We’ve received a lot of great feedback from our early testers who particularly love the ability to jump into a character’s shoes and become a new person. I’m going to attempt to explain why.

As children, we all had dreams and rich imaginations. Just today I went to a picture and found myself staring at the grass wondering what the world looked like from an ant’s perspective. We had hopes and dreams of being firemen, astronauts, explorers and adventurers. But slowly the reality of the world began to set in as we were given bills to pay and jobs to fulfill.

However, there remains a piece of our childhood lodged in our hearts. We all wish we had the courage and resources to go to the airport and take the next flight out to anywhere and immerse ourselves in a new world. While those dreams may be unrealistic, video games give us a temporary break from reality and a chance to let our imaginations run wild again. Games like Dramagame aren’t just about amusement and enjoyment. These games let us explore our fantasies and for a brief period of time, we become someone new. The real world becomes more valuable to us because we can take a break from it. Our inner children become satisfied as we stay true to who we once were.

Here at Dramagame, we try to make sure your dreams come true.

Here at Tribe Studios we’ve created a completely new genre of gaming altogether. Dramagame really is nothing like what the gaming industry has seen before. We’ve questioned the status quo and made sure that we provide a beautiful and special experience. But we’ve also been asked why we came up with Dramagame and what inspired us. I’ve crafted a list of what drove the team to create this game.

We wanted a chance to be someone else: We’re dreamers. I personally find myself daydreaming of another life, another time, a chance to be someone else entirely. Perhaps as a child you wanted to be an astronaut or a chef. Dreams never die, and to this day I’m sure you find yourself imagining a different life, asking yourself “What if?” What if I made different decisions? We wanted to make a game where you could truly be someone else, where you actually play a character and have complete control over their words and decisions. This was the key ingredient, that you as the player get to escape and act in the role of someone else.

We wanted games that don’t demand all your time: This team is comprised of gamers and game developers. Unfortunately, as we get older we have more responsibilities and modern-day games don’t account for that. I’m the youngest on this team at 22 years old, and just a year ago I could have played World of Warcraft for hours at a time. Not anymore. We need games that provide short but intense bursts of fun. No endless work to get to the enjoyment of the game, no pain or sacrifice to find out how to have fun. Dramagame throws you directly into the story and expects you to make full use of your short 45-minute story.

We wanted games that promoted social activity: So many games today that try to be short end up making us isolated. I’m guilty of this myself, having pulled out my phone to play Angry Birds on my morning commute instead of taking the time to make a friend sitting near me. There is something inherently exciting and attractive about interacting with others. But interacting with others is also scary. Games provide you with an avatar to protect you against that scariness. Humans are social creatures, and games are a beautiful and unique way to meet people.

The mainstream video game industry is destroying itself. Between the annual releases of sequels for major game franchises and the push for more senseless and shocking violence, the quality of major games has not improved. As technology gets better, we see a high degree of polish and veneer but the underlying games themselves are built on cheap, lazy mechanics. But there is hope, and I see 3 steps to making better video games.

1) Independent Developers. Indie developers have the ability to make a massive online shooter targeted towards teenage boys, but they can’t afford to. If they did, they’d be going head-to-head with Call of Duty, Battlefield and other major franchises backed by multibillion dollar companies. Instead, indie developers have to compete on creativity and uniqueness in order to stand out. Fantastic releases like Braid and Minecraft prove that creativity is not dead in video game development, as long as independent developers have the tools to build games and the channels to sell them.

2) Rich Storytelling. Roger Ebert, the film critic, once wrote that he didn’t consider video games to be art. I respectfully disagree. Just because mainstream games look more like your children’s fingerpainting than Picasso doesn’t mean we diminish the value of games. It means we need to explore the unique ability of games to allow you more interactivity than movies. Rich, great storytelling needs to be a part of this. As the gamer touches the universe, the game should give back lore and history, immersing the player in the culture in ways that film and books cannot.

3) Avoiding Greed. Greed will be the downfall of major gaming franchises. You can attempt to sell a game to 100% of the market, but in order to please everyone you can have at best 15% of what people want. I prefer the opposite. We want to find a small segment of gamers who are unhappy with modern gaming and give them 100% of their needs. By creating a beautiful and unique game, we build a fantastically captivating product that our fans will love. The mistake is assuming that everyone needs to be your fan in order to maximize revenue. We prefer to maximize customer happiness.