No Time To Play
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Weekly Links #93

Welcome, everyone, to another short week, and this time I don't have any personal rant to fill the vacuum, either. On the plus side, for once all my links are directly related to game development, so that's something.

Within a series of Back to the Future-themed articles, Juhana Leinonen asks, what if we don't succeed? And it's a very pertinent question, considering how people all too often use optimism as an excuse to not plan for their project simply not working out. Results vary from stubbornly pressing forward with an already failed project -- a shambling zombie that's expected to go on anyway because "that's the original vision", or worse, "we've already invested too much into it", to bad blood ensuing and people leaving in a huff when progress grinds to a halt without any deliberate decision being made.

I'll let you read the article for possible solutions. In the mean time, a blog called Kill Screen asks another fun question: is your game able to withstand a tabletop gamer? It makes some good points, too. After all, behind all the glitz a game is ultimately made of mechanics, and you need testers who can exercise them properly. But I never considered how much the mindset of players changes things, and I spent an entire childhood playing board and card games.

Last but not least, The Chi Scroller reminds us of the times when limited hardware led to limitless creativity, and the gist of it can be summed in these two lines:

What is left to push developers to think outside the box when the box is cozy and comfortable and doesn’t actually prevent them from doing anything?

Obviously not much, I say, and that is indeed a problem. Oh well.