You Say You Want A Revolution

No, not that Revolution, but the real potential for a revolution in games.

From the Scratchware Manifesto:

The machinery of gaming has run amok.

Instead of serving creative vision, it suppresses it. Instead of encouraging innovation, it represses it. Instead of taking its cue from our most imaginative minds, it takes its cue from the latest month's PC Data list. Instead of rewarding those who succeed, it penalizes them with development budgets so high and royalties so low that there can be no reward for creators. Instead of ascribing credit to those who deserve it, it seeks to associate success with the corporate machine.

It is time for revolution.

Driven by this vision a community of game designers, programmers and players is growing at Manifesto Games, dedicated to releasing quality, artistic, unusual games of the type that Walmart and GAME wouldn't and couldn't stock. Their own Manifesto Manifesto makes for interesting and inspiring reading, and it's hard to fault their logic.

Maybe not quite the gaming equivalent of the Punk ethos as it's clear that while anyone can play guitar it's actually quite hard to write a game it is possible for everyone who loves games and gaming to still get involved: submit ideas; buy, download and play these games; write reviews (they welcome honest reviews whether they're good or bad); spread the word.

Join us, and help build a better tomorrow. Get the word out that there's more to games than you'll find at Best Buy, and that Manifesto Games is the place to find the best of the rest, the products of individual vision, games created for love and not at the behest of some blinkered suit whose last job was selling Tide.

Let a thousand flowers blossom; let a thousand different games contend.

From now on, we must all strive resolutely to bring about the overthrow of the existing order.

Gameplay over glitz.

Word Komrad!