In 2005, when I pitched my first free-to-play game, Reset Generation, people truly thought I was "crazy." Crazy is fine, because crazy is the calling card of market disruption. I was already branded "crazy" for leaving console for mobile gaming in 2003, and, even before that, all the way back in 1999, people were calling me "crazy" for filling a Nerf Super Soaker squirt gun with my own urine.
Crazy is all well and good, but, somewhere along the line, the industry has gone from seeing free-to-play game design as "crazy," to seeing free-to-play game design as perniciously "evil." Well, to flip a phrase, "The only way to deal with idealists is to terrorize the bastards." So, let's get evil.
Within the below video, you will find three luminary free-to-play game designers - Greg Costikyan, Dan Rubenfield, and Ethan Levy - dressed as the super villains that they are. Therein they present game designs geared toward the most-evil pursuit of discovering scalable, repeatable business. One design loaded with thoughtful insight, one design a flight of wild imagination, one design a deeply evil winner ...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first Evil Game Design Challenge.
