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[RoseHeart]

Now days indie video games become crazy popular, even with only a few or even one person designing the whole thing.

Each day it becomes easier to make games. For years players have made full conversion mods. Games have releases "map makers", with tools to make custom scenarios. I remember my poison of choice was "StarEdit", StarCraft's map maker. And I actually spent more time playing other's "custom maps" than the game itself, sometimes I was a gladiator, or a pokemon, or even a hero in "defense of the ancients", a map that later become a "Real" PC game. Tools like these make it so an amateur with an idea, has one less step between the idea and the players.

Introduce forum games. Maybe you have played one, Mafia perhaps? (yes, it also available in other formats, like board games) The first time I played it I was blown away. How could something be this exciting? And not a video game, but a text based roleplaying game? My eyes were opened. There is something here...this medium of games on forums isn't as limited as it appears.

Since that day I have dedicated myself to what I have found to be the medium of games that has the thinnest membrane between the idea and the players. Within a day,  I can see something I thought of being played by 6 players. As a former board game designer hobbyist, this meant going to meetups and playing each others games cold. Personally I am more a maker than a player, but it was polite to go through the gauntlet of people's half bakes games, so they might try yours, its only fair. But Forum games have allowed me to be selfish. I rarely play others, and that is fine. Everyone making games are finding plenty of players eager to test them out. I feel there is a quite renaissance happening in this medium. Or perhaps it's just at a highly optimal equilibrium of content creation and consumption.

Either way I have been so liberated by forum games. I used to dream of being a video game designer, but I just did not have the patience to code. Game mechanics are different. Though if I want, I can even improvise as I go. I keep seeing glimmers of there being something here, some way I can accomplish the kinds of experiences I'd like to deliver, in the most humble of all of gaming's mediums.

I am really excited.

[Egan_BW]

Ah, yeah. I used to be more into videogames, wanted to make them maybe. But really making games is easier when you don't have to deal with computer programs. A good chunk of my entertainment is coming from the RTD board at this point, really.

Only problem is that I love to create and am bad at following up sometimes.

But yes, I understand your enthusiasm. This kind of gaming is a whole hidden world of potential. Also very hard to explain to the uninitiated, which makes it awkward to explain to people IRL this hobby which monopolizes most of my excitement.

[Enemy post]

I really enjoyed running the two RTDs I've done so far.

[RoseHeart]

But yes, I understand your enthusiasm. This kind of gaming is a whole hidden world of potential. Also very hard to explain to the uninitiated, which makes it awkward to explain to people IRL this hobby which monopolizes most of my excitement.

I had to do this today. I said it the way I usually do. I create boardgames and test them out with players online.

[Castlecliff]

Hi rose. It's been a while since we talked hasn't it.

[RoseHeart]

Hi rose. It's been a while since we talked hasn't it.

Refresh my memory. What did we talk about?

[Loud Whispers]

I've not much to add other than I concur with the OP

[Funk]

Yes and you get to focus on story then just pileing on mechanics or slugging thru them,

[scriver]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

Nah, just kidding. There's only one Game, and you just lost it.

[Loud Whispers]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

Nah, just kidding. There's only one Game, and you just lost it.

Words to put on your tombstone

The point about map editor games brings up major nostalgia. I've still yet to finish and release a concept I've remade again and again in the AOM editors, one where you control a single villager and compete against rival villagers to collect enough wood and food to let your family survive the winter. Every time your wood stockpile or food stockpile reached 0 your family would begin taking damage, dying one by one until game over. With each death things would get harder and harder for you, with less hands to work the farm or keep the fire going. A random civilisation would begin steadily encroaching into your forest and eventually annihilate it wholesale if they got big enough, while the forest would come alive and try to kill anything still inside it at nighttime. Deeper in the forest, worse things like druids and dryads roamed...

[Egan_BW]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

Nah, just kidding. There's only one Game, and you just lost it.

I am not allowed by the rules of the game to avoid losing whenever I think about the game, but there are no rules which say that I should be unhappy when I lose the game.

After all, losing is fun.

[scriver]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

Nah, just kidding. There's only one Game, and you just lost it.

I am not allowed by the rules of the game to avoid losing whenever I think about the game, but there are no rules which say that I should be unhappy when I lose the game.

After all, losing is fun.

Ha! I love it. And it's only the winners who gets sacrificed to the gods after all. Maybe losing is for the better.

[RoseHeart]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

- REDACTED -

YOU BASTARD!

@Loud Whispers, thanks for sharing that. ...I am sure it would be a blast!

[Egan_BW]

It's not a real game unless somebody gets sacrificed to the gods afterwards.

- REDACTED -

YOU BASTARD!

Clearly, you have not yet learned that losing is fun.

[RoseHeart]

I remember what got me into games. Never devalue the impact you can have on kids.

In day care, a male caretaker assistant would draw mazes. He taught me how to do it. I could make a game. With just a pencil and paper!