How the nitty gritty of video game funding shapes what you play
From old-school publishing models to a collective of indie game makers, funding has never been more important for an industry in perpetual flux
The 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco … game makers and executives make backroom deals while attendees enjoy the show. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
The 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco … game makers and executives make backroom deals while attendees enjoy the show. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
LewisGordon
Mon 15 Feb 2021 05.30 EST
Last modified on Wed 24 Feb 2021 11.29 EST
Brenda Romero, the designer behind Prohibition-era strategy game Empire of Sin, remembers the meeting as if it were yesterday. Facing publisher bigwigs in a Cologne conference room, the veteran game maker presented what she had been writing for the past five years, and dreaming of for 20. “It was the most nerve-racking pitch of my life,” she says. “I�
Stupefied. 18 January 2021
Magic. Have you ever really considered what it means? We re
told what it means a lot, especially in games. We re told it means fireballs and lightning bolts and turning people into sheep. But is that really magic, or is it simply a term used to describe something we ve become accustomed to? It s a thought that s been nagging at me.
It occurred reading The Tombs of Atuan recently, the second Earthsea book by Ursula K. Le Guin. It s a book about a wizard but something about the magic feels different. It feels incomprehensible. It s not defined by dice rolls or numbered values or rules, but worked out somewhere outside of explanation, just past the edge of understanding. A climactic battle happens where you can t see it: in the wizard s mind. He holds off a terrible evil but there are no explanations to lay it bare, no parameters by which to understand it. You understand it only as something extraordinary. And it feels like m
As 2020 draws to a close, many will reflect on 12 months defined by stress, upheaval, and the urgent need to confront some difficult truths about the way the games industry operates, and the myriad ways it can be a better and more inclusive place.
But just as that process of self-examination is necessary, so too is recognition for those already working to solve those problems. In this GI 100 series we will profile 100 individuals and organisations making progress in vital areas like diversity, accessibility, charity, mental health, progressive politics, lifting emerging markets, uniting communities, and more people whose stories can show us how this industry can be that better and more inclusive place.