thread: 2012-03-27 : Indie POV pt 3: A Small Pep Talk
On 2012-04-05, Josh W wrote:
I think there are loads of possible criteria for success, but having criteria requires comparison, and internal comparisons (make this thing that was in my head appear) miss some things that actual competitiveness has:
People in competition don't want to copy from each other, even when they want to do the same things. They'll want to do them differently, not because they're looking to differentiate themselves with water-weak "selling points" like "we do everything with d4s instead of d6s", but because they want to do what that game does better than it does.
Oh and yeah, sometimes this is being daft, and you'd be much better off copying a great idea and giving credit, but that should just encourage you to do something new and interesting with it.
People in good natured cooperation also give each other kudos, and build a network of games that do different things "ok, I admit it, this game is better than mine for this..". If everyone keeps comparing their games with other people's, they'll probably be able to tell people a lot about them.
Course, too much dwelling on other people's games is also daft, because if people already do have a head start on you, making some random thing that you enjoy will be more satisfying than pining away looking at games other people have made.
I can't really make a "point" from this, so I'll stop there!
