The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 3

The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 3

I was firstly approached by an individual named Mathias who saw my t-shirt. On the back it said “Seanarchy Gaming: Shift Happens”, appropriate I guess. He told me that his company, Klonk Games, had made a game that actually had the same name and I proceeded to check it out. It was a pure co-op game. Two blob people tied together by the fact that if one grows the other shrinks. Mathias is the level designer for the game, we talked about their inspirations, how he got involved, and about the game itself.

Mathias’s Interview and Shift Happens: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

With my camera already set up, I picked up the tripod and went to the next door game called Typoman. This was another word based game, a growing theme in modern game development I see, but with a darker tone and very different mechanics to our previously visited game. This game was made by Brainseed Factory, and their founder Bilal and I had a talk about their game and its interesting take on the genre. Imagine words like hate or anger being enemies and the word HERO making the body of the main character. It was artistically initiative and mechanically interesting.

Bilal’s Interview and Typoman: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

My next visit was to one of the most interesting sights at Gamescom. When I tell you the arcade is coming back, I mean it. The booth did not feature a game necessarily but an idea. Imagine VR cafes all over Europe and you get what Sebastian Kreutz is coming up with. His company is called HoloCafe and the goal is to make VR affordable and an experience you can go out with friends to do. The company is even making exclusive HoloCafe games, such as probably the first MOBA like VR experience. If you are living in Dusseldorf then you are in luck because it is opening there very soon.

Sebastians Interview and HoloCafe: https://youtu.be/39D2CSdwaD...

When I turned the corner I met with a person names Hamza from the publishing studio RawFury. They were showing off a game called Gonner, which is essentially Binding of Isaac, struck by lighting, dropped into a whale, and then dropped into whatever Joker was dropped into and you might get the picture, maybe. Furthermore we talked a little about the publishing business as a whole and how the public tends to negatively see their practices.

Hamza’s Interview and Gonner: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Finally I was mesmerized by the sight of a game that mixes Jenga with Tetris called Tricky Towers. WeirdBeard Studios Rebecca and I talked a lot about the inspirations for the game and her own experiences going from flash games to being here at Gamescom. Afterwords her colleagues and I had a conversation about how the games industry was moving forward and their own challenges within it.

Rebecca's Interview and Tricky Towers: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

From those seven hours at Gamescom I managed to cover more ground than I thought. However what can be said about the games industry today is that from most people's perspectives it is quite simple, bun in reality its complexity is exceeding grand. What I tried to do was tell the stories of games and, more importantly, their creators. What is missing from games journalism is that human element of the industry. Stories that can inspire others to do the same and create experiences which will stand the test of time.

Independent developers are what drive a lot of these stories. Almost all developers come from this position. What one is witnessing by giving attention to the independent branch is a glimpse of what is going to drive the next triple A games of the future. We can see how games are made at the core due because unlike the teams EA has of hundreds we can ask one member of a fifteen person team questions that are less answered by a PR manager, but by a human being. Furthermore, this year has demonstrated that the independent branch is now growing more than ever. In my first year of Gamescom I saw maybe fifteen to twenty games, the year after around twenty five; this year it has grown to more than thirty.

What can be witnessed is the story of a market being made more open in a time of economic uncertainty and global job losses. What can also be witnessed is the big outlets sparsely giving attention to these success stories in the making. At the same time if we ever talk about them we only see the game and not the people behind it. What might be a very simple subject is creating the appearance of an industry without personality. One where people do not care about the people behind their favorite creations and one where scolding of bad games has become normal without any attempt to ask the developers for their honest input.

That is what I am trying to change now, I am trying to make video games not just a product of personal enjoyment but a piece of art with a person or an entire team behind it. So when you hear of a new popular independent game or larger production, take your time to see where these people came from and how they got there. You might just learn something.

Thank you for reading my article, if you liked this article please let me know how I can improve for the future, I am always happy to hear constructive criticism.

Written by Sean W.Havel - Chief Content creator of the Seanarchy Gaming Channel.