Murder Dog IV: Trial Of The Murder Dog

Back when I first started putting effort into social media stuff, a combination of vanity and curiosity prompted me to set up some Google Alerts based on my various names. I figured that if people were going to be talking about me and my work – whatever form that might take – I’d be interested to know about it. Two years and nine months later I was finally sent an alert that was about me instead of ABC’s rural reporter for Southern Australia. What made it even more exciting for me was that the article in question was written by Darius Kazemi, whose website I’ve been learning a lot from since bumping into him and almost saying hello at GDC earlier this year (lesson one: I probably should have said hello).

The article was in Paste magazine and concerns the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart. The pirate kart – available here – is an oddball entry into this year’s IGF contest, a compilation of over 300 games by over 100 different authors. As you may have guessed, I was one of the contributors! I saw the call to arms going out around the Glorious Trainwrecks community on Twitter – the deadline for entries was 48 hours away, which sounded reasonable for us Klik of the Month Klub veterans. I began an explosion of work on my dog game, but became increasingly unhappy at all the little details and flourishes I would have to cut in order to make the deadline. It’s supposed to be a game that subtly recreates some of the pleasures of walking around in a real park, so of course you want things like rustling tree branches and flocks of birds flying around – you need that kind of atmosphere, or else the player will never get beyond the fact that they’re sitting at a desk and watching things move around on a screen.

I submitted Generic Turn-Based Video Tennis Game instead, so I could at least make some kind of practical contribution to the pirate kart instead of just talking about what a great idea it was. I made that game almost a year ago, but I’ve never gone out of my way to promote it. It doesn’t really feel much like my own work, like the majority of the game is someone else’s idea and has been a proven success for almost 40 years now, so it seems silly to claim much authorship over it. I suppose, for that same reason, it’s not such a bad choice for the kart – my personal contribution was always going to be greatly diluted by everyone else’s work anyway. But no, judging from the responses I’ve read about the game (it’s been singled out a few times, and people in Twitter have been writing reviews using the #igfreviews hashtag), people seem to really enjoy the one small twist I made to Pong. I mean, it seems that everyone understands that it’s just Pong at heart, but they evaluate Generic Turn-Based Video Game as a modification more than a standalone game in itself. I think that’s an appropriate way to look at it. And I’m very relieved to hear that people like it!

A lot of things have been said about the pirate kart since it was submitted to the contest, often quite conflicting. I think the hardest thing for games journalists to explain to their readers is what the kart represents, or why it was submitted to the IGF. There is no one single reason why it came about! With over 100 contributors there are obvious many different motivations behind its creation, but since this is my blog I’d like to share my thoughts on the matter – I wouldn’t presume to speak for anyone else.

The reason why I support the pirate kart is because it embodies a design and development philosophy that I think is often wrongly discouraged by the games industry. The games are short and (frequently) silly and unpolished, but they are also intelligent, inventive and (in most cases) took very little time and minimal resources to make. Many of the authors aren’t conventional game designers at all, but just creatively-minded people who have been introduced to tools such as Ren’Py or Game Maker. It’s an example of what I wrote about in my recent posts about the democratisation of game development – the idea that anyone can make a game, about anything that seems relevant to them.

That’s not to say that I have a problem with more conventional games, just that I think we should be broadening our acceptance of games to include all of these things and more. Personally I’m not convinced that the pirate kart should be accepted into the IGF contest considering it’s a compilation, but I think as a gesture – as a statement – its entry has already received enough attention to be considered a success. And who knows? With a little luck, I might be leaving GDC with a tiny shard of broken IGF trophy next year!