Dogmas as art in games

[tunca]

Have you heard of Dogme 95 of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg?

Here is the web site:

http://www.dogme95.dk

and here is the list of dogmas they manifest

http://www.dogme95.dk/the_vow/vow.html

I'd like to develop games on some dogmas, that look like Lars von Trier's but with adaptation to the games industry instead of the cinema. This is all apart from business, just experimenting dogmas as art in games.

Here is a little dogma list:

1) When developing the artificial intelligence of NPC's, never favour them and only give them the opportunities a human can have.

2) Never allow game saving during a level. State of the game can only be saved at the end of a level.

3) Do all animation by procedural methods and never use raw data like motion capture.

4) When using physics, never directly control position or velocity unless initializing the game or level, you can only directly change the force on physical objects after the game begins.

The above dogmas are just some that I try to obey in experimental games. Also in some commercial games, I try not avoiding them. Some are useful and some are a little utopic.

It took about 60-70 years for the cinema to apply experimental dogmas, probably starting with Stanley Kubrick. I'd like see the artistic development in the game industry similar to the cinema. I'd like to meet people who may be interested in developing a Dogma 2005!

[lakibuk]

Lars von Trier rules.
You know that Ernest Adams brought up what you are suggesting with his Dogma 2001?

[soniCron]

2) Never allow game saving during a level. State of the game can only be saved at the end of a level. How is this at all beneficial to the player or the gaming experience as a whole unless levels are < 3-5 minutes each?

[tunca]

Lars von Trier rules.
You know that Ernest Adams brought up what you are suggesting with his Dogma 2001?

I didn't know about Ernest Adams. His approach in 2001 is inspired by Trier like me as I learned from his articles:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020531/adams_01.htm

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010129/adams_02.htm

He prepared his own rules (different approach than my rules). They are very interesting:


1. The design documents shall contain no reference to any object which is installed inside the outer case of the target machine.
2. The use of hardware 3D acceleration of any sort is forbidden.
3. Only the following input devices are allowed: on a console machine, the controller which normally ships with it.
4. There shall be no knights, elves, dwarves or dragons.
5. The following types of games are prohibited: first-person shooters, side-scrollers, any action game with "special attacks."
6. All cinematics, cut-scenes, and other non-interactive movies are forbidden.
7. Violence is strictly limited to the disappearance or immobilization of destroyed units.
8. There may be victory and defeat, and my side and their side, but there may not be Good and Evil.
9. If a game is representational rather than abstract, it may contain no conceptual non sequiturs, e.g. medical kits may not be hidden inside oil tanks.
10. If a game is representational rather than abstract, the color black may not be used to depict any manmade object except ink, nor any dangerous fictitious nonhuman creatures.


Besides the rules, I strongly recommend reading the reason behind these rules in detail. He based his thoughts on a three word manifesto "Technology Stifles Creativity". There is quite a depth there as he widens the meaning.

[tunca]

How is this at all beneficial to the player or the gaming experience as a whole unless levels are < 3-5 minutes each?

That's true. For longer levels saving with periods is better. This is perfectly done in GTA. And it sucks in Commandos 1 (you know you can save after every bullet you fire).

[Robert Cummings]

These constraints are crippling for the indie developer making a living, but ok if you want to play.

I think that most of these items you mention, for example procedural and so on are already persued to good effect in the demoscene industry. However they look crap when applied in a game. I certainly don't want to view spastic hunchback on stilts walk cycles in Half life 2, nor do I want to see perlin noise textures everywhere.

So, for inspiration look at the 64k demo scene if you want to go down that road.

The other things you speak about such as game rules - ie no medkits in oil tanks and so on, rarely exist in games anyway. And when they do, I think you'll find the game has the emphasis on being fun.......

In short I think all these rules will not in any way have any impact on the game other than making it boring and ugly.

[cheese_phantom]

Besides the rules, I strongly recommend reading the reason behind these rules in detail. He based his thoughts on a three word manifesto "Technology Stifles Creativity". There is quite a depth there as he widens the meaning.

Originally Von Triers approach is to break (or simpler, refuse) the rules of conventional film, particularly being against Hollywood style and genre, but it is also an uprise against European cinema that was accused at that times to adapt itself to the American standarts, for the sake of higher profit. Directors like Wolfgang Petersen and Luc Besson made really Hollywood-like films with big budgets, using the iconography and narrative style of American movie genres. But more than that, it's about breaking the habits of the audience. The danger that was anticipated was that what the audience defines as "film" is limited to what it get's from Hollywood. Anything that is different is considered as "boring and ugly". So it was seen as a threat to those that want to do different or experimental things. Everything seemed to support the pro-industry and pro-entertainment views and that was seen as a threat to the right to be "different" and doing something without thinking of making a profit. Von Trier's quite radical minimalism and anti-aestetics is not really new. In the 60s some German directors like Vlado Kristl were famous for their anti-aesthetics. His goal was not just to experiment with the film medium but to annoy the spectator on purpose by not sticking even to the simplest aesthetic rules. In Cuba they had a similar manifest that was titled "For an Imperfect Cinema".

Usually it all boils down to some sort of realism that addresses the production process itself: Don't allow the spectator to get immersed or absorbed by the game; always remind him that this is just a game made by humans. Break all his conventional expectation like conflict, hero, climax, effects etc. Tell him that life doesn't need to be the way we live it.

Well, could you break the expectations of a player and prevent him to be absorbed by the game without making him think of that "this is boring and ugly"? I mean something that is quite different from what you define as a game, but that you still play "naturally" until the end. I wonder if you have seen some games of Gonzalo Frasca; he has quite pretty-graphics games that have no real goals... after a while you just understand that it's meaningless to reach the goal with the given tools and that is a moment where an ideological shift or some sort of "awakening" happens.

I always thought that dogmas or manifestos are not a good answer to the unwritten but "manifest" conventions of the industry. You limit yourself in a somewhat reactionary way and destroy some of the experimental options you otherwise would have to "break the rules", just because the industry uses this methods. Also I believe that these "reactionist" manifestos of games are someowhat determined by the particular moment of videogame history which their author is part of. When cinema was young and many of its abilities or the nature of its technology was yet not fully explored, there were many manifestos that tried to prevent some features to be used because the believe was that they kill "creativity". Just read some articles about the advent of sound in cinema. There are one or two manifestos that say "sound will make it easy and kill creativity, don't use it". Same when color came. As videogames are still in their adolescence and the technology is developing awefully fast, I think these "early" manifestos can't find a solid ground for a long life. It makes no sense to restrict yourself. Some of the things you restrict yourself from using and think they are the columns of the industry might be not any longer a standart in the industry after a few years. Maybe this time you will find a romantic side in this forgotten industy-disposals and your new manifesto would say you should only use this forgotten things. In other words, manifestos tend to carry the danger that they are reactions to temporary conditions and make no sense after a certain while since the condition that created the reaction is no longer there.

After all Adams list of do's and don't do's is too eclectic. What is the unique motive that makes this manifest one with a strong and clearly understandable position? Some of them are too straight translations from von Trier. A technical limitation that von Trier mentions for film, might not have the same result as the limitation that Adams imposes on the game developer. Seems like at some point, the "why"s that von Trier has for his own restrictions are not so visible in those of Adams. This is why some of them seem to be restrictions for the sake of restriction. They seem to be restrictions that put emphasis on better craftmansship and do not solely function as ways to increase creativity. Now a dogma is surely not about effectiveness or better craftmanship. It's about ideology and political preferences.


But on the other hand I think that the basic ideas behind dogmas might be quite OK. They show you different aspects and invite you to think about why you do things the way you do them. They are sort of kicks-in-the ass (even sometimes kicks-in-the-theet) that make you go for a "difference". Just concluding they'd be "ugly or boring" after some reasoning means that you have already a conformist side in you. This *might be* not so good news for your creative potiential.

I think what would make a game a Dogma Game (e.g a game that creates a radical and somewhat disturbing difference) is it's ability to be perceived as a true scandal. Scandalous in terms of aesthetics, gameplay or story. Some of you would claim that GTA III is such a game. I would say it isn't. It's just the same evolutionist universe that we tend to believe in since the 19th century, where the strong and "driven" survives.

[tunca]

I think that most of these items you mention, for example procedural and so on are already persued to good effect in the demoscene industry. However they look crap when applied in a game.


True for most of the time. Sometimes R&D on procedural methods lead to good results in the long term and get used in the industry. I think shaders are good examples for that.


I certainly don't want to view spastic hunchback on stilts walk cycles in Half life 2, nor do I want to see perlin noise textures everywhere.


Neither do I.

[tunca]

I always thought that dogmas or manifestos are not a good answer to the unwritten but "manifest" conventions of the industry. You limit yourself in a somewhat reactionary way and destroy some of the experimental options you otherwise would have to "break the rules", just because the industry uses this methods.


Do you mean that such manifestos do exactly the opposite of what they intend to? That is a point to pay attention. I wonder if that is the case in Adams. From his rule list and about the detailed explanations, I was not clear about what side he was on. He was radically opposing the game industry. But he is not as struggling enough and he does not seem to convince big game companies. I found that a little too defensive and made me think that he wasn't strongly believing himself.

What I personally think about the rules of Adams is that they are not presented well. I'm sure there is a good background. It just needs to be explained better.

[cheese_phantom]

Do you mean that such manifestos do exactly the opposite of what they intend to?

Not necessarily. But yes, I believe they could put further limits on creativity while they try to free it from the limitations of the industry. Sometimes they reflect an approach that seems to punish tools for things they can't be held responsible for. Or they want to prevent people from doing things they might not do at all. It just seems that all this is not really a solution. Wouldn't it be funny if the industry would accept Adams' rules and after a while we would complain that all the games based on the new rules look alike? And we would release a new dogma with more restrictions?? :-)

I think there are better ways than doing exactly the opposite of the industry just because you think their methods limit creativity. I think before the method, the mentality that makes use of it should be identified. Once you know what mentality makes creativity suffer, you could go for much more creative things with the same methods. After all it's about making different things. Restricting yourself from using methods means you might miss a chance to make something different.


I wonder if that is the case in Adams. From his rule list and about the detailed explanations, I was not clear about what side he was on. He was radically opposing the game industry. But he is not as struggling enough and he does not seem to convince big game companies. I found that a little too defensive and made me think that he wasn't strongly believing himself.

Adams is a industry veteran and I don't really think he could imagine a world without the industry. His position seems to be more a revisionist one, even if his suggestions sound radical. However it would be cool to see a Madden NFL Dogma version published by EA :-)

Sometimes it just seems to me like "middle-class member" complaints when I read this manifests begging for creativity. Especially when you read other, really shocking cinema manifestos from the 70s, like those of Glauber Rocha in Brasil. (Towards an Aesthetics of Hunger).

[tunca]

I think there are better ways than doing exactly the opposite of the industry just because you think their methods limit creativity.


I think that is a balance between creativity and focusing. I pesonally use some rules to focus on a subject. That almost never brings creative things but technical methods. And if you are able to change your dogma (after some achievement) with another one, than you have the chance to reach the next method.

[cheese_phantom]

I think that is a balance between creativity and focusing. I pesonally use some rules to focus on a subject. That almost never brings creative things but technical methods. And if you are able to change your dogma (after some achievement) with another one, than you have the chance to reach the next method.

For me the focal point is what I want to achieve. I think from that point on everything else becomes instrumental and might be subject to experimentation. But usually some basic rules make up the frame in which I want to discover different and new options. And when I find different things I can only be glad if they result in change of something that I considered a frame rule before. This is how I expand my own borders. At a certain point it seems quite similar to your method.

Maybe I have this advantage of not yet being a programmer, which leaves a certain space in design "undecided" for me. Simply because I can neither recognize nor break rules in something I don't know about. But this might be on the other hand a disadvantage, since sometimes creativity exactly needs this rules (borders) to be able to find an orientation. There is no win-win situation in this. Each advantage is at the cost of another advantage (even if I don't know what that one is)

[Anthony Flack]

1) When developing the artificial intelligence of NPC's, never favour them and only give them the opportunities a human can have.

2) Never allow game saving during a level. State of the game can only be saved at the end of a level.

3) Do all animation by procedural methods and never use raw data like motion capture.

4) When using physics, never directly control position or velocity unless initializing the game or level, you can only directly change the force on physical objects after the game begins.


I don't particularly like any of these dogmas. Although I admit, I am following #2 (they're only 1-2 minute levels though). The other three, actually I'm almost philosophically against them.

[KNau]

It's worth noting that films shot under the dogma restrictions are utter garbage. I defy you to find one that isn't. It stands to reason that games developed under such restrictions would be of the same quality.

The dogmatists (is that a word?) forget that a movie or game is ultimately about the audience and not about the developers' inflated egos. If you care at all about your audience, the business as a whole and making quality products then you will quickly wipe everything you've read in those dogma documents from your brain.

[cheese_phantom]

Here is a little dogma list:

1) When developing the artificial intelligence of NPC's, never favour them and only give them the opportunities a human can have.

2) Never allow game saving during a level. State of the game can only be saved at the end of a level.

3) Do all animation by procedural methods and never use raw data like motion capture.

4) When using physics, never directly control position or velocity unless initializing the game or level, you can only directly change the force on physical objects after the game begins.




Oh, by the way, I hope you don't think I have something against your dogmas. I am sure they inspire you a lot and you enjoy experimenting with them. And so might others who want to try them out.

My comments were generally on dogmas and on some aspects of them that might work against what they wanted to encourage: creativity. Also I think I don't like the word itself too much because of it's connotations in regard to matters such as freedom etc. However I think one could use many dogmas as tips, rather than rules.

For example your dogma 1 might be a wise rule for many games. For me this dogma translates into a sentence like "don't be unfair to the player". In many games the player feels like "there is a designer behind all these creatures and
it seems like he wants to keep me busy since this is what a game has to do. But this designer must have forgotten that I also want to have fun and not just something that keeps me busy for the sake of the rule that players have to be kept busy".

Rule 2 is interesting. But why? Because saving is in many games a way of cheating or beating the game? Could there be a game where the enemy AI is clever enough to save the game at a moment that is of his own advantage and beam himself back to that point when things go too bad?
Or a game where you and the enemy have three rights each to save the game level at a certain point and three rights to turn back to the game at the last saved point? I'd like to call this a SSG (Strategic Saving Game) :p Only if you win the level, the game auto-saves etc.

Rule 3 should be meaningful for those who can program. It seems to me like a way to test your programmer skills, right?

Rule 4.. can you give a concrete example from a game?

[cheese_phantom]

It's worth noting that films shot under the dogma restrictions are utter garbage. I defy you to find one that isn't. It stands to reason that games developed under such restrictions would be of the same quality.

The dogmatists (is that a word?) forget that a movie or game is ultimately about the audience and not about the developers' inflated egos. If you care at all about your audience, the business as a whole and making quality products then you will quickly wipe everything you've read in those dogma documents from your brain.

Personally I know many dogma-type films where I felt that the director cared a lot about his audience. I was happy about the quality of how these directors decided to tell me the story. I do not agree that dogmas necessarily result in utter garbage. It is maybe an educational difference or a lack of a certain background that makes you feel that this movies do not really appeal to you. But they have an audience and their definition of quality is quite different.

There is no thing as a homogenous audience anyway. That means also there is no universal taste that these films miss to address. They are just different films for different people, that's all. Like the girls games that you find so boring and which audience you do not really regard as gamers (but you wouldn't hesitate to regard as an exploitable audience if you feel it will do good to the business) :D

[tunca]

The dogmatists (is that a word?) forget that a movie or game is ultimately about the audience and not about the developers' inflated egos. If you care at all about your audience, the business as a whole and making quality products then you will quickly wipe everything you've read in those dogma documents from your brain.


I'd like point a different approach than what we conventionally expect from dogmatic approaches. I try to find ways to make use of them for the sake of players. I see them as challanges to take me further. An example from athletes: most athletes work with harder conditions in training than races. Runners tie masses to the wrists. It makes them get better results, unless they forget to take them off in the race. In game development, with challenges you take risks of developing new methods despite it is very tiresome (like dogmatic films as The Idiots) and demoralizing. But, sometimes, you find new things and apply them in games.

If I were to write a conservative rule list than it would look something like this:

1) Never use a library except the standard libraries.

2) Never use a scene or 3d models to make it look more aesthetic, unless simple boxes are not enough to express the idea.

3) Never advertise. You can only place a link on your website and wait for people to hear about it.

4) Never put a credits section.


Oh, by the way, I hope you don't think I have something against your dogmas.


Not at all. I have no passion to defend them. They are just tools for experiments. They are chosen as technical challanges only. Their reflection may bring coincidental results.


Rule 4.. can you give a concrete example from a game?


Rule 4 is the most complicated of all. It has a scientific origin. It is the rule of most physics theories with much much more conservative details (I diluted it for the sake of games). You know science uses dogmas, but names them as postulates. It was used by Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and many other deterministic teoricians for over 200 years to make challenging generalizations which brought today's modern technology (That period is too long for a game :) ). In games, you can make use of the rule very efficiently. Many game developers use it. The ones with theoretical physics background know its meaning the others do it without conscious. I'll give a few examples from games. When you shoot a man in Far Cry, after the man dies, rule 4 starts to be purely used. You experience very smooth and realistic falling dead body. It makes a huge difference with the old style games which used to uncontuniously set the man's body on the ground and that looked crappy. But still, for Far Cry there is a way to go. Before a man (NPC) dies, rule 4 does not work (because of some technical hardness which will be overcame with R&D in the next generation games we'll all see). And when rule 4 is not on the way, when a man hits a wall, you'll see an unrealistic collision and limb behaviour of the man. That is caused by avoiding rule 4. You can see those silly bugs in almost all third person shooters.

check this: http://www.mmandel.com/gdc

[soniCron]

1) Never use a library except the standard libraries.

2) Never use a scene or 3d models to make it look more aesthetic, unless simple boxes are not enough to express the idea. This would do nothing but help develop better programming skills. A camera operator being forced to crank the film might make him a better camera operator, but it won't make him a better filmmaker.


3) Never advertise. You can only place a link on your website and wait for people to hear about it. I fail to see why this would make the "art" any better for anything less than a pure masterpiece.


4) Never put a credits section. Nice anti-ego thing here.


Not at all. I have no passion to defend them. They are just tools for experiments. They are chosen as technical challenges only. Their reflection may bring coincidental results. Then they're not exactly "dogmas," are they? More like, "loose guidelines." ;)

[tunca]

Then they're not exactly "dogmas," are they? More like, "loose guidelines." ;)

Within the research stage, as you are analyzing hands-on, they are absolute dogmas because you have to stick on stubborn and expect results. After research, you must SHIFT-DELETE them. I'm talking about a dilemma.

[illume]

I think something like this that has been successfully applied to games is the 48 hour from scratch game competitions, and the indie game jams.

You are restricted to do something from scratch within a short time period and to a set theme. The games that come out of these are often quite interesting and weird. Maybe not the best games ever, but some could stand up against some shareware titles. However I think people take what they learn during those 48 hours and use the new techniques/thoughts on their less restrictive games.

The restrictions placed apon you force you to do things differently than usual. Which was the intent of the dogma rules. Allthough probably all of the dogma films are crap, I'm sure that people who made them learnt something from the process and applied that to their usual methods and made better films because of it.


Chairs,

[Anthony Flack]

A better dogma rule would be to not allow any realistic physics.

[tunca]

The restrictions placed apon you force you to do things differently than usual. Which was the intent of the dogma rules. Allthough probably all of the dogma films are crap, I'm sure that people who made them learnt something from the process and applied that to their usual methods and made better films because of it.


Exactly. Dogville and Italian for Beginners are good examples.

Not Dogme95, but some very popular titles such as Kill Bill have the similar approach. The audience loves dogmas in those films with conscious or without.

[tunca]

A better dogma rule would be to not allow any realistic physics.

Wow wow wow! That is quite creative. May I take that into my list? Sometimes not using physics is very challenging, but you may get a different gameplay for some type of games that has never been obtained before.

[Black Hydra]

Boy I hate listening to this "manifesto" crap from these jaded "artsy" developers.

Yes, I think it is good to try and strive for higher levels of performance, but a lot of the things they spout is complete BS.

In my mind there is one true measure of success and that is money. If you didn't make any money, it wasn't very successful. The reason a game failed (marketting aside) is because it wasn't very popular with a mass audience.

Critics who somehow believe that their tastes are more sophisticated and "correct" than everybody else sometimes believe games that satisfy their own niche interests are actually better.

If a game is great, then with the proper marketting it should do well.

An example of this situation with two critically acclaimed games is Ico and Katamari Damancy. Ico did poorly, Katamari did very well. You can't blame the audience when they don't like your game.

So all this dogma crap about "no cutscenes", "no fancy graphics", ect. is really putting unnecessary restrictions on games to satisfy the few jaded critics who want it in games. I can tell you right now that people like cutscenes (in moderation) and fancy graphics, so I should remove them from my game why?

[Ska Software]

How about no text? Iconic representation only!

[cheese_phantom]

How about no text? Iconic representation only!

That's interesting.
Does this also count for speech? :)

[Diodor Bitan]

A somewhat related post (back when my spelling wasn't very good) http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=200333&forum_id=17

[Anthony Flack]

In my mind there is one true measure of success and that is money.

But what if you become successful, make a lot of money and don't need any more? What would you do then? Life would have no meaning!

By this reckoning, I think you were saying that Ico isn't a good game, right? But I really liked it. I thought it was quite special. It was actually one of the only PS2 games I liked. So does that mean I must be wrong? I certainly felt like it was a well-made game, and I thought I was having a lot of fun playing it, is this not true?

And if the majority is always right, why don't we have better politicians?

[Speckled Jim]

Seems rather a pointless restriction to me. I could never understand what we were supposed to gain from the cinema version. If you don't like what Hollywood is producing, then you make something different. But that doesn't mean you need a rigid list of rules to define "different".

Same for games. The one rule you need is that there need be no rules. The idea of enforcing no saving mid-level for example, simply because you see it as something done by the mainstream and therefore automatically bad, is simply breathtakingly arrogant.

How about thinking what makes for a better experience for the player instead. A rule which is only there seemingly to make life easier for the developer is of dubious benefit.

[Nexic]

So let me get this straight, someone has written up a set of rules, on how to correctly 'break the rules of conventional game design'? Umm, what's the point?

If I wanted my game to be some kind of artistic statement of how different I was from the mainstream, I certainly wouldn't be copying anyone else now would I?

[Anthony Flack]

Yeah, I totally agree with you guys.

But.

I think the idea is that you set up a bunch of rules to force yourself to try different things. And in doing so, you learn new tricks, and you advance the art-form. And after that, you drop the rules again, and the stuff you go on to make is better than the stuff you used to.

[Speckled Jim]

The problem with that is the idea that the rules are an improvement. But are they? I wouldn't say so.

[cheese_phantom]

In my mind there is one true measure of success and that is money. If you didn't make any money, it wasn't very successful. The reason a game failed (marketting aside) is because it wasn't very popular with a mass audience.

I doubt the formula money=success=meeting-the-taste-of-the-mass audience. The thing is that money might not always be measuring the value/sort of success that really matters, or might not really indicate the type of person that we assume to be that talented, clever, creative and nice person that deserved the success.

Sometimes it's really just about some opportunistic exploitation of trends. If I publish a Paris Hilton sex tape and a billion boys download it for 0,99 $ each, I make a billion. Now that makes me really succesful. I mean we're talking about a billion here. But is that a success that makes you feel like you want to stand behind your argument? Sometimes having success and answering the needs and taste of the audience just means that a bunch of *ssholes had a nice trade with each other.

Remember the billions of Uncle Sam baseball-hats and T-shirts and flags they sold in the US after September 11? Make money through hysteria and pain? I really can't stand such success. Beyond that, audiences and tastes may vary: Wouldn't the arabic mass audience like a game where it can crush with planes into symbolic buildings or blow off israeli checkpoints? Isn't that supposed to be popular amongst kids either? Do you know how much palestinian kids like to play counterstrike mods were they can kill Mossad agents? Didn't many kids like to crush down the Iraqi forces in this Command & Conquer thingy? I just give these examples to tell what good sales can really mean.

I think it's just not so a good idea to measure success with money. Because it equals/reduces all sort of goods or values into something that can be measured by one universal measure that decides what is "good". It's like: when all vote for Hitler, then Nazism is a nice thing. In many cases you just find out about ruthless and ignorant people... on both sides of the trade.

And for myself, I can't and won't accept this sort of measurement.


Well, to hell with ethics we can say. But then there is still power. In many cases the money that had been accumulated or could be accessed before you make the game will decide the money you make with it later on. And sometimes success=access, so simple. I am talking of the road to the shelves (a thing that is maybe one of the reasons you call yourself an indie) I am sure, many indies here *know* what that means. And also many know how annoying it sometimes is to make games for the "masses". Sometimes its just more than making the game "user-friendly", it is sort of capitulation if you have to cut off some features of your game.

Well after all, it makes no sense to measure the success of dogma films/games with a measure they don't care about or are against. Money is just one of the measures you can apply, but many "successful" games would lack a hell of things that are important to the dogma people.

Different worlds.

You can't blame the audience when they don't like your game.

You can't always blame yourself neither.


Well, no offense... all I want to say is, it's just not that simple. Otherwise I have nothing against a creative person being rewarded with some cash for the nice things she allowed me to experience.