The Odds

Gamemaker Interview: sticky_wikkit (Carys Warwell)

[sticky_wikkit used to be RobotsWillCry. Questions posed by an anonymous interested party.]

1. As far as hosting is concerned, you're pretty much one of the pioneers of hosting! You've also been popping up in a few Games recently. What's changed since the original days of Author_Games? How do you plan on finding that sweet spot between new and old?

At a guess, with difficulty. This is a new crowd, used to different things, and what will gel and what won't is going to take a certain amount of trying and changing and mixing and trying again. I'm fully prepared for things to not go right. One of the things I am keen on is taking things right down to simplicity again, with very few of these trimmings that I'm sure work well for other Gamemakers who have the time and the inclination to show off everything they can do at once, but which just don't fit in what I think the Games are. Whether that will work or not I don't know, but I want to give it a go!

At the end of the day, it's a writing competition and the writing comes first. I'm sure that people will engage with that now as much as they did at the start, regardless of all the flash and sparkle that does or does not surround it. So that's what I'm going to focus on: a real writers' game. There's a limit to what we can do to make it new, but we can make it good.

2. It's fair to say that you're in large parts responsible for the Author_Games account's rise to its speak. What're your goals for the new era?

It is not fair to say that! AG has always been a team. So equal credit has to go to all those Gamemakers who have worked with me - Scraps, Sean, Megan - and if anybody deserves a larger portion of that, it's Jack.

This time around, my goals are to provide a competition where the writers come first, where it doesn't matter if you're friends with everybody or nobody, where constructive criticism is there if you need it, and where, with any luck, you'll have fun! So, yeah. Not far off from the original, actually...

3. Having hosted at least eight Games (note - the interested party does not know the exact number, and nor do I!) you must have read tons of entries. What are some pet peeves you've seen pop up often? What really catches your eye?

Ohh wow, how long have you got? I'm going to keep this short and probably a tiny bit too snappy, otherwise I'll just go on forever!

Okay, things that annoy me:

- Every single noun having an adjective. It's asking the reader to put in a lot of visual effort, and it takes gloss off your characters and settings.

- Overdetailed forms. Give only what you're going to need. Leave something for us to discover; what I'm finding a lot is that, as a character-driven reader, I'm finding out everything about a character in the form. In which case, why do I have to read the rest? Clear out the exact family ages unless it's siblings fairly close in age; ditch the tiny little background details; basically, unless it adds some level of actual character to your character, keep it out. Let your story writing do the talking. That's what you're entering for.

- Characters who spent half their time telling you about themselves. So. Irritating. Unless there's a definite clash there, where their perception of themselves is blatantly skewed and there's reasons behind it, making you wonder why they're lying to themselves...now that I'd like to see...

Things that catch my eye:

- Good dialogue. I can forgive a lot of problems if the characters actually sound like people talking to each other, if I can close my eyes and imagine overhearing the conversation without thinking 'hmm, that doesn't sound right'.