That's basically the inverse of my attitude when I back a kickstarter. I generally support what they're doing, believe that they are going to try and make the thing they said, and then just trust that they'll eventually deliver something.

For me, crowdfunding is more about ensuring the actual creators receive my money and avoiding the "publisher", than it's about being able to contribute to creative process.

I backed Wasteland 2 and haven't said a single word to the developers. I've looked at the preview art and video, but I wouldn't mind very much if they hadn't release those things and just showed up with a game.

However, if they did that, and the game fell flat, I might not back another. I assume most Kickstarting companies realize the preview/updates are not "owed" to backers, but are in fact an opportunity to preview (e.g. test) with a highly engaged and invested audience, thus mitigating the risk of failure of their final product.

You speak on behalf of the crowd? The entire crowd? If Ron Gilbert's (hypothetical) proposal is unattractive to people, they won't support it.

I'm fine with funding projects with either philosophy. If it comes down to just "give me the funds or the game can't get made", and I want to play that game, then I'm happy being a substitute for the publisher's money. (I had to look up maecenas, and I still don't get it)

I agree with your conclusion and I don't think it is necessarily the opposite, you can have artist freedom and access to the backstage.

But, as he admitted, he's not interested in breaking records. He's interested in making his game the way he wants.

That's totally legit and I totally support someone making that claim.

It's up to each and everyone of us to assess that claim and decide if we trust him in that endeavour.

I strongly resist the idea that Kickstarted games MUST follow one model or they are wrong or bad. Not every creative mind works well with the chaos and bile that spews from the crowd.

In Monkey Island I would sometimes get annoyed and google for what to do out of angry frustration. It was easy for me to throw my hands up and say "I don't give a shit any more, time to move on!" Lots of times the solutions made zero sense to me. In Machinarium I still got a sense of frustration and puzzlement, but I would try to forego the hints out of pride for as long as I could which made for a much more enjoyable experience.

I played MI 1 and 2 in the early 1990s and after revisiting them after 15 years or so, my impression was exactly the opposite: "Look how well the graphics has aged!". Yes, pixels are there, but the aesthetic value of locations, landscapes etc. is relatively unaffected, it's still pleasing to watch (esp. in MI2). I think this says something about the quality of graphic design in those games.

Deathspank was mildly amusing, but got tired very fast. It was visually flimsy and felt underdeveloped overall; it wasn't a good RPG, but it wasn't a good action game either, and it was a terrible adventure game.

Admittedly neither of those games are classical point and click games. It may well be that he's just much better at designing point and clicks than at the other game genres.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-sp...

I usually just do block quotes as italics by surrounding them in asterisks. As I did above.

Then you make a game.

(Even worse, in my opinion, are those that require that you delve into a certain part of the dialogue tree in order to get an item or otherwise open up something in the game, which means you have to go through the entire dialogue tree even some of the questions seem uninteresting and you don't want to go through with it. DotT did have a few of those, if I remember correctly.)

I agree about the retro pixel art. A retro style just to capture the essence of a golden age is, in my opinion, philosophically harmful; it quickly becomes annoying. There are some games that sort of redeem themselves: "Superbrothers: Sword + Sorcery", which uses ultra-low-rez graphics blown up to full size combined with fluid animation, is pretty good, although I wound the glib, self-referential tone of the game to be a bit obnoxious. Then there are Wadjet Eye games (like Gemini Rue and Primordia), which use some kind of SCUMM-like, really retro engine, and graphics that are something like 320x200, again blown up to full size, but without any modern animation wizardry. The games are so good that it works, but you do get the sense that the time of this kind of game is, and should be, over.

While I loved the zany style of DotT, I never liked the exaggerated "French" drawing style of Monkey Island 3 [1]. Monkey Island 4 was just awful, and the new Monkey Island episodes are downright creepy in its empty-eyed-doll animated characters, and the "enhanced" remake again does a kind of Disney-style makeover that doesn't quite fit. (Among other things the animation has gone from wonderfully zany to just plain. Watch how they animate talking people [3], it's hilarious.) (Of course, part of the problem with MI3-4 and later was that they turned Guybrush from a likeable, sort of innocent hero into an annoying, clueless, condescending moron somewhere between Chris O'Donnell and Chris Elliot. I don't know if it was the voice, or the hair, or whatever, probably a combination of them. It didn't work for me. It wasn't Guybrush.)

A more recent game that creates a cozy and charming, yet contemporary and technologically up-to-date style is Machinarium. Crisp high-rez graphics, charming animation, fun story, pretty much perfect in every way. That's the way to go, I think.

[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8op_6zSEYQ/UBDrWkuhwiI/AAAAAAAAAG...

[2] http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/100/1008507/tales-...

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9eJHotWoDQ

I'm reminded of this line from near the beginning of the movie Primer:

"The rest of it is the mercury bath... which you wouId know better than I do, but they're probabIy just showing off. I mean, you have it, you got to use it, right?"

Nonetheless, two things I absolutely love about text: 1) It can't be ruined by bad acting. 2) It leaves more to the imagination.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/static/images/media/screens...

It certainly does not look bad, but many icons here lack the same crispness you would find in pixel art.

Assuming you follow all the correct guidelines (1 pixel wide outlines, no pillow shading, good dithering, small palette, cold -> warm shading, clean lines and fills, etc), pixel art can approach perfection -- because of its inherent limitations. A single vector curve can have an infinite variety of permutations, but there are only so many ways you can draw a line of pixels (the same goes for a NURBs surface or set of polygons). It is exactly this limitation that enables artists -- if you are given an infinite canvas with every color of paint in the known universe, you can kill yourself trying to perfect one piece.

As soon as you hear George Lucas say the words 'what I originally intended' you should run a mile.

In other words, yes the game would be great regardless of its looks - but a visually pleasing setting only helps the cause.

And Machinarium is definitely charming.

Classic Adventure games are a cross between a puzzle game and a story - often using inventory or area switches to get past..

Walking Dead instead used an illusion of choice as it's core mechanic. It focuses on story more, and it works well, but it's not identical.

That said, TellTale's Sam and Max games and Tales of Money island are highly reminiscent of such old school works, as is Machinarium and quite a few others.

If you're in a hurry, try their top 100 list, at http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/18643

Also, the Lua version used in Grim was 2.5 (!) and a major issue was the lack of cooperative multithreading (see http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=articles&pagenumber=2).

I don't know what version was used in Escape from Monkey Isand (3.1 ?), but the current version of Lua also "runs in circles" around the Lua that was used in those games.

EDIT: more by Bret on Lua in Grim: http://www.slideshare.net/hughreynolds/lua-patient-zero-bret...

There's a programming language for writing textual interactive fiction games, Inform 7 ( http://inform7.com/ ), which reads as a natural language. For example, here's part of the "programme" of a game (copied from http://www.hpiweb.com/newmedia/i7/cbrk/source.html )

The Forest is a room. "This forest is cold and damp. Sunset is drawing very near and shelter must be found soon. The only apparent direction to go is north." A room called Before the Castle of the Big Red Key is north of the Forest. "The castle looms before you. Its massive front door has a lock that seems to glow a fiery red. You must continue north past that door. The only other exit is to the south." The big_red_key is here. The description is "It's a big red key." The printed name is "big red key". Understand "big", "red", and "key" as the big_red_key. It unlocks the massive front doorway. The massive front doorway is north of Before the Castle of the Big Red Key and south of the Castle Vestibule. The doorway is a door.

It would be interesting to have a graphical equivalent.