The Webzine Gamasutra released a great article on “what makes a game sticky and persuasive”. A recommended read for anyone making games. There is always time to think about this issues, and always new things to explore. One thing for example is this. Try to reach: “Familiarity, not Simplicity!”

Scene from “The Spring of Ants”

Wait, what? Weekly open-source mini-games in Processing? This sounds fantastic, and surely it is. Every week the people from The Croopier release a fresh new game in Processing, also with the source-codes provided – free to share and build upon. If this were not cool enough, but there is also more: The mini-games are an exploration of the art of narratives in the new media format “games”. They take everyday situations and time we live in and try to make games out of it. I tested some of the games, and also the gameplay of the pieces is innovative and interesting. Feel free to get inspired by the project!

Abelardo Gil-Fournier from The Croopier wrote me:

“The project itself is considered to be part of a research on new communication and narrative formats. We come from an art, technology and new media background, and the project may also be considered as an experimentation with the micro-game format.”

Nothing more to say.

Scene from “A Clockmaker’s Fantasy”

Pacman physics is a Pacman remake. Or better a deconstruction of the game. If we already talk of “games as art“, there could be nothing better than this game, to show some aspects, that are at least important to me.

Pacman Physics short after start of the game.

A Korean developer made this fun version of Pacman. He applied all static elements of the regular Pacman game with gravity. That means, that walls, pellets, ghosts and pacman itself will fall to the ground. The ghosts are still chasing pacman. Pacman still have to collect all pellets. One difference was made with the wonderpills. The do not make the ghosts eatable, but changes the direction of gravity. Good, that’s for the concepts. But… what about gameplay? What about fun?

I think that is the biggest drawback in the game. The concept, design and implementation is quite good. The result you will definitely consider as art. But for my very taste, art games also have to be fun at playing. That is what gaming is about, isn’t it? What do I need a game, that is fun to look at, but does not have a replay value? I think this is a new, if not the new area, that art has to come for. To get into. Just besides pixelling retro-characters on walls or paintings. But… to give respect to the developer: Pacman Physics was made on one day, so everything is fine in the end.

Try it out: Download Pacman Physics

Unless you like to fiddle with this Korean website, until you find the green download-link, you better take on with that mirror-file of Pacman Physics.

(via Indiegames)

The game-discourse is entering a new arena. “Games as Art” seems to be one of the emergent topics at the moment, that is growing into relevance. You eventually have heard of the Project Horseshoe conference. They – in own words – address the “game-designers hardest problems.” At Gamasutra is a longer wrap-off of some of their insights about what is making games as art hard. They do not only look at the progress of making a game itself, but also take a look on the underlying context, where games appear and are played. Or about the approach of an artists versus game designer.

The journey of an apple-seed. Simply beautiful and much too short! Anyway.. there is also a making of available.

(via Grafikjungs)

A company with the name NeuroFocus could play a role in the flow-testing of games. Instead of filling out questionnaires, what in the game is rewarding or boring could be just measured with brainwave-technology. I even could imagine real-time statistics and nice visualisation about the things, that drive gameplay. Gamasutra writes about, what packages the company will offer. Quite a lot:

“The NGame suite includes NSequels, which is designed to identify core game elements that build into a franchise; NTarget, which offers user group analysis, design, implementation, and marketing recommendations; NeuroNet, which is geared for multi-player and social gaming; and TGA (Total Gamer experience), which measures multi-sensory gaming effectiveness. NGame also offers NPlatform Analysis; NLevels, which identifies “NeuroFrustrators/NeuroRewards” in games, and GCA (Game Compressions Analysis), an automated selection of the most powerful neurological components in a game.”

Top reading of the day is the sum-up of 2D-boys / Polytron’s speech at the Indie Games Summit over at Offworld, about successful hints, to market your game effectively. Well, the thoughts are neat, but not revolutionary. Best figure to start the day comes from Kyle Gabler:

Valve’s Left 4 Dead marketing budget was $10 million, Spore’s $35 million (compared to its $50 million development budget) and Wii Fit’s was $40 million, a figure Gabler reckoned could buy 21,917 indie devs a burrito every day for a year.

I left your thoughts with that beautiful new trailer of the Fez-game from Polytron. Also note the beautiful music and colors!