Indeed. Which is absolutely why we should be encouraging people to do the absolute best they can *not* telling them not to make a game for some arbitrary and unverifiable reason.

It’s easy to shake your head and be negative, it’s not so easy to be encouraging (and realistic with your advice, natch).

Help not discourage, y’know?

“What makes these games great are the polish, creativity, art style, writing, humor etc. that was put into them – not the core game mechanic.”

I disagree entirely. I think the core game mechanic of each of the titles mentioned so far is incredibly important. If the core is rotten… well, I don’t think I need to explain that do I?

“If you’re making your first game ever, I think it’s a valuable experience to find a game you’ve enjoyed (casual, indie, retro or otherwise), copy/replicate the core game mechanic, expand on it, add your own style, music, humor, whatever to it – and finish it.”

I think it’s valuable to allow people to fall over and mess up a bit. It’s also valuable to understand that your advice is not anymore a guarantee of success than saying “make the game you want to make”, that’s what I really take issue with.

It’s not “a better way”, it’s “a way” and one I wouldn’t feel comfortable suggesting to be superior whilst looking at the amount of games that haven’t made any money or have totally fallen on their arse from doing just that.

Given that there’s thousands of games on the portals that do precisely what you’re advocating – how is it a safer bet?

But when you start to see game development as a business, of course you’ll start measuring your risks. Sometimes you’ll have to make safer choices that mean developing more conventional games, and sometimes you’ll be able to take risks and go for the wildest ideas. It’s all about balance.

So sorry to see that you found my article to be of bad advice. Reading through your post, I don’t really disagree with anything that you’ve said. There are absolutely other reasons to make games besides for a profit and I completely agree with your advice:

“Play lots of games. Good ones, middling ones, shit ones. Work out what works and what doesn’t and try and learn from other peoples in-game mistakes and successes and learn to be critical of your own work too.”

Like in your post, every advice must be taken in context. My article is part of a series and was meant to speak to not someone who wanted to simply make games, but for someone who wants to ‘live’ off of games. Maybe it took too strong of a stance on shooting down creativity, but it was just a way of grabbing someone’s attention. It’s very hard to create a successful game on someone’s first try.

In your article, you pointed to tons of indie developers: Adam Atomic, Moonpod, Zombie-Cow, among others. You yourself have a ton of great indie games, but if you break down the mechanics of most of these games, they are familiar or clones in some way. Moonpod’s Starscape expands on the basic mechanics of Asteroids, Mr. Robot is an RPG, TGP is a click adventure game at its core, Canabalt is a platformer with one-button, and most of your own titles are old school shooters.

What makes these games great are the polish, creativity, art style, writing, humor etc. that was put into them – not the core game mechanic.

If you’re making your first game ever, I think it’s a valuable experience to find a game you’ve enjoyed (casual, indie, retro or otherwise), copy/replicate the core game mechanic, expand on it, add your own style, music, humor, whatever to it – and finish it.

Regardless, I enjoyed the counterpoint.

The very idea that we might want to make games for other reasons – such as that we are inspired, that we love doing it, that we want to create, or that we’re on a mission from God (they’ll never catch us!) – those are just the ideas of silly amateurs. Cleary, the only thing to do is create another clone of a clone of a clone. And then clone that.

These people are draining the gene pool of game design, and we all know what happens without genetic diversity, right? THEY happen. And we don’t need more of them.

“… don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t and shouldn’t make a game. Of course you can and of course you should.”