Blips: Family Synthesis

Source: Making Fract as a family
Author: Charlie Hall
Site: Polygon

We all know making video games is hard work, but how about making video games, building a company, and starting a family all at the same time? That's exactly what Richard Flanagan and Quynh Nguyen did, founding Phosfiend Systems to create the virtual synthesizer game Fract OSC, all while raising their infant daughter. In a lovingly captured profile over at Polygon, writer Charlie Hall tells the story of Fract from this trio of perspectives, and how Flanagan and Nguyen managed the chaos. At times heartbreaking, and uplifting at others; give it a look.

Having recently played and reviewed Fract OSC, I think all of that effort was worth the final result. As someone who loves electronic music, that there would be a game centered around synthesized audio production, wrapped up in a Myst-like world of music-inspired puzzles sounds like my perfect game. Ultimately Fract isn't perfect, but it does so many unique, stylish things that I'd still consider it a must-play. The game seems squarely aimed at someone like me, but it seems like plenty of folks who are less invested in electronic music have been digging it too. The one thing I'll recommend is that if you're coming from more a music interest than a games one, you might want to keep a guide handy or occasionally ask someone else who's played the game where to go, since many of the exploration systems can be indecipherable to players not in the know.

Blips: A Tale of Two Indies

Source: Embed With...London
Author: Cara Ellison
Site: Embed With Games

Most of the Blips I post on here feature articles and essays that express a particular point they'd like to get across or a desire to open up some subject for further critical discussion. It's not that Cara Ellison's new Embed With Games project lacks either of those, but they are more difficult to summarize and present in a succinct abstract. Ellison's initiative, which is the premise for her Patreon campaign, is to perform personal, investigate journalism with game developers. Not necessarily to talk about their games, but to gain access to their everyday lives and tell those stories, which invariably intersect with games. This along with telling her own tale of travel and personal reflection is what Embed With Games is all about.

Ellison's first stop was London, a city with which she expresses a pensive relationship. There she literally shacked up with devs George Buckenham and Alice O'Connor as they prepared for and carried out The Wild Rumpus local multiplayer video game and music event/party. I'm not going to recount the whole thing here, partly because story-wise, there's not much to tell. The Wild Rumpus came and went, seemingly without incident, and that's that. What makes the story worthwhile, and why it's a feature that you have to read for yourself, is because Ellison doesn't actually tell a story, she paints a picture.

Ellison employs short, bluntly descriptive sentences that make her journey one of constant activity and shifting attention (and rather funny to boot). One paragraph speaks about the international, Internet-grounded make-up of Die Gute Fabrik (Johann Sebastian Joust) and before long the subject has shifted to spooning, missed connections, and cat bacteria. Still, it's not a poem, it's a documentary, and of a kind you just don't see in video game coverage. I can't wait to read about where Ellison heads next, and am curious to see how her experience might change if she heads into more foreign territory.

:image from The Telegraph:

Blips: Boom and Bust

Source: The Glorious Lie of the Indie Bubble
Author: Ben Serviss
Site: Dashjump

The indie game bubble is a myth. The rising number of indie games being produced regularly does not reflect the marketplace that led to the crash in the 80s, and developer/writer Ben Serviss explains why that's the case in a recent post on his blog Dashjump. Problems arose in the 80s not just because of the tremendous glut of games being released, but because many of these games were low quality or were copycat designs that stirred confusion in the marketplace. There may be an expanding number of indie games being released now, but the bar for quality has also raised tremendously, which an impressive number of games are able to meet or surpass. Developers with game design degrees are pouring out of colleges and institutions like never before, which ensures that more indie devs know the basics of how to approach the practice. Game prices are down, and more people are able to get their hands on development tools than ever before.

However, the story's not all roses, as commenter Daniel Cook points out. The indie game space might not be a bubble, but that doesn't mean some of the market trends shouldn't be a bit concerning. Development costs for indie games are going up as more money is being spent on visuals to make games stand out in an increasingly crowded environment. This makes production less sustainable in the long term as it intensifies the need to have a "hit game" (not a statement of quality) simply to survive because there's less room for error. Previously underrepresented genre niches now has overflowing coffers of games for players to choose from to the point where that kind of gap-filling novelty doesn't go as far as it used to. Actually Cook's breakdown is an incredibly succinct post about the difference between development now and in the 80s and opportunities the near-future market may hold.

Either way you look at it though, it doesn't appear that video games are headed for another bust in the near future. I'm not saying it could never happen (Zynga and social games have had better years), but I think we can leave those particular alarms switch off for now. There are plenty of other issues worth concerning ourselves.

Blips: Labor Intensive

Source: 'You Can Sleep Here All Night': Video Games and Labor
Author: Ian Williams
Site: Jacobin

I'm so pleased to share this wonderfully insightful piece by Ian Williams for Jacobin about labor practices in the video game industry. Well, the report isn't exactly exciting in a "good news" sort of way; it's a sobering reality check about an industry that flies under the radar when it comes to how it treats its workers. In summation it's a cycle of extended crunch time hours that inspires high burn-out and layoff rates, ensuring that there are entry-level openings for the most "passionate" of young developers, willing to subject themselves to menial, low-paying labor with equally low job security for a chance at the big time that has been promised them: the dream job of working in the video game industry. There are no unions and there is very little diversity in the workforce. Much of the data on the video game labor force is either obfuscated or not tracked seriously. I highly recommend reading through the entire piece for all the details and citations.

Indie development, which was only brought up briefly in Williams' piece, is often seen as an alternative to these corporate practices, but from what I've heard and seen from small development teams, this isn't a solution, just a different way of doing business with its own set of problems. For starters indie devs aren't known for getting a whole lot of sleep either. Small teams may work from home and subject themselves to the very same kinds of crunch time hours that big corporations do. A solo developer who self-publishes does not receive a salary, and is wholly dependent on the performance of their finished game at market to provide enough money to live off, not to mention fund their next project. According to Williams' research, the average indie worker income is only $23,000. It's the "starving artist" mentality all over again. I'm not saying indie development needs to be regulated, just that it's not free of the problems that plague the rest of the industry and makes for a poor (literally) alternative. The real solution is to actually fix the problems at the corporate level, not to point to another corner of the market that you hope will overtake the establishment and go on to not become the same structure that it once replaced.

Blips: Midwestern State of Mind

Source: Chicago: Home of a New Indie Gaming Renaissance
Author: Jordan Minor
Site: Kotaku

It's no secret the the vast expanse of land between the two coasts of the United States is largely neglected when it comes to cultural video game happenings. There's an east coast epicenter up in New England and a west coast expanse between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Except for Austin, Texas, there's not a lot of video game scene visibility in the country's midsection. However, if a recent article by Jordan Minor for Kotaku is to be believed, Chicago may be on its way to filling that void.

Minor's piece offers up a solid list of names and projects that are gaining more national recognition, and I find the whole thing inspiring. As a St. Louisan it can be alienating to be invested in a cultural medium like video games, but feel limited in what physical membership in such a community means. If I wanted to attend just about any major gaming convention, it would have required a pilgrimage-level of effort to get there. Perhaps sometime in the near future, that won't feel like the case anymore.

Of course, I live in New York now, so I'm able to see the industry from the other side of the lens, but I don't plan to stay here forever, and if I find my way back to the Midwest, Chicago seems a likely destination. So, maybe my motivation is a bit self-serving, but I also think the industry could use more perspective from folks who aren't around the corner from Silicon Valley, Hollywood, or Times Square, even on the indie front. So, all I really have to say is, keep it up, Chicago!

Blips: Support Indies, Buy Direct

Source: Want to support your favorite developers? Ditch Steam and buy direct
Author: Ben Kuchera
Site: Penny Arcade Report

I was quite pleased to find an article on a well-trafficked site like Penny Arcade Report about buying games directly from developers so that those teams earn more profit from game sales. And it's true, as Ben Kuchera points out, that in sales through Stream, Valve takes a certain percentage of each sales, leaving less for the actual game makers. While Steam is a pretty impressive and worthwhile service, if I already know about a game from other media and decide I want to buy it, I will always search for a direct purchase option before resorting to a middleman service.

This is part of what makes Humble Bundles so great. When you purchase a suite of games through Humble Bundle, you can choose to divide up where your money goes between developers, charity and Humble Bundle services, meaning you can ostensibly give it all to development teams if you would like. As someone who doesn't care for most of the meta-game services that platforms like Steam offer (automatic updates are nice though), I don't have any reason not to buy as directly as possible. In fact, I get a little bummed when I have to buy through Steam, as is the case with Antichamber and Kairo.

I'm not vouching for the abandonment of Steam and similar services across the board, but on a case by case basis where the option is available, it's worth the extra effort (if it actually ends up being extra) to find a developer site and purchase directly. This is a plea to the informed consumer to take action in greater support of some of the most creative voices making games today.