Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Websites => Off-topic (Locked) => Topic started by: bencollver on March 08, 2014, 04:27:54 PM
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Clubby – inaccessible, requires lots of explanation. Makes you feel like a cool insider when you use jargon, but hopefully by now, as developers, we can all agree that not making potential future players feel stupid is better for business in the long-run.
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In the indie game space, design and marketing are often so tightly linked that we may forget the power we have over our product's message. We aren't used to the idea that we're shaping the player's narrative about our game – that the terms we use on our websites, in our Kickstarters, or elsewhere in our marketing might skew the attitudes of our fans, and our industry.
-- from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TanyaXShort/20131119/204988/Never_Say_Roguelike.php (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TanyaXShort/20131119/204988/Never_Say_Roguelike.php)
If the term "roguelike" makes someone feel stupid, imagine the experience of actually playing a game with instant death around every corner. The best things in life are free, and so are the best roguelike games. The roguelike player comes for the dungeon crawling, not for the marketing. He or she is not a mindless automaton to be led to the altar of commerce. The new marketing term "procedural death labyrinth" fits more nicely in the same sentence with business, industry, kickstarter, and twitter.
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Well it's a woman (I guess?) - what would you expect from them?
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Perhaps proper pronouns?
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You can't make a good game unless you're willing to make someone feel stupid.
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I think 7DRL and other games that clearly are not roguelikes are a kind of problem, because they obscure the genre. As a learning process to programmers they can be valuable, but that's it.