2015 in Review

At the begining of 2015, I had a game release event for Arcane Journeys the Fantasy Adventure Board Game, at Off the Wall Games. It was a fun time, and I sold all the copies I had made, which was the culmination of over a year of work making it.

In 2015, I did a lot of work on the online games, to make them compatible with mobile devices and tablets. That spurred on a lot of changes to layout, internal changes for speed, and refinement of the game play of almost all the games on the site. All in all, a very satisfying experience, with more work to do.

Additionally this year, I posted more articles about game design here, including Don't confuse 'good design' and your own preferred style of game play and Don't be Perfect.

And lastly, I started a series on symbolism in games. Which was a really fun thing for me. I hope to keep thinking about it in the future.

I hope the coming year is good for you!

Symbolism of Space

Previously in the symbolism series: Robots, Demons, Ruins, the Undead, Deserts

Outer space represents an anarchy similar to the desert, but more lonely. It is the ultimate isolation from law and society. Everything you want to feel by marooning someone on an island, or placing them in a desert or somewhere else where resources are scarce is magnified by putting them in space. Time spans and distances are enormous, dwarfing individual human and even individual societies concerns.

In space, everyday concerns are stripped away and replaced with a unique set of things to do and think about. It is very introspective. Oddly enough, going out to the vast world of space symbolically lets a person go on an equally deep inner voyage, since they may have lots of time to think, and are jogged out of their terrestrial ruts.

One thing outer space offers as a setting is the possibilities of true alien-ness. Even the physics are different from normal earth side life.

If I had to guess one more thing that space is about, I would say it is a sub-conscious replaying of being in the womb. It just has that feel to me at certain times. Or at least a deep inward-looking mind space, since you literally aren't connected to regular reality anymore.

Read previous entries in this series about symbolism: of Robots, of Demons, of Ruins, of the Undead, of Deserts.

Symbolism of Robots

This next article about symbolism is about Robots. (See the other enties about Demons, Ruins, the Undead, Deserts)

Robots, and trap machines, are another example of non-human enemies. I like using them as cautionary statements about the misuse of science and technology, and the creation of massively destructive weapons. They are dumb, very powerful entities created by the greater power of human intelligence, which is sometimes misguided in its applications because of its undefeated ghosts and demons. They represent someone putting their effort into developing something, without thinking about, or trying to curtail, the misuses of that development (uses like war and killing). Or even developing deliberately destructive technology that has no application but for war.

In The Well, there are robots from hundreds of years ago, built to protect the wealth of long dead people. The robots served their (dubious) purpose back in the day, but now cause harm without doing any one any good. It reminds me of the current making and stockpiling of nuclear (and other highly destructive) weapons. The ultimate end of their use could be the elimination of human beings, when their purpose, according to supporters, is to protect at least some humans. The actual purpose of such massively destructive weapons isn't to protect life, but to intimidate and control other people by threatening them with destruction, and sometimes to destroy them when they oppose you.

Even if we suddenly come to our senses and decide not to use and make such weapons, the current ones are still around and must be dismantled or dealt with or they could do massive harm in the future, even by accident. They would be like mines left in a field long after a war is over.


Read previous entries in this series about symbolism: of Demons, of Ruins, of the Undead, of Deserts.

Symbolism of Demons

Demons, like the undead, are not human. They represent a different internal state which human beings must confront within themselves and others. That state is rampant emotionalism, or being run by our feelings, being lustful, angry, hysterical, paranoid, fearful, filled with hate, being greedy: states of mind which detract from and interfere with more benign human functioning. So to defeat a demon means to symbolically take control of your internal emotions, and not let them run your life.

Read previous entries in this series about symbolism: of Ruins, of the Undead, of Deserts.

Symbolism of Ruins

Ruins indicate the general rise and fall of cultures as time passes in human history. They are about the transitory nature of time, they are a connection the past, grounding because of our connection to a greater thing than ourselves, yet unnerving because they tell us about our mortality, and the passing of cultures and times.

They can also sometimes be cautionary, saying, "Look, these people had advanced buildings, technology, society... where are they now? What happened? What was their weakness and downfall? How can we learn to avoid those weaknesses in our society? What do we do now that is not in the interest of our own survival?"

See the other entries in this series about symbolism of: The Undead, Deserts.

Symbolism of the Undead

I often use undead monsters (skeletons, zombies, ghosts) as some of the major enemies in the games I make for three reasons.

First, the undead are obviously not human, not even life-forms - they are evil, wrong, and against the natural order - therefore fighting them is a classic symbolic struggle against evil forces by the forces of goodness. It is not about struggling against other human beings for supremacy, which gets into anti-human areas such as racism, imperialism, and class-ism (who is more worthy of supremacy, how do you divide good and bad in a human population, etc). The struggle is not about killing living things at all, but about ridding life of obstacles which hinder its fullness.

Second, the undead are DUMB. It gives a nice picture, symbolically, that the battles we have to fight for our own liberation are not with evil intelligent beings, but with dumb, unthinking forces, such as fear, or other painful emotions that can grip a person, and make them behave 'like a zombie'.

Third, ghosts and skeletons symbolically refer to things we need to deal with from the past, and that is also one of the major areas people, and societies, need to address to move their liberation forward. To vanquish a ghost is to lay the past to rest.


See the previous post in this series about symbolism, about Deserts.

Symbolism of Deserts

I made a bunch of online games many years ago, and the setting for each one was super important. The style of game was like a minimalist statistical adventure game, and I tried hard to make the theme function well with the mechanics. (Read about theme in game design) I also decided that games, like any human creation, can have meanings and mythic relevance to our lives, and I tried to think through some of the symbols and meaning in my games. Over the next few months, I will post little pieces about particular ideas.

Today's theme is 'The Desert'

The desert is a place where all extraneous things are stripped away. Life is reduced to some of its bare requirements. You get to examine some core concepts directly, without the interference of society. Life, death, eating, breeding, building a social structure.

The deserts found in my online games are hinted at being not 'natural' deserts, but deserts left behind by some terrible cataclysm that occurred in the world. There are old bunkers and robots in the midst of the wilderness. Nobody knows where they are from exactly. These deserts represent a chance to start over, a chance to build new societies, and contain warnings to people of what didn't work before.