Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s a bit of an indie season, innit? News reaches us that comments-regular Cliffski’s latest game - Kudos 2 – is now available to buy for the sum of twelve quid. Its the sequel to his popular alternate-take on the Sims – think the Sims meet Princess Maker. And if you don’t know Princess Maker, think Championship Manager with a Teenage Girl, except Kudos is about 20-somethings. I liked the first one, and this one seems a genuine improvement, not least because of the cool indy aesthetic brought by Jamie “Suburban Glamour” McKelvie. A demo can be downloaded off the electric internet. It’s amazing! Like, a game just arriving on your hard-drive by clicking on your screen. This shit is going to catch on. Seriously, try it.

If there’s one name that’s come up each time in RPS’s perennial piracy comment threads, it’s Positech’s Cliffski. The moniker of PC developer, Cliff Harris, he’s ruffled feathers with, surprisingly, the anti-piracy position. As Kieron mentioned on Sunday, Cliff decided to run a survey via his blog, and then via every other website on the internet, asking people to tell him why they pirate his games. It’s a remarkably modest and reasonable question to ask, and now he’s back with an anecdotal presentation of the results.

Cliff Harris deserves applause for taking this approach. But he deserves carrying aloft the shoulders of those who have loudly disagreed with him in the comments (me included) for his response to his broad survey. He’s changing how he develops games as a consequence.

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I’ve spent more than enough time with artist Jamie McKelvie over the last two weeks, so the knowledge I’m going to have to deal with him in my bloody day job is one to provoke a crushing sense of depression. Cliff Harris, who you may know as the creator of Democracy, the previous Kudos Band and 300-post threads about Piracy, has released the first images of Kudos 2, highlighting the art of Jamie “Kitten” McKelvie. Kudos follows its prequel in being an alternative-take on the Sims-life-management genre, seen through the filter of the Princess Maker games. Except much more twenty something. More here. And what did you do during your 20s, readers? I played videogames and drank. I would score lowly in Kudos 2.

Yes, it’s true, Hot Punk Girl. Jamie McKelvie, creator of indie comics like the critically acclaimed Suburban Glamour and Phonogram, will be providing character art for Positech’s forthcoming sequel to Kudos. Putting aside the fact Jamie’s a friend of mine – yeah, I write That There Phonogram - I think this is an interesting move for Positech. As much as I like Cliff Harris’ games, they’re lacking in glamour and McKelvie is someone who absolutely keeps the grounded reality which Cliff needs while adding style. Compare and contrast a Kudos figure and Jamie’s rendering of a similarly grounded character. Which he’s bitching at me linking to, as it’s a few years old and he’d rather I show something more modern. Or this. Or even this. The perpetual whiner.

Which makes me think – is there any artist, comics or otherwise, people would like to see contribute towards a game? And what game, for that matter?

Behind the faux-futuristic moniker of Positech stands one man. Cliff “Cliffski” Harris has been quietly working up his own catalogue of indie-games since leaving Lionhead, shortly after they shipping the Movies. Having experienced both indie and mainstream development, produced a string of games – Democracy, Kudos, Rock Legend – that are clearly chasing after a grail seperate from the majority of developers and managing to earn a living from what may at first appear niche games, Cliff has a lot of things to say. And, as anyone who’s every followed him in a forum thread, he’s not a man for mincing his words. We talk about his origins, how he feels he’s grown up as a developer, how he actually manages to feed his cats and how he believes a game can be “anything”.
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Look, we have a graph to prove it and everything.

So, yeah, playing my first game of Democracy 2 and things went awry. The National Front’s got a landslide, so it’s Jackboot stomping on a human face forever time. Pah. Anyway, if you think you can do better, the demo’s over here, but there’s a little post-match analysis and some more on Democracy (And its prequel) beneath the cut.
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