itch.io

This manifesto often conflates “no one is going to buy your game” with “no one is going to play your game”, ironically reinforcing the capitalistic notion of games as products you ostensibly seek to challenge.

You can make games that no one will buy but many people will play. There’s nothing wrong with that. Rebelling against… uh, good game design practices (section 4) and implying that these represent Marketable Games implies you still conflate “quality games” with “marketable games”, and that any game that isn’t marketable is necessarily “bad”.

Heya everyone, name’s Lucio, right now on my last semester of getting my Computer Science degree. I’ve wanted to get into game design for as far back as I can remember, been making some small board games as a hobby for the past 3~ years and reading a lot of books on game design, but I’ve been consistently terrified of actually trying to dip my toes into game jams.

Every time I’d think if it I’d be enveloped by a dreadful sense of “oh god what if I don’t know enough, what if I pull down my team, I have to be reliable.” Hopefully I’ll mange to force myself into a jam this year, kicking and screaming all the while, but as long as I manage to get over this mental barrier I’d consider it a win.