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Games Entertainment

The Indie Game Jam 87

Posted by michael from the angry-god-bowling dept.
Rich Carlson writes "The Indie Game Jam is a yearly game design and programming event designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry."
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The Indie Game Jam More

The Indie Game Jam

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  • Why not let me win JUST ONCE!!!
  • more indiana jones games.

  • Gaming Nerds Fasion (Score:4, Funny)

    by alien_tracking_devic ( 579685 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @03:40AM (#3528325)
    Let's see:

    black shirt, blue jeans
    black shirt, blue jeans
    black shirt, blue jeans
    black shirt, tan jeans
    grey shirt, blue jeans
    grey shirt, black shirt, white shirt
    (that guy in the back has a red shirt--must be gay)
  • "...experimentation and innovation in the game industry"

    Hey, now there's an idea. It's nice to see a game every once in a while that doesn't fit neatly into a specific genre. Helps keep things "fresh".

  • Experimentation?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Qrlx ( 258924 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @04:04AM (#3528369) Homepage Journal
    "The Indie Game Jam is a yearly game design and programming event designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry."

    Here's some real innovation and experimentation:
    Dani Bunten Berry [happypuppy.com]

    Pardon me while I feel nostalgiac...every game that comes out lately (esp. in the arcade) is either two guys beating the stuffing out of each other, or some sort of Exxxtreme Simulation, be it piloting a helicopter, shooting a gun, or pushing a shopping cart full of your worldly possesions down the street while being chased by cops and skinheads.

    Okay, that last one doesn't really exist but WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH ALL THE SIMULATIONS??? You wanna be Deer Avenger Mega XL? Why not actually go hunt a deer. There are millions of 'em out there. You want to drive real fast? Go to the local racetrack and ACTUALLY DO IT.

    I miss the quality games like Rampart, which was extremely playable as a multiplayer or single player endeavor...must stop ranting...trying to stay on topic:

    A lot of the games on that web page are very, very cool ideas, and I'm really glad to see the big vendors (read: Intel) getting behind the local community. I would love to play Dueling Machine, because it sounds totally cool, and many of the others seem utterly hilarious.

    God, I miss the good games. I think everyone fell in love with the "rich story line" after Wing Commander II and forgot about playability and the intense PLEASURE that comes from battling it out with a game like Lemmings. I bet the current crop of mainstream game designers has watched a lot more TV and action adventure movies and spent a hell of a lot less time playing lunar lander, drag racer, and Adventure on the mainframe.

    100,000 sprites? You had to do something crafty with interrupts to get more than 7 sprites on my old C64. And yet, I have a game of MULE scheduled for right after I hit the submit button...

    I light a candle for Infocom
    • This can be considered as an advertisement, sorry for that. There are still people who do good, intense and imaginative games, specifically at Llamasoft [llamasoft.co.uk]

      Good old Yak!
    • pushing a shopping cart full of your worldly possesions down the street while being chased by cops and skinheads.

      Whoa, cool... anyone have a link to the demo?

    • You want to drive real fast? Go to the local racetrack and ACTUALLY DO IT.

      Sure I could spend 100s-1000s of dollars and actually risk my life, or I could spend 5 bucks to rent a game and experience a modicum of the same thrill from the safety and comfort of my living room.

      These things are not comparable, so don't pretend that they are.

  • The code is released under GPL, and is available on sourceforge for everyone to play with. I've always wanted to develop games, so looking at *actual* game code is really exciting. I know I can do that elsewhere too, but these are (supposed to be, anyway) top-of-the-line game developers doing their stuff. I'll be downloading the source for sure :-)

    • So why haven't they released it yet? They say in about a dozen places that the code is "GPLed on Sourceforge" (even the project entry on SF) and as a tiny little addendum as "Stuff To Do" they mention the source has not actually been posted.

  • Neat yes, but innovation on demand? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Joe Tie. ( 567096 ) on Thursday May 16, 2002 @04:15AM (#3528399)
    The term innovation seems to becoming more and more overused. As much as I'm
    sure that code will be created through this that will be very interesting to see
    and see run, isn't innovation something rare enough to not be expected? What's so wrong nowadays with being proud to have simply made something of quality, even if it's not some earth shattering revelation.

    Sometimes it just seems to me Microsoft's proclamations of their so called
    'innovations' have lowered the bar considerably. I'm about to go make a bowl of
    ramen noodles, and I'll be throwing in some pieces of broccoli. By todays
    standards would that be considered an innovation in the world of everyday
    nutrition?
    • I'm about to go make a bowl of ramen noodles, and I'll be throwing in some pieces of broccoli.

      You'd better not. I've patented that.
    • When you put broccoli in your ramen, that's called *synthesizing*.

      The ramen noodles are the *framework*. Nutrition is a *functional requirement*. Dumping leftover veggies into your kibble *adds value* and *lowers your TCO*.

      I could keep going except I agree with you too much. Innovation is dead, or at least becoming increasingly more stultified as we approach the "McCultural singularity"

      Democracy is a registered trademark of the America Corporation.

    • Re:Neat yes, but innovation on demand? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think the premise of "innovative" is that all possible games and ways to play games haven't been discovered, and that they want to try to find some of them.

      So, they provide a new gimmick (100,000 sprites), and ask the developers to try to discover new games for the gimmick. The gimmick exists to help kick the developers out of any rut they may be in -- to be the impetus for them to exploit their creativity.

      Quality is something we all want. And there are plenty of groups producing games of quality.

      But innovation, while perhaps hard to force, also isn't something that just falls from the sky. You have to keep at it and keep at it, and hopefully finally out of the 100's and 1000's of tries, something is actually new and interesting.

      Or maybe we should be working toward a top quality abacus, nevermind all those new-fangled tran-sis-tors. Translation: if they try hard enough, they may eventually find something that changes everything, that becomes the foundation for everything else. A lofty goal, for certain; but, they've got to start somewhere, and they may develop lots of other cool stuff along the way.
    • What's so wrong nowadays with being proud to have simply made something of quality, even if it's not some earth shattering revelation.

      Yes, true. The trouble is that most game developers set out from day one to write a game "like popular game X." So they follow all the cliches that are laid out before them, and they write a game effectively by the numbers. And that's exactly what people hate in music: bands that are obviously trying to sound like some other band. But when it comes to games, people just accept this--even game critics--and revel in the cliches.

  • interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thanjee ( 263266 )
    Well, the concept behind the indiegamejam seems to be very interesting, but what are the games actually like? I would like to download some of them and give them a go, and see what you can actually do over a 4 day period.
    The sreen shots don't give that much away. Just 100000s of people everywhere to kill. How complete was the base sourcecode they were working from?

    --
    I guess everyones attention is on AOTC, so perhaps it would be wise to have a /. discussion in a comments on AOTC news item rather than posting all over the place.
    • Im sorry but I dont thnk the concept is interesting at all. You can draw very strong comparisons between this and all kinds of Art-house film competitions. Both industries are comercialised up the ying-yang and for the most part bereft of any originalty. You can pidgeonhole most movies (action,romance,comedy...etc) and games(rpg,fps...etc) and this is a natural byproduct of the cookie cutter,make another game with slightly better graphics.

      Personnally i would really like for there to be no need for this kind of thing.

      we can only hope.
  • designed to encourage experimentation and innovation in the game industry.


    Hmm, sounds familiar. Is it similar to the way patents & trademarks are designed to encourage innovation?
  • If we can judge from the screenshots, this engine is terrific. I can imagine some really sweet lemmings-meets-M:TFL games. And while there were a few games produced that appeared to be in that vein, it was cool that a number of completely different ideas showed up as well.

    By the looks of it, the first iteration of this event was a success. It will be great when we can download the games and see for ourselves.

    later,
    Jess

  • Because it looks very much like a demoscene party.
  • Gotta love how geeks wonder why the mainstream never gets interested in anything they do when they use "funny" programming in-jokes like this.
  • I'd love to see a game where i can be a person who walks around with big guns and shoots things.. like pain in the but moderators for examples.. or just bad guys too :)

  • This took place in March.. how come we hear it just now?
  • This is what I want for Myth IV, Mr. Jason Jones. Billyuns and Billyuns of sprites.
  • "innovation" and "game industry"

  • What is still on my wishlist... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm still missing a multiplayer game where participants could create free-form 'creatures' and let them fight or do another things. Of course there were attempts, like TechnoSphere, some others but usually they are limited to some narrow set of rules, are not developed or not addictive.

    Wouldn't it be nice to have a game where you could design your characted in a let's say modern 3D package, give it physical properties and let it 'live' together with others in a virtual environment. It sounds maybe dull, but look how popular Sims are - and not - Sims is also one of those 'limited' kind of games. Pity.

    /Diolas
    • Highly acclaimed Black & White allows you, as a god, to Sims-style take care of your own "creature" and take him to fights against other creatures, on single player and multiplayer campaigns.
      Of course, that's not exactly the game's main idea.
  • Fuck, that's just excellent. Angry God Bowling. I think that just may have to be one of the best concepts for a video game I've seen in a long time ... sorta B&W'ish.

    What I think these folks should do is take all 12 games that were made, and combine them into one big mega-one - you can't get to the next map until you win the existing one.

    Package 'em up, slap 'em in a box called "Angry God Bowling" and sell.
  • Another Independent game festival [igf.com] and a pretty addictive java based browser based game insaniquarium [freshpulp.com]
    (it starts off slow, is a simple game, and carpal tunnel inducing, but stick with it, it gets better)

    e.

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