Interview: Greg Costikyan

By: Derek Yu

On: February 22nd, 2007

The Mercury News has an interview with Manifesto Games‘s Greg Costikyan. I’ve been curious how they’ve been doing, so I found this to be interesting:

“Q: What result have you had?

A: Weâ€™ve achieved a modest level of sales, and the curve is on an upward path, but weâ€™re very aware that we have a long way to go. To succeed, weâ€™re going to need to continue plugging away to get the word out, and weâ€™re going to need to raise some capital to both build the technical infrastructure and the consumer awareness we need to achieve our goals."

Greg says and has generally said all the right things, but my ardor for him cooled significantly once Manifesto actually went live. To me, it seems like nothing more than Game Tunnel with a store front and a red paint job. Let me just be frank and say, without picking on titles specifically, that when I look at the front page of the site I am not seeing what I want independent gaming to be represented by. I’m seeing (with a few exceptions, of course) a lot of games that are essentially one or two steps above match 3 casual.

And they need to get someone new to write their game descriptions. I don’t know how else to put it – it sounds like they were written by someone lying down and eating potato chips. But it probably be easier to write exciting copy if the games themselves were more exciting.

Posted in Community, Interviews | Tags: Costik, ManifestoGames

NOT BMcC

Sorry, I’m too busy developing a game! :P
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

Haha, wow…
failrate

I guess the real question is, “Would you sell your game through Manifesto?”
PoV

What if I’m making an experience, not a game? ;)
lexaloffle.com

I’ve heard of experiences. Apparently you can buy engaging ones nowadays. Anyone know where to get them, or what they look like?
TIGDev367

“Iâ€™m seeing (with a few exceptions, of course) a lot of games that are essentially one or two steps above match 3 casual.” – Derek’s ass

Seriously, care to cite any specific examples from that “lot” for your semi-resident contrarian here? Are you thinking of a certain Manifesto Exclusive, perhaps? What else?
Derek

Like I said, I don’t particularly feel like singling out any specific games! Honestly, I don’t want to. I dunno, does that seem cowardly? It’s just kind of beside the point… and my point is that when I heard the word “revolution” being bandied about a year ago I was expecting something different.

When I say “one or two steps above match 3 casual,” I mean “generic,” okay? Just because it’s a fantasy RPG doesn’t mean that it’s somehow better than a match 3, in my honest opinion. Or a shmup, sim/tycoon game, or turn-based strategy game.

Why is “Tycoon” even listed as one of the game genres? The whole “Tycoon” naming system was like a plague on the commercial industry and you want to bring it back in the “indie revolution?” C’mon.

I appreciate you being contrarian, btw. :)
Derek

Also, when did my ass become so verbose?
Dan MacDonald

Well you know the first rule of internet politicking is to never say anything negative about anyone or anything because it gets recorded forever and can and will be used against you in the worst possible time.

So I always appreciate it when Derek shares his opinion, even when it’s negative. It’s harder to get away with when your posting under your own name y’know?

That said, I always felt that Costikyan was waay late to the “Downloadable games” revolution and jumped on the bandwagon waay too hard. The whole manifesto was a great marketing gig, just like every other manifesto out there, it doesn’t exist for the people who embody it, only those that don’t.

And since it’s late and we’re being honest, trying to hold up indies as the minute men rallying against the redcoats (a broken industry) is sort of an over simplification of what indie developers are trying to accomplish. I thought it was a little presumptuous and a little heavy handed.

All that said, I think his intentions are good and he’s trying to do what he thinks is best so I can’t fault him on that account.
crackers

Don’t feel like singling out any specific games, sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me.
TIGDev367

Pointed negativity is fine, I guess – it fuels debate, and indeed, the Internet itself. Vague and summarily dismissive comments are harder to respect, though.

I see the great majority of the Manifesto catalog as being quality work, whether the titles are “my thing” or not. Derek’s match-3 jab left me scratching my head, and the “generic” label doesn’t clarify much for me, either. Is the vague derision of (est.) 100+ indie studios more politically sound than the offering of some concrete examples of mediocrity? How should I know, I’m just a generic identifier. :)
Derek

Hmmm, okay… I’m starting to see your point. Let me clarify a bit. I guess my point is that a derivative RPG/SHMUP/SIM/STRATEGY game is only a few steps better than a derivative MATCH 3 puzzle game for me. So when I say a few steps above match 3 casual, that’s what I mean. The games may be more involved than a match 3, but in spirit they are really just kind of rehashing old ideas without adding anything new.

In terms of quality, I don’t agree. Many of the games, because they don’t offer much new or better to me in terms of gameplay, end up looking like bargain bin versions of commercial titles.
Derek

I think this is all coming down to what you and I perceive as “quality.”

When I hear “Recommended: the Central Committee’s Choice,” here’s what I DON’T think of:

“Multiplayer Super Mario Kart with Snowmobiles and, Um, Poker”

Does that sound like a quality game to you? To me that sounds like something that would get laughed at by the commercial games industry, but somehow gets by with indies. Fuck that.
TIGDev367

Thank you, sir, for clarifications. Now we can debate! Or, we could quit while we’re ahead… that sounds good, too.

Alas, you’ve confused me again by slamming “Arctic Stud Poker Run” for being laughable. I haven’t played it, so I can’t assess the quality, but… it doesn’t sound too derivative. So that’s good, right? I mean, if we’re worried about the commercial industry laughing at indiedom’s weirder ideas, we better not tell anyone about “Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden” either. Oh, damn… too late
Derek

Haha! Well, unfortunately, I really like debating. So here we go… ;)

I haven’t played the game, either… that probably hurts my argument. For all I know it’s a really good game. Well, I don’t believe it would be a really good game… but I do believe it could be fun. Is the idea derivative? Well, it’s a combination of derivative ideas that I haven’t seen before… I don’t know whether that counts as original or not.

Super Mario Kart is a game that’s been redone over and over again… adding multiplayer, snowmobiles, and poker to it doesn’t make it original, in my opinion. It’s really not a strange idea at all, when it comes down to it. If I told you I was making “The Legend of Zelda with Lawnmowers and, Um, Golf” would you call that an original idea? Or am I just throwing things together haphazardly and calling that creativity?

Also, I should mention:

“How’s that for the elevator pitch? You can almost see the frozen look on some game industry executive face as he hears it…”

Personally, that’s exactly what I think game industry execs would like to hear in a pitch. Something like “I’m making a game like Popular Game X, but I’m adding this, this, and this to it.”

Game Industry Exec: “Now that’s something I can understand!”

Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden… honestly, I’m going to have trouble describing how terrific a satire that game is if you don’t already get it. I mean, there’s no way I can explain why… but the writing is incredibly funny and the basic premise that basketball is banned in the future because Charles Barkley killed 12 million people with a “chaos dunk” is extremely creative. The idea is silly, but the wit is sharp.
Alec

Yeah. How do the creators of “Barkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaiden” expect to sell it?

Oh wait, its freeware.

I think that Super Viking Poker Kart goes for $24.95 tho.
http://www.arsecast.com DrDerekDoctors

“Well you know the first rule of internet politicking is to never say anything negative about anyone or anything because it gets recorded forever and can and will be used against you in the worst possible time.”

Oh man, I’m seriously fucked then…

And I agree that when I look at Manifesto’s lineup I’m not exactly blown away by its radical nature but then I suspect that a lot of games which are close to our heart and which we feel are the epitome of indie are free to download and so outside the site’s remit. As our discussions on the forum have proved, we can’t agree on what indie really means…
KNau

How about this – 50% the titles Manifesto launched with were old, real old. Like, “covered in dinosaur shit” old. 45% of the remaining titles were already on sale at other portal sites and had been for a while. The final 5% had been turned down by every single distribution entity on the net for being substandard.

“Yeah. How do the creators of â€œBarkley, Shut up and Jam: Gaidenâ€ expect to sell it? Oh wait, its freeware.”

That’s okay, Manifesto hosts freeware – mixed in haphazardly with the commercial product. I honestly don’t get what all the months of venture capital raising were for. Any of the experienced devs here or on indiegamer could have set that site up in a couple weeks using off the shelf components. It looks like an amateur affiliate farm.

“I guess the real question is, Would you sell your game through Manifesto?”

Truthfully, if I felt like helping Manifesto out (like an act of charity), maybe. But if I wanted to make money off my game then probably not.
NOT The Arsecast Host

A very good talker, but I’m afraid he can’t talk his way out of this one. It has ‘failed project’ written all over it.

You’ve got to look at your competition. Real, Yahoo, BFG… they’ve got no shadow of a chance. A very confused man indeed, and now you’re bitching about support.

Derek’s right this time. And I remember him being the biggest Costik supporter last year.
Ricardo Chirino

I myself define indie as this: Made by individuals or small companies for the love of it, for expressing something, or just for fun. I don’t care if it’s a rip-off or carbon copy of a previous game. Indie is NOT the same as innovative. You can have innovative commercial or indie games, like Katamari Damacy or ICO (commercial) for instance, and Cloud (indie), as well as indie games that are not really new stuff but great nonetheless (like Doukutsu Monogatari). I don’t care too much for innovation, I just care about having a blast and thats where lots of indie games rock. Just my two cents :)

As for Manifesto, I still wish them good luck and I’m even thinking about selling some games in the future with them as one of the distro channels. The site you might dream about may never exist, and as much as you criticize Greg, no one else has done anything like this before, and he’s indeed giving room to games no other sites like Real, Yahoo, etc. would dare to host. So I think it’s a good job so far. (IMHO, Real, Yahoo and the rest of game portals are the kings of Match 3 Match 2 EXTREME EDITION +alpha so Manifesto is still light years ahead of that).

If you want to flame me go ahead, I don’t mind :) I’m still rooting for Greg. Go Greg, go!
Derek

I should point out that I’m not rooting for Greg to fail. If anything, I’m rooting for him to win! And I’m rooting for indies to win, too, natch. :)

I just don’t believe that the way to get ahead is for everyone to bullshit each other just to be nice.
nullerator

“Well, itâ€™s a combination of derivative ideas that I havenâ€™t seen beforeâ€¦ I donâ€™t know whether that counts as original or not.”

I don’t know… How about this: Platformer/Sokoban-clone mixed with JRPG-elements.

Platformer? Derivative. Sokoban? Derivative. JRPG? Derivative.

I think you know which game I’m describing. Maybe you wouldn’t call it original, but I know I would.
Dan Macdonald

^??? is confused ???
Derek

Yeah, I’m not sure… there are a lot of games like that.

In any case, you can break any (most?) games down into derivative pieces. The question is really how much thought they’re tied together with. The theme of the game, also, makes a lot of difference to me, along with how it’s presented.

Puzzle Fighter, for example (Alec came up with this one), is really just Columns with fighting characters in it… it’s quite a simple idea. And yet the two ideas fit very well. Nothing was added to the game really for the sake of adding, or to make the game “different” and yet the game is very different and very fun. The presentation is also great – very stylish and well executed. That’s a match 3 that to me has some heart.
Prio

Mr. Robot.
Which I haven’t bought, at least not yet, because the JRPG fights were pretty simple and easy in the demo, and you can’t skip the animations, and I’m frightened that I’d buy the full game and end up bored to death because the RPG battles would stay dull and unexciting.
god I could write a whole big long thing about what I HATE about virtually all RPGs, but I don’t feel like it.
Prio

(no, I’m not the same person as nullerator. But I’m just, like, briliant. lol!!!one)
http://studioeres.com/games/ RinkuHero

Manifesto Games is just a portal that excludes Match-3’s and other very simple casual games. But, to me, that is what makes it so useful, because the games it excludes drown out all the more typically “gamer” genre games on all the other portals but this one.

I agree that the games on there didn’t blow me away. But, is that Greg’s fault? Or is it the fault of all the independent game developers who haven’t made those games yet?

Also, one criticism of this entry: exactly what independent games *do* you like, if you dislike most of the games on Manifesto Games? I really can’t think of very many independent games that show more originality than what he has on his site.

I also think your standard of originality is way too high, it’s at a level so high that you only get an original game every few years or so. Sure, games should not be too derivative. But there’s also absolutely nothing wrong with making a really good fantasy RPG or a really good shooter.
http://www.tscreative.net BMcC

You’re right, we should just lower our standards. Then everybody wins!
[email protected]

I work for Refuge Games and I just LOVE to spam.