This blog serves as a place to talk about my experiences playing new-to-me videogames and hanging out in SecondLife. It might encourage others to try playing games and spending time in virtual worlds.
Showing posts with label Game development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Game development. Show all posts
IN the business of gaming class we had a play test session for our final. They had to turn in a short paper, but the focus was on games and donuts. One of the students in class - Mack Cameron - has developed a variety of board games in his spare time. So we play tested the Croquet game - actually based on croquet but with some very fun modifications - like being able to send the ball right at another player. Lots of good violence and scheming was engaged in by all.
We also had a group playing Halo. We had hoped to play the Halo multiplayer beta but of course our wireless in the classroom wouldn't talk to the wireless receiver in the XBox. As the students said - what else is new.
Here are some pics of us having fun..ending up the semester as a pretty tight group that hopefully will do things together next year to make fun games.
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!
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.
I can see the game design students making games for the iphone and since we're an all mac shop (our students have to buy macs) it would be another way for them to use their hardware. And I like it because mobile gaming is a huge new market. Would be good for our junior level special topics class maybe - combo with topic like casual games.
Of course everybody is making iphone games - this is a photo of a iphone dev camp! so the chance of getting any market share is slim - but there are competitive games to study and maybe we could interview other developers/get them to talk to the students. The business angle of the app store would be good to investigate.
You can develop on your mac and test. But we'd need some iphones or iTouches to test on. Wouldn't that be a hardship? - ha ha. Tho imagine asking the dean for money for iphones "just for testing, really, nooooo - no phone calls". Wonder if you can play games with out service Just kidding about the dean - she'd spring for the money for a couple I think.
Two students from the game design major here at Ithaca College went to SUNY Albany to participate in the Global Game Jam at the beginning of February 2009. They met people interested in making games from other colleges. Sounds like there was a ton of food and enough participants to have 6 groups making games
Here is a link to the game that their group created. They put the game up on YoYo Games since they made their game with Game Maker, software distributed by YoYo. They'd really appreciate any comments and feedback. You can leave it on the YoYo site or here on the blog and I'll make sure the students get the message.
IImage by kgregson via Flickr bought some more game for the game design program - mostly card games because they have some interesting gameplay mechanics and rules. And remember I've said you can make a game about anything - check out these topics - zombies, sushi, sammich making, bean farming, school politics, medieval politics.... And I bought most of them locally (in Binghamton) at Jupiter Games. Here's a link to their website and to a yelp page with a map. The store has game nights on Friday that would be worth going to. They regularly attract about 30 players. They have a big collection of games open to play. And people seemed open to teaching games to newbies (for folks from Intro to Games & Society - they have Race to the Galaxy and know how to play it! And like playing it!!!)
Image from Coloretto via WikipediaHere's what I bought over break.
Wasabi (card game - make sushi by Joshua Cappel and Adam Gertzbein)
I'm preparing 2 new classes - Fun & Games (a seminar discussion class for 18 senor undergrad students) and Critical Analysis of games (for 30 undergrads) - trying to find readings, think of assignments, and read a lot of extra stuff to add to the lectures to help make sense of all the new material (new to me and them)
I"m also determined to play a lot of videogames. I checked a lot out from our collection at school - i bought them but never had time to play them over the semester. I checked out a lot for hte DS - I like the 2 screens and the different input options. I also took a couple for the XBox360 and the Wii Image via Wikipediaand one for the PSP. I have a couple PSP games at home already that I need to play. I figure I"ll blog some little summaries/reactions to the games and ideas I have about using them in assignments. We bought a lot of the games used and many don't have instructions which is a pain for me. I discovered tho that hte students don't read the videogame instructions (and were ticked that they had to read and understand the instructions for the board games we played. I have found good guides and instructions on the IGN site and have put links to them on our website Reviews Image via WikipediaMeteos (for the DS) - a puzzle game. I bought it used and it didn't have the instructions. I think I need to read the guide I found on IGN - there are things going on on the screen that I had no understanding of even after playing for 2 hours and sometimes winning. As a puzzle game tho it's kind of typical - match the tiles up in groups of three to have them blast off. Things happen really fast tho - I'd concentrate on the right side of the screen and before I knew it I had lost because of something on teh left hand side. There's some kind of outer space theming - the falling tiles are takng place on different planets. I can see assigning students a group of puzzle games to compare or compare puzzle games on different platforms or different kinds of puzzles. And in the fun class we're going to talk about puzzles so it might be interesting to have them play puzzle games and see what the fun is. Someone I follow on Twitter recommended I check out the Disney verson of Meteos - I'm a big fan of all things Disney so I will look for it when I go shopping later.
Image via WikipediaLumines II (PSP) - another puzzle game - kind of like Tetris with the falling tiles but the tiles are made up of 4 smaller blocks and each block can be one of 2 colors. You have to maneuver the tile so that you get 4 smaller blocks of the same color in a 2 x 2 arrangement (not a 1 x 4 unfortunately - those I seem to be able to build with no problem). Themusic (in my opinion) is annoying. And some of the flashing skins are hard on my old eyes. The 2 x 2 squares don't disappear immediately - only when the timeline (that maybe is moving in time with the music, I can't tell because the music irritated me and I turned it off) crosses over it. The timeline is a neat feature they added to the tile matching puzzle. if you can work it right, you can stack up 2 x 3 or 3 x 3 (or bigger theoretically) and get more points. You can save at the end of each game. There are 22 levels as a beginner, another 22 for the A level and a third set of 22 levels for the S level. And then lot of other ways to play including competing against the cmoputer. Assignment possibiities: It might be interesting to try and lay out historically the feature development in the puzzle genre - any of the genres probably. Same with some of the euro games (like from carcassone to settlers to stone age). Another assignment - compare puzzle games on the different platforms - how do they take advantage of the strengths of each platform/how are they different from platform to platform.Another assignment - take the timeline feature and work it into another genre - and think how you'd have to change the win/lose conditions and the rules.
Image via WikipediaAnother puzzle game I have been playing is Boom Blox on the Wii. You knock down these stacks of blocks with baseballs and ray guns and bowling balls. Some of the blocks are bombs. Others are filed with explosive gas. It's good destructive fun. There's a big training set of lessons, then 3 areas of quests. As you finish the tutorials and quests you win stuff like castles and ray guns of your own to use in the third section - an area wher eyou can builid your own stack of blox for others to knock down - tho the backgrounds and decorations are limited to what you see in the regular game so no outer space blox. I like the destructive aspect. There are little creatures - cows and dogs and penquins - in the background. If ya toss the ball just right you can bean them in the head and make them disappear; you don't get any extra points (and you really should) but it's still fun. It seems less repetitive than the other puzzle games. And there are lots of ways thru the tutorials so you dont' get stuck having to do the same skill ove rand ovr and over till you accidentally do it correctly or in a timely fashion. And no mind-numbing droney music. Maybe that's one of the adantages of hte console - more space on teh dvd for content and better sound on the tv. I'd like to have the students make their own stack of blocks and decorate it for others to play and evaluate but not sure how to share it. Another assignment possibility migight be to look at how games incorporate avatars or characters representing hte palyer - in this game you pick your avatar out at the beginning but the only time you see that character again is when you restart the game. You don't see him throw the baseball or chase the cows. Kind of irritating that they made me pick him out and then I don't get to play as him.
Image via WikipediaSid Meier's Civilization (DS) - ok - i really don't like this kind of game - build units, place units, move units - turn based strategy. You go from the stone age to space age. There are several ways to win - that I like. It had a consistent use of the keys but i couldn't always figure out what triggered the end of my turn and it wasn't always clear to which units I'd already given a destination. It's a good example of in game tutorial level tho. Comparing the content of the tutorials with the directions for the board games we play might be interesting. Or examining the tutorial to see how they teach a variety of skills - what order does the tutorial put things in and is that the optimum pattern. This is definintely one I want to compare across platforms - what did they have to sacrifice to get it on the DS for instance. This isn't a picture of the DS version - it's just the only one I can find at the moment; I'll replace it when I can.
Image via WikipediaAssassin's Creed for the DS - just started this one (I have to play it on the xbox360 too). It's a platformer - run,jump, climb walls, run along rails. I think there's fighting - i saw a tutorial with some wicked sword moves and stabby combinations. No massive blood spurts like Mortal Kombat, but that's ok. There are some mini-puzzles. You use the ABXY keys and the LR trigger instead of the stylus. That was kind of irritating. I want to point with the stylus and have the little guy move there. There are spots where you can't see very good - seemed like my little assassin was around the corner from the camera. And now my little assassin is caught in some kind of dumb loop - i keep following hte arrows but there's nothing to do and it just keeps sending me around. Time to check for a hint online I guess (man how lame is that - but hey, this is for educational purposes, not fun!)
N+ (on the PSP) - IT's a good intro the the button mashing type of videogame - one button with the left hand (directions) and one with the right (jump). Except even that is giving me fits. I'd like to blame it on the fact that I"m left handed so i keep trying to jump with the left hand, but mostly don't think that's it. I need more practice. I am going to play the game on the DS too. I think it would be a good first psp game for the students - use a few buttons. Not much story or character development, just action. You could build a story around it I think to give the little ninja some back story.
Text Twist - a casual game - I played it on Yahoo Games - URL: http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=texttwist. I'm a big fan of Book Worm - maybe it's clear I like puzzle games. I like casual games because you can play them for hours but if you only have a few minutes you can still get in a couple of rounds. This one is a little tougher because you only have 6 letters to work with at a time. I like the twist feature which rearranges the letters because it's hard to rearrange them mentally. There is a timer to compete against. If you ahve the right kind of browser it keeps track of high scores (I was on Firefox and it didn't track them). It's an example of a game with very few rules up front (or maybe very few rules overall). It's on a lot of sites - an example of portal distribution. I can't figure out how they're making money but I enjoyed the game.
Shape Inlay - another casual game on Yahoo Games - URL: http://games.yahoo.com/free-games/shape-inlay - a stream of tiles scrolls across the bottom. You have to drag the pieces up into the puzzle shape, trying to fill it in with the shapes. The drag and drop interface is pretty slick. There's time pressure because if the shape tile area fills up you lose. I can't imagine how you could use up all the tiles so I figure you play to get the most points - you're always going to run out of time/tile space - the trick is to play as long as possible. So you maybe can't win but can delay losing as long as possible. I just noticed - there is no credit for the game creator
The first session of the expo was a session where people got to pitch a game idea nad get feedback. I listened to about 5 or 6 ideas. The ideas weren't why I was there - I wanted to hear what kinds of feedback the judges gave, what kinds of questions the judges asked. Here are my notes from that expo. I think pitching will need to be a part of the sophomore class - it's a skill we all need to practice and it ties in with giving and getting feedback, another necessary skill.
General Advice
There are different types of pitches - to venture capitalists, to IPholders (to get permission to use their property), to other people in your company to try to get your game made
Different audiences want different information; some want more info, others less (the high level executive summary type presentaiton). For some people you need the "elevator pitch - 2 minutes or less - that is designed to pique the listener's interest and hopefully they will want to extend the conversation. If you're pitching an MMO to MMO developers then give lots of details about story and crafts and levels while other audience won't want that kind of detail.
Goal of pitch is to get people excited - you have to get them excited right from teh beginning
Pitch meeting is time to develop an internal champion, make connections with at least one person in the room.
Have to give the impression that you can get the job done - they're going to risk a large amount of money on you if they agree to do your game and they want to be sure you can deliver on your promises
When you first start out in the biz you'll be pitching to people who's job it is to screen out ideas. Don't ignore them tho - they're probably assistant producers and in a few years they will be in charge of something. Make a long term friend.
Most ideas get thrown away originally. Companies might have something like it in production already or might now have a team available. And sometimes idea is just bad.
Content pitches are tough to sell - no reason for audience to listen to long story
Remember - game is entertainment product and they're going to take liberties with your ideas and your content to make it more fun and cooler
Have to understand the play habits of people who play the kind of game you're pitching - if mobile game, need to understand how people play mobile (play in little bursts, can get text messages but might need them deferred since might be at work) - same iwth casual games (if you say you're going to have huge conversion rate you sound naieve), part of showing them you can get the job done successfully. You have to show you've thought about the potential problems in your kind of game - that features such as microtransactions won't mess up the balance of the game
Specific Advice - what to include in the pitch
Need to consider who's your main competition and what's going to make your game special, what differentiates it from other games. The differentiator might be the feature set the IP the price, how it's distributed
Say who's your intended audience (and it should be an audience that hte company wants to reach)
If you're tying in with some current trend or pop culture success, say so - they might be interested because that trend shows there's some interest in the topic
For the majority of games the story isn't that important, game depends on the core mechanics so don't downplay your mechanics
If you're pitching an MMO - you have to say how you're going to beat/compete with WOW, especially if your game doesn't have features that WOW type players like, how you're going to deal with subscriptions/make money such as by using microtransactions
Want people at the meeting to be able to see what the space looks like and how characters move and what characters look like
using industry terminology, catchy names for things in your game give the audience something to askyou about
Some topics that the judges thought were good/interesting right now - mmo's with microtransactions, free racing, games with non-stupid NPCs reputation AI for NPC, UGC, community features
What I'm mostly doing at the Future Play confernce is going thru the 3 day game producer's workshop. Today we covered preproduction and got an intro to production. Lots of notes, we did a couple of group exercises. I got lots of ideas for things we need to do in the 4 year curriculum to give everyone exposure at different levels to these preproduction ideas. The game producer's workshop is led by Heather Chandler who was the producer for the Ghost Recon franchise at Ubisoft up to 2005 when she started her own company Media Sunshine, inc. to provide producer and creative services as a contractor. Here are a couple of ideas from today's class.
I think i would like to be a game producer - they do the budgeting, the scheduling, the relations with the team and with the "suits". They have the big picture in mind at all times.
independent stuios/developers have to prove that they can deliver on time and on budget and they can quickly get a bad reputation if they mess up a project
preproduction should take up from 10 to 25% of time alloted to the game development - more ya do up front, the smoother hte production will go
brainstorm often with people from the team - game concept, character names, character appearance, gameplay, look and feel - - get lots of ideas and you get buy in from the people on the team good for morale and good for game quality
Image via Wikipediaproducer has to do competitive, SWOT, and risk analyses - for competitive analysis look at past games that set the standard for the genre, present games that are selling well, announced but not yet released games to see key features, how you can position your game against hte competition - she says to write down for each competing game - title developer, publisher, platform, release date, game summary, key features, sales estimates, game reviews on things like metacritic, - can do in a spreadsheet
prototypes are good - show people your idea, play test early on, can be paper or digital, good for iterative design, can prototype parts of the game like new game play mechanisms - - gets people from all parts of the team talking about the game since they will all be able to see how it looks and plays
milestones - deliverables on key dates key events to track game progress, goals for designers & programmers - have to make sure everyone agrees wiht the definitions of hte milestone deliverables, break down what each part of hte team should have ready for each milestone so each part of the team knows what to expect to be getting from other parts of the team
she talked about very detailed schedules i project management software that has dependencies and resources assigned, break down tasks to that subtasks might take just a day or two, get a list from everyone of al the tasks that they think they need to do, organize and prioritize it
hard to plan 2 years in advance so producer has to be flexible and be willing to update schedule as you move thru development phases
as ya get people to play the prototype - need them to say what htey like/dislike about the game and why - why is the most important and the toughest to actually get, have to tease out what they don't like specifically and what they'd like to see instead
during production - focus on finishing the game - no new features without compelling reasons, stick to the plan, easier to do if there's buy in earlier from the preproduction phase
gamasutra has salary reviews that you could use for initial budgeting share schedule with the team - again gets buy in, lets them see what happens if they fall behind on their tasks - they can see all the other tasks that will be put off schedule
I ahve a copy of the slides and we're getting a copy of her book with a lot more detail.
I think we have to give students a chance to practice these preproductin skills - developing budgets and schedules, doing QA being the producer, being lead designer/artist/programmer
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Image by kgregson via Flickr bought some more game for the game design program - mostly card games because they have some interesting gameplay mechanics and rules. And remember I've said you can make a game about anything - check out these topics - zombies, sushi, sammich making, bean farming, school politics, medieval politics.... And I bought most of them locally (in Binghamton) at Jupiter Games. Here's a link to their website and to a yelp page with a map. The store has game nights on Friday that would be worth going to. They regularly attract about 30 players. They have a big collection of games open to play. And people seemed open to teaching games to newbies (for folks from Intro to Games & Society - they have Race to the Galaxy and know how to play it! And like playing it!!!)
Image from Coloretto via WikipediaHere's what I bought over break.
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Image via Wikipediaand one for the PSP. I have a couple PSP games at home already that I need to play. I figure I"ll blog some little summaries/reactions to the games and ideas I have about using them in assignments. We bought a lot of the games used and many don't have instructions which is a pain for me. I discovered tho that hte students don't read the videogame instructions (and were ticked that they had to read and understand the instructions for the board games we played. I have found good guides and instructions on the IGN site and have put links to them on our website
Image via WikipediaMeteos (for the DS) - a puzzle game. I bought it used and it didn't have the instructions. I think I need to read the guide I found on IGN - there are things going on on the screen that I had no understanding of even after playing for 2 hours and sometimes winning. As a puzzle game tho it's kind of typical - match the tiles up in groups of three to have them blast off. Things happen really fast tho - I'd concentrate on the right side of the screen and before I knew it I had lost because of something on teh left hand side. There's some kind of outer space theming - the falling tiles are takng place on different planets. I can see assigning students a group of puzzle games to compare or compare puzzle games on different platforms or different kinds of puzzles. And in the fun class we're going to talk about puzzles so it might be interesting to have them play puzzle games and see what the fun is. Someone I follow on Twitter recommended I check out the Disney verson of Meteos - I'm a big fan of all things Disney so I will look for it when I go shopping later.
Image via WikipediaLumines II (PSP) - another puzzle game - kind of like Tetris with the falling tiles but the tiles are made up of 4 smaller blocks and each block can be one of 2 colors. You have to maneuver the tile so that you get 4 smaller blocks of the same color in a 2 x 2 arrangement (not a 1 x 4 unfortunately - those I seem to be able to build with no problem). Themusic (in my opinion) is annoying. And some of the flashing skins are hard on my old eyes. The 2 x 2 squares don't disappear immediately - only when the timeline (that maybe is moving in time with the music, I can't tell because the music irritated me and I turned it off) crosses over it. The timeline is a neat feature they added to the tile matching puzzle. if you can work it right, you can stack up 2 x 3 or 3 x 3 (or bigger theoretically
Image via Wikipedia
Image via WikipediaSid Meier's Civilization (DS) - ok - i really don't like this kind of game - build units, place units, move units - turn based strategy. You go from the stone age to space age. There are several ways to win - that I like. It had a consistent use of the keys but i couldn't always figure out what triggered the end of my turn and it wasn't always clear to which units I'd already given a destination. It's a good example of in game tutorial level tho. Comparing the content of the tutorials with the directions for the board games we play might be interesting. Or examining the tutorial to see how they teach a variety of skills - what order does the tutorial put things in and is that the optimum pattern. This is definintely one I want to compare across platforms - what did they have to sacrifice to get it on the DS for instance. This isn't a picture of the DS version - it's just the only one I can find at the moment; I'll replace it when I can.
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Image via Wikipediaproducer has to do competitive, SWOT, and risk analyses - for competitive analysis look at past games that set the standard for the genre, present games that are selling well, announced but not yet released games to see key features, how you can position your game against hte competition - she says to write down for each competing game - title developer, publisher, platform, release date, game summary, key features, sales estimates, game reviews on things like metacritic, - can do in a spreadsheet![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vB6EMq3WyH1_8FVHfAdMFIfn0Yl3UcHebc922vWUvr7X5nkTyn_ozvjdsqdxeC-OuJpj3Y-DQlWn9tAp4aeqwS2owZbNISAv9IbrU3FRML2FJmjlxXTqOG7DVj6EQdcR-0XBeEoB2dzGGHDlca338=s0-d)
