contemporary and interesting, right? (BTW, weed farming games are huge on mobile !) ‘Contemporary’ and ‘interesting’ are two things sometimes missing in a commercial video game scene that - if you’re not careful - is orcs all the way down. That’s kinda crazy, given the amount of violence tolerated in games, hm?īut the point is, these ideas are. And Devolver made some noise about how difficult it was to even promote a weed-related game. The sim is perhaps a bit too clever for its own good, explicitly saying up front that it’s about the “financial, political and cultural aspects” of the scene. Can you push against a taboo without being straight-out edgelord-y? Vile Monarch and Devolver’s Weedcraft Inc. Which I find kinda gross and borderline offensive, and… hang on, am I being Malcolm McLaren-ed here? Am I the British police waiting for the Sex Pistols after their boat ride down the Thames? Be a puckish provocateur?
#Genital jousting console simulator#
Though going against this, the first-person Drug Dealer Simulator continues to sell very well, and is even now spawning YouTube videos like ‘ Let’s Make Crystal Meth! ’. So - I think if you’re just edgelord-ing it up to be controversial for the sake of it, maybe that doesn’t work. (Though to be clear, Not Tonight’s devs picked the game’s subject to make a point, not for sales reasons. And though it sold well, I think its ‘spiritual sequel to Papers, Please!’ angle was more key to its success. (Or devolve into hideously divided topics.)įor example, Panic Barn/No More Robots’ Not Tonight is a post-Brexit pub bouncer simulator with a definite point of view (check out this Boris trailer mashup ), and probably picked up eyeballs on that basis.īut I also suspect it lost the chance for console platform-level featuring due to its subject matter. (Frostpunk is my favorite example of a game that has resonant, morally interesting gameplay, without being too deliberately outrageous.)īut it’s way more difficult to push boundaries in the 2020s like the Sex Pistols once did in the 1970s, when a lot of those boundaries… sorta don’t exist any more.
And I do feel like many games play it too safe, especially when it comes to even considering real-world quandaries in their design. Well, they do say all publicity is good publicity (?). actually making your game popular? Here’s what I see still works, and what doesn’t: Be controversial? This raises the question - in the 21st century, in the hallowed realm of video games, do any of McLaren’s lessons on amplification still apply in. I admit I’m partial to the concept of the art prankster (see The KLF ). He gave things a platform, generally with a dash of deliberately charged controversy. And he instinctively played the part of the puckish amplifier of iconoclastic, sometimes taboo concepts. Often, he looked for - or was involved in birthing - emerging trends. So let’s concentrate on what McLaren did right - and amplify that.
But he also had genuine skills in talent spotting and understanding the zeitgeist, even when it bordered on cultural appropriation. McLaren had a lot of faults, of course, including not compensating artists properly, and sometimes deliberately played up his Svengali image for effect. For this latest newsletter, I thought I’d switch things up as a one-off - partly because I’ve been reading Paul Gorman’s excellent new biography of controversial Sex Pistols manager, Vivienne Westwood collaborator and all-round provocateur Malcolm McLaren.
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