Rise Of The Videogame Zinesters

Book preaching: I want Computer Game creation to be decentralized. I want open access to the creative act for everyone. I want games as zines. (Network Economy, indie)

cf Interactive Art

http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=1583

http://www.bogost.com/blog/rise_of_the_videogame_zinester.shtml

pitches, among other Game Engines: Twine

May'2013: Semi-different view from Darius Kazemi. Let's say you have a thing you want to express or an idea you want to explore. Maybe it’s best explored with a game. Or maybe it fucking isn’t. One time I wanted to make an autobiographical game that summed up how I felt in the spring and summer of 2009. I labored over it for a month, building a shitty platform game of all things, before I realized that I could just WRITE IT DOWN

Aug'2015 update from author: Recently I've been surveying the current landscape of similar tools. Spoiler: They all suck now. Many of the tools I suggested as possible options for a budding game creator with no programming experience - Game Maker, Construct, Stencyl - have shifted towards marketing themselves as professional, commercial game-making tools for Capital I Indie, Capital D game Developers. In today's market, that means accommodating touch screens, mobile games, and filling every tool with so many options that I, who have been making games for ten years, get overwhelmed and lost. How would I teach these to someone who's never made a game before?

• 2021 LiminalWarmth says I work in GameMaker Studio primarily because of the multi-platform support and I prefer it to Unity for working in 2D (simpler IDE), AND originally it was an affordable way to publish to mobile/console... but they're migrating to subscription pricing... shenanigans like this pricing creep are probably gonna push me into either Unity or more like Godot for my next project