I Don't Make Games

This post originally appeared on the author's blog, It Was Never MS Paint

Nearly three years ago, I was fired for making a video game. Except I wasn’t. I mean, I was fired. It was in the news. I’m not refuting that. But the thing I made? The creation that got me fired? It wasn’t a game. I may have called it that at the time, but in retrospect, I Get This Call Every Day was never a game.

It was made in a code framework intended for games. It is hosted and sold where games are hosted and sold. It was inspired by a community game jam. I even called it a game for a very long time. But a large portion of my critics are right: it is not, and has never been, a game. They use this as an insult, but I’m not denigrating my work here. There is nothing wrong with the fact that I Get This Call Every Day is not a game. It is an interactive digital experience that communicates a fictional and yet still real part of what was once my life. It is an experiential record of a nearly true event. It is not played, or witnessed, or read; it is experienced.

I’ve made games before. It’d be hard to deny that HEMO RACERS, the multiplayer heartbeat racer we made two days before I was fired, is a game. It is a thing you play; it exists to be played, preferably by friends or friendly rivals. My first creation, Zombie Zapper, is a game. So is my second work, EscapeOut. So is A Game For Ana, my playable Valentine’s gift for my wife. So is my most recent project, War Never Changes. All of these utilize the language of play to present a challenge and to entertain. They are games. They are played.

I Get This Call Every Day shares some of the language of play, but it uses a different vocabulary to speak. You choose dialogue options, but not for success or challenge - you choose them to represent how you would respond, or to test the consequences of an action you would never take in reality. The feedback is not binary. There is no win state. There are degrees of failure. The end result is not entertainment; it is frustration.

I Get This Call Every Day represents the kind of experiences I want to keep making. There is an industry, of games, and a thing like IGTCED doesn’t really fit within it. I’ve tried, and found some financial success; but the people for whom IGTCED resonates with are not the same people who shop on Steam or who browse Kotaku for news. I have met some of these people. They are the ones who have lived through a similar experience. They are mothers and fathers whose children love games and who they want to show a taste of adult life in a format they understand. They are the office workers eager to show others a digital representation of their daily reality, that someone besides them “gets it”. They are not gamers, at least to themselves.

And let’s be honest. This past year has shown that games, as a culture and an industry, is a giant trash fire. I have no regrets leaving that behind.

I may make games in the future, but going forward I am not calling myself a game developer. Pretentious as it may sound, I am a digital experience creator. I Get This Call Every Day will still come to Steam, eventually. After that, I look forward to creating more experiences.