Recognition
Monday, December 31st, 2007
I wasn’t expecting it, by the way, wasn’t expecting it at all. I was very much in a state of acceptance over our bunch of review scores in the 60s and 70s and the occasional new player who loves flying sword-fighting. I have to admit that there are times I find it quite difficult to even look at Determinance, let alone play it.
I feel like we got treated fairly by the mainstream press, but strangely never really by the Indie “system”. I think I’m pretty realistic about Determinance’s flaws by now, but being rejected by the IGF twice still hurts. Determinance didn’t seem to be high-concept enough for them, which is a bit bizarre.
So honestly, that’s why winning the award for innovation makes me more happy than almost any other of their categories would have. Innovation is pretty much the soul of Indie (along with “character”, I guess), so being awarded in it is a big deal.
I think that we came out, in “PR” terms, too hot with Determinance. People who really rate indie games like to find something they’ve never heard of, discover it, and then rave about it. We were, I think, too in-people’s-faces for the kind of cult wave that we almost felt we deserved. That previous sentence will have put my esteemed colleague in an absolute rage, by the way, so I have to finish by saying that our approach did work in the way that actually mattered – getting a box deal, a publisher, and starting us off on the path of being a non-indie developer.
Getting some recognition feels good.
