Can you mix fun & serious?

The videogames industry keeps growing year by year, nowadays the number of videogames studies (where most of them have been created very recently) is the highest it has ever been, however, this economic growth is not always accompanied by social progress. Big companies are afraid to take big risks that may destabilize their consolidation and they keep producing the same successful format of videogames. It’s worth mentioning the enormous budget that is destined to this “triple A” productions, that is not only destined to the production of the game but to promotion, being promotion increasingly important in the last years.

The huge amount of money is inducing in the videogames industry the same effect seen in the movie industry in the last years: there is not a significant amount of risky or different products creativity wise, companies go for tittles that are improvements or continuations of famous and awarded sagas, or remakes of classic playability games, so they can secure a high number of loyal players.

The problem goes actually further: in this stale state of creativity violent videogame titles or videogames that just try to entertain the player have become the norm, without trying to provide anything more to the player.

However, many people see hope and a chance for change in smaller studies, the so called “indies”. This studies are usually composed by a small team and have a limited budged, but they have an open creativity range (they are not constricted by producers who have too much to lose or studio policies) and, some of them, are willing to risk, innovate and offer new alternatives to the classic storytelling and playability, creating risky and new characters, free of stereotypes, trying to convey a feeling the player, to make him think.

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At InfiniteGames we are working under the motto "revolutionary notions", trying to provide something extra to society through the biggest and most powerful entertainment source today: videogames. We are not satisfied with just creating fun games that attract to a big number of players; we want to give them something to think about, something that helps...

We are trying to mix fun & serious, so players can have fun while learning or thinking about something of importance.

But, we are living in hell...it's very difficult connecting to players and media offering non classic videogames. Experience is proving that our range of target players is much smaller and more difficult to reach, and the effort is titanic.

Our last title is the platform videogame Aqueloo, remarkable for its watercolour graphics, relaxing and amazing soundtrack, its unique playability and its commitment with the environment protection (ecology).

Before continuing the videogame development (it is now at 60/75% of the total development) we have tried to make a market research, for knowing our players interest in Aqueloo. We have launch both Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns, and written to many videogame press, blogs and web pages, and we are pessimistic about the results.

For more information, you can visit the campaings here:

Steam Greenlight

Kickstarter

The questions are, therefore:

- Is there a place for fun&serious games in the market?

- Is there no interest at all for non action, violent or classic playability videogames? or, aren't we reaching correctly our players though internet?

- Have we failed setting the campaigns? Aren't they correctly constructed?

- Aren't PC players our correct target? Would we find more interest in mobile platforms?

I would thank ideas and feedback from you all!!!

I would like to end this reflection with a calling:

"Society and people who dare to pursuit their dreams are able to change the world."