The Gamer’s Manifesto
Sometimes when the big boys play, things can get a little rough, trapping comsumers and smaller ventures in the crossfire. Two game industry veterans, Greg Costikyan and Johnny Wilson, have had enough. They’re tired of only mega-hit spinoffs and licensed titles nabbing all of the limited shelf space at vendors, and want niche and unusual games to have a spot in gaming. Getting a game into production and distribution is difficult without previous successful incarnations or the nod of say, the NBA. The era of big budget gaming, according to the dynamic duo, has proved “to be self-fulfilling prophecies of an era of sequels, imitation and indistinguishable, derivative material”. Independent developers thus have a bit of a hard go of it, which is something that Costikyan and Wilson plan to fix.
Together they have formed a new development company called Manifesto Games that promotes itself as an “indie” business, offering digital distribution of independently developed games. The wily vets plan on taking full advantage of the vast expanse of the internet, with its capability to reach millions of people and its endless “shelf space” for games of all shapes and sizes. Costikyan, who has kept a rather scathing blog about the gaming scene for quite some time, feels that without the innovative and slightly off-kilter new titles to draw in new audiences, the industry is in great danger of stagnating. Manifesto hopes to be producing their new and stimulating content as early as spring 2006.
It’s a lofty, and somewhat idealistic goal to think that they will be able to turn around the big hit mentality that has gripped gaming for years. I myself have walked up and down the aisles of retail outlets noting that almost everything offered smacks of the same sort of stuff. All the MMORPG are pretty much the same, all the WW II FPSs are pretty much the same, all the Sims games are pretty much the same, and the sports games don’t seem to improve much from edition to edition, with developers happy to make small changes and repackage the same old tired material. But I’ll give Costikyan and Wilson a huge amount of credit for trying to correct something that they feel is fundamentally wrong with the industry. Instead of just complaining about it, they’re doing their best to offer a viable alternative to the narrow scope of retail titles, and I would expect that quite a few imaginative games will be emerging from Manifesto in the near future.
4 opinions for The Gamer’s Manifesto
Jason K. Dove
Oct 1, 2005 at 4:04 pm
we really do need more people getting off the collective asses and making a change instead of trolling forums and posting to blogs….uuhm..hmm 8|
Jason K. Dove
Oct 1, 2005 at 4:05 pm
man I hope the humor came out on that one :)
Karine
Oct 3, 2005 at 2:47 am
I’m all for a more varied offering. This is clearly one of the main reasons why it took me so long to have any kind of interest in gaming - most of what is sold I have no interest in. Let me tell you, it’s not fun being always outside of mainstream.
Erin
Oct 3, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Karine as a non-gamer woman, I would be particularly interested in hearing your points of view on things like what sorts of games would get you interested in playing them, what sort of marketing changes would intrigue you, etc etc. Perhaps setting up a sort of interview with Ingrid would be fun.
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