People Always Lettin’ Me Down

by Darius Kazemi on June 13, 2006

in gdc

Oh, Chris Crawford. You are pretty much the person who convinced me that games are a worthwhile medium to work with. You taught me that a design vocabulary for games is possible. You were my #1 inspiration in the first few years I spent breaking in to the game industry.

And then you go and say shit like this:

I was appalled, for example, at the recent GDC. I looked over the games at the Independent Games Festival and they all looked completely derivative to me. Just copies of the same ideas being recycled. I didn’t see anything I’d call innovative, and this was from people not even interested in doing anything…in making money. It was just straight amateurs trying to be innovative and even they couldn’t be innovative.

Did you even play Braid? No, you probably just looked at it and said, “Oh, a platformer with time control. Bah.” You missed out.

{ 2 comments }

Craig Perko June 13, 2006 at 2:56 pm

Honestly, I think he’s saying this kind of stuff just to pimp out his new engine. “Oh, nothing is innovative… except me!”

Patrick Dugan June 14, 2006 at 2:48 am

Yeah, thats pretty much accurate.

I don’t want to sound like I have an insider perspective on the thing, but while Storytron might make for an interesting subculture of innovative experiments, it isn’t going to revolutionize the medium. It’ll be one of several thrusts in the generally right direction, but it isn’t going to get more than 100,000 subscribers, which would be quite succesful for it.

The two primary flaws with it are the interface and the homogenous archetechture design, which ties in with the prior.

It seems like its harder and harder to like Chris Crawford these days, but he’s still an okay guy in my book. I mean, we’re all full of shit right? Its just a question of when we last used the restroom.

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