vga256 on Nostr: there used to be a space, prior to AAA, where addictive and fun and art used to ...

there used to be a space, prior to AAA, where addictive and fun and art used to co-exist.

in the 80s we had a lot of 1-4 person development houses that took risks with gameplay, had 'addictive' gameplay in the positive sense of the word (the way most people describe Civilization 1), and were financially successful.

I'm thinking here of early Interplay or early Origin; Neuromancer and Wasteland and Ultima 1 through 4. they're all built with what amounts to fairly simple game mechanics but very artistically weaved together into a complete experience.

they didn't sell like pac-man, nor did they build their gameplay around addictions in the negative sense. pac-man was addictive, in the negative sense - i'm sure you remember the 'pac-man fever' song. how many games have had radio played songs?

maybe i'm thinking of the ultima series and interplay rpg's for a specific reason - they *were* built around the possibility of playing them forever. except, unlike roguelikes and pvp, the experience was expected to be fairly different each time despite the mechanics being the same.

i've thought for years that the missing piece of the industry are low-budget role-playing games like spiderweb software's stuff. they're unique, they take a couple of years to build, they're ugly, and they make jeff enough money to raise a big family.

i honestly think we've come to think of AAA as some industry goal for developers, when it's really just an abnormality. prior to the late 80s, there were no AAA development houses with $1M budgets for a single title.

in the early period there were just small teams, many indie and some publisher-owned, that only later blew up into giant development houses. both Origin and Interplay collapsed under their own weight eventually.

much of the "indie" movement of the late 00's tried to capitalize on a rejection of AAA style development, while ironically trying to turn themselves into industry rockstars for AAA-level profit.

i'm very strongly in favour of a different approach: rediscovering the shareware-sized company of the 80s. one where games are made on small budgets and a ton of creativity put into the parts that matter. i'm not even sure what to call that - but it's self-publishing without ego and rockstars, without design-for-populism mechanics, and a genuine love for the software you're creating.

i don't think pico8 can give us that, nor was it ever meant to.