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This presentation should take six minutes, but it could pretty much last fifteen.
We'll give them a try at it anyway.
The next speakers, guys: Vlambeer!
Yeah, uh, we're Vlambeer. I'm Rami Ismail and this here is Jan Willem.
I do the business and development at Vlambeer and Vlambeer does game- Jan Willem does game design.
Super Crate Box is a little game we made. Retro arcade game with a small innovation in the gameplay
It's been doing kind of well, wow - the presentation looks weird - uh - it's been doing kind of well.
IGN awarded us 'best free to play PC' game of 2010, Bytejacker awarded us 'Best Free Indie Game'.
EDGE pronounced it "Best free... friday game" and Gamasutra put it right there in the top 10 indie games of the year.
We've been nominated for the Independent Games Festival in the category 'Excellence in Design'.
...but that's not really what we want to talk about.
Games should be games again.
Innovation has always been a bit of a problem in our industry - there isn't too much of it.
You see big games taking tiny steps and when something is succesful, everyone tries to copy them.
That way, genres change slowly but it doesn't mean a lot for 'games' as a whole.
On the other hand is the indie community in which people force innovation. Everyone can come up with a quirky platform mechanic...
...but making a good game is something entirely different. You see few of them with worked out mechanics.
So maybe we need to search for innovation in a different place.
And that's what we want to discuss.
Gameplay is what makes games special. Games have gameplay.
Paintings don't have gameplay. That's a real shame, but they don't. Games do.
Games can have gameplay and that's what makes them different.
That's what makes games different from films, books - they have gameplay.
These are four examples of games that are great because they are games, not because they're something different.
Top left is Flywrench - you probably haven't played that - game by Mark Essen - go download and play it now because it's far too good.
Katamari is not just 'pretty', it also has solid and simple mechanics.
Tetris... if you don't know it, you're excused to leave now.
Donkey Kong, brilliant game, super simple but it works really well.
These are all games, just games with good gameplay.
We're going to define gameplay as 'the result of the designed ruleset' for this presentation.
It's been designed, that's what we do, what I do, maybe what you do or want to do, and that's what makes it fun.
We also would like to point out we're limiting ourselves to videogames for this talk. Kind of obvious, actually.
But.
For the development of videogames, nowadays people most look at other media.
To name some examples quickly: in the top-left, Call of Duty actually is a Hollywood action blockbuster.
Top-right, Proun, which takes its artistic inspiration from paintings.
Bottom-left: The Graveyard, which tries to be "poetry... without words"
Bottom-right is Heavy Rain, which really tries to be some sort of thriller-drama, but in a game.
What we're wondering is... why?
Imitating other media is useless. It doesn't strengthen the aspect 'game'.
You can make a game look like a Hollywood movie really well, and you can go beyond what's possible now - but at one point, you'll wind up with a movie, not a game.
It's a dead end of sorts, and it doesn't strengthen the game aspect.
Games are interesting because they have gameplay, unlike movies.
Here I have four examples of moments in games that are good because they're actual gameplay.
If you survive in Doom with 13% health and you kill everything and you complete the level, well, you're happy.
In Super Mario, when the entire game is explained to you in one screen right at the start, that's only possible in games.
The first boss in Half-Life, if you've beaten it you most likely remember.
And when you find the morphball in Half-Life... [ in Half-Life? ]
Metroid.
Joking.
But those are super memorable moments just because they're games - they're not trying to be epic or storytelling or poetry.
It's because they're games.
So.
Progressing the medium games should be achieved through the ruleset.
Go improve your games. Spend more time on your gameplay, or maybe ONLY spend time on your gameplay.
Be interesting with your gameplay. Don't try to expand to other things, don't try to be other things with some of your games.
First get your gameplay straight. Maybe, that way, we'll progress the entire medium with tiny improvements.
Or maybe even big ones. You might be the ones to do it.
So: games should be games again.
We're Vlambeer. I'm Rami and this was Jan Willem. Our website and Twitter. Thanks!