tanyaxshort.bsky.social
Captain of Kitfox Games (Loose Leaf, Streets of Fortuna, Boyfriend Dungeon, Dwarf Fortress). Co-director of Pixelles & Polaris. She/her. Be full of love. Put in the effort.
674 posts
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also, if anyone wants to make their own Game Design Retreat, I highly recommend you do so! happy to give tips. but the structure is:
- get designers together
- have em pick design problems that interest them
- have em discuss in small groups comfortably for ~2 days
- get em to write stuff down
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southwest also! and northwest to a lesser extent
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can I play it please?
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I primarily identify as a good plate-spinner
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"mediocre and unenthusiastic dealmaker"
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just sayin it sure would be weird if we called TV shows and YouTube clips, and also TikToks all "movies"
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I hear you. I don't know many folks who do that, but it's nice to know ya'll exist.
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hmm.. sometimes I think the term "replay" is insufficient to describe how some games continue to create new experiences after 1000 hours (Dwarf Fortress, etc), it's fundamentally not comparable to rewatching a film or replaying a story. maybe better to call these 'infinite rabbithole'
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"most" might be an exaggeration. but I find a large number of devs idealize having a specific image of the play experience (likely influenced by other mediums, or games of their childhood), that centers around characters and storytelling (also part of the auteur adoration of Kojima etc)
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heh, of course! and I love making the games we make! I'm so happy for ya'll (and me). (I really enjoyed Ballionaire btw! thanks for making it! Whales are OP)
but I know A LOT of devs (esp artists) that really want to make adventure/narrative games, and that's increasingly risky/unfeasible.
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attn @playbalatro.com we are available for a collab
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relatable content
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EXACTLY
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if by "meds" you mean "Caves of Qud" and by "adjusted" you mean "play more of", then we completely agree
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agreed. the problem is that this is not the kind of storytelling most game devs wish they could do with games. it's common, in my experience, to really want to Tell a Specific Thing in a Specific Way (the way films do, and most games pre-2010)
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no, what I'm saying is literally just making a living by telling good stories is exponentially harder, year on year. Kitfox has always been a "let's try to break even" studio, and every time we stray from replayable is usually when we fail to break even, and we see it happen to 99% of our peers too.
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to my great fortune, this is all relatively academic to me personally, as I enjoy playing AND making systemic games. but it breaks my heart how many talented, passionate friends I have who might never make games they ~love~, bc there's not enough profit in hearing virtually ANY stories get told
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it's possible visual artists are especially prone to dreaming of game-making as storytelling.. envisioning the final result is key to becoming an artist, and putting a bunch of systems/unpredictability between you and the player is counter to that (also, many artists first dreamed of film/animation)
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sure. we just can't pay rent with the mark we leave on people, unfortunately for Boyfriend Dungeon... or Lucifer Within Us, for that matter
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lil shout-out to good old Civilization, perhaps the grandmother game of "normal Gamers can enjoy synergy nerd shit, check THIS out", may we all welcome her stomping in to brighten our year shortly
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there are sooooo many games out there made with passion and they die with 0 sales. but most of these aren't extremely good endlessly replayable experiences (or horror, I suppose).
because most dev passions, I think, want to make narrative (non-horror) experiences.
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i could be wrong! but maybe it's also a generational thing, depending on what game spoke to you and made you want to make them. devs who grew up on dreaming of Final Fantasy or even Elder Scrolls might be more likely to idealize game creation as a storytelling mechanism?
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yep, I was an early Dominion fan too :) Dominion -> StS -> Balatro is a classic digestion into increasingly mainstream-appealing experience. all are deckbuilders, but I wonder if they'll someday shed the deck/cards metaphor to find further wide appeal
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Most Gamers will still appreciate a good authored experience -- but they might not think to look for a few years, and then when they do go try to find one, it'll be like looking at a roomful of parrots and trying to find the one that isn't squawking. ok bad metaphor but I gotta get back to work.
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long-form narrative games were never predictably profitable. it was always a huge gamble with tons of losses. but it's gotten harder and the expectations are higher and the floor is lower.
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(Minecraft and Roblox of course also helped usher in this expectation, but Steam used to be somewhat insulated from this normalization and maybe was part of why its population stayed stubbornly older? hmm gotta think about that more)
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and fundamentally, I think right now and increasingly in the future, it is difficult to pierce through all of the elements that make replayable/surprising/systemic games more powerful as products, which means more and more gamers will see these as the default/expected/normalized experience.
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a big problem I see is that most game devs at this moment don't actually enjoy making ANY of this kind of game (synergy-builder especially but also systemic sandbox). most devs want to follow in the footsteps of creators and artists that have a Specific Vision and Create a Defined Experience
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they'll still want endlessly replayable games with surprise and delight, because that's the play pattern that suits modern life and virality best and is ultimately easiest to attach your identity to.
but I think more toyetic, expressive replayable games will outlast this trend.
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after synergy-builders (credit me in the wiki article plz) appear to grow for 5ish years, they will get sidelined and plateau into tide-pools as, slowly, most Normal Gamers get tired of spending time in the same loop in different (even if increasingly unshabby) clothes. see also: farmville
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Aaaaah yes needyboy, I remember him
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he's so pretty 😠I would open the door for him every time ðŸ˜
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this is the most Bruno response I can imagine