my brain works. I could easily start painting any game in a negative light, or an aggressively positive light, but why? I'd rather let my emotions do the talking for me. My intellectual side will acknowledge all the bugs and twitches and glitches, but my underbrain is going "I wonder if I can make Hercules Fastball-Special Jason through that heap of dudes?" and that's what ends up on paper.

I'll be honest, if I weren't doing this project I might have started up Rise of the Argonauts, played it for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, made kind of an "Oh." face, and stopped playing again. I would have missed out on some neat stuff. I think this project is already paying off, just because of that.

I guess this post didn't really have a point, but I just wanted to point out how narrow the line can be between a finished, polished product and something that's trying real hard but didn't have the time or attention to shine. I'd like to leave you guys with kind of a challenge. The next time you're playing a bad game, or watching a terrible movie, or reading a crappy novel or whatever, don't just dismiss it. Take a while and look at it, really study it. Try and get under the surface, try and find the big ideas that started it all. See if you can find just one small example, one place where you can point and go "Somebody liked working on this.", one place you can find somebody's heart and soul poured into the project. Where someone really cared about what they were doing.

It's entirely possible you won't find it, and that's okay. Sometimes you really do get extruded entertainment product. I just feel like if we can't occasionally find those little craftman's touches and let them make us smile, even for a few minutes before we give up on the whole thing... well, then I don't really know what all of this is for, y'know?

Anyway. Just a rant that probably sounded better in my head. Carry on. Babbling squirrel is out, peace.

Comments

[electrickeet]

Actually, it drives my wife bloody spare that I do this all the time with all media. If something just doesn't work for a movie or game or story or whatever, I tend to consider where they might have wanted to go with it, what might fill the gaps, and what might have kept something more fully-realised from showing up. Thus, I end up enjoying a lot more stuff than she does, because I can imagine what it was supposed to be.

Perhaps this is instinctive based on watching so many of my own projects hit release without really being as complete as I'd like...

[wingywoof.livejournal.com]

I just made a stream-of-conscienceness post myself. Honesty is sometimes more important than grammar or formatting. At any rate, it's more honest.

[800yearsodd.livejournal.com]

The devs...actually supporting the game themselves, as the company was shutting down...is pretty cool dedication. And underbrain is delightful - I will likely use that term. Though I'm curious as to what "this project" is. Granted, I haven't read any of your entries before the Rise stuff, so maybe I'm just lazy. I also approve of this message.

[xyzzysqrl]

Oh uhm.

I buy far too many games and play them a little and never finish them. Thus I recently started a Project where I let a randomizer select a game from my backlog. And then play it. And write about it, because I am at least -theoretically- a Writer With Knowledge of Video Games. (I was a professional game reviewer, complex things happened, but I still love writing things.)

Rise of the Argonauts is the second game of this Games From A Hat Project.

[kiruppert.livejournal.com]

The gaming industry is full of awesome, imaginative people looking for ways to turn their passion into a living.

On the one hand, it's led to an industry that uses, abuses, and then discards creative people in the interest of making a buck,

On the other hand, it also leads to people doing really awesome things solely for the love of doing it.

[pocketofheather.livejournal.com]

I hear you. I try not to give up on anyone's work while I'm in it, even if it's pissing me off. I'm not sure if this is the best example, but it's the first one that came to me. I just saw Alan Rudolph's movie "Trouble in Mind", and as I was watching it I was bothered by what it seemed to be saying about gender and masculinity and femininity. And all the way to the end, those messages just kept getting worse. But I'm still glad I stuck with it all the way through. Politics aside, the creators did a brilliant job of assembling its fictional world, a hybrid of different time periods and cultures that doesn't exist anywhere else. I wouldn't have gotten to experience that unique, compelling environment if I was determined to stay inside my comfort zone.

And I love your rants! Please babble whenever you feel like it.