Reneissance of PC gaming?

I am so excited to see successful projects at Kickstarter. PC gaming is returning to its roots! The good old days when game designers didn't really need to please anyone are back. And now that there is a world wide channel for marketing and selling, the budgets can grow too. For example, Wasteland 2 has raised over 1,4 million dollars and the money keeps on pouring in.

It's definitely a shift in the paradigm of PC game development. Until now, publishing a full-fledged PC game was a huge risk. It had to sell millions just to break even. In order to sell millions, the game has to be made easier and shallower. Or at least that's what all the big publishers seem to think and thus concentrate on sequels and known brands that sell. Burger games.

With Kickstarter, passionate game devs and designers can pitch their idea, no matter how insane. If many enough gamers see it as potential fun and back it up with few bucks, it becomes reality. This just might be the Reneissance of PC gaming.

Saving money can be expensive

Couple of days ago I received and RFQ from a government entity. They needed a logo and some applications for it so I was thrilled to see what the project was about. As I read on the RFQ it soon turned out to be an invitation to a logo contest and a dodgy one too. They wanted a sketch or an idea for a logo, reserved the right to back out of the deal, deadline was in less than two weeks and that's not all: they expressively pointed out that the cheapest one will win.

Folks, this is not how you go about designing a logo or business identity. Creative work is not something you buy in bulk or emphasize low price over everything else. Logos and graphic design are highly customized products - in order for them to be successful, designer has to be familiar with the product, company and the project.

Now I'm not trying to sound elitist here. There certainly are endless cases where a highly customized work is simply not needed or won't provide enough value. The thing is to consider your aspirations and adjust the RFQ accordingly. In the one I received the expectations were high but conceptions about creative work were coarsely flawed.

I love my work and practically all of my clients are a pleasure to work with. I treasure them and their goals and in return, they value my work and my opinion. It's a pity that in large institutions this concept is just too difficult to grasp and focus is on saving money, no matter the cost.

Maybe you're just trolling?

Get a load of this. Canal+ ad for the upcoming world hockey championship 2012.

There are so many things wrong here I don't know where to begin. Perhaps the most disgusting quality of the ad is its view of the target group - hockey fans. Seriously, you're awkwardly comparing winter war to ice hockey and we're supposed to have a breeze of sentimentality? Or is it supposed to be funny? Maybe both? By making this ad you're sending a clear message: hockey fans are a homogenous group of low-brow morons who are easily seduced by a whiff of weird nationalism where honor exists only in the rink or on the battlefield.

Trying to simplify target audience can be useful sometimes. Underestimating and condescendingly trying to sell something to a pretty big part of the nation is fucking stupid. I for one, was considering buying the Canal+ package for hockey championships. Not anymore.

Startups and design

Today I attended a lecture about startups by Steve Blank. Very inspiring and thought provoking.

Steve's talk was about the kind of startups that need invested capital and either go Google or broke. Freelancing.. well, we are what Steve calls "lifestyle entrepreneurs" and he said there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yet, there are many similarities between the mindsets of startuppers and freelancers. Certain resilience is certainly needed, as well as passion and the ability to adapt.

There was also something energizing about the way Steve talked about the startup business model, or lack thereof. Everything is under constant change and the product evolves with every iteration. The initial business idea can change fundamentally in the process - which is why it's important to keep busy at it, bouncing ideas and asking customers questions. So in fact, the evolution of a startup is much like the evolution of a good design.

Startups are all about evolution, just like design. Designers should be, too.

TeliaSonera's new logo

Let's start with the BS that marketing came up with:

"- The symbol is unique, dynamic and unites us as a company. It symbolizes global and local connectivity at our customers’ fingertips. When customers see the symbol they will know that they are both part of the strongest local operator as well as the whole international TeliaSonera group of companies.

The symbol also manifests TeliaSonera’s heritage as one of the telecoms industry’s true pioneers."

Nigga please.

I have a theory of their train of thought. Being a huge corporation, they're afraid of making something unique and striking. This is only natural. Using abstract, symbol free graphics is a good strategy if you don't want to annoy anybody. Thing is, they could've made something timeless and classy yet retaining the references to IT but no. They had to be trendy. Trendy to the point where they add gloss to the logo and round the corners of the typography. Oh the typography of this one.. *shudders*

As they are a huge company I'm pretty sure the logo has a portion of committee design in it. It's a result of contradictory requirements. Still, the logo itself is really not a disaster. It's the flawed process and mentality behind it that bugs me. Business identities shouldn't follow trends nor should they be made generic.

Minecraft and design

For those who have been living in a mine for the last year - Minecraft is a game where you build things out of blocks. Blocks and nothing else but blocks. There are different colours and materials but there are no complex shapes, just blocks. The game has no mandatory milestones or ending, just millions and millions of blocks. It's up to the player to choose what he wants to make out of them. Minecraft is essentially a big box of legos and that's the genious of it. You have a very restricted way to create things which leads to some mind-bending creations.

Same principle often applies to design as well. If you have a very restricted toolset, you often end up creating something far beyond the capacity of the given tools. Less becomes more.

Minecraft is also interesting because it always reveals something about the player. One player creates natural landscapes where others might build castles, underground halls, complex I/O systems, rollercoasters or replicas of New York. Some players finish one project before moving on to the next, others have dozens of unfinished constructs. One thing seems to be common to all players though. They're all hooked to their virtual box of legos.

Boardgame fun

One of my own long-lived projects is to make a boardgame. I've been too lazy with that but just a week ago my brand spanking new desktop PC lost its will to live taking all the games with it so all of the sudden there was a game-related void in my day.

I already had some thoughts on the theme, rules and strategies of the game so I quickly drew a board and got to work. Soon I was ready to run the first test games and soon after that I had spent seven hours just balancing, running test games, thinking of new rules and not eating a thing. What a great fun! It's almost like solving a puzzle of sorts. There are so many things to keep track of in order to make the game truly enjoyable. No longer I hesitate to call myself a nerd. If I ever did.