The creator of Super Meat Boy about games as a special kind of art
The other day, the author and developer of the hits Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac - Edmund McMillen gave an interesting interview to Gamezebo . In it, he shared his vision of the state of the gaming industry market, spoke about the experience of creating game parodies and price experiments. We translated it for Russian mobile game developers on App2Top.ru and made a special version for Habr.
For many developers, the rise of the App Store was simply manna from heaven: there were many examples of how the author managed to earn a lot on one game. But the lion's share of developers is not able to repeat this. Why do you think?
To be honest, I hate the gold rush. I hate it when some people say: “I’ll make a game under iOS to earn some extra money”. It does not reach them that the App Store is a roulette, if you like, a lottery. Nobody argues that it is possible to break the jackpot, but the chances of it are really miserable. And the money and time to develop can take a lot.
')
There is so much in the App Store that it will soon be impossible to find at least something there. What do you think, maybe it's time to change something?
I once thought so too. But then we started working on Super Meat Boy: The Game for the iPhone and iPad, my opinion changed. The fact is that against the background of low-grade projects and all kinds of garbage that the App Store is full of, a quality game always stands out. Let's take as an example the game Sword & Sworcery - it has earned something in the region of a million, it seems. And why? Because against the background of other games, it looks unreal cool. Some users are willing to pay more in the hope of getting a really good product for their $ 5.
As far as we know, did you make parody games?
With our colleague Tommy (Tommy Refenes) we created a lot of parodies. We came up with the same Super Meat Boy as a response from the international organization PETA, which fights for the ethical treatment of animals. Another parody is Zits and Giggles , which Tommy created in an attempt to prove to Apple that the quality of most applications in the store is below average. And people still buy them.
Zits and Giggles gameplay was straightforward: players were asked to squeeze acne on the smartphone screen. With a price of $ 1, there was no sale at all. Then Tommy decided to conduct an experiment and raised the price to $ 5. Demand has risen. Then the price was raised to $ 10, $ 20, $ 30 - and so on. After more than ten people bought this app for $ 400, and Tommy gave a fiery speech against Apple, the game was removed from the store.
This allowed Tommy to prove promiscuous users when buying. He also said that these people are not gamers at all and have no idea about games, so they buy everything in a row.
It seems to me that high-quality games are needed now more than ever. And all that is being offered to users now is to kill time with some kind of simple nonsense.
Well, probably, to fully enjoy the game, knowing that its main task - to get money from you, is not very pleasant?
It turned out that all the games that I developed were closely related to one or another event in my life. Rather, I thus expressed my protest in a satirical form. One of them, as I said, is the case with the organization for the struggle for the protection of animal rights. And this is one of the highest forms of art - with the help of the game to be able to get people to think, to let them know that they have a choice.
Few people are making games now to make people think about something.
Now - probably, but before they were. Moreover, there were various awards and awards for such projects. Moreover, the games could really be devoted to serious problems - such as starving children in Africa.
And now everything has turned into a business. Although many still perceive video games as art, as they combine video, film and graphics. Although I believe that the art of video games is not the ability to cover all the components, but the ability to interact with players and communicate with them. At the same time, you cannot control the whole process, you only give them a reason to start the dialogue, and its further development is up to the players. That's exactly what puts video games in a number of other arts, and an understanding of this began to appear only today.
For many developers, the rise of the App Store was simply manna from heaven: there were many examples of how the author managed to earn a lot on one game. But the lion's share of developers is not able to repeat this. Why do you think?
To be honest, I hate the gold rush. I hate it when some people say: “I’ll make a game under iOS to earn some extra money”. It does not reach them that the App Store is a roulette, if you like, a lottery. Nobody argues that it is possible to break the jackpot, but the chances of it are really miserable. And the money and time to develop can take a lot.
')
There is so much in the App Store that it will soon be impossible to find at least something there. What do you think, maybe it's time to change something?
I once thought so too. But then we started working on Super Meat Boy: The Game for the iPhone and iPad, my opinion changed. The fact is that against the background of low-grade projects and all kinds of garbage that the App Store is full of, a quality game always stands out. Let's take as an example the game Sword & Sworcery - it has earned something in the region of a million, it seems. And why? Because against the background of other games, it looks unreal cool. Some users are willing to pay more in the hope of getting a really good product for their $ 5.
As far as we know, did you make parody games?
With our colleague Tommy (Tommy Refenes) we created a lot of parodies. We came up with the same Super Meat Boy as a response from the international organization PETA, which fights for the ethical treatment of animals. Another parody is Zits and Giggles , which Tommy created in an attempt to prove to Apple that the quality of most applications in the store is below average. And people still buy them.
Zits and Giggles gameplay was straightforward: players were asked to squeeze acne on the smartphone screen. With a price of $ 1, there was no sale at all. Then Tommy decided to conduct an experiment and raised the price to $ 5. Demand has risen. Then the price was raised to $ 10, $ 20, $ 30 - and so on. After more than ten people bought this app for $ 400, and Tommy gave a fiery speech against Apple, the game was removed from the store.
This allowed Tommy to prove promiscuous users when buying. He also said that these people are not gamers at all and have no idea about games, so they buy everything in a row.
It seems to me that high-quality games are needed now more than ever. And all that is being offered to users now is to kill time with some kind of simple nonsense.
Well, probably, to fully enjoy the game, knowing that its main task - to get money from you, is not very pleasant?
It turned out that all the games that I developed were closely related to one or another event in my life. Rather, I thus expressed my protest in a satirical form. One of them, as I said, is the case with the organization for the struggle for the protection of animal rights. And this is one of the highest forms of art - with the help of the game to be able to get people to think, to let them know that they have a choice.
Few people are making games now to make people think about something.
Now - probably, but before they were. Moreover, there were various awards and awards for such projects. Moreover, the games could really be devoted to serious problems - such as starving children in Africa.
And now everything has turned into a business. Although many still perceive video games as art, as they combine video, film and graphics. Although I believe that the art of video games is not the ability to cover all the components, but the ability to interact with players and communicate with them. At the same time, you cannot control the whole process, you only give them a reason to start the dialogue, and its further development is up to the players. That's exactly what puts video games in a number of other arts, and an understanding of this began to appear only today.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/150535/
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