for a magazine article on video game design i'm writing about, i've been rethinking principles ever since i started making games proper. titles like *He Fucked the Girl Out of Me* changed how i see video games forever.
and i think if i ever had to write a Manifesto, it would be about making "sick games". there aren't that many games about people who are ill or sick. instead, we get games that hide the pain and trauma for happy times.
i once saw a defender of the Wholesome Game movements calling critics and detractors "sick people" and it really stuck with me since. because yeah, i am a sick person ever since i learned i was a minority in a racist country and contracted covid.
i enjoy games with friction because it reminded me of how uncertain life was. to use a crude analogy, a healthy person can suddenly be ill the same way i get ambushed in *Nioh 1*. overcoming this stress is rewarding to me.
there are too many games about healthy people who lead happy lives and this is, i think, the main issue of movements like cottagecore and wholesome games.
end of the day: no one cares about some leftist tripe about capitalism and colonialism. however, it is this avoidance of friction that means the engagement has to be vapid. ZUN (*Touhou*) joked about how gacha gameplay fazed him because all you do is roll to win. there's no skill involved.
this sucks and it isn't my life anyway.
i find myself drawn to abrasive games because i find life stressful and there's catharsis in the power fantasy on overcoming stress or at least being able to meet it eye-to-eye.
what i find evocative about *He Fucked the Girl Out of Me* is that it presents an experience that not many people will ever face. however, this interaction is enough to make you understand the life of mccue without going into pity.
that's rewarding for everyone and will never be accepted in current trends.
so i think, in opposition to trends like the wholesome games movement, people should be making games about how we're sick and tired. that's where all the interesting game design is at:
what makes particular encounters stressful? what controls make it difficult to master? how do we show how we are sick and ill in video games?
i swear, making that sydney game rewired my brain or something. i just liked how personal and particular that experience was: what a SICK game that was.
@Domin0e sure, but consider that soulslike often requires mid-tier PCs (and games like *Nioh 1* runs like shit the more you play) and precision platformers with the exception of *Celeste* aren't popular and easy to find.
and i don't necessarily think people should be making games like them anyway. instead, it's more about exploring mechanics like resource management and pitting players into awkward situations. it's why i brought up *He Fucked the Girl Out of Me*: it does that in narrative.
@kastelpls That's part of why Archivist and Revolution exists :P
tangential but maybe there's a distinction between games that are mechanically difficult and games that have difficult writing/narratives. Parser IF is often the former while twine stuff is often the latter - a lot of twines don't have mechanical friction, i feel like?
@autumn yeah, most twine games railroad players to make very limited choices (even more so when people simply choose to turn those twines into glorified ebooks).
i enjoy games where they put players in pretty awkward situations and force themselves to empathize with someone so unknown to their lives. twine games may do that with narratives, but the lack of choice means you're just gonna click and see what happens.
you're not typing in the action, so that friction isn't in the game.
@autumn like, i can't imagine *Photopia* working as a twine title. all those stories of people trying to avoid the inevitable won't happen if it's just a button you click.
twine games could have more choices to mitigate that, but i still find myself drawn toward parser games because it's enjoyable to see the player stumble onto the action they need to do and be repelled by it lol.
i guess all the interactive fiction i enjoy so far has FRICTION. *Archivist* has that in spades too!
@kastelpls This is something we tried to think about with Cozy Grove. What if the stories were about real people who had lives adult lives?
I kept thinking "Wait! Cozy doesn't have to be saccharine." It can be a space to be authentic and process things that are not always pleasant.
Kastel
Domin0e
Autumn Chen
Nickie ‘Talvi’ Harper-Williams
Daniel Cook