Indie games "take out the curves" [some Swedish idiom that I don’t know how to translate]
Greg Costikyan has had enough of the games industry. He loathes "the cowardly conservatism born by million dollar budgets." That’s why he started a game publisher.
When did you last play an adventure game where you were a Rabbi on the Lower East Side, struggling to keep your faith, your congregation and your synagogue, while simultaneously solving a murder mystery? Never?
Then you’ve never played The Shivah from Wadjet Eye Games, one of many examples from a dawning independent scene that is pushing the boundaries of the game medium.
The Shivah was released last year, and is one of the games distributed by Manifesto Games, an online store and gathering place for players and creators of independent games that was founded by game designer and industry dropout Greg Costikyan.
- I’ve been concerned over the state of the games industry for several years, he says, speaking on the telephone from New York, where he lives and runs Manifesto Games.
- People don’t think fresh any more, but rely on established genres and franchises. In the nineties the development budgets were a few hundred thousand dollars, now they’ve reached ten or twenty million. That means people don’t dare or can’t afford to try new things.
When Greg Costikyan started in the games industry, a development budget wasn’t bigger than what it took to pay for some notebooks and a few months’ pizza deliveries. That’s when he fell in love with the game medium. He started designing games in the 70s, before PCs, and among the early games he created were RPGs like Paranoia and Star Wars: The Role Playing Game.
But as budgets have escalated, he feels that the medium has stagnated, and two years ago, when Costikyan was working on Nokia’s game effort, he’d had enough, quit, and started Manifesto Games. To set the tone he wrote "The Manifesto manifesto" where he opened a frontal assault on what he considers an intellectually bankrupt industry.
-We desperately need a real indie scene, comparable to what we have in film and music. That’s probably the only thing that can shake up the industry. And I actually believe one is forming, says Greg Costikyan.
The first person to agree is Dave Gilbert, the creator of The Shivah. Inspired by the old adventure games made by LucasArts and Sierra Online in the early nineties, he started putting together original work, using the Adventure Game Studio tool. Recently he released the adventure The Blackwell Legacy, which is a ghost story where he turns a bitter and reclusive woman into a reluctant hero, in contrast to the macho men who usually fill that role.
Dave Gilbert has just begun working full time as a developer in his one-man company Wadjet Eye Games, based in his East Village apartment, and in his nasal New York accent he describes his passion for the medium.
-I’ll never get rich doing this. My games are far too personal to ever go mainstream. But if I can just continue making games and pay the rent, I’m happy.
His next project is a sequel to The Shivah, which will delve deeper into the Jewish culture in New York. Dave Gilbert has no doubt that he has found the right tool to tell stories about religion, relationships and the difficulty of finding your place in the world.
-The games medium has a unique ability to engage the player in choices and actions. Games that really succeed can convey emotions and human relations in a way that no other medium can match, he says.
[Caption:] In the game The Shivah, a New York Rabbi fights to keep his faith while simultaneously solving a murder mystery.
[Caption:] In The Blackwell Legacy, the reluctant hero is a reclusive woman.
[Sidebar:]
-Gametunnel is a site that reviews and covers independent games
-Download Adventure Game Studio for free, an application to create your own adventure games. There is also a forum where developers exchange experiences.
