HUDs and MMOs

I'm thinking about having the juniors in our program create a game of some kind in SL. It has 3d building; you can make animations; you can put scripts in objects to make them do things; there is an audience of people looking for things to do who know the ins and outs of SL already - in other words, you could create an interesting game. There are a variety of games - role play, arcade, board in SL already.

Some of these games use HUDs (heads up displays) to control combat. Here is info on a couple of them

Osiris (originally called roleplay combat system) - http://www.osiris-sl.com/default.cfm and here's more specific info about the RPCS - http://www.osiris-sl.com/products.cfm and they're set up to sell the player's HUD thru XStreetSL - https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1516549
- has an open licensed API so people can develop weapons and can have NPCs --- they use this one on the Erie island rpg - here's a new world notes post about it under the old name - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/07/kanomi-plays.html

Info on a Naruto themed game on Hinode Shima island with Ninja Control System (NCS) - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/06/sl-naruto.html
SLURL for a boxing sim with a Combat Evolution HUD - http://secondlife.com/events/event.php?id=2781326&date=1244768400

2 HUDs discussed in this new world notes post - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/07/weapons-of-choi.html
DCS2 (Dark Combat System v2)
the company handles most of the set up and runs the server with user stats, stats carry across multiple sims and so do weapons - not too customizable but very easy to get started. they keep 90% of revenues from weapons sales to make their money so the game probably won't make any money

CCS (Community Combat System)
you have to do all the set up and can customize the heck out of it - you have to run the server for user stats and they don't go from sim to sim. Possible to make money since you pay a little up front nd then keep all revenues from weapons sales

list of combat systems used in the stra wars themed rpg - http://swrp.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_System

Some role play places
Deadwood 178 Wild West role play - http://secondlife.com/events/event.php?id=2695563&date=1245286800

Toxian City - here's a YouTube video about it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B_zhYtz5to

Erie Isle - http://www.erie-isle.com/ - there's a very active calendar of events, groups for new players, they use the Osiris combat system, separate areas for humans and supernaturals, lots of weapons, good role play

Other SL games
Here's info on a turn based combat game played with deck of virtul cards in an arena - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/12/play-with-vidal.html

Back into SecondLife

I hadn't been in SecondLIfe except for school stuff in awhile. But the last coule of weeks I remembered all the fun to be had there.

I went to an art gallery. I viisted a Dr. Who themed area and got a cyberman avatar. I heard a folklorist reading an amazing European fairy tale. I built a cave on my little piece of land and put in a waterfall. I"ve been trying to build a sound cube floor when when you bump into hte cubes the play strange sounds and change colors - got the sounds to work and found some interesting collections fo electrical and industrial sounds, but when I added the color, it broke. Stupid LSL And I went to a discussion of space exploration and watched the NASA TV stream of the film from when man landed on the Moon. It was the 40th anniversary of the landing. That made me feel old.

And I"ve talked to vampires and tiny rabbits and a wind up doll. I've been to classes on role playing. And visited a role play island that uses a combat HUD (tho I have to figure it out and learn how to shoot weapons. I got a blindfold to see about walking thru the sound cubes in the dark (since I can't figure out how to make it dark in my cave).

I bought new hair - don't laugh. Good hair and a new skin and my avie feels like a new woman!

I'm having fun. Building, creating, and socializing. The essence of SL to me.

(pictures to come tomorrow

And I

Play testing - end of the Semester

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.

More thoughts on my game based on Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Image via Wikipedia

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)

Image by sanctumsolitude via Flickr

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

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Info about publishing analog games

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.

Image by lavenderstreak via Flickr

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.

THinking about the summer internships and jobs

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.

http://tinysubversions.blogspot.com/2009/04/writing-resume-for-game-company.html

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).

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Research Presentations at the RIT Undergraduate Research Conference in Communications

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.

Building in SL

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.

Here is a link to photos of the things they built (on Flickr) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgregson/sets/72157616413802019/

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!

My game idea for Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom

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Image via Wikipedia

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.

Image by Express Monorail via Flickr

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

Image via Wikipedia

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.

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iGoogle game related themes

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Here's the link to the page with all the new themes - http://www.google.com/help/ig/gaming/

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.

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More games

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Image via Wikipedia

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

Image via Wikipedia

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.

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Playing more games

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Image via Wikipedia

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.

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Building Prototypes for Analog Games

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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.


URL: http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/dale_yu_everything_you_need_to_know_about_prototypes_but_were_afraid_to_ask/

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.

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Game Testing

Image by kgregson via Flickr

I have 10 groups in my Critical Analysis of Games class (26 students). Each group had to create a game using the Icehouse pyramid game system. They could add anything else they wanted - boards, cards, dice, spinners. The games had to be playable within 10-40 minutes. I didn't want any 1 minute throw the pyramid (like 56 card pick up) games.

We tested the games today with other students from class, volunteers from my Qualitative Research class, the chair of the TV-Radio department, and several of the administrative staff from the 3rd floor. It was kind of organized chaos - 10 tables with games spread out, people milling around - some playing, some taking notes and observing.

The goal of the play testing was to get feedback from people who hadn't seen the games before. We needed to know if the rules made sense and, maybe more importantly, was the game fun to play. A secondary goal was to let people in the class see other people's games - kind of set up a little competition to improve the games.

A full set of pictures is on flickr - I am not a photographer but you get the idea - lots of people, lots of tables, lots of games, small room - ha ha. - click here to see the set

Image by kgregson via Flickr

I think we met the goals. Most groups had notes. A couple of groups discovered problems with their rules or winning conditions; they made some changes on the fly and adjusted their documentation.

We may test again on Monday if I can find some other people to come in, depending on the feedback I get Wednesday in class. They will turn the game in on the Friday before spring break. I also want them to put the rules and game documentation online and encourage others to play.

Students in Critical Analysis of Games Blog About Games

Image via Wikipedia

The students in my Critical Analysis of Games class this semester are blogging (I teach at Ithaca College and we're just starting up a new major in Game Design and Immersive Media). They have to apply the game design topics we're discussing in class to one or two games all semester. The goal is to get a really deep understanding of their game and show that they can apply the concepts in class to real world games.

They got to pick the game they wanted to analyze. Here are some of the games being studied this semester - Portal, Star Oceans 2, Psychonauts, Turok, Okami, Conkers Bad Fur Day, and Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice.

Here's a link to a list of their blogs - http://kimgregson.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=118&Itemid=39

A second reason for the blogs is to help them establish a professional presence. I hopt that they will keep blogging as they go through the program. They'd love some comments on their blogs if you have time to take a look.

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This would be cool to get involved with

Image via CrunchBase

The iPhone Developer program for universities - http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/university.html

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.

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Trying to Interest People in New BoardGames

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Just read a post on BoardGameNews from a guy who tried to get a couple of his friends to play modern board games and they refused regularly. - http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/tom_rosen_joe_and_bob/

I've noticed some of these same qualities in my college students. Specifically - they don't want to read rules to learn new games. They see games like Colossal Arena and Race for the Galaxy are too complex, have too many pieces, take too long to set up. And some of them do take a while to learn or to set up - but the games seem worth the effort with good game play and different ways to win.

Not sure what to do about it - any suggestions?

Great News

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BIG NEWS!
The game design major at Ithaca College was officially approved. It will be a BFA in the Television-Radio department of the Roy H. Park School of Communication. It's multi-discipline and multi-school. Students take classes in screenwriting, programming, art history, as well as game design. They play and make analog games as well as videogames. They study analysis of games, the videogame industry, and legal issues. It will be in the catalog probably in 2010. Unfortunately students didn't know about it when they applied for admittance for the Fall 2009 school year. I need to get to work promoting it for Fall 2010. However, students already admitted can switch to the game major.

We have a website for the major - and a blog - the blog might become the site's homepage, still playing with that.

Homepage (for the moment) - http://parkgameportal.com/
Blog - http://parkgameportal.com/wordpress

On the website, you can play games and other projects made by students in the program, see some photos, read descriptions of the classes.

If you know anyone interested in studying game design, have them drop me an email at kgregson@ithaca.edu or give me a call at 607-274-7348 and I"ll try to answer their questions.

Visit from Firaxis Executive Producer

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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)

Global Game Jam

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.

URL: http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/69679

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