PLay games and more games and more games

There's a thread on a mailing list I"m on about helping students have access to old classic games. One interesting suggestion was to get a license with steam as an internet cafe. Another was to get a subscription with GameTap. Both of them have interesting older games. Game Fly subscriptions for the students (like buying a textbook) is another possibility. The conversation turned to lists of games people should be playing.

Here's one list from the Game Career Guide - new, old, Flash, board, card, D&D....an ipmressive list -
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/668/ask_the_experts_31_games_students_.php

And here's a list of games that seem to have been abandoned by their publishers or their publishers have gone out of business. You might not be able to play the games, but you can use the descriptions and images on these lists to get a sense for what the games included and how they looked.

• Abandonia - http://www.abandonia.com/
  
• Abandon Games - http://abandongames.com/
  

And last but not least by any means is to look for game play videos on youtube and elsewhere on the net. This is especially good for older games that just aren't available anymore (or their consoles aren't available. My students use game play videos now to illustrate the games they're presenting each week rather than bringing in hardware we don't have at school.

Visit from Firaxis Executive Producer

Image via Wikipedia

Firaxis makes the Sid Meier's Civilization games. Friday February 6, 2009, Barry Caudill and screenwriting alumni Liam ??? visited with students at Ithaca College. They gave some good advice for students interested in working in the videogame industry.

• The big message - it's tough to break into the industry. Don't give up. There are steps you can take to be more attractive to game companies.
  
• Be willing to start small and work up. Be adaptable and versatile.
  
• Communication is key - written, oral, with team members and managers, with publishers and consumers.
  
• Sometimes there are designer/writers, designer/scripter; at Firaxis they have designer/programmers.
  
• If you want to get into the industry as a designer you need some programming so you can create your own prototypes. You're better able to get across your own ideas if you can create your own prototypes.
  
• Quality Assurance is a good starting point especially if you want to move into a position as a producer.
  
  
• Companies are looking for experience which makes it tough for new grads. You can make your own game and take to the interview. It's not enough to have ideas - you have to make stuff. You can make videogames, game mods, even analog games (board/card games). Show you can implement ideas and finish stuff. There are lots of tools to use to make games - XNA Unreal engine, NeverEnding Knights engine, flash... You need to let people play your game and get feedback. So playtest early and often.
  Go to game jams - you work with a team to create a playable game.
  
• The more you know the easier it is to talk to other people on the team. They use a variety of software - Visual Studio, MS Office suite, visualization tools like Visio and PowerPoint, lots of project management tools, graphic tools like Photoshop and 3D StudioMax, Python and other scripting languages, XML for game text, and software for source control.
  
  And - to my students who wonder why I assign strange projects and make them play with boardgames about bean farming and zombie brains - - - see I don't make this stuff up. The pros give the same advice. And they'd both played Bohanza, the bean farming game - ha ha!
  
  Here's alum Liam Collins:
  
  

  
  Here is a photos of Barry Caudill:
  
  
  
  
  

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  • Game On! An Introduction to the Video Game Industry, February 6 (ithaca.edu)

Interesting blog post

from an indie game developer on what it really means to be an indie game developer - he gets to do a little of everything (he's the only full time employee of his company) including talking to the media and promoting his games. There's a discussion of distribution channels and the current state of the casual games market.

Blog: NotesonGameDev.net, post written by Andy Schatz

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Videogame News

Some interesting news and new news sources.

A new-to-me news source called Game Business Daily has editorials and news tidbits. It is very strangely (as in, difficult to read on my Mac running Firefox) formatted but interesting stories. They don't have an RSS feed as far as I can tell as of early November 2008. For instance check out their story predicting upcoming economic woes for the game industry - might be a bad time for us to start a videogame design major. Except as it points out, there are lots of new distribution channels, new kinds of games; we have to find a niche for our students to specialize in and/or give them a variety of skills so they can adapt to changes in the market to come. http://www.gamebusinessdaily.com/articles/articles4.html

Another new-to-me news source is Daily Warcraft - I'm not a WOW player but I know some of my students are; again I didn't see an RSS feed. The thing that caught my eye on this site is the ads for learning how to be a gold farmer. Ok - that's strange. It was there yesterday, had news about the maintenance downtime in fact. Now today - the day of the Lich King expansion release, it's down. Maybe too much volume. Worth trying later - http://www.dailywarcraft.com/

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Peer Review Results

After the Introduction to Games and Society students created their podcasts, I had them complete a peer review of their teammates using a Google Form. Being able to give and receive feedback is a skill the game industry is looking for in their employees. I wanted to see how they did with the giving of feedback. I told them I would not share names , just general results. Here is my summary of the peer review results the students entered. Most of the students worked in pairs on the podcasts but some were groups of 3.


Peer Review Observation

11 people didn’t fill out the form – missed out on 10 points

Good skills people thought their teammates had

• know how to use the media making software, how to edit
  
• background/content knowledge, knew where to go for more info
  
• work skills – doesn’t get distracted, efficiently finds the right info
  
• creative, can improvise on camera,flexible, provides inspiration
  
• good public speaking voice
  
• good writer
  

Work Styles
7 plan ahead, 13 do assigned tasks on time, 2 do assigned tasks late and need editing

Could Do Better (both self and teammate)

• start earlier, be more flexible in scheduling, use time more efficiently, be upfront about schedule
  
• plan the project better, use a script, proof read before recording, be more organized, be proactive, better organization skills
  
• speak up on tape
  
• don’t try to do all by yourself, take turns better, everyone in the group should help and should talk on screen/tape
  
• focus the topic earlier, be decisive
  
• know more about how to edit so could help, know how to use the hardware
  
• know more background info, know where to find more images
  
• be assertive, communicate more/better especially at beginning