KestrelPi

@believer258: I don't know how to explain it in any way I haven't already done, but I'll try to rephrase, so sorry - this'll be a long one.

Basically I've seen a lot of chatter lately on the internet lately, debates flaring up in one place or another about what games are, whether they're art, by extension what art itself is, and what it means to be indie.

Inevitably what'll happen is that someone will say (and I'm simplifying here) something along the lines of:

"Well, I think a sensible way to define indie is this: blah blah blah. Based on that definition, X and Y count, but Z doesn't count, which seems about right to me."

And then without fail there will be replies which say 'what about A, B and C?' And then someone else will suggest their own definition or a modification to the definition and the conversation will go on.

On the one hand this might be seen as healthy debate about the state of the medium or whatever, but it seems to me that debating definitions is a very over-simplistic way of doing that. It's like the discourse is wasting a lot of time arguing over what box various things go in that they don't get into any depth about the thing itself. Like, I was listening to a podcast segment on Proteus recently and they spent several minutes arguing about whether it was a game or not and while some interesting points were made about the nature of play, the actual thing they were talking about, Proteus, kind of got shoved aside in service of this meta-discussion. That's what I think definition-debates do, most of the time: distract from deeper analysis.

As for tables and games, I acknowledged in the original blog that they're different things in some important ways. I said: "You might rightly point out that while there's no disagreement over what a table is, there's plenty of debate over art, indie and games. And that's true - at the moment there are different schools of thought on what counts as these things. That's because they're quite complex, abstract concepts unlike that of a table which is an easy enough pattern to recognise even if I can't put it exhaustively into words."

I'm aware that the concept of a table is different from the concept of a game in lots ways. But I was using it as an example of how we approach language in daily life: we don't know what words mean because we know their definition, rather we know what words mean because we recognise and understand how they fit a pattern. The nature of the pattern is something that can be debated (and that's very likely to happen with an abstract concept like games, unlike a concrete one like tables) but attempting to settle the debate by trying to conjure an exhaustive definition usually just ends up with the same kind of nit-picking that I emulated with my table example. Except instead of 'what about a bird table?' or 'what about a snooker table?' it's 'what about this game?' or 'what about this studio?' There'll always be some section of things someone intuitively wants to call art/indie/game that nevertheless manages to fall outside any given strict definition. Seems to me the best solution is to embrace the inherent fuzziness of meanings and move on.

So, finally, and as an example, I think one way of talking about, say, Proteus is having a discussion about whether it's a game or not by trying to pin down what a game is and then seeing if Proteus fits that. But I think this is likely to devolve into nit-picking if the discussion is framed that way. I think a more interesting and productive way to talk about Proteus would be to talk about Proteus. So, for example, one could discuss what motivates someone playing Proteus to explore, and how that's different or similar to other games (or whatever you want to call them). It might not get us any closer to knowing which box to put Proteus in, but we at least might discover something interesting about the nature of play that we wouldn't get to while hung up about which definition it fits. (which, to me, seems like a far more trivial discussion. Even if it was definitively settled, Proteus forever more is/isn't a game... what now? What have we learned from that?)

Uh... :) To be clear, I think dictionary definitions are just fine. They're useful as a reference, as a quick way to get a general idea of meaning, but they're not much good at setting boundaries on that meaning, and so not much good in discussions about where those boundaries lie.

@believer258: That definition also applies to a all other pieces of furniture that you put things on. Like a shelf. Or a bookcase. Or a TV stand. (Some of those still aren't ruled out even with the flat, slablike top, which is why this definition business is a bit trickier than it first appears)

The point is that I can quibble the definition of table just as much as I can quibble our definition of anything else, but I still think you know what a table is.

@ravenlight: I'm not sure the analogy is weak in the way you think it is. All I meant by it is that even easy words are hard to define precisely. In fact, your comment is kind of the point, and I sort of address it at the end: if it's not all that easy to precisely define a physical object, then isn't it going to be considerably more difficult to precisely define something abstract, nebulous and subject to interpretation? And so shouldn't we be looking for a different way to talk about these concepts rather than trying to pin them down in a really concrete way as a starting move in an argument?

@winternet: I don't understand why you're in such a twist over it or indeed why the existence of this thread seems to offend your sensibilities so much. I don't mean to rile you, but it seems like a fairly simple point to me. The post is about this:

a) Lots of people are weighing into various debates about what games/art/indie are.

b) One of the things these people regularly try to do is define games/art/indie in a particular way, and then use that definition to categorise what is/isn't that.

c) I don't think that's a very good approach, for reasons listed above.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. I wasn't really trying to be controversial - just saying 'hey, maybe right now these discussions are being framed in a way that's kind of a red-herring'.

Why? I mean, sure I could have done, but ... (goes to fetch it)

"A piece of furniture with a flat top and one or more legs, providing a level surface for eating, writing or working at it."

This has all the same problems as my modified definition of table from dictionary.reference.com, and also at least one new one: not all tables have legs. Some are just solid blocks (which I guess could be one leg, but it stretches the meaning), while others might be suspended, or come out of the wall, or what about a futuristic hover-table? At least dictionary.reference.com had the part about 'other supports'

So by going to Oxford, I've done nothing to advance the discussion at all. The whole point of my post was that definition gets confused with meaning, and it doesn't matter how much of an authority the person who is doing the defining is. Both the Oxford and the reference.com definitions are fine. They're good. But they both fail to convey the whole meaning because that's not what definitions do.

@winternet: I'm aware of the supposed (dubious) quote. I don't like it, because it's misused more than it's used well. :)

@nickieroonie: Oh, I agree. There are definitely situations where two people might be talking about completely different things and not realise it. But even then, the solution is rarely to come up with a strict definition they both agree on. The solution is to identify the confusion and move on from it.

@BisonHero: Not necessarily. Pitching to a publisher is no longer the only route. If any of these prototypes prove successful enough, maybe that will be enough to generate enough interest for Double Fine to self-publish using funds from elsewhere, or maybe some of the projects they'll gamble will pitch well to a Kickstarter crowd, or maybe individual investors like Dracogen will help fund development.

Or, maybe they won't get that far. Only about half of prototyped games tend to make it to the next round, full-on development, according to Tim, so it's quite likely that only 2 of these will move forward after the 2 weeks.

@BSw said:

@KestrelPi said:

@BSw said:

Voted for six now, might increase or decrease this amount later. In order of how awesome they sound/look:

1. The Flock

2. Kaiju Piledriver

3. Black Lake

4. Critterverse

5. Hack 'n Slash

6. Autonomous

But so many of these are great ideas. DF should give the leftover ideas to indie developers so that they can develop them (possibly together with their respective lead dev from DF), because it would be a shame to lose so much creativity.

That could be fun, but I don't think most indies are really wanting for ideas. From experience I know ideas come at a rate faster than it's possible to work on them. For example, my two-person team works in our spare time, and about 6 months ago we had almost the exact same idea as Autonomous. We're not working on it now because we've got another idea we're working on, and after that we have at least 4 more killer ideas to work on, and another 5 or 6 that could be great if we figure them out a little more. And it's a real shame to look at the list and go 'well... guess we're never getting around to THAT idea' but it's just the way it goes.

It's a cliché but nevertheless somewhat true that ideas are cheap. They're frequently wonderful, but we've had to accept early on that there are just too many! So if Double Fine did say: 'go forth and make these games' then that might be cool (maybe as a game jam) but I've got a feeling that my and most other developers would react with 'thanks, these are neat... but we've got all these other ideas...' :)

That makes sense. However, I can also imagine that some indie developers would love to use the name Double Fine, let alone cooperate with one its employees. And I would just love to see The Flock get made with Greg Rice leading the development. Same for Kaiju Piledriver and Brad. Both of them could be so awesome.

By the way, what kind of game(s) are you working on (if you can share anything, that is)? Since I'm not a game developer myself, I'm always very interested to see what you guys do.

@MrMooEar - If you don't mind me asking: what are you going to do with all the money that's coming in? That's already a lot, and DF never needed if before to pull off Amnesia Fortnight.

Sure, always happy to talk about my own games ;) You can find them at surprisedman.co.uk where there are also some dev blogs of our current project, Fix Fix Bang Bang, an asymmetric 2D co-op game where one player shoots while the other keeps the spaceship running.

Back on topic, I agree that it'd be cool if those games got made by anyone, and maybe Double Fine will use the results to give some of the more popular ones a second chance. I just have some doubts that many indies would see it as a good use of their time. Maybe, but I think most devs who would be worth working with already have loads of ideas they're excited about.