Manifesto Accepts Maverick Award

By: Shapermc

On: March 15th, 2007

Hello there TIGSource readers. After meeting up with Derek Yu at GDC (and falling head over heels for him) I got on my knees and begged him to let me write for TIGSource. Begrudgingly he agreed, but said I would have to do my damnedest to impress him. For now I’m on a trial basis until he kicks me to the curb, but I have attitude for gains!

Some of you may know me as the editor of The Gamer’s Quarter, or even my shabby (and recently belated) GameSetWatch column Parallax Memories. With that said, I’m hoping that I can add to the already fantastic lineup of TIGSource news and articles here, so if I bore you just let me know (and Derek, so that he can fire me).

For my first entry I wanted to share with the community Greg Costik’s GDC Maverick Award acceptance speech. It is touching and heartfelt as well as inspirational.

“[I’m] delighted also that the development community so clearly sees that we we’re trying to accomplish is important. … [O]utside the industry’s mainstream, the signs are hopeful—in the increasing attention paid to independent games as a means of sustaining our heritage of creativity; in the serious games and “games for change” movements; in the growing acceptance and study of games by the academy.

I want you to imagine with me a game industry that would make us proud to belong to.. I want you to imagine a 21st century in which games are the predominant artform of the age, as film was of the 20th, and the novel of the 19th; in which the best games are correctly lauded as sublime products of the human soul. I want you to imagine an educational system in which games are integrated into every aspect of the curriculum, in which everyone understands that games can illuminate things in ways that are complementary to but different from text."

Very potent words there, and one can only hope that they ring true outside of the choir he was preaching to in the audience last Wednesday night. I recommend heading over to Manifesto’s blog to read the entire speech.

Photo taken by Vincent Diamante

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: We’ve achieved a modest level of sales, and the curve is on an upward path, but we’re very aware that we have a long way to go. To succeed, we’re going to need to continue plugging away to get the word out, and we’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.