The Scratchware Manifesto
I read this long ago, and I still feel it’s important to remember. Here’s the important part:
We will develop for open platforms, not proprietary consoles.
We will work in the white-hot ferment of our own imaginations, striving to produce games of enduring merit, games so fine that generations to come will point to them and say, this, this was important in the creation of the great artistic form we know as games.
We will strive for innovation over imitation, originality over the tried and true. We will explore the enormous plasticity of what is “the game,” thefantastic flexibility of code, seeking new game styles and new approaches to the form.
We will create games we know gamers will want to play, because we ARE gamers, not MBAs or assholes from Hollywood or marketing dweebs whose last gig was selling Tide.
We will work in small, committed teams, sharing a unified vision, striving to perfect that vision without fear, favor, or interference.
We will find our market not by bribing retailers to stock our product, but on the public Internet, reaching our audience through the excellence of our own product, through guerilla marketing and rabble-rousing manifestoes, by nurturing a community of people passionate about and committed to games.
We will create, through sheer force of will, an independent games revolution, an audience and market and body of work that will ultimately redound to the benefit of the whole field, providing a venue for creative work, as independent cinema does for film, as independent labels do for music.
We reject the machine. We reject the retail channel. We reject big budgets and big teams. We reject $50 boxes of air. We reject end-caps and payments for shelf-space. We reject executives and producers who don’t understand what they sell. We reject timidity. We reject the notion that “we know what works,” and commit ourselves to finding NEW things that work.
We will turn this industry on its head.