Deceptive descriptions.

In my efforts to come up with a description of Bientôt l’été for potential players, I had forgotten about something. Auriea reminded me of it when I told her about the presentation of a new project to the Notgames Critique participants last Wednesday in Köln. I explained the concept of this new game to nothing but blank stares and blinking eyes. But after I showed the early prototypes, a lot of encouraging reactions bubbled up.

We get that all the time. Our games are based on weird ideas. But we do try to make them into pleasant experiences. On the surface, the ideas don’t work, or are too flimsy. But when realized as interactive environments, they can bring deep joy to many players.

This is not really a coincidence. We feel challenged by unlikely proposals. Making something that sounds plausible does not get our creative juices flowing. So we end up making multiplayer games in which you can’t speak, games about old ladies, games in which you win by losing and games in which nothing happens. We find such ideas exciting. Because they are so unlikely, because it’s hard to imagine what such a game would be like. But I should understand that other people probably don’t share our enthusiasm.

So trying to describe the concepts or even the stories of our games as an introduction to potential players is probably a bad idea. That doesn’t mean that all we can do is hope that they play the games and make up their own mind. What we should do is not describe the concept but the execution, the end result. We should talk about the atmosphere we create, the thoughts and feelings the game might provoke, the aesthetics, etc. I’ll try that next.