3 ms·

This is NOT going to work, You alone can do nothing. There is NO way, an indie, or a Game firm, can afford to NOT make as much money as their competitor in the

This is NOT going to work, You alone can do nothing. There is NO way, an indie, or a Game firm, can afford to NOT make as much money as their competitor in the industry is making. 1) Margins and discovery is difficult in this industry. 2) If you are a public company, you will face management and market pressure to improve your numbers which means going ahead and making a skinner box. This is straight up a case for legal frameworks and avenues for legal recourse to be made available. So no - you wont manage it on your own. Its not possible. You WILL manage it by connecting with other game devs, writers, reviewers, indies, game houses, parents, programmers - especially people who get why this is an issue (as opposed to the ones who are happy with the status quo) I know that there is at least one other Game dev who recently spoke out against this (<5 months ago). Also consider that NOT having addiction boxes as your competition means the hooks and attention grabbers in gamers are shallower. This both reduces the size of the population. You are definitely not alone. This is precisely what needs collective effort at an international scale. Farmville/candy crush is as effective as it is in California, as it is in Cochin, or Trindiad. Frankly, I wouldn't be damned surprised if eventually a law firm does catch on, and then targets the entire industry.

cableshaft 10y ago
I'm not sure what you're claiming I'm planning to do is not going to work. I'm not trying to fight the market trends, I understand they're bigger than me. My main job isn't even in the game industry right now, but in the healthcare industry. My plan right now is design board games, get them published somehow (I'm slowly working on that front, my games have been evaluated by some publishers and professional designers, but nothing is signed yet), then developing an app/PC version in Unity and releasing that while promoting it on the channels I know people would be interested (i.e. board game sites). But I'm getting older and don't have the free time I used to, so it's going pretty slowly. I'm also not expecting to get rich off these games, it's more about getting things out there again and making some side money, hopefully more than a couple of games I worked on for other companies which sold abysmally due to some unfortunate timing and inadequate PR coverage (I've already made games and released them on my own that have performed better than those did, it's not a high bar to clear). But yeah, I'm not really disagreeing with you. It is what it is. And if a much more well known game designer than I am, Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness), can rail against these types of games in multiple talks while having almost zero effect in changing the trends in the industry, then I, as an almost completely unknown designer, can not expect to make any significant changes. It just makes me less excited to get back into mobile game dev industry when I'm almost guaranteed to work on a skinner box type game.
- intended 10y ago
  My point is that This is an advocacy issue, not a design issue. My deep concern is that this is also an issue with media and political legs. It's got "think of the children" and "evil video games." Built into it.

cableshaft 10y ago

I'm not sure what you're claiming I'm planning to do is not going to work. I'm not trying to fight the market trends, I understand they're bigger than me. My main job isn't even in the game industry right now, but in the healthcare industry. My plan right now is design board games, get them published somehow (I'm slowly working on that front, my games have been evaluated by some publishers and professional designers, but nothing is signed yet), then developing an app/PC version in Unity and releasing that while promoting it on the channels I know people would be interested (i.e. board game sites). But I'm getting older and don't have the free time I used to, so it's going pretty slowly. I'm also not expecting to get rich off these games, it's more about getting things out there again and making some side money, hopefully more than a couple of games I worked on for other companies which sold abysmally due to some unfortunate timing and inadequate PR coverage (I've already made games and released them on my own that have performed better than those did, it's not a high bar to clear). But yeah, I'm not really disagreeing with you. It is what it is. And if a much more well known game designer than I am, Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness), can rail against these types of games in multiple talks while having almost zero effect in changing the trends in the industry, then I, as an almost completely unknown designer, can not expect to make any significant changes. It just makes me less excited to get back into mobile game dev industry when I'm almost guaranteed to work on a skinner box type game.

intended 10y ago
My point is that This is an advocacy issue, not a design issue. My deep concern is that this is also an issue with media and political legs. It's got "think of the children" and "evil video games." Built into it.