Macguffin Games

Demo Night & the Leigh Alexander Challenge

At GDC this year, GamaSutra news editor and blogger Leigh Alexander issued a challenge to game developers.  During the Game Journalist’s Rant, she asked us to be open and forthright about the process of making our games.  She made the case that a lot of the static between the press, developers, and the public is the result of devs hiding behind PR people and double-speak.

She has a good point.

From my experience in AAA games, she’s right.  Sometimes it’s because the publisher is controlling marketing and PR, but a lot of the time it’s because the developers don’t trust the people interviewing them.  These developers have talked frankly to the press in the past – but then what got printed ended up making them look bad.  After something like that, of course they stick hard to their talking points – give very little away and admit no weakness unless forced to do so.  If that feature you were going on about earlier on gets cut, well, just pretend it didn’t happen.

The situation for indies, on the other hand, is a little different.  An indie doesn’t have a marketing department sitting over their shoulder, so there is no one to tell them to shut up.  And for an indie the maxim of any press being good press is absolutely true – since no one has heard of you, you should take almost anything you get.

So I find myself exactly one week away from presenting Heritage to a pile of people, most of whom I won’t know, many of whom may be from the press.  It’s an intimidating proposition.  On the one hand, any press I can get is fantastic.  On the other hand – this is terrifying!

The whole process of getting the game to this point has been pretty uncomfortable at times.  Prior to to last year I had only dabbled in game design, and now I’m often asking for advice from friends and acquaintances who have worked on some of the biggest games out there.  It can be difficult not to feel like an idiot.  And next week I’ll be presenting this fledgling game to people from major publishers and the press?  Yeah, it’s a little intimidating.

I think I see a way forward through this, though.  Here’s the trick – I am indeed an indie.  In the end, the only thing on the line with the game here is my personal reputation* and savings.  There’s no giant company that stands to lose $15 million on my game, no boss back at the office who will be upset.  When I really look at what I’m worried about, it comes down to people not liking what they see.  My thought is that if I lie or am more evasive about the game in order to cover its flaws, I’ll just squander whatever good will I had coming into this for being a plucky underdog.

So here’s what I’ll do.  I’m taking up Leigh’s challenge.  The best possible thing I can do for myself and Macguffin Games right now is to be totally up front and honest about where the game is at.  Instead of papering over or apologizing for its deficiencies, I’ll just explain where we are at in the development cycle.  Ask people for their thoughts and advice.

In the end, it still sucks to be vulnerable and to put your half-done creation out there for the world to see… but that isn’t going to change.  So I’ll do my best to face it head on.

*Graham’s reputation is out there as well, but since he’s a newcomer to making games, he’s a bit more on the sideline regarding this whole industry ridicule thing.