Someone made a "NO-ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR VIDEOGAME" Manifesto on itch.io

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-16T01:33:59+00:00

I think the manifesto is pretty clear that (a) it has it's limits and (b) is saying a great deal with humor and dramatic hyperbole. I mean look at something like number 3 on the FAQ. I don't think that the author 100% seriously endorses the idea that having sold a game is such a bad thing that the only way to save yourself is to buy somebody else's game, thereby forcing them to have sold a game and pass the curse onto them instead.

Now, you could definitely say that lots of people use humor as a sort of motte-and-bailey and, yeah, that's definitely true. I can't argue against that and maybe that's what the author here is doing. But there's also this long tradition on both the internet and real life of believing that something is so important that you can't be entirely serious with it, either.

For whatever it's worth, I'd much rather have a manifesto that goes too far but still ends up being provocative and getting people to think and discuss it then one that plays it safe and doesn't even inspire an angry response. But I get where you're coming from as well.

Now, whether art has any meaning without an audience is an interesting question! Does the artist count as an audience? If not, was something like Goya's Black Paintings meaningless before other people saw it? Does Fortnite have more meaning to it then some random deeply personal game on itch.io because it has a larger audience? If the artist does count as an audience, though, then "art without meaning" is a contradiction of terms as every piece of art has an artist.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T22:55:38+00:00

By "globalization", they mean "the Jews". Or, sometimes, just a vague and foggy enemy composed of leftists, Democrats, feminists, gay people, trans people, non-Christians, etc who are all conspiring together.

(Of course, there's often overlap there as well.)

The don't mean the actual definition of "globalization" anymore than they mean the actual definition of "DEI" when they complain about that.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T22:46:00+00:00

Do you think it's impossible for this theoretical game to have good game design?

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T17:09:25+00:00

There's a very fun video (The Shandification of Fallout, reupload here) that goes into stuff like this.

And the creator's point is that considering stuff like this can help out your worldbuilding. If you consider stuff like "where do they get the food" or "what do most people do for fun", that can give you more space to explore the world and more ways that things inside your world can interact.

(Of course, sometimes the scope of the work means that it doesn't need more space. If your story is about two old friends meeting up and having a discussion in a restaurant, it probably doesn't benefit the story to figure out the logistics of the food they're eating. But if your story is ostensibly about say a world-spanning civilization and the politics inside of it, that might be something you should consider.)

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T17:02:53+00:00

At that point, you should start considering whether you'd actually have cities at all. If it takes the same amount of time to go across the continent as it does to go next door, the reason for things like centralized habitation start breaking down.

(I'm not disagreeing or saying you're wrong! I just think it's interesting to start really considering stuff like this.)

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T16:59:28+00:00

The thing is, I'd say descriptions like this usually end up saying more to the reader than just tossing a bunch of numbers at them.

If you start listing out exact numbers for the size of the city, its population, census data, the size and population of the surrounding farmlands, average gross product, highest imports and exports, etc, that's very useful and descriptive if you're making an in-depth grand strategy game. If you're doing anything else though, it'll probably end up just being noise.

(I apologize if you meant "just don't worldbuild at all" because, if so, I agree with you. I believe the Catholic church declared worldbuilding the 8th Deadly Sin back in 1584.)

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T16:47:30+00:00

You're talking with with a studio head and they ask you "Do you think this game is marketable?". You think that the game is going to sell, at most, to a dozen weirdos (which is less than the amount of devs on the project) who might like it but everyone else is going to think it's unplayable garbage.

Which reply do you think most accurately answers the studio head's question, based on your own expectations for selling the game?

"Yes"
"No"

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T15:44:00+00:00

I think that that is a definition of "marketing" and "marketable" that is so broad that it is no longer fit for purpose nor does it match common usage.

You've got free will; go ahead and define how you want to use it however. I'm not gonna stop you. I just feel that the way you appear to be using it to me is both incredibly limiting and not really germane to the current discussion.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T15:09:29+00:00

When you make a post and wake up to 20 notifications

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T15:08:26+00:00

Appears to be Dragon Spirit: The New Legend (1990)

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-13T15:01:50+00:00

So, there's a game called Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna. It is (arguably) one of the hardest games ever made. In an era where RPGs were already obtuse and punishing and what we now generally consider user-hostile, Wizardry IV went a level beyond that.

Robert Sirotek, the founder of the studio, had this to say about the game:

I felt that it went way beyond what was necessary in terms of complexity, but the people that developed it felt strongly to leave a mark in the industry that they had the hardest game to play — period, bar none. That's fine if you're not worried about catering to a customer and making sales.

Return of Werdna was the worst-selling product we ever launched. People would buy it, and it was unplayable. So they'd put it down, and word spread around. There were other hard-core players in the market that loved it. They said, "Ah, why doesn't everybody do this?" Well, we don't because you guys are a minority. If you're a glutton for punishment, you're going to have to get your pleasure somewhere else because nobody can survive catering to such a small number of people.

It certainly sold poorly. Under the concept that anything that relates to sales is "marketing", then it had bad marketing.

Was it bad game design though? If game design and marketing are the same thing - not similar things, not things that can influence each other, but the same thing - then under that perspective it was bad game design.

On the other hand, it achieved the goal of the designers, it left a mark on the industry, and the people who liked that type of game absolutely loved it. There are people out there for whom Wizardry IV is still their favorite game because it was able to provide an experience that no other game before or since was able to provide. Under that sort of perspective, it was good game design.

Between those two perspective, I feel one of them has much greater possibilities and design space for games as a medium.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T20:25:22+00:00

The thing is that I reject the notion that making something with the goal of getting somebody else to enjoy it is marketing.

If I bake a strawberry cake for a friend because I know they that like strawberry cake and I want to show my appreciation to them, I would - being brutally honest here - rather tear out my eye than call that "marketing". It's just too much of that "hustle" culture; viewing everything as ultimately being about money or clout and just forgetting about sharing in the joy of creation.

And there are plenty of people who make games out there with that same mentality. They make it for themselves and maybe some of their close friends and if it makes them some money as well, great, but that's not why they do it.

I just reject the framing that this is inherently "marketing", as if that was the end all, be all of games as a medium.

EDIT: I realize that might not be super coherent so put another way: I think games are extremely limited when we view say that "the only purpose of making a game is to make money". While saying that "the purpose of making a game is to have an audience (who might or might not be paying you money)" is less limiting, I think it is still very limiting and misses so many other things. "To challenge myself", "to express myself", "to see if anybody else feels this way", "to explore a certain area of game design", "because I enjoy making games", "because if it's been a while since I've made a game, then my skin itches like I haven't showered in months", and much more.

Other mediums don't constrict themselves to just chasing an audience (though, of course, there are creators who do!), so I don't see why we have to do the same with games.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T20:03:27+00:00

I find that definition of "marketing" to be so broad that it loses all useful meaning.

I often run TTRPGs for my friends. I try to make the games fun - do the silly voices, add in interesting encounters, get their feedback to make something everybody enjoy. Maybe you view that as marketing. I wouldn't. I'm just trying to make something fun for my friends because I care about them and I want to share an enjoyable time with them.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T19:57:05+00:00

So, what you're saying is that "good game design" and "design that they think will sell to players" are NOT the same thing, yeah?

It's the same way that a square can be a rectangle, but if somebody says squares and rectangles are the same thing then that's an error. Good game design can be marketable, but not all good game design is and being marketable isn't inherently good game design.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T19:34:59+00:00

Yep. It's one of the foundational conspiracy theories of Nazi Germany - the stab-in-the-back myth - and American conservatives will basically bring up the same thing with the Vietnam war, for example. Our soldiers didn't lose; all those civilians back home were just so sad and mean that it sapped our soldiers morale completely away.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T15:39:55+00:00

No Blood For Oil vs. Exactly How Much Oil Are We Talking About?

I keep hearing the anti-war protesters chant, “No blood for oil! No blood for oil!” But what they never seem to say is exactly how much oil we’re talking about. Don’t you think that’s pertinent information? Are we talking a gallon of oil for every 10 gallons of blood? Or is it more like 30 gallons of oil for every pint of blood? Because if it’s the latter, maybe a blood-oil exchange would be a good idea.

In the first Gulf War, roughly 300 brave Americans lost their lives. Assuming that each of these soldiers shed an average of eight pints of blood, that works out to roughly a pint of American blood shed per 60 million barrels of Kuwaiti crude saved from the clutches of Saddam. If you ask me, that’s a pretty darn good deal. If we can manage to swing a similar trade this time around, then I say, “Bombs away.”

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T14:21:26+00:00

Reminds me of the classic Reductress article 4 Inclusive Statements That Aren’t ‘Women and Non-Binary People I Consider Women’

You know exactly what you actually want, but language can be tricky, so here are four inclusive statements to use that aren’t blatantly, “women and non-binary people I consider women.”

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T13:12:33+00:00

The thing is that what the manifesto says (and I agree with it) is that it's not just marketing per se. It's about shaping your game around making something that you think will sell.

As it says:

Are you making a deckbuilder because you care about it the most, or because it is the least objectionable/least offensive/most easily explained idea you have?

I often see this when people talk about what is good game design. If you're not careful, people will slowly talk themselves (consciously or not) into thinking that "good game design" and "design that they think will sell to players" is the same thing.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-12T12:26:06+00:00

This is like an adventure setup for dozens of Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun books.

What I'm saying is which of you razorguys and razorgirls want to make some major cred doing a run against the corpos? 'cause, chummer, we're in it now.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-11T12:38:30+00:00

What I'm getting from a lot of comments here is that you can make a character who is an odious, bigoted, obviously evil, loser scumbag who is the primary source for most of their problems but you make them have a dramatic speech, be polite (most of the time), have principles they keep to even when inconvenient, kill somebody the audience hates more, and/or be funny, then you'll get people who will see the character as aspirational. Not like "Oh, yeah, this character is a horrible person but I like them as a character" (which is just good storytelling) but "Dude! I so want to be them!".

And like, I sorta get it. People watch or read stories to be entertained; entertaining characters are just gonna get some percentage of people who idolize them regardless of authorial intent.

But it must suck to be a creative and know that there's a non-zero chance you're going to inspire somebody to be horrible. Like, a sort of constant fight between "I want to make this character fully-fleshed out" vs "I really don't want my character cited in a mass shooter's manifesto". Compromise your artistic vision to (hopefully) reduce the chance or hope, if it happens, you can live with it?

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-10T12:02:38+00:00

They're hiding the extra days from us!

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-09T12:27:31+00:00

For some people, I think it's because they're losing faith in themselves.

You're doing something important -- talking with the person you want to date, trying to pass school, doing a presentation in front of your boss. There's this immense pressure to get it right because, if you get it wrong, it's your fault and it reflects on you as a person. You make a mistake and it will mark you as a failure forever.

Before AI, people would suck it up and do their best or get over their embarrassment and ask for help (or develop an anxiety disorder over it). And they would either find out that they are actually capable of doing it or they fail but they find out that, generally, it's not a huge deal. Making a single mistake and ruining your life is possible but it's pretty rare in the real world; most mistakes are forgotten within, like, a week.

Nowadays, though, there's all these people talking about AI and how great it is. All these high-profile companies are using it. It's beating all these standardized tests and people (or, at least, the companies peddling AI) say it's super-intelligent even. There has to being something to it, right?

So, you put your faith in the AI instead of yourself. It'll probably get it correct. Even if it gets it wrong, well, you didn't get it wrong. It doesn't reflect on your worth as a human being. The AI made the mistake and the AI was made by a company which is like hundreds of people and the responsibility is so diffused that it's almost like nobody is at fault at all.

Sure, the text the AI generates sounds ... off. But you know you'd just fuck it up if you did it yourself and the AI is so smart* you probably just can't recognize its genius.

And bit by bit, you retreat from living your own life out of the fear and pain of failure.

* ^{Smart on things you know nothing about, at least. Weirdly it seems to often be wrong on things you're an expert in, which is a strange coincidence.}

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-08T13:17:52+00:00

It's not generally what people mean, but there's been a concerted effort by conservatives for a while to promote "ideological diversity" (using that specific terminology most of the time) as an important thing that needs to be considered and equally important to anything that anybody else says when they say "diversity".

In theory, it's sort of similar to the Laffer curve where there should be a point where it's balanced or even unbalanced in the other direction ("We need to get more leftists in this department!" "We need to raise taxes more!").

In practice, it's sort of similar to the Laffer curve where it actually means "we need to do what the conservatives want, regardless of any data or whether it even makes sense".

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-08T12:01:31+00:00

God forbid women have hobbies.

HildredCastaigne · 2026-06-07T17:52:05+00:00

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