I teach about video games and virtual worlds like SecondLife. We're developing a new major about video game and immersive media design; this blog will serve as a place to talk about my experiences playing new-to-me videogames and hanging out in SecondLife. It will show how i learned how to play games and be an example for my students of how to reflect on their own game playing experiences. It might encourage others to try playing games and spending time in virtual worlds.
This semester in Critical Analysis of Games, we had about 12 or 13 games out of a class of 26. Some folks worked alone because of their schedules or because they were the only person interested in a topic. Here is a link to all the projects for this class: projects. You can see more pictures here on Flickr.
There were games about LOLcats, YouTube videos, space pirates, Dante's Inferno, Dr. Horrible's musical blog, greek mythology, dating in the 50s, retro space adventuring, trans-Canadian highway system, children's fairy tales, and bounty hunting. We had board games, trivia games, card games, and combinations. The play test session was hectic. We rotated games in and out as people finished a round. It would be better to let them play a round, have a few minutes to make notes, and then repeat. For that we need space and people - lots of people - since most of the games need 4 players.
We invited some staff and other professors to come play. They gave the students good feedback. It was a way for other people in the school to see what kinds of things students in the new game design major will do. And it's important for students to get feedback from someone other than me (or their peers). Especially if we want to think about making commercially viable games - we need to understand different markets
Having our playtest time during final exams week makes it tough to get students. Next year we're going to do the big play test the last week of classes. That will give the students more time to revise and do their write up too. This year we had candidates in doing demo classes so we were a little short of time.
I've decided to make it more of a straight card game, no board.
There are ride/exhibit cards that tell you how much whuffie (respect) you need to update, what skills you need to have to update, and how much whuffie you get each round just for controlling it.
There are skill cards - painting, animating, robotics, etc. Some rides (E ticket rides maybe) take more than one skill to update and extra whuffie because people don't want you to mess withe classic rides. It might be interesting to let people spend whuffie to buy a specific skill.
Whuffie is in the form of chips - I'm thinking each player has a different color so you could watch your respect move from player to player. You get a stash of whuffie at the beginning of the game. You get whuffie each round for the rides you control. It costs you whuffie to rehab/update a ride. Once you update a ride it might be worth more whuffie (like putting a hotel on a property in Monopoly - still thinking about that.
When you have the whuffie and skills you can update a ride that you control. You have to update a number of rides to cause the end of the game - I'm thinking one in each land of the Magic Kingdom but that might take too long. There are 6 lands - so maybe gotta rehab rides in 4 of the 6 lands.
The winner is whoever has the most whuffie wins (assuming that the more rides you update, the more whuffie you will have).
There will be unexpected event/wild cards - sometimes you lose a turn, sometimes you get to take their whuffie or take over a wide they've put out to control
downloading the character's memories for safe keeping (since you can get cloned/reborn pretty easily) - lose a turn
get shot/killed and have to be cloned - lose a turn
accident on one of your rides -you have to give up a chunk of whuffie
your best friend starts dating your significant other - lose a turn
I'm playing with the idea of cooperation - so if 2 people had the Space Mountain card, they could share ownership of it and pool their resources to rehab it (and split the whuffie that ya get for hte rehab. Cooperation would be even cooler if players were eliminated one by one - players could cooperate to gang up on another player. Not sure of the benefit of cooperation if it's a winner take all game.
Right now I think everybody will be dealt a small number of cards to start - say 5. They will get a stash of whuffie chips. They can claim a ride by laying the card down in front of them and putting up some whuffie as collateral that they will treat the ride with respect. Each round you can rehab a ride, draw a card, play a wild card, buy a skill - do one of those things. Each round you get a new stash of whuffie. If you decide to rehab a ride you have to lay down your skills and take the right amount of whuffie out of your stash and put a marker on the map of the kingdom (hmmm - forgot to mention there's a map didn't I ? Well there's a big general map with the areas marked out like frontier land and fantasy land)
Lands & Rides (in order from the main gate to the left on the map except for toontown fair which isn't part of the classic Disney Magic Kingdom that I grew up with)
Main Street USA 4- railroad, horse drawn jitney, double decker bus, parade - all A tix so easy one to start with
Adventureland 4 - treehouse - B, enchanted tiki room - E, jungle cruise - B, pirates - E
Frontierland 4 - tom sawyer island, country bear jamboree - E, splash mountain, big thunder mountain
Liberty Square 3 - hall of presidents, riverboat - D, haunted mansion - E
Fantasyland 5 - it's a small world - E, peter pan's flight - C, show white's scary adventures - C, dumbo - C, carousel - A
Tomorrowland 5 - speedway, space mountain - E, wedway people mover - D, carousel of progress, astro orbiter - D
In my freshman class this semester we're making games - analog games. That means board games, card games, dice games, dominoes...No computers, no keyboards, no programming. That comes next year.
The board game industry in this country is small. But it's there. Here's a great blog post from Jackson Pope on Boardgame News about getting your game published. He owns Reiver Games. Notice he points out the importance of clear well-written rules and having a prototype for hte publisher to test out. Be sure you've play tested the heck out of your game before sending it in.
Here's an article from Wired about the guy who created Settlers of Catan as a hobby. Board games are much more popular in Germany and the rest of Europe than they are in the States. And here's the webpage for the game.
I just read a great post from Darius Kazemi on his Tiny Subversions blog about writing your resume if you're applying for a job in game development. It has specific advice.
He recommends you work on game projects - what you learn from that is worth more to the game company than most things you learn at a part time job.
So this summer - don't just lay around - even if you are reading great literature or playing all the new games. Create games too. Find some people to work with. Get some experience worth putting on your resume. Because you want to go to the Game Developers Conference and South by Southwest interactive (SXSWi).
Two groups of students from a section of Qualitative Research last year presented their interview papers at the 2009 Communication Undergraduate Research Conference. Here's a link to the schedule - as you can see there were a wide variety of topics and many posters this year as well. One group presented about dating in SecondLife and the other about communication in world. They had to answer a lot of basic questions about SecondLife as well as about their topic. Most attendees (college students nad professors) seemed to have never heard about or gone into SecondLife. One presentor (who's paper was also about SecondLife) seemed to have never gone into SecondLife either since there were some factual errors in her presentation.
The students in the Critical Analysis of Games class started building in SecondLife on Monday. Whew - 26 students spread over our 2 islands trying to line up shapes. They came up with some interesting stuff tho. Here's a pic with a couple of their builds - one student built a table and a childs stacking toy. There's an ice cream in the background and several of our early experiments with shapes and texturing.
We will be building more things on the island. I think today we will pair up and try to build checkerboards. They'll have to think about the overall size and the size of the individual squares and they can use the position numbers to line everything up. Still trying to decide what to build next week - I want it to be something with a bigger group working on it . Any suggestions? Leave them in the comments - thanks!
Since the students in the critical analysis class ha to make a board or card game, I decided to try my hand at it too. My effort will be an example of the process students might go thru to create their own game and if I have to look for a new job, it will be good to have some games in my own portfolio.
I read Cory Doctorow's sci-fi novel Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom. He writes the very popular BoingBoing blog I just got back from a trip to Disney World over Spring Break 2009, and it was fun to read about all the places at the Magic Kingdom that I had just visited. I've been going to DisneyWorld since I was in high school, so I could seriously identify with the main character's (Julius) desire to live in DisneyWorld. The group he works with protects and maintains the Haunted Mansion ride, which is one of my favorites. . There's a lot of discussion of protecting the past and maintaining the traditions of the Disney legacy. Many parts of Disney currently don't seem to have that same respect for legacy now (a whole new rant, not for this blog)
Here's my process. I wrote down all the main characters, listed plot elements, and then started doodling around with ideas. I made notes, sketched boards, drew arrows, thought about cards and dice and spinners and markers, and different game play mechanics. And I came up with a number of ideas. I tell my studnets the first idea is usually not the best so I want to generate a bunch to show them that it is possible and that the ideas really do get better. Now that I have some ideas, I'm going to go do a little research on Cory and on the Haunted Mansion to see if there are any bits of history that I want to work into the game.
characters:
3 main characters Julius, Lil, and Dan - they're in romantic relattionships, they're friends, and they're co-workers so there are lots of situations to put them in in the game
other characters - Lil's parents (who've been deadheading for a hundred years or so),
Debra (knew Lil's parents, creates new exhibits at disneyworld, Lil's rival for power in the park)
Tim a programmer who works with Debra
Kim and the other newbies brought in to work on the Haunted Mansion by Julius
plot elements
deadheading, choosing to die, end of death
clones, brain backups, backup reloaded into clone if you die, long life
maintain rides, enhance rides at WDW
work at WDW - cast members, design merchandise, deisgn/enhance rides, be member of the ad hocracy
whuffie - reputation points as the currency, high whuffie gets you access to teh scarce stuff, low whuffie can't get the elevator to stop for you, whuffie related to how other people think about you, with more whuffie you can control more territory or make changes to rides
there's the Bitchun Society that encourages people to do the brain dump and use the clones to live forever - not sure if the society itself has any character-capability
game ideas - goals, relationships, random thoughts
could deadhead to skip a turn but what would be the effect on the player (lose whuffie, lose something, not get paid if someone owes him rent)
what makes whuffie go up adn down - gotta have whuffie as sort of the game currency since it's a big part of the book
one possible game goal - to become a cast member, to move up from cast member to belong to the ad hoc, to leading the ad hoc - does it take certain amount of whuffie to move up, whuffie in combo with something else like skills or followers
another possible goal - make exhibits better - more thru put, more audience appreciation, more revenue from mechandise sales - allof these would also increase whuffie
another goal - collect whuffie, collect followers, collect internet fans, collect ride maintenance skills, collect territory
in eurogame style whuffie could be around the outside of the board or could be pile of chips
roles you could play as
ad hoc leader - only they can play the exhibit change card and only 1 per turn (so have to rotate who goes first maybe?)
play as basic cast member who wants to get into an ad hoc, work shifts each round to earn whuffie
play as griefer/hacker who can cause all your whuffie to go back into the pile (maybe costs the griefer some whuffie too) and maybe they gain a skill card or maybe they get to take one of yours
play as Kim and the internet fans - add whuffie to the ad hoc
things that could go wrong
you get killed while testing new ride
you get killed by an assassin
your brain electronics fail and you have to go offline
your girl friend dumps you for your best friend
your best friend shows up whuffie-less and has decided to kill himself (and not be cloned)
game idea 1
could be 2 kinds of cards - skill and action cards, chips for whuffie
take so much whuffie and specific skills to attempt ride upgrade
roll dice to see how successful the upgrade is = how much whuffie and rank change - so that's random but cards are strategic
could ahve a board where if the upgrade is successful you claim territory
need ways to take someone's territory - more whuffie and lower chance of success with the dice
board could look like Magic Kingdom - maybe have to have a ride claimed in each land to win or maybe rides worth different amounts of points - first need certain point level to win so player has to decide whether to go for the big point rides or several smaller rides
need markers to show ownership
deck of action cards - could give whuffie, could give ya permission to attempt an upgrade - what other actions, take a skill card from someone else, might have a rule that says you can only have 5 skill cards at a time (5 is arbitrary number) and you have to throw away any extras
maybe whuffie is a pile of chips that everyone can see
skill cards are secret - maybe a set that you have to collect, maybe a set for different kinds of exhibits - so there might be 3 or 4 cards that you need ot collect for the take over of a small ride (paiting, merchandise creation, crowd control...)
have to have the set of skill cards and enough whuffie and a permission action card to do the project upgrade
might have them draw 5 skill cards to start and throw back 2
not sure who you're playing as - julius, new cast member, the adhoc?
get a certain amount of whuffie each round
claim territory you're going to work to own - see who gets done first
maybe have to bid whuffie and someone (?banker?) gives skills/territory to highest bidder
idea 2 - could do something with the Haunted Mansion redo angle - maybe the game takes place inside the mansion, board is the ride (except everyone on it in parallel, not serially), parts/scenes of the ride = levels, need to do something different at each stage of the game, move marker along board path
idea 3 - could build a new ride - like Carcassone - pieces are ride elements - can put in specific order - get whuffie for successfully joining 2 pieces, take work to claim the territory for your ad hoc, can only have some number of spare pieces in your hand for future moves, need some other way to get whuffie, need way to take territory from others, game over when allt he pieces placed
some links and ideas about Haunted Mansion - need graphics, story elements, conflict there really are fan shrines to the ride - http://www.doombuggies.com/ is one of them Here's a video walk thru of the ride - in the story world you'd use something like that to reduce the ride time and increase thru put the Haunted Mansion wiki page - wikipedia
the carts the customers ride in are called doom buggies. there's a haunted mansion at all the parks. On the plans before park opened but it wasn't one of the original rides at disneyland. original designs based on antebellum mansions. they have graveyards - including a pet cemetary.
If you have an iGoogle page these are worth checking out - google has created a series of themes for the iGoogle page using intellectual property from videogames - with the game publishers' permission. So you can have Mario and Megaman and characters from Zelda, The Sims and Guitar Hero, and evfen Wii Sports on your iGoogle page.
I hope they add them to the themes for gmail. I use it a lot more than I use my iGoogle page.
I'm going with the game of the day - every day graphics from a different game till I see what I like. Probably I'll spend time going - wtf - what game is that from - ha ha ha.
Ok - there are some sucky games out there - we all know it. This weekend I'm playing Mystery PI: Portrait of a Thief on the DS. I am not sure what the mystery is and I've been playing (successfully) for 3 hours. You have to find specific objects in a photo filled with objects. There are several locations to gather evidence and at each location you have to find a specific number of objects. When you find all the objects in the given part of town you get to play a mini-game (concentration, rearrange the puzzle pieces are the 2 types I"ve seen so far). And you get a screen of text that seems to be talking abou thte mystery but there's no info there to help you on the next level or that adds to the story line or even to your understanding of yourself as the private investigator.
I like puzzle games. Don't get me wrong. And repetition doesn't always bother me. I like Cooking Mama with its repetition of a set of cooking skills; I'm anxious to get the new recipes even tho I know there's no new skills to learn (ok - and is it just me but or is Mam really passive aggressive - look at the literal fire in her eyes when she tells you she'll fix your mistakes. She sounds all friendly, but her eyes show her real feelings!). But this game is bad There's no apparent logic to what objects ya have to find - they're not related to each other and since there's no bigger story clearly layed out, the objects don't seemt o be related ot the story either. There's something in the text about art so ya think maybe some art has been stolen. But you're not looking for art - you're looking for paperclips and red peppers and butterflies and birds and masks and .... . And I don't know if it's my older DS or the graphics quality in the game but the pictures are hard to see. I'm not even sure if there is a bigger purpose to the game. So it falls down in terms of story, in character development, and in variety of game play. I keep playing going - is that all there is?
I think this game will become part of an assignment next year for the game design students - fix the game. They will be developing the sequel maybe or porting it to a new platform. I am sure there is no shortage of bad games we could pick up - i will look for low meta critic scores and recommendations from the more senior students. And if you have any suggestions - please leave them in the comments section. It will just be the design - i don't think we'll be doing any of the programming tho I think we could in flash but I want them to focus on the design elements, the rules, and giving the game a purpose. So stay tuned in the fall for an update on how that assignment goes over
As an aside - this game is from Pop Cap games which has a great portal on the web and has done very cool things to monetize their games. They're a company I want to study more in our junior class on the business - they've stayed independent (I think), they have tried a variety of things to get revenue from the games. I need to find out about their relationship with developers.
Over the winter break month I tried to play a variety of new to me games. I got side tracked when I pulled out my DDR for the PS2. I'm bad at it but it is fun to play. Today I hooked up the EyeToy (a USB camera that hooks up to the PS2 and is recognized by the DDR). Turns out I am even more uncoordinated than I imagined. You have to use your feet and hands. You have to put your hands so they cover specific parts of the screen and move your feet with the arrows. I was doing ok in the setting labeled "hands OR feet". Then I moved to what is my normal level in DDR (easy peasey) and it became "hands AND feet" and I fell over - not literally but my own lack of aptitude made be laugh out loud. I'll keep trying tho.
And then I played Viva Pinata on the DS. I don't get it. I can grow carrots and daisies. But seemed weird to lure pinatas onto your land, breed them and then sell them. Ok - truthfully, maybe it wouldn't have seemed so weird if I could have successfully gotten them to breed. What do ya do with the building? Why build it and then knock it down? My sister and her husband play Viva Pinata on the 360 and they both love it. So - I think I"m just missing something. I'll watch them play and see what the big deal is.
Boardgame News has a good post this week about bhilding prototypes of boardgames. It doesn't go into game mechanics or creating ideas. Instead it looks at the importance of having lots of bits and pieces around to work with - cards, money, markers, dice. The author talks about using existing cards (playing cards, Magic the Gathering cards) and pasting new game stuff on the card front - the cards all have uniform card backs. He keeps around old games that he doesn't want to play anymore and uses the money, cards, small wooden pieces. I guess you could even use the board - just cover it with a new graphic. He even has a home laminator.
It's a timely article because the students in my critical analysis of games class (2nd semester of the freshman year of our game design major) are finishing up creating games with the Icehouyse game system pyramids. After spring break they start work on creating a board game. This article suggests stuff I need to collect for this semester and the future. I saw tons of gorgeous paper at AC Moore. They even have die cutters with premade dies that I need to look at - we could make cool specialty/themed shapes with it.
See an earlier post about our playtesting the pyramid games. I will post about playtesting the board games at the end of the semester and have some more ideas about what we should be colecting.
We invited some staff and other professors to come play. They gave the students good feedback. It was a way for other people in the school to see what kinds of things students in the new game design major will do. And it's important for students to get feedback from someone other than me (or their peers). Especially if we want to think about making commercially viable games - we need to understand different markets
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