Looking back at my own experiences, my situation isn’t too much different than a lot of the experiences seen in the younger crowd who are being introduced to Minecraft Missions or Wii Sports today. It might seem silly at first, but the appeal of these games is so vast and varied that it’s difficult to be scared away from gaming that badly. It’s an age where what defines a game is so ambiguous and diverse that it’s near impossible to be turned off by absolutely every title on the market. This is why games are such a fantastic medium today; there’s just so much to play. New niches are being formed and filled as we speak and even the most jaded, cynical technophobe would have to find some aspect of a video game that’s worth a considerable look. It’s hard to explain what exactly makes games so magical, since we all have our own little moments of fascination with games, ones that kept us playing throughout the entire story and into the sequel.
Even better, indie games can afford to lose. They are often low cost, low maintenance, high concept works that don’t rely on reaching a certain figure to be considered viable, and as such they can throw caution to the wind and take some big risks while still making a profit off of even the most modest sales. That means they can also afford to remain loyal to a system like an undertaker with a debt to the don, as while they might want the money that can come with being a multi-platform release, what they need is the backing and spiritual support of a major company like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to get their games out there. A backing that is no longer lip service and is becoming very, very real.
What do I mean by that? In game development terms, a “vertical slice,” is a gameplay segment of finished or near-finished quality that showcases all the planned features of a game to potential investors. At the start of a project, these are a massive sink for time and effort, since they essentially involve doing all the hard parts of finishing a game to complete one 10-minute section. Generally, they’re seen as a bad practice. However, toward the end of development, it’s a lot easier to pull assets together for a vertical slice. Of course, if you’re shopping your game around to publishers at that stage, you’re probably in a lot of trouble, but a standalone “vertical slice” can also serve as a strong alternative to a traditional demo.
During the early 90’s, many of us were involved in, as coined by James Rolfe, the “bit wars,” the point where competing systems developed a brand loyalty with the consumers. It was a Genesis/SNES world and the market intended for you to pick a side. But those of us who were first exposed to video games during this time didn’t originally intend to side with either Sega or Nintendo. While there were certain characteristics of each console that we preferred, our focus was never on what games were better. The first big step for any future gamer is one devoid of partisanship in the gaming community; when you first enter the gaming world, you aren’t involved in the console wars. In fact, they did not exist to you back then. I personally chose Sonic the Hedgehog as my “gateway game” simply because I liked who he was as a character. I liked his cool blue color, his tough-guy stare, and the acrobatic nature of how he moved. Level design, physics, replay value, music, even the buzz term “blast processing” meant absolutely nothing to me. It was Sonic himself that captivated me to join the gaming world.
We’re all familiar with the standard demo format: you play a section of a game (almost always the tutorial up until just before the first boss), and then everything comes to an abrupt halt while a screen either asks you to unlock the full game to continue, or tells you when it’s coming out. If you’re very lucky (as in the case of most Devil May Cry demos) you’ll get to play through a level and fight a boss out of context. This might convince you to get the full game, or tide you over until a game you’ve been waiting for has been released, but either way, it’s almost always stuff you’ll have to redo once the game proper begins.
Don’t Starve Together perfectly translates the tension and excitement of the original game into a multiplayer experience , but it’s not the only title that achieves such magic. Accordingly, there are many multiplayer games like Don’t Starve Together for fans of the fantastic survival game to en
And understanding what initially draws a person into video games is all the more difficult today. With three major consoles on the market and an avalanche of games to play, newcomers to the gaming world have ample opportunity and choice to select from. Fans of sports games are able to experience the fun of managing their favorite player rosters with Madden . Fans of Dungeon and Dragons or other tabletop games are able to get a faster-paced and more cinematic version of role-playing with The Elder Scrolls . Alternatively designed games like Minecraft , Journey and The Stanley Parable are becoming interesting to scholars who find fascination in experiencing a story from an unorthodox viewpoint. There are so many different styles and genres to choose from that, now more than ever, finding out why anyone gets into games is a question with too many answers to list.
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