Here is a hot Protip. Tale of Tales just released a very special limited offer: the Day of the Dead Bundle.
No, it’s not about zombies.
It includes 3 of their games – The Graveyard, The Path and Fatale. The combined value of that bundle is 22$. The deal is that you can pay whatever you want. There is a lower limit of 3$ because of the transaction fees.
If you don’t own the games, this is THE chance to get them. I already bought them some time ago and I enjoyed them very much. The Path alone should be enough incentive. It is something one simply needs to try out at least.
Speaking if Tale of Tales, just a few days ago Auriea and Michaël held a great presentation here at Cologne Game Lab. The spoke in great detail about how they came to develop games, the challenges they faced, their philosophy and what they want to do in the future. It was an incredibly inspiring talk. Tale of Tales are a great example of a new idea of what a game designer is. The vast majority of people working on games right now have a computer science background. This is one of the reasons for the expressive poverty so prevalent in the industry. Auriea and Michaël have a background as artists and web-designers. They come into games with the mindset and the experience of using digital media in an expressive way. The games they make are bound to stand out.
I’m not saying this to suggest that everybody should make games like Tale of Tales (although I wouldn’t mind). My point is that in order to create diversity in the games culture, we need people with different backgrounds coming in bringing new knowledge to the table. Luckily, with modern development tools becoming easier to use and with more academic programs emerging everywhere, we might be heading in the right direction.
The only thing we still need is an vocal audience embracing this extra diversity in games. Hey, you know what? How about starting now?
Hey, a CS background isn’t necessarily a creative kiss of death!
Oops, you are completely right. That’s came out wrong.
The problem is not necessarily the CS background itself. The problem is how widespread this is.
Heh, I was mostly being flippant. It’s definitely true that at large, we’re really good at making something that’s technically amazing. But when asked “What should we actually do with it?” far too often the answer is just shooting some dudes in a grey-brown, real-ish ruined city. Folks that bring stuff to the table that ain’t that, regardless of background, are more than welcome.