For a couple of weeks I have been able to play Rollerdrome , the new Roll 7 video game, the study behind the great Olli Olli World. Just half a year will help them to launch an additional title with the displacement on wheels, although this time it is something quite different from the precious February skate game.
It is no longer that we change the skateboard for a couple of skates, it is now the thing becomes much more violent. If you jump exploring the proposal of the third title in the Olli Olli saga, we move on to a fictional sport in which firearms shake hands with extreme sport tricks. Something likeTony Hawk Meets Serious Sam _.
This is not an analysis, not even impressions, although we can ventilate that aspect in a phrase: it is a notable game, with a very well brought visual aspect and very ingenious mechanics. However, what has made me think Rollerdrome, even that in himself, is how video games are created. And more specifically in a concept that is spoken a lot, but it is explained little: the gimmick .
Some previous concepts
Gimmick is a word widely used in the video game industry, but also has its echoes in literature, cinema or other arts. Although he was born with some negative connotation, especially to designate fevers such as movement by movement, cameras such as Kinect or other tremendously colorful added, but largely little successful, reality does not have to be.
The most common error is to take a mechanics of a video game like gimmick, but being able to be a mechanic, it may be many more things. The official definition isa trick or a device created to attract attention, advertise or sell , something that makes a lot of sense if its interesting and supposed origin is commented: it comes from the word _gimac, an anagram of the word magic, Magic in English. The magicians and traders used it in the 1910-1920 decades to attract attention to the public.
Although we all understand advertising as something bad, and if we use the most current and voracious definition, which seeks to generate needs that consumers do not have, we have a tool against democracy and the informed decision making. Could we say that the appetizing hamburgers of fast food chains are a gimmick, and that the something more chuchirrias that arrive at our table is why the gimmicks fall badly? Well, we could.
But let’s think about video games again. Although it is usually associated with the gimmicks with a mechanics, and being able to be, the reality is that it does not have to. The gimmick can appear in many areas of the video game, and it is even possible that it is also the idea of which the title is born. From the do a roguelike of prayers in a monastery, going through a game of cards with aesthetics of the drawings of the 20s, to every time I jump, the game accelerates 10%. If the idea is central enough to be the main claim, it is possible.
The gimmick well of rollerdrome
A gimmick may well be something integral to the title, that is a commercial hook, and that also works great once we put ourselves at the controls. Well, I think that is just what happens with Rollerdrome . The Roll7 title presents a mechanics like gimmick, also taking it to fruition: To recharge our weapons we will need to do all kinds of tricks. In fact, as complicated as they are, we will get more bullets.
This is the key idea that defines the game, its main claim when proposing something different, and the glue that joins the two genera used . It is the perfect union of foundational idea, nuclear mechanics to development (as a creation process) and development (as a progression within the video game), as well as a gimmick with which to call attention.
