Thoughts on indie game development. Humor. General crabbiness and bad feelings.
A happy little message for anyone still following this dusty old blog. I am still writing! Not a lot, but I am making quality free content. I just do it on Substack , which is a properly maintained blogging site with nice features and a working captcha. So if you want to experience more ranting, please subscribe to the new Bottom Feeder ! Hope to see you there! Edit (5/26/2023) - Google is going…
Once, to survive in the arts, you needed someone like this : The profoundly rich product of centuries of inbreeding. This is a blog post about making a living writing art. Like, say, indie games. So expect a certain amount of despair. In ye olden days, many talented people wanted to be artists. However, very few of them sold their art for enough money to make a decent living. So they would get a…
All new. All different. Now that we've finally released our new game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror , we're finally free to talk about it! Nerdy game-design talking! We have been writing role-playing games for a very, very long time. It's what we do. One of the ways we stay sane while doing this is to change things. Every game or two, we like to change stuff: The graphics. The setting. The game…
A Queen's Wish screenshot. Note that I use game art that I like to look at. This is necessary because I'll be staring at it for years, and I don't want to go mad. A week ago, I put up a blog post called "Why All My Games Look Like Crap." It really blew up. A lot of people read it. Some were highly supportive. Others took precious time out of their days to let me know I am a gigantic, gigantic…
We spent years working on this game. We're betting our family's future on it. So. Why does it look so bad? We've been writing indie games for a living for 25 years. My wife and I run a humble little mom-and-pop business. We make retro low-budget role-playing games that have great stories and design and are a lot of fun. Also, they look like crap. The first game I released, in January of 1995,…
Players can get a deep feeling of satisfaction from games that literally play themselves. How cool is that? Last week, I began my discourse on how video games can warp your brain chemistry to bring you pleasure in order to make lots of money and how difficult, delicate, and awesome that process is. I have eight observations about how video games cause your brain to secrete delicious dopamine. Here…
Get those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers! I've been reading a lot about Anthem. It's that gigantic, mega-budget looter-shooter from BioWare and Electronic Arts. Apparently, it doesn't give out enough loot for the monsters you kill. For a game like Anthem, this is BAD FORM. Apparently, when you spend three hours killing a boss, the increase in your character's numbers isn't generating a…
Another journey begins. A long, long journey. For the fifth time in 25 years of doing business, we at Spiderweb Software are making a whole new game world (and new engine to go with it). Along with the announcement of our new series, Queen's Wish, we are launching our very first Kickstarter to support it. We've put a lot of information about the new story and a video on our Kickstarter page. We're…
There will never not be a market for a solid RPG. I recently played indie RPG megahit Divinity: Original Sin 2 . I went through it front to back, spending over 90 hours (Normal/Classic difficulty). It'd be a pity to expend so much time if I didn't get a blog post out of it. Divinity: Original Sin 2 (or DOS2 as I'll call it) is really the ideal of the indie aesthetic. It feels like it's a product…
Please enjoy this reasonably-priced hour of grumpy ranting. For a long time now, I've wanted to give a talk about the history of Spiderweb Software. It would be a combination of funny stories about the ancient history of the internet and a summary of everything I've learned about the True Meaning of Indie Games. At the 2018 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I finally had the chance to…
Seasons come and go. Pages fall from the calendar. And Spiderweb Software releases another game. In 1997, I wrote a hit game. It was called Exile 3: Ruined World . It and its remasters are the most popular games I've ever written. Bear in mind this game was a hit by 1997 shareware standards, not 2018 indie standards. It made enough to buy a modest 1997-priced house. It didn't make enough to buy a…
Teacher, mother, secret lover . When charming indie megahit Cuphead came out, I watched a ton of it on Twitch. How could I not? It's so pretty! I wasn't planning to play it. I like to play one super-tough game a year, to show I can still game hard like the cool kidz. But I'd already played Bloodborne last year, and my aging heart won't take much more than that. Then my wife got me a Black Friday…
According to the rigorous definition of Game that I will provide, creating "dank memes" IS a video game. One of the painful things about being in the games biz for a long (LONG) time is that you see the same tedious arguments brought up and rehashed, again and again, by new generations. I am writing a series of posts to settle these debates once and for all. No need to thank me. When I get the…
There was a ridiculous controversy recently because a games journo was bad at this difficult game. All time spent debating it was time wasted. I am writing this so that such time-wastage never happens again. I live to serve. "You can speak your mind but not on my time." - William Martin Joel One of the painful things about being in the games biz for a long (LONG) time is that you see the same…
It's weird to see over four years of my life just sitting there in a lump. I've been making my little indie games for a living for 23 years. Being a greybeard in such a weird and young industry comes with special privileges. For example, while some of my peers are getting around to remastering their old games, I am remastering our most popular game, Avernum 3: Ruined World , for the SECOND time.…
Sorry, grandma. This doesn't exist anymore. I guess you should have bought more than the launch title . Over the years we have had console gaming, the perfect control mechanism for our entertainment has emerged. Our thumbs, those nimble and durable pieces of flesh and bone, operate the joysticks and buttons. Our trigger fingers work the triggers. The rest of our fingers, stupid and useless, hold…
Strap in. This might get a tiny bit weird. I write long RPGs for a living. Yet, I am the most jaded RPG gamer in the world. I tend to hate playing them. Yet, I force myself to play a long RPGs, because if you become totally divorced from playing the sort of game you write, you are lost. That is why I recently spent 92 (92!!!) hours completing Persona V, Altus's cool, quirky, cult-hit JRPG. I…
In this chapter, I unwisely critique the work of my betters. I recently wrote an article about how video games have too many words. We designers don't properly edit our writing to make sure our words are worth a player’s time reading them. I want to do a case study where I go through a wordy game, step-by-step, and show what it's doing right and wrong and how it could be doing better. Most game…
TLDR.jpg (Also note: This gigantic lore-lump is just for choosing your character's sex.) "Too long. Lose half." "Which half?" "The half that you don't need." - Their Finest My whole career has been based on writing very story-heavy games , with lots of words. Our company, Spiderweb Software, is small. We can't afford fancy graphics, so we have to rely on words. Interesting, quality words. We're…
"Our game is called Mystik Spiral. It is an indie interactive aggression about the evils of conformist corporate culture. Coming on Steam for Windows and Mac and as an XBox One console exclusive." Over the last couple years, I've gotten a fair amount of attention for my articles about the Indie Bubble and the Indie Glut . (And even a GDC talk .) Quick version of indie gaming history: In 2010 or…
When I stare into its cold, dead eyes, all I see is my own failure reflected back at me. So I won't bury the lead in this blog post. As of the very near future, Spiderweb Software will be discontinuing support for the Android platform. We will be removing our games from Google Play and the Amazon App store. If you purchased Avadon or Avernum for Android from us in the past and need a copy for your…
Even by my wordy standards, this page is super TL;DR. I suggest just reading it until I get to the bit where I plug my new game . It has come to my attention that quite a few young, aspirant creators find my opinions to be of value when it comes to making a career in the game industry. It's true, and it terrifies me. Kids, most mornings I don't know whether to crap or wind my watch. (You used to…
Avadon is done. That's 5 years of my life, tied up with a bow. I don't always write controversial, widely-read blog posts that make people way, way, WAY angrier than they should be. I also make games. At last, we have completed the Avadon Saga! Avadon 3: The Warborn is out for Macintosh and Windows! We are selling this fine, indie, retro, story-heavy RPG on Steam , GOG , Humble Store , and our own…
Do you think this should fill me with shame? Because it does not. "When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me. When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me." - Bob Hope, as told by Patton Oswalt I used to argue passionately that video games were art. Then I stopped arguing about it, because…
Trigger warning: Bears. I want to say a few words to young developers on the value of resilience and the growing of a thick skin. Slow down there. Hands off the keyboard. I an NOT talking about abuse, harassment, and threats. I've already written on this topic. Certain behaviors online are clearly unacceptable, and you should not be subjected to them. What I AM talking about is learning to endure…