Orson Scott Card on why games are boring…

Came across a little article on Wired today. http://wired.com/news/technology/0,7…_technology_11

It's basically Orson Scott Card pimping his newest book/film/computer game, but IMO he makes a few good points about why games nowadays tend to be kinda boring. Nothing dramatically new, but I found myself nodding in agreement a couple of times when reading it.

Worth a read anyway, IMO. The author of Ender's Game can't be all bad. :-)

Very good article / interview. I'll forward this, because I already know a few discussions on exactly that matter.

The thing is, that gamers are in generally agreeing on the failure of the publishers; yet nothing is being done, because the publishers have all of the power in their hands and meanwhiole don't know how to make it right.

It's as if a millionaire tries to build and sell statuesby saying to sculptors : "We need a statue that's appealing to anyone, is being made with the least cost, and sells most".

What would a sculptor think about this ?

I think the power they have is corrupting the publishers, draining them von creativenes, innovation, like a vampire. It's kind of freaky to me.

I've been semi-seriously thinking of starting an independent games studio, once free of my current obligations (with which I'm stuck at least two, probably four more years). I'm pretty sure there's a market out there for games that emphasize story, content, and originality over simply pushing the envelope technically.

I currently work in software development, and we do a lot with OSS platforms using agile development practices; I'd like to try applying the same kinds of methods to game development. Basically, write a game engine on top of OGRE as another open-source project and try to get people from the OGRE community involved, get together a bunch of creative wingnuts to do stuff like dialogue, art, music, and cutscenes, and deliver the stuff as small modules over BitTorrent using a subscription payment model. I see no reason why it shouldn't work.

Clownkeep had a similar idea, but it fell apart!!

What happened?

Not sure, they just cancelled their game and broke up!!

How serious were they about it? For example, were the people working on the game actually being paid?

Not sure about that, probably not. Dhruin might know more!!

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
How serious were they about it? For example, were the people working on the game actually being paid?

Don't know - but here is there profile from the Codex.

And Dhruin did an interview at RPGDot.

Funny such a critique coming from him. Enders Game was fantastic but most of his other books are intolerably boring.