John Kane (Mallow Drops), social media fandom & game over

John Kane joins us for a second time right off the back of this award winning run and success in the weeks leading up to PAX Australia. The triumph of John’s previous game Killing Time at Light Speed was followed rapidly by that of his next release Mallow Drops. John tells us all about lessons learnt, what winning AGDA awards mean to him, and writing 2 year long pun threads. Game fandom is one of the reasons why some seemingly simple titles stay in the spotlight far longer than anyone thought they would. In the case of games like Five Nights At Freddy’s and Undertale they seem to have whole new lives, living in the forums and image boards like Tumblr and Reddit. The fan’s dedication to the game redefines what a successful game is, and sometimes popularity doesn’t reflect the millions of dollars that are spent on the blockbuster games. Developers spend massive amounts of time and money making their games flow so that their players have a good time. But has this made them too easy? Could the absence of the game over screen and abundance of save points simply taking the punishment out of the experience? We discuss the changing trends in game design, and why we don’t see a game over screen as often as we once did. You can find us on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and Steam. Just search for "pixelsift"!Support the show: https://sifter.store