Joshuah Bearman has an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about the burgeoning independent video game developer scene.
Basically, technology and distribution has enabled a do-it-yourself, ‘zine movement in video games. It’s a raucous avant garde, and wants to upset its medium’s establishment while also — dare one say it — making video games that aspire to artistic greatness.
Profiling the scene for the magazine, Josh spent some time at the Game Developer’s Conference, during with the indie designers convened in a corner of the Moscone Center. This was the site of an incredible lecture by an indie gamer named Cactus, which was one of Josh’s favorite scenes — until it got cut at the last minute! Hey, it happens. But thanks to the magic of the internet, such tragedies can now be corrected by allowing resected prose to appear here, on the Rumpus!
FROM THE BOWELS OF THE GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE, MARCH 2009
Room 131 was filled to capacity when Cactus took the stage, flat drunk on Malibu Rum, to give his talk: How To Make a Game in Four Hours. Cactus is the handle of Jonatan Sondstrom, a 23-year Swedish amateur who has made over 100 video games over the past five years. For many of the people in the audience, this prowess made Cactus a folk hero. And he looked the part, in torn-up vans, red jeans, and green army cap. Cactus’ games are sensory overload experiences, where the player is thrust into a strange world of psychedelic imagery and must quickly resolve the ensuing confusion. This would also be a fitting description of Cactus’ presentation, which was mumbled, heavily accented, accompanied by colorful slides, and opened with a rudimentary animation of a digital turd. “DON’T MAKE GAMES IN FOUR HOURS IF YOU STINK,” the text admonished. “END OF LESSON ONE.”
Unlike Jason Rohrer, who programs in C++ — “I feel like I’m working with the grain of the machine,” he says — Cactus uses GameMaker, a drag and drop software tool that makes it possible for anyone to make a working game. GameMaker, which costs $25 for the “pro” edition, has allowed Cactus to spend his days in his childhood bedroom at his parents house in Gothenburg, Sweden, transmitting his bizarre output to the world for free.
Whereas Rohrer might start programming with a premise, Cactus and other designers like him approach each game as new experiment with no hypothesis. They start doing something, and see what happens. The process is somewhat algorithmic: constantly branching out, discarding duds, finding occasional breakthroughs. “You make a game a month, or every week,” a young Canadian designer named Chris Lobay later said, “And you’re going to have a few eurekas.”
Over the course of the next half hour, Cactus delivered what seemed at times like a mixed-media performance experiment in PowerPoint comedy. The aesthetic was like his games — crude but clever. The point: a video game can be anything. “Games don’t need to be fun. They can get intensely weird and freak you out.” He said from the stage. “More people should make games that are not for children, but for adults. And, like, mature people.” Cactus did not explain precisely how to do this (or make a game in 4 hours, for that matter), but he did say that anyone can try. His one caveat: “Don’t make games that suck.”
By the time it was over, Cactus’ talk was already becoming a matter of GDC legend. He personified the indie game movement’s anti-establishment cultural ethos, and although his actual games don’t speak to a broad audience now, the example he set for relentless innovation excited the room. “If you were talking about music,” said one indie designer, “then this would be like seeing the Ramones play for the first time.” Cactus left the stage, and was quickly surrounded by a posse of like-minded indie designers and admirers. “Let’s go get more drunk,” he said, and wandered off. It was 4pm.
