Tonight was the Bastion launch party, an awesome event for many reasons. First, I got to play a new game called Joust, which I suppose every indie developer should know about, but I somehow didn’t. Here is me playing:
I lost every round but one.
Second, it was great to see the crew after they had accomplished something many set out to do but few succeed in: band together and create a high quality title independently. This is somewhere I want to be in a little while. It can be done.
Third, something Amir said during a brief toast, really struck a chord with me: that most of the people here he did not know before he began building Bastion, and that he never expected that making a game would make him this many friends. Hell yeah! This is game development at its finest.
Today was one of those days. Less than great sleep last night, oppressive heat in the home office (though nothing compared to the rest of the country I guess), general lack of energy. It’s easy to get really down on these days–especially for those of us who work alone.
I watched Harp Dreams tonight on Netflix, and it was worth watching for one quote, which I’ll paraphrase. One of the finalists in the harp competition, Cheryl Losey, said about day-to-day practicing at this level:
“Some days are worse than other days. On those days, when everything just seems overwhelming, you just have to block that out and focus on really small things. You can’t think about the big picture on those days, and you can’t make any huge judgments.”
It’s Wednesday, and there’s not much to report on the Escape Goat front. I’m currently making sure the game can cope with multiple worlds, so the player can play the campaign or user-created worlds from the title menu. Straightforward so far: fingers crossed. From here on out, it’s just ticking off the boxes until it’s what I consider beta.
For a change of pace, I’d like to offer up some video game music favorites.
Yes, these are all XBLIG games coming out this summer. Pretty sick stuff in there, and though I’m not on the list, I have to take this opportunity to give them a shout-out, for many reasons.
First, the amount of effort put forth by Armless Octopus Dave is mindboggling. I’ve seen the XNA forum thread on this event, and it’s gotta be the biggest on the site. Lots of people interested in the event, wanting to join in, with ideas on how to run it, and he’s managed to wrangle it all. I’m seriously impressed. I don’t know how they divide the labor but I have to assume Kris is picking up a good bit of slack as well. I mean, for the IGWU I somehow managed to get credit for helping kick it off without the hassle of doing any real organization (Robert handled that), so I don’t have firsthand knowledge of how much goes into it–but it’s gotta be huge, and we all gotta give props, final cut or no.
Second, I’d still like to see XBLIG grow as a platform. It’s taken a beating this year with the ratings shenanigans (which slaughtered SC2’s profitability–SC1 still outsells it 4:1) so it’d be great to see it get more traction. Maybe there’s a critical point at which Microsoft decides it’s time to add Achievements and an improved top list system, so if we can get closer to that point, I’m all for it.
Why is Escape Goat not on the list? I don’t have a great reason for not entering it, but my somewhat passable reason is that I didn’t have something quite finished enough to nominate. There’s a chance it’ll be done in time for the event, but not a certainty, and with 50+ nominees I figured it’s best to sit this one out. When I get into hardcore game development mode, it’s hard for me to think about anything else. My involvement in the community is sporadic to say the least. (Look at the date stamps on this blog for instance.)
So for now, I’m just looking forward to some of these games. Good luck to everyone and congratulations to the devs who made the first round of cuts.
