My Presentation Rant

Hi,

Well, now that it's over, my project pitch I think went pretty well.  I sat down (actually paced endlessly) and memorized the following tirade:

Hasn't it ever bothered you that those games you play are plotless, and that any given backstory is merely an excuse by the game developers to give you repetitive gameplay?

At the risk of sounding like an idealizing hippie, I find the dreary monotony of modern games despicable. Something needs to be shaken up, and I think that it's high time that that shaking up comprised the pathetic excuse of a plotline that as a gamer you endlessly have to suffer through.

Consequently, I am making a game where there is something to think about. It will be a WWI flight simulator, but the characters will have personalities, and the backstory will have merit in its own right. It won't just be some curtain to hide a gaping editorial hole as in some other game where you just punch the same buttons in the same ways to do the same thing for the same rewards, incentives, and dumb monologues.

By contrast—and, in case you glazed over it in my proposal—our game will have a plotline that is surreal, anachronistic, bizarre, and downright insane. We are going to make a game so “out-there” that when something like a swarm of giant spiders, quantum tunneling through mountains, wielding mayonnaise-shooting death ray cannons, accompanied by dragons, and lead by Dalek overlords under the mistaken geographic presumption that they're in Spain, kick down the front doors of indie gaming and crash the party, the rest of you will be too awestruck to wonder why you didn't think of doing it first.

Well, here's your chance. I need imaginative, flexible, fast-coding innovators with a passion for creating the next big thing out of whole cloth. It will be fun, challenging, and rewarding. I need CS students who thrive on their own reserves of such commonly untapped creativity. If you like code, and you like good games, we need you. Please consider my proposal; thank you very much.

The tirade was delivered confidently, and I'm pleased to say that that I exceeded my expectations for the amount I would remember (nearly all; faltered a bit at the end in the moment).

I got a lot of people asking me about the project and seeming interested.  However, I think the overall effect was too strong.  In one student's words: "Your project sounds really great, Ian, but honestly, I think you're too fucking insane to work with."

Well, I prefer the term "idealistic".  Oh well.

Ian