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11equalsfish46 days ago (30 edits)

Interesting manifesto. This code looks to be about being completely original and artistically intentional, making openly available and focused games. This is a great idea with some practical guidelines. Most of the rules here are nice, I'm trying it too.

I think the most challenging idea here seems to be the one with using a different aspect ratio every single time. Have to use new layouts every time then, really creative. Also, wonder what point 4 means in terms of 'game systems', so solo devs use only one, and the number is dependant on people devloping it? I only use one game engine at a time... why not use just one? This is very curious!

This doesn't seem very 'radical' though? It's not like "extremist" in a political way which is what I just assumed, so wonder what this means. Like some manifesto examples talk about not buying new computers ever, breaking the site rules or fighting fascism, being queer perverts, avoiding all the mainstream platforms, "killing the capitalist/game dev in your head", being barely readable etc. I guess it's about challenging norms.

This is for creativity, and it's not an 'overreaction'. This list is kinda "blandly formatted" in a way, maybe it's only my preconception that 'extremism' should be like a chaotic overreaction. 

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Maxence16 days ago(+1)

I remember we definitely hesitated about point 4 and also considered going with "only one system", but depending on what you consider "a system", this seemed very minimalistic to the point of becoming almost counterproductive. Also, we thought the idea that you might let someone join the project, just so you can “take advantage of yet another system”, was kind of hilarious.
But that's a fair point, yeah.

Your comment about radicality is interesting, although I don't think any of the example you gave is, in itself, more "radical" or "extremist" than our manifesto. But, really, what was our idea in the first place is : a very tangible, actionable set of rules about how to make games a certain way (inspired by the Dogme 95). Being queer perverts, "killing the capitalist in your head", etc. is definitely equally interesting, and I'm glad such manifesto exist, but it does not really give the reader an actual set of rules to try to follow, which is precisely what we thought was fun to imagine.

We believe the set of restrictions we created can be inspiring and fun to try, but following a set of hard-coded rules is, by design, a bit silly.
Our hope was that, by following these rules, a person would be able to make a game that they would not have created had they not followed them.

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11equalsfish16 days ago (12 edits)

Thanks for the response. I remember this manifesto in the past month, since I'm trying to be more creative and honest, trying to do this. Edited my comment a bit. The idea of breaking stasis is exciting! 

'Extremism' I often hear only from political discourse, so it's cool to see it about games instead. Maybe it's only my old preconceptions that 'extremism' should look like Dadaism for example. Absurd intention, anti sense, and anti materialism, against "art" itself. It's tricky to fit rules of not following rules into this.

I remember reading a manifesto about a hypothetical, of eliminating old referential games culture and status, never repeating or referencing anything to create new futures. Outlawing every game that retreads old topics. I feel like this is related to your one. Against Introspection

These commandments are helpful, it's funny to try following strict rules to make unexpected things. There is some freedom in avoiding having all creative control. 

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Maxence16 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Very interesting answer! One of the rules we planned to put but later removed was something along the line of « Abolish genre », for example. But we finally decided to only include rules that one can follow without too much « interpretation» about what it really means. What I like about the Dogme 95 is that it features rules very specific about the craft of movies, like how to actually do something differently. We tried to do exactly that.

But I think because video game as a medium is intrinsically way more indie / punk / amateur (in the good sense) than cinema (because cinema is soooo expensive to create), I think our rules appear to be less « extreme » than Dogme 95. I guess that’s a good thing, overall.

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