Our Spring Party was a super happy success! We had a great many folks turn out, and it was quite an event. We held an open design meeting for some folks who we consider to be up and coming in game development. Folks with real imagination and smarts. During the meeting, and during the party, I had many opportunities to network, mingle and get new insight and ideas.

Somewhere around 9 or 10 PM, I had a discussion that let me lose my religion, and yet, keep my faith.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is get us more involved in “The Community”. I guess what I failed to realize is, when you want to think outside the box, you should try to avoid climbing inside one. Put another way: we should be involved in “The Community”, but which community we choose is just as important as the work you do to get involved in it.

Double Cluepon rejects the main game industry. In total. There I said it.

I could give you a bullet pointed list of why we came to this conclusion. But, rather than rag about crap that is truly immaterial, I would rather focus on where we are going with this. Because, we definitely think we’re on the right track.

It was pointed out to me, that a lot of downpressing is going on, especially with respect to the people who graduate, or are close to graduating. A great many of these folks have a fist full of fire, a belly full of steam, ideas, and imagination. We need to be catching those folks to maintain something that’s missing from a great deal of game development: the hobbyist mentality. The notion that you can do something that’s not been done before. The off kilter approach to doing new things. The drive to do things that are not homogenized, sanctioned, processed, and ultimately packaged for the masses because that’s the way “it’s always been done”. We need to catch these people before they wind up in a cube farm, or even a funded and over structured studio with VC Obligations. They need to be mentored, before they get pressed down like a square peg in a round hole.

There’s a big difference between making money, and making fortunes. It would seem like, the old guard is more interested in making fortunes. To hit the game success lottery. I suppose that approach has merit, and has it’s place. But, it really does not foster anything new and inventive. It also leads to silly meta discussions about the legitimacy of success. Or meta discussions of meta discussions about whether or not something is even a game or not. (Again, I suppose these are perfectly legitimate avenues for running a game company. It’s just not legitimate for us. We aspire to do more, and we refuse to be constrained by “the way it’s always been”.)

One of the things I and a number of others have discovered is, a great many of these discussions lack one thing: discussion of mechanics & game play. More importantly and more disappointing, we have noted a more serious absence: the discussion of fun. It just seems like a lot of discussions among the established boils down to “wash, rinse, repeat”. This is pretty much what happens in the music industry too. Justin Bieber may be a hot commodity, but he’s no John Lennon.

So, we reject that notion. What we actually want to do is look at things like fun, and from there: try to innovate. Try new things. The thing about innovation is: you never know if what you’re doing is going to work or not. Risk is part of this game. Sifting risk down into formulaic methods will make you a billion dollars. It won’t, typically, allow you to go outside of precomputed and established norms. On another level, it does something worse: it ties you tight, you can’t move or react to what’s going on. I guess what surprised me most is: a lot of game developers who should understand the nature of risk better, through game development, often mitigate it in the real world and produce a great deal of mediocrity. That’s fine and all. But, as Crocodile Dundee said: “You can survive off of it, but it tastes like crap”

So, we’ve hatched a bit of a plan. We’re going to do our thing. We’re going to do more to catch some of these folks with the belly of steam before they get down pressed. Before they get roped in by slick marketing. Before their ideas are ground into prepackaged soylent green. Some of it boils down to a very simple policy of “shut up and produce”. Some of it boils down to mentoring early. Some of it boils down to rejecting all of the psycho babble oriented, hyper analytical look at the successes of others in an attempt to “wash, rinse, repeat”.

To that end, between the folks here at Double Cluepon, a few of the other devs and artists that were here on Saturday, we’re going to further develop this IUGU idea. It needs to be less about what everyone else is doing, and more about what everyone else is not doing. Not for the sake of going an opposite direction, but because we want to see what’s down that path. We’re curious. Curiosity is the backbone of inventing new things.

In closing, we’re going to stop looking at things from the group perspective, and start looking more toward the individual perspective. One conclusion I came to early was, we know as much, and as little as everyone else. Developing games should revolve around people, not labels or definitions. Sure, this might sound crazy. But everyone likes a good crank.

By all means, discuss.