Games for the Self Manifesto
1. Games as a medium for Self-Knowledge.
2. True Interactivity lies in Intelligence.
3. Create to honor humans and Humanity.
4. Intent First. Always.
5. Reject crunch, sleep.
6. Experimentation is at the heart of Play.
I had an interesting revelation; I was reading Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” and came across the part where he explains the use of comics to represent concepts. He realized an interesting truth: the more abstract the character in the comic, the more we can fill up our own details on that character, and thus the greater we can empathize with that character. Upon reading this, I realized why Disney's movies moved me. Disney movies generally feature protagonists with rather abstract features— the people look a lot more “cartoony” than they would in real life. It isn’t that the technology to create life-like characters does not exist, the real genius lies behind choosing not to represent characters that way.
Read MoreThis is one of the most important things I’ve learnt from an experiment that took 2 years of my life. I was the sole developer on my game, and I had to think about what made my game better.
At first, I started with the wrong questions. What if I made the icon into the shape of a lightening bolt? Where can I go to learn how to make good looking 3D models? Which software is the best for developing games?
Slowly, I began to realize my error. I was not getting to the root cause of things. I had to ask the right questions, and these questions would lead me down better, more thought provoking rabbit holes. I started asking more why questions. Why do I even need an icon? Why do I need music? Why do I need to build an AI system? Why am I making this game?
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