Creators and Mechanists in Indie Gamedev

[a327ex]

One of the things I've noticed over time after watching myself and other people progress as indie game developers is that there are roughly two main types of personalities that indie gamedevs fall into. I'm going to call them "creators" and "mechanists".

Also, I decided to write this article as a somewhat of a response to this blog post by one of the itch.io people.

Creators

Creators are generally people who have an open and free-form way of looking at the world and doing things. They derive their sense of meaning from exploring the unknown and finding out what works from their explorations. Because they're dealing with the unknown their processes are likely to be undefined, murky and adaptable. Creator types also have a sense for the artistic appeal/value of something and generally they want to create games with that in mind.

Most indie developers are creator types. This is because indie game development is a very new and interesting field with lots of unknowns, but also because it's a field that enables the exercise of many different disciplines in an artistic way that creators really care about, so it will attract lots of them.

Here are some common things I've noticed about creator types:

• Lack of consistency in productivity, works in bursts
• Likely to work on and drop many many projects before completing a single one
• Favors unique projects
• Prefers the start of development on a project and dislikes the middle/end
• Prefers creating games that are story/narrative based
• Places the artistic value of a game above other concerns
• If a game is successful, unlikely to work on sequels and likely to move on to a next project quickly

Mechanists

Mechanists are generally people who have a conservative and process oriented way of looking at the world and doing things. They derive their sense of meaning from operating on well defined processes as well as making sure that those processes are optimized. They're the types of people who will feel really bad if they aren't being productive every single day. Unlike creators, they have a lower sense for the artistic and they don't derive that much pleasure from exploring the unknown.

A minority of indie developers are mechanist types, most of them being programmers. This is simply because indie game development is too undefined a field for most mechanist types to try to venture into yet.

Here are some common things I've noticed about mechanists:

• Consistent productivity, works about the same amount of time every day
• Likely to stick with a single project for a long time
• Favors safe projects
• Dislikes the start of development and prefers the middle/end
• Prefers creating games that are system based
• Places the system depth of a game above other concerns
• If a game is successful, either works on sequels or keeps developing the successful game for a long time

Now let's go part by part:

Productivity

Creators are by their nature undefined, unorganized and adaptable. They're built for dealing with the unknown, which means that attempts to bind them to more well defined processes is a direct attack in how they place themselves in the world. The way this is reflected in productivity is that, by default, they will work in bursts rather than in a consistent manner. Everyone knows someone (or is that someone) who gets a burst of progress done in a few weeks and then goes silent for months. This is a very common trait of creator types and often times one of the biggest challenge they face is just learning how to become more disciplined.

Mechanists generally don't have this problem. In indie gamedev, from my observations, lots of mechanists tend to be programmers who have worked as programmers in the real world, and so they already have some sense of discipline built into them because of their experiences (if not because of their personality).

Projects

Creators have a very disturbing propensity to never see projects through to the end. Everyone knows someone like that. They've been trying to make game for years, everything they make is extremely polished and looks really look, but they've never really finished and released anything for real. It's very common for creator types to be like this and to always be stuck in "exploration" mode, without ever committing for too long on a single project.

Because the majority of indie developers are creators, the advice around this is skewed towards what will work for creators. And that advice is generally something like, you try out a bunch of prototypes until you find something really fun and really promising (and this process is very fun for creators), and then you commit to that project and try to finish it. And of course, this fun prototype you settled on needs to be somewhat unique otherwise it's not good enough.

Mechanists are the opposite. Unlike creators they're more likely to spend less time deciding on what type of game to make. They don't like the process of exploring the unknown, and so instead of trying out many prototypes they'll simply pick something that is safe and proven enough and just execute it well. They will have a harder time getting their game off the ground, since at the start there's a lot of uncertainty and lots of high level decisions have to be made without knowing the details yet. But once this phase is through, mechanists will get more and more productive with time until release.

The mechanist way of making games isn't talked about much, but if it were it would be something like: pick a game mechanic that is proven to work and that you want to execute better and execute it better. The size of the project should be small enough that you can handle but you should aim high, since you want a game that has enough meat to it.

Start/end of development

Creators prefer the start of development. Like I just mentioned, they derive their sense of meaning from exploring the unknown, and the phase of development that has the most unknown exploration is the first. The idea of trying out of many prototypes until you find something fun is an idea that appeals a lot to creators because of this. The weakness of creators lies in the middle/end of development, when enough of the game is settled and decided on and you just have to do a lot of boring tasks to see the project through completion. Creators will often say that the last 10% feel like an eternity.

Mechanists dislike the start of development and prefer the other phases. Because they derive their sense of meaning from executing on well defined processes, the start of development feels too chaotic for them to enjoy. Picking safe and well-tested mechanics helps with this, as well as with giving them a realistic vision early on of where they can shine (what they need to execute better). Unlike creators, mechanists thrive as the project becomes more and more complete and they have no problem with doing the boring tasks that are needed to succeed.

An additional thing that follows from this is that creators will love game jams, while mechanists will generally not participate in them, especially if they have a very short time window like Ludum Dare.

Art and systems

Because creators value the artistic appeal of things a lot, they're more likely to create games where that appeal can be elevated, which means that they will generally favor games that are story/narrative based. This creates a problem for creators because, in general, gamers tend to not value narrative-type of games that much. There are many ways in which this conflict manifests itself in reality, but the one that comes to my mind now were concerns from narrative-based indie devs complaining to Valve that the 2 hour window for refunds would kill off games that had less than 2 hours of gameplay. I don't think that's what ended up happening, but the concerns were raised because it was an (unintentional) attack on creator types.

Mechanists on the other hand don't have that much concern for the artistic aspect of their games in the same way creators do. They tend to focus much more on creating games with many systems that come together in different ways to create a lot of depth, and generally also hook players into the game for a long time. In this sense, mechanists have an inherent advantage over creators, since the games they want to make are generally games the audience wants to play for a long time.

Success

If a creator's game is successful, they're much more likely to move on to another project quickly rather than stay with the one project for a long time. This is because they derive no pleasure from doing maintenance type of work, and they dislike being too far away from working on "new". Creators are unlikely to create sequels to their successful games, and if they do, the sequels have to be different enough to justify it.

If a mechanist's game is successful, they're much more like to keep working on it for a long time or to work on a very similar sequel. Mechanists don't want to play around with new ideas as much as creators, and once they find a formula that works and an audience willing to play games of that type, they see no reason to deviate too much from it. Creators see this pattern of behavior as a weakness or corruption of the creative process and they very much dislike it.

One of the things that follows from this is that mechanists can find a lot of success by just making spiritual sequels to successful types of games that were abandoned by successful creators.

Creators vs Mechanists

Now that we have all this in mind, the reason I disagree a lot with the itch.io blog post is because that post only cares about elevating creator types of games and completely rejects (unintentionally) what appeals to mechanists.

One of the things I mentioned is that mechanists have an inherent advantage compared to creators, since their games are generally aiming to be deep and played for very long amounts of time. The article mentioned explicitly rejects this notion:

Sure there will always be a place for mass-market experiences, but let’s also place value in intimate conversations between developer. Let’s look toward games that don’t stretch on for 100 hours but ones that can be completed on your lunch break.

Sentences like these are a direct attack on what mechanists care about. There are many others like it in the rest of the article. And coming from anyone we could just chalk it up to differences in taste, but itch.io has mentioned before that they manually curate their store and the person who wrote this article (and if not him someone else who shares the viewpoint) is doing that curation. This creates an inherent hostility from the platform to anyone who is paying attention and doesn't share those viewpoints.

Valve, on the other hand, seems to understand this wonderfully which at first surprised me, but now it doesn't anymore. You'd expect the big corporation to be out of touch and the small business to be nimble and agile, but sadly that's not the case here and Valve is just handling this way better than itch.io by not favoring any type of game over another and just letting the market decide.

This "conflict" between both mentalities also makes itself clear in other parts of the field. Journalists tend to side with creator types more often because they're creator types themselves. And since most gamers aren't like that and enjoy games made by mechanists, this increases the separation between journalists and gamers, which has resulted and continues to result in all sorts of problems.

In any case, I'm not going to push on these points much more because hopefully by now I've made what I mean clear. But I would urge everyone in the indie gamedev community to not make the mistake of ignoring mechanists. We are a minority but our games provide a lot of value! ^-^

END

And here are some examples of well known indie developers and where I think they fit:

Examples of likely creators

• Alec Holowka of Night in the Woods

• Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer

• Steve Gaynor of Gone Home

• Jonathan Blow of The Witness

Examples of likely mechanists

• Tynan Sylvester of RimWorld

• Scott Cawthon of Five Nights at Freddy's

• ConcernedApe of Stardew Valley

• Andrew Spinks of Terraria

Note that these are guesses. I don't know any of these people so I can just guess by their games and the way they act online. And there's also the fact that most people are both types to varying degrees. I think that ideally you wanna be slightly tilted towards the mechanist side of things because the overall environment is tilted to the creator side, and so there are advantages to being a contrarian in this way. Most people reading this are probably creators, which means that taking notes on what mechanists excel at and what they care about and trying to tilt yourself more that way might be advantageous as well.

[Nikaoto]

Great read, I especially agree with your predictions of the game developers you listed.

I was also wondering what you'd think of the SokPop Collective guys. They're basically a bunch of solo devs who put out two games every month. They are very much experimental and each game they make is unique. They've also described their seemingly sustainable schedule in this article, having each person work in bursts on a new game once in every two months, because there's 4 of them.

They seem to have taken a completely different approach to gamedev from others, what's your opinion?

[Chukobyte]

Cool article. In my personal opinion I don't think there is a cut and dry designation of people that are creator and mechanists types. I think there are shades of grey.

Me I relate to both types. Maybe it's possible I was more of a creative type in the past before I entered software engineering (programming) professionally. I am sucker for good processes and systems but I also love to do game jams. One of the reasons I like to do game jams is to get better at game design and making games. Anyway, interesting read!

[Lancemaker]

This article was nice to read ADN. There is one creative skill you did not point tho, they are more creative :P. I did not check the itch.io forum so im guessing this was very well pointed there and it would be fruitless to point it in here.