Back from Atlanta.
March 16, 2008
Looks like it was a wise move for me to head over to Atlanta for this past weekend rather than sticking around in Savannah for the St. Patrick’s festivities. Power outages, angry drunks, and too much loud noise for me altogether. Plus it was good to see a friend again. Not that Tornadoes in either area helped 
.
On Wednesday I’ll be hopping a flight to Chicago at 6 am to see my parents and a special someone, so hopefully I can either get some REAL posts up before then. If not, pop on by again next Sunday and I’ll have some things up.
Finally!
March 13, 2008
The quarter is finally over! My birthday being on Tuesday and it being St. Patties celebration tomorrow… it’s looking to be a great weekend.
I’ll be taking a few days off and just enjoying myself. I’ll also be traveling to Atlanta and Chicago over the next week so updates will probably even less than usual.
Happy Spring Break to all SCAD students.
Goodbye Gary.
March 4, 2008
Thank you for everything you’ve done for all of geekdom and those who wish they were geeks. You’ve touched more lives in so many different ways, you may not even be able to fathom it. We haven’t lost you; you will always be giving to us through the generations of nerds to come and their inevitable interaction with your work.
Back pats all around!
March 4, 2008
As I had mentioned in a previous post, I have been working with 3 other talented individuals on a board game project for Brenda’s Game Crit class. We received our evaluations from her on the project and they were… wonderful. Of course, she disliked the name, but that’s alright; an easy fix.
I was glad to work with Brian, Dave, and James on this project, and am continuing the adventure with our newest design for our final. Not much can be mentioned about that at this time, BUT I do have the fantastic post-mortem Dave wrote for Klepto Kapers.
In addition, Brian has a look at our first out of team play experience with the final product.
Dave McDonough’s look at the project.
Brian Shurtleff’s Keeping the Faith.
And as mentioned, here is Dave’s penned post-mortem submitted with the project.
GDC 2008’s Game Studies Download 3.0
February 20, 2008
Unfortunately, I am not at GDC. Luckily, many people post the information they were going to present at the event on their websites!
The third Game Studies Download is up at http://www.avantgame.com/top10.htm and some of the things within it are rather interesting!
#9 Discussed how breaking a games’ immersion can be good for the player, as sometimes clumsy controls can cause reactions to the game that don’t follow the desired aesthetic. In addition, a game commenting on itself or causing a positive distraction to what is at hand can create a more memorable experience for gamers.
I think a few designers have been aware of this for awhile; the one that stands out the quickest would be Kojima with Metal Gear Solid. Almost every one of these factors is contained in each of his games. The in-game radio is a positive distraction from what is going on in the game, allowing the player to take a tiny break from the action within the game to get some more of the story or some humorous rhetoric; often the characters in the chat will break the fourth wall by saying “Press the Square button to choke him!” or something of the like.
Half-Life also does some commenting on itself, especially in HL2. The player, always being in Gordon Freeman’s view (always 1st person, and no loss of control during “cinematic” events within the game, which i LOVE!) also does not say anything. I simple interaction with the E key always elicits some vocalization from characters. Often the game makes a note of Freeman being a, “Man of few words,” or the “strong, extra silent type.” I remember these things from the game because they took me out of the immersion (which the intentionally make almost as seamless as possible in every regard) to give me a mental break from being sucked in and let me have a chuckle before progressing; perhaps I enjoy these games more without even realizing it because they did that. It also helps that the writers at Valve are pretty sharp.
#6 Women/non-gamers acquire spatial awareness improvements within 10 hours of game play.
It has always made me wonder why more women do not play FPSs, and while there are actually a few more reasons than simply, “it’s just the violence!” On issue that game theorists often look at is how difficult is too difficult? Or why certain players are drawn to certain game types. From reading of Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun (fantastic book, also an amazing artist), he notes that people will often be drawn towards games that they are innately superior in. Men are, in general more spatially aware than women. It’s by no chance that more men play FPSs than women.
However, #6 is suggesting that if a woman is to sit down for about 10 hours and play a game that involves spatial awareness that determines the success of a player, they will acquire the ability to keep this heightened spatial awareness permanently. The study itself retested after 5 months and their scores were about the same. This coincides exactly with what Koster was relating in his book (Pg. 108 of Theory of Fun, if you are interested.) So the question now is; how do you keep players interested in a game for 10 hours while they work up their abilities enough to the point that if the game was somewhat frustrating because it didn’t sync up with their innate skill sets, how do you keep them hooked long enough? It’s an uphill battle until the player can gain the necessary skills to continue on with a more comfortable feel for it. Perhaps the industry needs to introduce some more “training up games” where it’s not so much a direct FPS, but games that are based around spatial awareness for player success. Then women may not be as put off to the idea of FPS. (As a note, these references are from studies on average female players and are not intended to be sexist stereotypes. I’d rather have a great discussion about how men and women are different and how to improve both sides of the fence rather than being placed into the ’sexist pig’ bracket without any discussion.)
#5 The Exit Screen!
Who would have thought about the exit screen as being an integral part of a games process. The only risk, as was noted in the presentation, is that you exit the game or not. Games build up a grand entrance; there are cinematic in almost every game now when a player begins their journey, and yes, when they complete the game, but what about when a player does not have time to complete the game in one sitting. They must exit the game in some fashion, and this year the focus of a game element that is not studied as much was on this topic.
I personally would have never thought of this by myself. Once I read this, I thought back at how many games I remember the exit screen of; one was DOOM, asking if I was wussying out or some other such thing. Other than that, not many games give me as nearly a grand an exit as an entrance. Perhaps with MMOs there can be some sort of “leaving the game world” sort of cinematic that can be played the first time a player logs off in that area; in FPSs perhaps the player has to move out of a command center between missions to a parking lot or some other resting area that would be “off the job”. There are many interesting possibilities, most of which I’m sure will come about when I’m not trying to think up some for this post!
Some of the other findings were not so surprising, such as Voice Chat making your relationships with guild members much more… extreme, whether positively or negatively, there is a stronger attachment to the emotions regarding them. Video games becoming the future of live sports, and games having a more enjoyable experience if you can take it outside of the screen with friends or family.
Overall a fantastic read; I wish I could be there to hear the actual presentation. Hopefully there might be a live-blog of it out there somewhere or a podcast or some such.
Game Designs coming together; also paranoia.
February 16, 2008
Currently I’m in a group with 3 other members to which we must make a board game. Following some MDA approaches, we decided to go with paranoia as our aesthetic. Over the last week we’ve been hashing out games back and forth on ways for the player to feel paranoia; whether through the concealment of information from other players, hidden objectives, etc. It’s fascinating, when you step back, how often the best ideas also have little that can be applied. Often one of us would suggest an idea, there would be a moment of silence, and then the follow up of “Yes, but how do we apply that to our Core?”
After finally being with a group of people to develop a game, I’m finally realizing how often digital games are being made backwards. The aesthetic is often the aftermath of sessions containing, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we let the player do this!?” To which then, the player has a complete detachment from the game as they perform some random task through a level because somewhere, someone thought it would be cool. Perhaps that works well for multiplayer first person shooters, where often there is not an aim to make the player “feel” anything, so much as to give them challenging goals to complete, whether that be in co-operative play or eliminating a stronger team in a ladder tournament.
So, after a week of our group having trouble keeping consistent dynamics with our aesthetic; everything clicked. We dropped the ideas that did not fit with vigorous backhands and embraced dynamics we knew were the purest route to paranoia. After we hashed out some mechanics to make these dynamics functional we drew out a dirty prototype. It has MUCH more fun than our planned play testing earlier. We were all laughing, making jokes, and generally confident in our design. We packed up for the day all patting ourselves on the back. One team member noted how this was probably the hardest design he had ever worked on; this coming from someone I view as a very intelligent, read person to which I respect their opinion greatly. So, knowing that I was not the only person having difficulty coming up with systems that worked AND were enjoyable for a player to go through was a spectacular feeling when all was resolved.
If this is the buzz that comes with everything clicking in a game design; I’m hooked.
Cluk Cluk! A Chicken Simulation Experience
February 9, 2008
We were discussing paranoia for a group project, and on a completely random tangent I got into a chicken game. Although it didn’t pertain to what we have planned for our group, I decided to flesh it out! So without further ado, I give you:
Cluk Cluk! A Chicken Simulation Experience
Suggested players: 4
Objective of game: Accumulate the most eggs to win!
General Play Dynamics: The player is a chicken, and as we all know the biggest chicken lays the most eggs! The goal is to ensure that you are the biggest chicken per turn to gain eggs, but also to make sure you are not so big you can’t make another chicken have their eggs taken away by the farmer instead.
The Going Ons – Oh Boy!
January 31, 2008
So, Valve, in another move of being awesome, has decided to release their Steam system to developers in the form of Steamworks. For Free. This potentially allows all games that have developers use this with to:
- Distribute digitally, removing the middle man from developer to consumer for no cost to the company.
- Provide no-cd support through key-codes attached to accounts for players.
- An Achievement system like XBL for players on the PC platform.
- Provide a social network system for games that often would not have a social network tied to them, on a free platform the player already uses.
I find this to be incredibly big news. Many companies were afraid to hop on board of Steam at the beginning. Now, many companies have gone ahead with working with the digital distribution of Steam, even given some Steam exclusive games, like the in-development prequel sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which I actually enjoyed a great deal.
Also, this seems rather interesting. I know I’ll be watching it when it comes out, as I really don’t see how ANY gamer can’t at least see a little bit of themselves in any of those people. For those that don’t want to click the link, it’s a documentary film trailer called Second Skin that looks at gamer lives between a few games and how it has affected them on the large.
