tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74719916619611850182024-03-05T12:19:56.330+00:00Rosa Carbo-MascarellUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-67731180817419331482016-02-10T16:36:00.001+00:002016-02-10T16:36:13.383+00:00Jam Jar for GamesAid - A ReviewSince starting work at GamesAid I've challenged myself to celebrate the job with doing a bit of fundraising.<br />
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For those of you to whom this is news, I started this January working at GamesAid, a UK video games charity who help disadvantaged and disabled children and young people. What originally started as an intern position got upped to the fancy name of Operations Executive - a title I'm still warming up to. Currently I am their only employee, surrounded by a circle of very talented trustees who volunteer their time to the cause. They all represent the best of the UK video games industry and they are also all inspiringly lovely.<br />
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To celebrate I decided to organise my own fundraising event for GamesAid. The Global Game Jam was around the corner and inspired by Matt's "Lollies for Lolly" event, I pitched "Jam Jar at the Global Game Jam" to Ian and Matt, Chair and Vice-Chair of GamesAid. With their blessing and support, I began to contact the organisers of Global Game Jam sites across London and then further across the UK.<br />
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The pitch was simple: We will place jars of candy at Global Game Jam sites and offer the sweets to jammers. In exchange for the candy, they can place a donation towards GamesAid.<br />
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The execution was difficult. First, I had to get GGJ sites on board. Up to a day before the GGJ began, I was emailing back and forth with sites who jumped in at the last moment, arranging meetings and transporting more jars with candy. In the end all GGJ sites within Greater London participated:<br />
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<li>SAE Institute London</li>
<li>City University London</li>
<li>London Metropolitan University</li>
<li>Popped</li>
<li>Goldsmiths University</li>
<li>Brunel University</li>
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And we even had some engagement from further afield, from individuals that decided to run their own Jam Jar:</div>
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<li>Staffordshire University</li>
<li>Warwick University</li>
<li>Brighton</li>
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That is 9 sites out of 42 sites across the UK, one in every five sites participated. Not bad for a first time event.</div>
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I ordered six jars, a set of fliers I designed for the event, and Matt kindly ordered 10kg of candy for me. With all the materials set and ready to distribute and six sites to distribute them to, I began the biggest pinball game of my life. I was the pinball and London the pinball machine.</div>
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There was a lot of walking. In fact 71.87 km of it (more or less the equivalent of walking from Houses of Parliament to Heathrow Airport then further out until you are standing, slightly confused, just outside of Oxford). I sat with jars of candy in buses, tubes and overground trains, sandwiched between confused tourists and stirred by commuters. I met many wonderful faces, all who were eager to collaborate with GamesAid, and offered candy to many more.</div>
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During the Saturday of the Global Game Jam, I even decided to bake some cupcakes for the lively jammers at City University London. They came out delicious! In exchange they donated generously towards GamesAid and even showed me their games. Some of my favourite were: <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/alien-growth">Alien Growth</a> and <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/secret-handshake-society">The Secret Handshake Society</a>.</div>
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On the last day, Des and I visited the SAE Institute where I walked around the building offering more candy. The jammers were rushing to finish off their games yet still welcomed a moment to munch on a sweet and give to GamesAid. Des gave a cheerful thank you to all the jammers at the end of the night, then we all got to play the wonderful games. Some of my favourite: <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/solstice">Solstice</a> and <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/cracked">Cracked Up</a>.</div>
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There are so many thank yous to give out! All the wonderful trustees of GamesAid for giving me a hand (and offering me the opportunity to work for them!), the site organisers in London for going that extra mile for GamesAid, those individuals outside of London for setting up their own Jam Jars, and of course the Global Game Jammers who donated towards GamesAid. All in all, we managed to raise over £200! Thank you!</div>
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To become a member of GamesAid and keep up with our events: <a href="http://www.gamesaid.org/">check out the website</a> or<a href="https://twitter.com/GamesAid"> follow us on twitter</a>.</div>
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Finally, here are some wonderful images people sent GamesAid from across the UK.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-62917619099824690272016-01-23T16:07:00.000+00:002016-01-23T16:07:06.827+00:00Game a Month: Jan 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am making a game a month. Born out of the idea that making games shouldn't be a commercial endeavour, <a href="https://twitter.com/McFunkypants">Christer Kaitila</a> sparks us to make games as a hobby and, in so doing, experiment fully with the medium. The initiative is called <a href="https://twitter.com/OneGameAMonth">Game a Month Challenge</a> and below is the key note:<br />
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4Tpt5QIkV9Q/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4Tpt5QIkV9Q?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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So what have I made this January? Mainly a lot of unfinished text exploration games as I try to experiment with different forms of storytelling structures. My first completed one is also the shortest but probably the most freeing. Made during a few hours at <a href="http://loadingonline.co.uk/">Loading</a>, I used the telescopic text tool to play with folding and unfolding narratives. It only takes 3-5 minutes to play. <a href="http://www.telescopictext.org/text/koeFDO9FyXuS2">Here it is!</a> <br />
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This is very much an experiment, filled with all the enthusiasm and coarsness that experimentation entails. The story evolved as I was writing it as did the voice of the character you are questioning. Looking back, this made a lot of sense thematically as the mechanics revolve around the increasing understanding of a story through exploration. As I began to shape the game, the character openeded up and the player finds out more about the mystery.<br />
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Finishing the story was the hardest. As each word branched off into smaller narrative layers, I found it difficult to make them all combine physically on screen. Instead of drawing a conclusion, I left small puzzle pieces at the end of each narrative layer. Thus when the player is done unfolding all the branches, they can read the full, unfolded paragraph and draw the conclusion on what they think happened to poor Tim.<br />
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For those wondering, Tim is a real person. You've probably seen him various times on this blog. Inspiration from a real life experience included in this game... always... in all games.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-80024815293695838272016-01-16T13:35:00.000+00:002016-01-16T13:41:38.356+00:00What do we do next?<div dir="ltr">
Learn how to make a creative project a reality. That was my one wish when I applied to Blast Theory's volunteership. As someone who has spent the last 4 years in academia I've become a professional at writing 6000 word essays that lie forever hidden in the folds of pixelated PC finders, or prototypes that twirl and fade behind secret doors. "The best thing you can do is show your games to people," our professors lectured us. I could almost hear the question whispering through our heads: 'But how do you do that?'<br />
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I sat with my peers at the graduation ceremony, our certifications for a successfully completed MA folded on our laps. Legs crossed, gowns tightened, between the closed cardboard file, the word "distinction" burried itself in the page. - But how do you do that? - I flapped my certificate in front of friends and family until the word "distinction" glided on the words "congratulations" and "well done". - But how do you transform a project into reality?<br />
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Starstruck into a corner of a Blast Theory couch, I murmured this question to Matt, Ju, Nick, Kirsty and Dan in turn. Their knowledge soared into the air in waves of spectacular performance and honesty. I hurriedly scribbled their words on paper. Below is a peak: </div>
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<li>Identify the 3 people that can change your future. Send them an email inviting them to play your game.</li>
<li>Submit your games to all the festivals. Get seen. Showing a game speaks to people much more than talking about it.</li>
<li>Go to talks and in the question and answer session raise your hand and start with "Hi! I'm Rosa from Ludic House and I have a question about...".</li>
<li>Get big names to give a testimonial about your game. Use it everywhere! In all the funding applications, everything!</li>
<li>Write personal emails to people you are inspired by and show them your work or ask for 30 minutes of their time.</li>
<li>Sign up for talks. Even if its not your game, you can talk passionately about other games.</li>
<li>Even if there is no money, do it. Start with what you can do and things will snowball.</li>
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On December 18th I hugged the Blasters goodbye and walked along the seafront from Portslade to Brighton for the last time. More than the sugar of the goodbye-gifts or the hangover hum from the night before, it was my notebook, penned with the knowledge of giants, that lifted me to an exhilarating high. Blast Theory is a family of artists who were never afraid of showing themselves. Even their work, in a world of high-rise anonymity, is a call for strangers to open up and connect. In the two months volunteering at Blast Theory, what my professors taught us finally solidified. I know what to do. Thank you!<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-78256784191054528622015-10-08T16:10:00.003+01:002015-12-02T09:11:09.992+00:00Dissertation: Month of September<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Most of the month started with one big content rush to complete the pre-alpha stage of my game in time for playtesting day and the rest was spent implementing feedback and getting supportive friends and family to review my written submission. In that time I managed to polish my writing, to make sure my points came across clearly and thoughts flowed smoothly. Also I made some major changes to the UI and fixed bugs in the game. More of that can be read about on the <a href="http://moreelen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/dissertation-playtesting-day.html">playtesting day blog entry</a>. On the 23rd, I successfully submitted my masters dissertation.</div>
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Overall I feel very proud of what I've managed to achieve in 4 months. I think the power of environmental storytelling and games as an expression of an artist's subjective state is an area that is only just flourishing in the games industry. Being able to dedicate an entire semester to psychogeography in games has been very enriching and I've had so much fun immersing myself in the spirit of the Romantics.</div>
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There were also challenges in spending four months on independent research and development. When working on a solo project, self management became such an important task in assuring the health of the project and myself. It was thanks to all the Gantt charts and sticky notes that I didn't have to take an all nighter at any point. A vast improvement from the weekly all nighters when undertaking my architecture undergraduate. The input of others also became invaluable to the short-sightedness that often occurs when working alone. That includes not just the kind friends and family who took the time to read and/or playtest my dissertation, but also those that asked me in passing what my project was about. Being able to describe it in a sentence or two really helped me put the project in focus and perspective.</div>
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Should my dissertation be deemed worthy by my professors, I plan on taking my work onto more public platforms. With so much great feedback, <a href="http://www.jackalowe.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/review-of-bound-by-rosa-carbo-mascarell.html">including this very well written and humbling review by Jack Lowe</a>, I'm hoping to optimize my game for tablets by the end of the year. I'd love to be able to go to events and gatherings and pop out the game for others to play. As it is such a short piece (now that the key issue has been fixed) it would work quite well as a self contained experience.</div>
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All in all, it has been a very rich year and I am incredibly melancholic it is over. This course had not only helped me gain confidence in my game design skills but has also been the seed of lasting relationships and budding opportunities. We are a cool class and I have no doubt we are all going to do some amazing things. As for my own path, I have moved down to Brighton where I will be starting my volunteership at 4 times BAFTA nominated and all round geniuses, Blast Theory. In the meantime, look out for blog posts on cool indie games events and artist's happenings in London and Brighton. </div>
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And bring on the next stage!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-86428591777452801092015-09-12T13:07:00.001+01:002015-09-12T16:10:10.013+01:00Dissertation: Playtesting DayOn the 10th of September our professors kindly let us invite non-Brunel students onto campus to try our games. With that extra pressure of completing something presentable for outside eyes, us masters bonded over tight deadlines and development sprints. Hours before the doors opened we were pinched over last minute bug fixes, keyboards clacking as we polished gameplay.<br />
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The event was busy, guests traveled from as far as Canterbury and Cambridge to play our games. (Thank you!) We were overwhelmed by the interest and we welcomed everyone with drinks, cookies and controllers. With only three hours in which to play games and so many playtesters, not everyone got to play all the games. However everyone seemed satisfied with what they got out of the day and we ended the event with some celebratory drinks at the pub.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thank you <a href="http://twitter.com/GamerGrrl">Ashley</a> for the picture!</td></tr>
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My notebook is filled with notes. Some of the biggest observations was my gross underestimation of the time it would take to play the game. While originally I was expecting it to take 10 or so minutes, the reality of it was closer to 40 minutes. It was a similar mistake to the one we did during Meeting. A puzzle that would take 1 minute to complete for us designers would take 20 for two completely new players. In this game, the time difference was greatly to do with the amount of content in the game (people spent an average of half a minute looking at things, then rechecking them for the number code for the safe). However what took the most time was the fact that the key was accidentally really well hidden. While it took up a quarter of the screen, everyone seemed to overlook it to the point that I would have to interfere in every game session at around the 30 minute mark. It was an interesting optical illusion and while funny to a lot of players, it will have to change.<br />
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Some things that worried me before playtesting day were settled. My game has a strange navigation system that might be more intuitive for tablets but on PC might seem a bit esoteric. However the instructions were clear to almost all players and after two minutes they could control the device with ease. To be absolutely sure, I might add an extra line of text to go with the current animations.<br />
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While I like everything being diegetic, it will also be easier to include a system that makes it clearer what objects can and can't be interacted with as some players would resort to clicking on everything. This might not need to be the case in the tablet version but for PC, the platform on which it is being graded, it will make interactions smoother. Also, I will have to add in the option to read handwriting as typed text as some players had difficulties with a few words.<br />
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The overall feedback was fantastic! After finishing the game I would ask my playtesters: "What do you think happened?" What a relief it was to hear them relate back to me what I was trying to say! Everyone understood my main point while reacting differently to it, the more observant players would go deeper into the story, others caught the references to surrealists and romantics. One of the playtesters, Adam, put it wonderfully: There are many layers to the story. Not everyone will explore the deepest layer but everyone got the overarching concept.<br />
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I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to play my game:<br />
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Negin Aminy Raouf</div>
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Charles Weston-Smith</div>
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Adam Chladek</div>
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Jack Lowe</div>
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Joseph Moran</div>
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Ivo Chladek</div>
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Your feedback is helping me greatly in polishing up this game. And apologies to those that wished to play but where cut short by the time. Drop me an e-mail and I'll be happy to send you the prototype.<br />
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With so much to do, us masters are living 24/7 in the labs while we all finish up our games. Wish us luck!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-63837555102572066762015-09-04T19:56:00.000+01:002015-09-04T19:56:29.806+01:00Dissertation: Month of AugustThe quick rundown: The paper has been sent to various of my very kind friends and family for proofreading. Thank you everyone who gave me feedback! I owe you a beverage for taking the time to read a very lengthy essay and put in the brainpower to criticise an academic text. After standing so close to my writing, getting fresh eyes has been very encouraging. I can safely say the paper is a couple of days off from being ready.<div>
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Most of the month of August has been spent creating the ludic sketch. No matter how short I've tried to make it, a game takes its time and getting it all done in 6 weeks is proving a challenge. The most time consuming factor has been the content but, as it is a game based on environmental exploration, content is everything. I'm not very happy with the art but with how little time I have it is going to have to wait. But all is going well and I should be going into testing next week. Which brings me to...</div>
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On the 10th of September we are holding a playtesting day at Brunel University London. This is all thanks to our very kind tutors who let us open the labs to guests. Setting myself such a harsh deadline has been tough but productive. The game definitely needs to be of a good enough quality by then.</div>
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And with that, I'm delving right back to work.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-27488002547782963322015-08-02T13:35:00.001+01:002015-08-02T13:35:29.023+01:00Dissertation: Month of July<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Brunel students, there is a wonderful patch of tall grass between Isambard and Cowley Road in which to get lost. If you keep exploring you might find perfect picnic alcoves and secret gathering spots. Keep walking and you might come across a 20-something talking animatedly into her phone, except no one is on the other line. That would be me, and just this month I was wondering why a town, street or house would lay completely abandoned and what the core message of my game would be.</div>
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The story and the mechanics of the game are there, both birthed out of each other and capture the requirements I outlined the month before. Even some of the ideas that arose from that one afternoon on a Barcelona balcony made it's way into the game. I spent some time placing the story in various settings and observing how it changed however I ended up going with what made the most thematic connections, with a setting that represented from all perspectives what I will be trying to say.<br />
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I'm thinking these two images, by the same Caspar David Friedrich, when placed next to each other. And Sylvia Plath's "Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can, I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night." I'm thinking Anna Karenina, her mind consuming itself indoors. Le Corbusier calling homes "machines for living" and Will Self's spiritual exultations in the classroom and on walks. Yes, I am being vague on purpose because nothing will show it better than the game (if all goes well).<br />
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After the walk, I set off to test the core mechanics. Nine lines of code later and I had a rhythmic walk that made use of parallax and the technicalities of a tablet. Some digital brushstrokes later I had a sky (shown below) and some mountains which move to the rhythm of the tablet. Watching it come together in one satisfying afternoon is getting me all excited to get this game done and out there.<br />
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But there is still a lot to plan until then. Like for example the placement of the story in the environment. Something I have been working on through the help of post it notes and markers, and of course by making friends play it through like a text-based adventure game. The shape of the house has changed so much while placing the story in it. Everything from the objects to the style of the architecture is becoming a metaphor for the characters and the mechanics.<br />
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Over the course of the next week I will be working on re-drafting the first version of the essay. Maybe it's because I've been in the same room for so long while writing, it's been a really slow process. I'll be printing out the essay and writing by hand this week in hopes it might help loosen up that creativity. Onwards!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-12563115873035932222015-07-16T17:08:00.000+01:002015-07-16T17:50:07.995+01:00Develop Brighton and the Role of Games Education<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Film:_An_Odyssey#Episode_7_-_European_New_Wave">The late 1950's film industry saw a revolution in their medium through names like Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman</a>. The primary distinction from their anterior maestros is that these filmmakers had studied their crafts at universities. They understood their semiotics and aesthetics and this strengthened their script concepts and filmic frame. It lead to innovation. It is my belief that we have reached a similar point in the games industry.<br />
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This Wednesday, Tim Phillips and I tubed and trained our way from Brunel University to Brighton. It wouldn't be my first time at <a href="http://www.developconference.com/">Develop: Brighton</a>, a game developer conference where <a href="https://twitter.com/moreelen/status/621363702370058240">indies dress up like their triangle-breasted characters</a>, academics mentor visiting students, and Peter Molyneux makes ghostly strolls on his phone. Though slightly sleep deprived from days of working on our dissertations, we jumped from stand to stand, playing games and debating the state of the industry with developers and fans.<br />
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We must have played every game at the expo when Tim collapsed on a bean bag. I had just been talking animatedly with the masters students at the National Film and Television School and my mind was sparking with excitement, frustrations and ideas. In that pause Tim and I shared a thought:<br />
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The most innovative game designs are coming out of universities. The boundaries of games were pushed that day by people like <a href="http://fragmentsofhim.com/">Mata and Elwin of SassyBot</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/uxvQOEPK-5o">Paul Dillon of Cupboard Games</a> and the various students of the National Film and Television School. They have games that break our understanding of agency, transform storytelling or go Dali and take you on an experience on the development of an egg.<br />
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We are at the game industry's European New Wave where the Henry Jenkin's and the Janet Murray's guide the university student's design decisions and expressive journeys. Through a deep understanding of theory, these developers strengthen their craft. It is no wonder to me that they are coming out of universities.<br />
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Underneath the burnt shadow of the long-gone Brighton Pier, I watched in wonder as Tim Phillips transformed a traditional hack-and-slash mechanic into a piece-together-narrative, Quantum Leap game in the style of<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5It0nmoYE4"> Hitchcock's Rear Window</a>. It is minds like these, minds that understand the theory, who will have the basis with which to break the factory mould of the games industry. University students are going to change games.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-58449713127303899962015-07-11T02:17:00.000+01:002015-07-11T18:36:32.502+01:00Midnight Scanning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Three hours ago master visualiser <a href="http://at.kiltan.com/">Atahan</a> circled a Kinect around me as I watched a 3D replica of myself form on screen. He opened me up in blender and turned me into quicksilver and silk, marble and glass. Below are a few of the renders that Atahan quickly did to show me the program, including the one render where I become custard!<br />
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It's way past midnight now but I've turned the excitement of playing with your own face into a crash course on the blender software. The image above is the fruit of some of my playing.<br />
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Update: Got an hour in to play around some more with Blender and their nodes. It's amazing how much you can do with this!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-70232648077843038412015-07-08T22:41:00.000+01:002015-07-08T22:41:52.277+01:00Dissertation: Month of JuneWalks have stopped feeling solitary the more I read on its origins and practice. Strolls over the course of this month have been haunted by the ghosts of Benjamin and Poe, Breton and Garrett. Even during recreational time Lefebvre and de Certeau invade my "City: Skylines" and "Her Story". Side effects of writing a masters dissertation.<br />
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Most of what I was aiming on exploring for this paper has been read and gathered in a structure of quotes, post-its and notes. That means the most time intensive section of the paper is drawing to a close. Rather later than I was hoping but it is super satisfying nonetheless. I will be doing a final printing and restructuring this week before sitting down to typing it all out into a coherent draft.<br />
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In terms of the game, I spent two weeks in Spain, Valencia and Barcelona. While I was hoping to set the game in Valencia, the more I read, the more I realised how unrealistic it would be to make it all the way from London. It was in one of UCA's guest lectures where CJ Lim called London a victorian sponge cake: layered with stories and dreams. When you've got JG Ballard across the road and Thomas de Quincey in your foundations, it makes little sense not to draw inspiration from the London around you. Valencia will have to wait.<br />
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A few basics have started to form from chats on Barcelonan balconies and walks around Uxbridge. While the exact story is a mystery still, I have outlined four requirements:<br />
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<strong>1. The game must provide a constant urge to explore.</strong> The player must feel curious about their environment. This can be done through hidden objects that relate to the story or the environment found through exploration.<br />
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<strong>2. The story must be told through the environment.</strong> The game, what you do and what its messages must be communicated entirely through the design of the environment. Ideally this would be a small, urban and abandoned location.<br />
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<strong>3. Walking must translate mechanically.</strong> It needs to feel rhythmic and fit tightly into the exploration of environmental stories. A fair bit of experimenting might need to be done to get this right.<br />
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<strong>4. Played in the first person and in 2D.</strong> The screen must feel like a window to the world. Without a character to draw your attention to, the eyes fall solely on the landscape. The 2D is mainly due to limitations of the software.<br />
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Everything around the game might change. These four pillars are solid. Meanwhile the loop of the game will probably follow a structure of walk>discover objects>piece together story>unlock new space>walk. But things might shift once I'm done writing the essay and start contemplating the game more. The longer I spend writing the essay, the smaller the scale of the game becomes. Time is running out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-43162568906499817152015-06-03T16:46:00.001+01:002015-06-03T16:46:45.257+01:00Dissertation: Month of MaySix hours a day, five days a week from now until September is the rough schedule for dissertation work. While most of it has been spent making the most of opportunities outside the course, it's time to focus on what I came here to do. It's dissertation time.<br />
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Days have been spent writing on windows, drawing clouds of thoughts that would combine into storms of ideas. I've been trying to find a string that would tie together the research I've been doing over the course of this academic year. This includes fields such as architecture, geography and games design, writers from Henri Lefebvre to Henry Jenkins, games like Gone Home or Year Walk, environmental storytelling, immersion, navigation, urban narratives and of course my sweetheart: psychogeography.<br />
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A little snippet of what I plan to do:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Walking is a practice that has gone
beyond the mechanics of bodily movement. It is endowed in meaning, critical and
aesthetic, environmental and personal. In 1790, Wordsworth and Jones began a
2000 mile journey through the European continent.<span class="MsoCommentReference"> </span> The hypnotic rhythm of walking stunned
them with fatigue and raised them to a plane of transcendence (Self, 2015).
Walking to the early British psychogeographers was a route to spirituality in a
disenchanted world. The nineteenth century flaneur, a leisurely observer of
urban space, would end up immersing themselves into the intoxicating past of
the city (Benjamin, 1939) similar to the ‘deambulation’ practices of
Surrealists who would walk to reach a state of hypnosis (Basset, 2007). This
immersion into the landscape allowed for the excavations of hidden secrets and
exploration of spatial patterns. The exploration of landscapes was used
politically by the Situationists International (Sadler, 1999) and as a window
into an occult mysticism of the city by British psychogeographers (Coverley,
2010).</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Like the Situationists International,
geographers like Michel de Certeau (1988) use the immersion invoked in walking
to read cities. Walking is a spatial trajectory that allows the exploration of
hidden stories, embedded in the landscape. Early writings followed the spatial
pursuit of a secret. In Edgar Allan Poe’s <i>Man
of the Crowd</i> (1840), the writer followed the nightly wanderings of a man
through London. Throughout the voyage, in which the author falls deeper into
the hypnosis of insomnia and the rhythms of the walk, Poe takes a psychological
anonyme. He abandons his identity so he can reattach himself to that of the
vagabonding stranger and at the same time assume the position of Walter
Benjamin’s archaeologist, collector and flaneur. In his alienated position, the
flaneur can excavate the hidden secrets of nighttime London.</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
At the heart of the ‘derive’, or
‘drift’, is a ‘playful-constructive behaviour’ (Debord, 1958). Playful walking
represented a fight against the boredom of the modernist city and the delusions
of control (Chtcheglov, 1953). It aims to excite the body and the senses
through the sudden changes in ambiance in an attitude of resistance against
functionality. The practice is often considered an ‘elaborate game’ by
geographers (Bassett, 2007: p.401). One that draws a player's attention to the
stories of the environment.</blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
The steam store has seen a sudden
appropriation of the term “walking simulator” used on games such as Year Walk
(Simogo, 2013), Gone Home (Fullbright, 2013), Dear Esther (The Chinese Room, <span style="font-family: inherit;">2012),
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (The Astronauts, 2014), The Stanley Parable
(Galactic Cafe, 2011) and Life is Strange (Dontnod, 2015). Even games from
before the term was coined such as Myst (Cyan, 1993) have been tagged as a
walking simulator. This
project<span class="MsoCommentReference"> </span>is a literary analysis into
the patterns of these games, arguing that at the core of their design is the
psychogeographic derive.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">This project will concentrate
on </span><i style="line-height: 115%;">Year Walk</i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> and </span><i style="line-height: 115%;">Gone Home</i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> as two examples of walking simulators. Year Walk has been
chosen for its critical acclaim (Unity, 2013; BAFTA, 2014) as well as its
strong references to psychogeographic practices. Gone Home has been chosen for
the writers extended experience with the game as well as its use as a point of
reference for other walking simulators. It will identify the similarities
between walking simulators and derives by comparing these two games, formally
and aesthetically, to psychogeographic practices. Through the use of a gameplay
log, it will identify the games goals and mechanics as well as their use of
environmental storytelling and ludic experience.</span>It thus argues that an understanding of
psychogeography, its practice and reading, can help create more immersive
environmental storytelling games such as walking simulators.</span></blockquote>
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I'm aiming to have the essay come in conjunction with a game demo. What the game is going to be is still a bit up in the clouds. To brainstorm I've been walking down the route of Valencian rondalles, les falles and various other local traditions. I think it's time I put my home city on my map of games.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-44747244000353987182015-05-22T22:29:00.000+01:002015-09-12T15:13:42.727+01:00London Spring and GamesSpring in London is the season of picnics, rooftop networking and plenty of opportunities. Us Brunelians have dived straight into it.<br />
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<a href="http://www.untoldrubies.co.uk/"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXcAqyPy5PwGSaePx7ImzWqIGi9sI6ZXpSOCNcEiZWROVFYv18KL2edR5SRLtj2u6XRbvvCOhYDIuwvEhKoXJfmOHl6Ri8iFT9qQXPWGIMh6ArQaX37FELt716wcbEIuFZ-nzU_K0aKckA/s320/logo+black+writing.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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A team of masters students have started a game design collective by the name of Untold Rubies. We design games for studios, filmmakers and competitions. Really good news and interesting doors have opened up since we started laying down the groundwork in winter. Working with game and film studios, we have made many prototypes, game design documents and artwork. My role was mainly in game design, layouting and editing of documents, and art asset creation. Two projects have been particularly successful.<br />
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On the 30th of April a team of us submitted E-Sol, an entertaining and informing mobile game that interacts with pollution databases across Europe, to the MYGEOSS European Commission competition. We won! With the EU grant under our belts, we are now in the works of making this game a reality. But first a bit about the game and how it came to be.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEXRNXd1DurRNQ2FSnBG7pQHStdN3P-2ki1z7ycCgTMpgXRGT1dBUNFyyoje7NEC0-ZXB2M1rjG_u3nWwRaqQf-TWVtSEeo3WXl5-jVuh9pzBGoHEFSBTqG4V5U86XykyYtn_DleWtwoax/s1600/FlowerHappy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEXRNXd1DurRNQ2FSnBG7pQHStdN3P-2ki1z7ycCgTMpgXRGT1dBUNFyyoje7NEC0-ZXB2M1rjG_u3nWwRaqQf-TWVtSEeo3WXl5-jVuh9pzBGoHEFSBTqG4V5U86XykyYtn_DleWtwoax/s320/FlowerHappy.png" width="216" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPX23Imy-DDBgKEdih3LSeBFM6rYmxw2JiOdV-22QYHGr6JNlMa-2u0iWqF9jvsyMHi1eWE7m5eCyZ46oa7BxDfKybAaT8ftjQiuWzDkK_nMLMOK7szd7dD6V2AK0w-9QBKxWVmM1H45L_/s1600/FlowerSad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPX23Imy-DDBgKEdih3LSeBFM6rYmxw2JiOdV-22QYHGr6JNlMa-2u0iWqF9jvsyMHi1eWE7m5eCyZ46oa7BxDfKybAaT8ftjQiuWzDkK_nMLMOK7szd7dD6V2AK0w-9QBKxWVmM1H45L_/s320/FlowerSad.png" width="216" /></a></div>
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E-Sol gives players a virtual pet plant named Sunny who needs your protection from air pollution. The more attention you give your plant, the happier it will become and the faster it will grow. However Sunny is directly affected by the air pollution of the country it is in needing you to clean the air, water it and encouraging it to stay happy and grow tall. The game promotes environmental awareness to young children and encourages them to learn about air pollution levels across their country as well as the rest of Europe.<br />
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The project started when I received a very enthusiastic call from Andreas Paspatis about an opportunity for Untold Rubies. A group of us gathered and began brainstorming for an interesting way of beautifully showing the data provided by MYGEOSS. The challenge: we had a week to bring it all together. Luckily, we have a lot of talent in our collective. Many daily meetings, sleepless nights on Photoshop and discussions over tea and whiteboards were had. A day before the deadline I was arranging Pong Nantapan and mine's artwork on InDesign. Then playing with fonts for the excellent text Andreas, Toni Brasting, Tim Philips, Givoanni Rubino and Daniel Thompson had written. A week of insane work payed off with such talented people on the team. Our game was picked as the top 10 apps and won the European Commission grant.<br />
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The winning GDD will be made public on the 10th of November.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS5nW7KbNHrD2D2eLM7A1ecRQvteedQOGkkWpI4S9ax44_UjHzSi2Tqc_7AE9NpHHKXPlH9Z_FMAcvC_fXeMBrytd24PvA_1e1ATkfHfwBXjStAvi49px-BU1A5lbRPS_0pQyYXgcSkLYa/s1600/rawabiWIP3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS5nW7KbNHrD2D2eLM7A1ecRQvteedQOGkkWpI4S9ax44_UjHzSi2Tqc_7AE9NpHHKXPlH9Z_FMAcvC_fXeMBrytd24PvA_1e1ATkfHfwBXjStAvi49px-BU1A5lbRPS_0pQyYXgcSkLYa/s640/rawabiWIP3.png" width="640" /></a><br />
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Shortly after the E-Sol project, we were contacted by Kate Stonehill, documentary filmmaker applying for the Tribeca New Media Fund. The brief was to create a game to complement her documentary on a very interesting development on the West Bank. "A Palestinian millionaire has built the fist futuristic, high-tech city in Palestine but the fate of his dream city is threatened when an Israeli official refuses to supply the city with water." I jumped at the opportunity to work on such a game. In collaboration we created DRIP, a game where players assume the role of water and navigate the pipe infrastructure of the West Bank. On their journey, they become witnesses to a multitude of events and discussions relating to the conflicts in the West Bank.<br />
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The proposal has been submitted to the Tribeca New Media Fund and we are looking at beginning the development of DRIP in late 2015. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B85fdeDTGQddWnZjZ24tdTROem8/view?usp=sharing">You can view the game design document here.</a><br />
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With so many projects popping up, I think it is time I temporarily retire from these rooftop networkings, however fun they may be.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-14378564142957550052015-05-12T00:40:00.000+01:002015-05-12T01:02:22.440+01:00Digital Games: The Final Taught WeeksThe last taught classes of the masters course are done and the final assessments have been handed in. But the young game designer never rests. The past two months have been a series of non-stop work straight through the Easter holidays and into the summer break. It included pitching, theory work and creating a game demo.<br />
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Geopets was the focus in design. A solo project for the game design module. Geopets is an augmented reality iPhone/iPad tamagochi that uses geolocation and object recognition software to pin your pets to a particular location in the city. Originally, it began with the idea of using magic realism to enchant the day to day lives of citizens. Some brainstorming later and it had evolved to enchanting Londoner's commutes with creatures hidden in the city.<br />
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The pitch was done entirely using Adobe After Effects. The result was a 10 minute long animated presentation that illustrated the game. It took a relentless fueled week to create the presentation, including artwork and practicing the timing. Above is a short compilation of some of the highlights of the presentation.<br />
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After pitching the game comes making it. There were massive limitations in terms of tech (augmented reality and geolocation services in particular), however I found ways to simulate the feel of it through the games presentation. As this project was entirely solo, the biggest problems were overcome through feedback. A week into creating the demo I had people playing prototypes of the games. It became invaluable to making the game flow smoothly in ways that players could understand intuitively<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXtfrCWnUD7zMuhsLthb33ZGhC-FdqGPippqfkfe5yw591buYNwDn0zgCGyYSk01SEZIZhOnTrktCSxGyz9udU8tLci3NYS4UWc_fHLINYjxLl5pZ3CbXMiDBUIXtmHNXpUXim8Elnh25s/s1600/2015_05_11-GeopetsStart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="border:none" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXtfrCWnUD7zMuhsLthb33ZGhC-FdqGPippqfkfe5yw591buYNwDn0zgCGyYSk01SEZIZhOnTrktCSxGyz9udU8tLci3NYS4UWc_fHLINYjxLl5pZ3CbXMiDBUIXtmHNXpUXim8Elnh25s/s320/2015_05_11-GeopetsStart.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Above are various screenshots of the demo. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Mu_YMCVqxrU01hOWZDdDNEbUk/view?usp=sharing">You can play the game here.</a></div>
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Theory work centered on my ongoing research on psychogeography in virtual worlds. This particular one featured how the architecture of Skyrim evoked a sense of place, drawing together fields of geography, myth and virtuality. Will Self's lectures were particularly useful in broadening the scope of the paper beyond games design.</div>
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End of March we had a Brunel research evening in which a group of us lecturers and students presented our research. <a href="http://amlbrown.com/2015/04/13/game-design-research-evening/">You can read all about it in Ashley's blog</a>.</div>
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And with that, the taught section of the course is over. Bring along the dissertation!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-87970808200575830822015-03-13T11:34:00.000+00:002015-04-20T12:50:26.094+01:00Made in BrunelOur game, Meeting, is now an award-winning game! Judged and awarded by Steve Jackson, co-founder of the Games Workshop, Lionhead Studios and writer of the Fighting Fantasty series. Here we are, accepting the award at the Made in Brunel event. From left to right: Steve Jackson, Matthew Halls, Tim Phillips, Rosa Carbo-Mascarell, Dan Thompson and Olga Guseva.<br />
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How it happened: Every year the Department of Computer Science hosts a software innovation event where students showcase their software to academics and professionals. This was the first year (of hopefully many years) that Games Design collaborated in the event. The heads of Game Design decided which would be the four chosen games to be displayed at the event. Apparently it took some "heated debate with some wrestling and walking over fire challenges" before deciding on the games. The four games that were finally chosen were <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/what-do-we-do-now-24">"What do we do now?"</a>, <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/tribe">"Tribe"</a>, <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/nope">"Nope!"</a> and <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/meeting">"Meeting"</a>.</div>
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The event itself was a very busy success. There was a blurr of many game players and curious students. Dan did an amazing job at describing our game to newcomers and many players high-fived each other when completing the game.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNvAMf8cS1GEElY3hc_1ZJCFvUe6s3E1v87uPhqmR2LkVZMwMyomGSwCDxdGWqqna-jyjTOKJCnmtwxTwRjhQ-eOIo7lUs9O_mMNH5cGS72u_XmpfoOk80hNfxn4eNQE1GocQJpl7puj68/s1600/2015-03-05+18.20.44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNvAMf8cS1GEElY3hc_1ZJCFvUe6s3E1v87uPhqmR2LkVZMwMyomGSwCDxdGWqqna-jyjTOKJCnmtwxTwRjhQ-eOIo7lUs9O_mMNH5cGS72u_XmpfoOk80hNfxn4eNQE1GocQJpl7puj68/s1600/2015-03-05+18.20.44.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The highlight of our showcasing was when Steve Jackson came around to play our game. There was much laughter and banter ping-ponging between Steve Jackson and his co-op as they played Meeting. After plenty of shouting across laptops, they solved the puzzle with much cheering, back-patting and hand-shakes. As a game designer, seeing the two players leave the game buzzing with camaraderie and amusement was the most rewarding experience of the event.<br />
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The games showcased at the Made in Brunel were all made as part of the Global Game Jam 2015 in collaboration with the department of computer science. If you are interested in the event,<a href="http://moreelen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/global-game-jam-2015.html"> I have written about the experience here</a>. I am incredibly proud of the games my fellow Brunel students have made. If you have a chance, <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/jam-sites/brunel-university-london/games">make sure to check them out at the GGJ website here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RosaCarboMascarell/20150127/235059/A_Brunel_University_London_Experience_of_the_GGJ.php"><b>Read about the award-winning Meeting on Gamasutra.</b></a><br />
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<a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/meeting"><b>Play v1 of the game!</b></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-50909656560436630152015-03-04T23:26:00.001+00:002015-03-04T23:26:16.822+00:00Digital Games: Weeks 22-23Story was the requirement for the weekly game. We discussed branching narratives and how to make a story appear non-linear. As an example, we looked at Harry Potter. How different would the story experience be if the exact same things happened but Harry was portrayed as an evil antagonist?<br />
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I paired up with Toni (who's storytelling skills have awed the course more than once) and made a game inspired by a short film. "Feeders" is an anti-commercial about psychic vampires - beings that suck your energy dry.<br />
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The game is set around a dinner party with old friends and rising tensions. The way you respond to conversation changes people's mood around the table. Toni did an amazing job at the script which Ivo, director and creator of Feeders, Toni and I then edited together.<br />
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We used various game design tricks to give the sensation of non-linearity. Starting with the player feedback loops: upon making a choice in dialogue, the facial expressions of the characters change, giving the player a sensation of meaningful choice. The script itself follows the same topics and happenings, the only difference is the tone in which the characters can respond. They have three moods: positive, neutral and negative. Because of these changing tones and moods, players can get a different perception of the characters. For example in one playthrough, Lorenzo might be really aggressive, in another he might be really loving. This can tint the player's opinion of who is the psychic vampire.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wBahRA2fE7ZU91dmJiWDhGbHc/view?usp=sharing">You can play the game here.</a><br />
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In theory we discussed race the first week and age the second and both were preceded with a fun exercise related to each topic. For race we had to create a fantasy or sci-fi race that was not based on any real-life cultural references. The stuff some people came up with was hilarious but probably the most profound lesson learned from the exercise was this: If play is the basis of all culture, then the first question we should ask ourselves when designing a culture is "how do they play?"<br />
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The second exercise was a look at representation of age in games. I went on a quest on Reddit to look for women over 40 to see if I could identify any patterns or, in fact, if any existed. Many answers were given and I collated portraits of the highest voted replies. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised at the range and complexity of female characters over 40. Less so when I looked at how many of these women were playable characters.<br />
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For the second week I took a break from the a game a week exercise due to other commitments. While at a loss in terms of game design practice, it has allowed me to step back and evaluate my schedule. Deadlines are looming. It's time to fight these hand-ins with my deadly post-it notes of ultimate planning.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-33672426043335245942015-02-21T00:53:00.000+00:002015-02-21T00:53:15.053+00:00Digital Games: Weeks 20-21I'm not quite sure how to begin about these two weeks as it was a roller-coaster of events that ended with Tim and me working night and day to make a game about sex and contraception.<br />
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Before I continue, let me do a little disclaimer: If you are uncomfortable with sex, female sexuality, contraception and personal women's issues you might want to skip this blog entry. I've thought long and hard about how to go about this professionally but there is no way to talk about the very personal game Tim and I made this week without raising well... personal female issues. If you are uncomfortable with this in any way, I suggest you stop reading here.<br />
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It started with a strand of contraceptive pills that unleashed its wrath complete with sudden depression, debilitating migraines and violent mood alterations. Around me, we were discussing some very heart-felt topics in Ashley's theory class. The first was gamer culture and gatekeeping issues women face, the second was gender representation and sex in videogames. The first left me in a pit of hopelessness, the second with the powerful outlook that I could change something. So when Justin gave us the task to create a game with strong use of numbers and balancing systems, I knew what I had to do.<br />
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The goal was this: Create a game that would voice a problem a lot of young women have to face. Namely, (if they wish to) not getting pregnant. You play a young woman who is starting university with the aim to get amazing grades and great friends. Her boyfriend moved with her and the last thing she needs on her plate is a pregnancy. The game is one of balancing fertility, contraception and its effects with day to day life.<br />
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I went to Tim for game design advice and he exploded with great ideas and enthusiasm. He came onboard and we sailed off to create a sex-positive exploration of female sexuality and contraceptive use. Of course, true to the design task that Justin set us to do, it was backed by a mathematical system of balancing numbers: intimacy, pleasure and day to day activities.<br />
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The news spread quickly in the university labs that Tim and I were making "a sex game". We were approached many times by bewildered and curious faces. Often both at the same time. As we came closer to Wednesday, I worried about presenting the game to a male-heavy class however the reactions of some ("What is the pill?" "You have to take it every day?! That's so tedious!" "What does this day in cycle mean?") made it all the stronger. By putting players in the shoes of a sexually active female character, those that were uninformed became curious, asked questions, they initiated conversations on female issues as in the context of this game it also became the player's issues.<br />
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At this point I need to mention the game is far from perfect right now (like the very humorous but inappropriate need to have sex every night in the game to move onto the next day) but as a prototype of a more polished life-style game, it really works to spark curiosity, play with systems and, most importantly, empathise.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2wBahRA2fE7WkI3VlVnT3N0Q2s/view?usp=sharing">You can download and play the game here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-16162483488141484322015-02-03T21:24:00.001+00:002015-02-03T21:24:51.976+00:00Digital Games: Week 19<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So many developments on the psychogeographic end have happened this week starting with auditing Will Self's classes. Various students in game design heard about my work on psychogeography in virtual worlds and let me know that the quirky and legendary Will Self is a professor at Brunel. After contacting him, he was kind enough to let me audit his weekly module literally called "Psychogeography" where he trains and takes students on derives. The experience was fantastic! The most fun I've had in a while. I'm so looking forward to Monday mornings.</div>
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On the other hand, in Design class, Justin introduced us to the topic of the week: out of the box. We are to create a game without thinking what a game should be. As an example he showed us three videos:<br />
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There were many great points made that have stuck with me. 1. Don't give a damn about rules. 2. When you forget the rules and play with your medium, you will fail 99% of the time. But 1% will be amazingly innovative and eventually become mainstream in the medium. 3. There are no rules to being creative. In fact creativity is often so out there that it is dangerous and, quite honestly, scary.<br />
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I paired off with Tim for this exercise and suggested an idea: "Let's make the first psychogeographic videogame." There have been movies, there have been drawings, there have been texts. But what would it look like as a digital game? Honestly, one week is not enough to explore this concept but we gave it a full day where we grabbed the metropolitan line all the way to the end, wandered, and then tried to express our observations through gameplay.<br />
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So what did we observe? Contradictions. Plenty of ridiculous contradictions. Government signs prohibiting drinking in the streets while two meters away, a barista practiced his juggling skills with a plastic alcohol bottle and cocktail cup. We saw a car park with a big "No Parking" sign. A coffee shop that called itself the Antishop. While Shoreditch puts on a facade of quirky liberation, it is still surrounded by corporate glass high-rises and considered a "good behaviour zone" in the controlling fist of the police.<br />
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What game came out of this? One precisely about these contradictions. Tim and I spent two days playing around in MMF and in between we watched Salvador Dali and Luis Bunyuel's L'Age D'Or. We observed that the film is full with meaning, only that they would put the message above anything else, including reality. For example, there is a close up shot of a character who has flies all over his face because he is literally "a piece of crap".<br />
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We collaged images from our trip and gave them behaviours to literally represent our observations from our psychogeographic wander. I will not say anymore since I feel this is very much a game that is a game for a reason: it cannot be expressed in anything that is not a game. (Although whether or not this is a game can be really contested. But that was the least of our worries.) Y<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Mu_YMCVqxrT09HYU1nRkdENTQ/view?usp=sharing">ou can play the game here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-58427270759790466052015-01-30T22:40:00.001+00:002015-01-30T22:43:55.948+00:00Digital Games: Week 18<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week has mainly centered around the Global Game Jam, <a href="http://moreelen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/global-game-jam-2015.html">an event that I talked about in detail here</a>.<br />
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In theory we ran through the first and second media age and spent a good while questioning what is time, stating that the virtual is real and everyone carries their own reality. It is a very theory heavy class and Ashley promised us the next ones won't be so head-achy however the second media age is an area that interests me quite a bit and I'm hoping to set aside time to read more on the subject.<br />
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The game a week continues and this time we had to create an economic system. Maybe it was the fact I had traveled around eastern Europe all spring and summer, or the fact that I have been playing a lot of This War of Mine recently, but as Justin presented the challenge, my mind instantly traveled to a soviet area. The goal then is not to amass a huge wealth but to survive in a world where an unstable political background might affect weather or not you can buy bread the next day.<br />
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My first instinct was to talk to friends who's parents had lived through those times and they supplied with very interesting stories, both bitter and funny. A lot of inside jokes made it into the game, from the cabbages, to the shadow characters, the names of the counties, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJhTZeAs8NI">to the very expensive bananas</a>, I originally wanted to vaguely follow the history of Czechoslovakia which had a very interesting good first years, called the kind face of communism, up to the Prague spring in 68. Mechanically, it could translate quite well into an easy start of game before hitting 1968 where things would get more difficult. But a lack of time meant condensing it into something completely different.<br />
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The most fun part was drawing the world and giving the characters life. A few students on the course from ex-soviet countries all smiled at the buildings and commented how their neighborhood back home looks just like that. (Comments that made me clench my fists in silent jubilation.) This game is by far the one with the most of my soul in it to date and also the first game I've designed and created completely on my own. I really would like to fix bugs and polish it into a more complete piece.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Mu_YMCVqxrbmdEUVBVbTk5dGc/view?usp=sharing">Play the game here.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-25628954591296328932015-01-26T14:42:00.001+00:002015-01-26T14:42:45.357+00:00Global Game Jam 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Our games lab looks like it has been through a very wild party and, in a way, it has. The past 48 hours have been a mixture of playing, singing to 80s power songs and making games.<br />
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Sixty Brunel students gathered at the Games Design lab where the university generously provided a kitchen-full worth of coca cola, snacks, pizza and our professor handed out home-made cookies and sweets. But that is not the reason why we were all there. The real reason: to make awesome games in 48 hours for the Global Game Jam, 2015.<br />
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Our team (left to right by row): Matthew, Tim, Olga, Dan and me, were a heavy visual and design team with an absolutely genius programmer. Together we created a game that challenges gaming practices, builds (or breaks) relationships and got pairs to laugh, shout and high-five each other. Put simply, it is a two player escape-the-room game with a twist. While most games grab people in different spaces around the world and connect them in virtual places, this game does the opposite. It grabs people in different virtual spaces and connects them in the physical. The official description of the game:<br />
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"<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Roboto, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.00006103515625px;">You are trapped. So are they. You will need to work together if you want to escape in time, solving puzzles to break down the virtual barriers that separate you. Meeting is a game for two players who sit in the same room yet play on different computers. So grab a friend, set yourselves up and get going. For the ultimate challenge you should avoid looking at your partner's screen. And remember: communication is the key to success!"</span><br />
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<a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/meeting">The game is called Meeting and you can download it at the Global Game Jam website here.</a><br />
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In this blog I will write about the process of making the game which will cause heavy <b>spoilers</b>. So if you wish to have the experience, I highly suggest you<b> play the game with a friend before continuing reading</b>.<br />
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<b>- How the idea came to be -</b><br />
The theme of the game jam is: "What do we do now?" so while sitting in the pub, we began to define some limitations. There were two things we wanted to do. 1. Have multiple players. 2. Limit the information available to the players so they have to communicate. After various running around in circles, defining our skills, suggesting examples, ect., we came across a thought. "What if the player is blindfolded?" And it spun from there. After a bit of passing the ball back and forth we all agreed on the premise of the game:<br />
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An escape the room game between two people. Each person sits down at their own computer to escape the room BUT, their controls are inverted. What they press on their computer affects the other person's screen and vice versa.<br />
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<b>- The development experience -</b><br />
By the end of the first night we had a Unity3D scene with two rooms and two lights. Press "L" in one computer and the light in the other computer would toggle on and off. In other words, the networking was working. While the genius programmer, Matt, slept, the rest of the team designed. I was the designated sketcher who would draw out the puzzle designs on paper as they were being talked about (image above). We decided to have three rooms to escape from and once the final puzzle was solved, the two virtual rooms become one and the two players meet in the game. We had the first two rooms puzzled out however were stuck on the last one. After trying to do paper mock-ups and splitting headaches, everyone went to bed to tackle it in the morning. Not particularly tired, I stayed up and modelled the first and second room along with their assets (image below).<br />
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Saturday was the most productive. By the time I got in, Matt had the movement controls set up and we worked on adding in the puzzle for the first room. A simple dragging the correct coloured box onto the corresponding coloured platform. There were a few bugs to work out during most of the day and Olga and I worked on texturing the assets. It took us quite a lot of tests and retexturing before Olga made these amazing squares which we promptly began to use for everything.<br />
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At the afternoon on Saturday we realised that we were facing a problem. The programming was taking much longer than any of us designers had realised. At this rate we wouldn't be able to implement the second and third level. We decided to get the first level playtested as soon as it was done and see where we went from there.<br />
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The playtesting is where the fun really started. The first two playtesters reacted in EXACTLY the way we designed the game for. When they first started the game, they did not talk to each other and started pressing buttons. Until one would call out "Oh! Hey! You're turning my light on and off!" "You're spinning me around, stop it!" And that would be the ice breaker that would make them start toying around, asking what things did and what the other person saw before realising they can do stuff together. The most interesting was seeing the team dynamics. There were trolls who would proceed to try to annoy the other person as much as possible and laugh evily. There were others that would go at it logically and formally. It was very telling of the type of people the two players were and the dynamics between them.<br />
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But we also learned a quite revealing fact about the game: the puzzle wasn't too simple. The players were finding it difficult enough to get used to talking to each other in the first place. That single level on its own, while not even one thousandth of as complex as the puzzles we had for level two and three, was enough to get the feeling across. Either way, we had a few tweaks to do in Unity to perfect this level. We decided to cut out levels two and three and concentrate on polishing the first level.<br />
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We made a list of things to tweak and redesigned the main menu and the final scene that night. The main issue was that right now players have to type in an IP address to be able to play the game and we wanted to find a way to skip that step. Like Chris mentioned, it can scare players away if they have so much to set up. Especially if it comes in jargon. However Matt let us know that programming for it would take quite a while which we didn't have. We instead let the players know in game which IP address they'd have to type.<br />
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Tensions were rising on the final stretch. We were all depending on the programming at this point which made me wish I knew more than just Unity3D but also how to program in C#. I really wanted to have a second instance of Unity3D up so I could do the non-programming tweaks like changing and repositioning images so Matt could concentrate only on the programming. Meanwhile Olga was making really cool logos for the submission, Tim and Dan were working on the submission text itself.<br />
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We made it! There were many more things we wanted to add such as my great friend and muscician Annabelle of BraveYoungGod offered us a song for the title and final screen. But the game was there. It was playable and gave the exact player experience we were going for.<br />
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<b>- The fun stuff -</b><br />
Above all, our team was very good at keeping the morale high. We would go on random midnight wanders, get caught in the rain, sing loudly to disney songs and blast 80's power music through the games lab. Here are some highlights of all the random things we did that wasn't exactly games but was an integral part of what made the Global Game Jam 2015 such an amazing experience.<br />
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Starting with our mascot: Olga's face (drawn by me) on a platter. She liked calling herself our overlord and now her face was sure to always watch us, even when she was asleep.<br />
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In one of our midnight wanders, we came across another team's room. Tim began drawing a big face on their whiteboard and well... it kind of got out of hand.<br />
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By far, the most bizarre thing that happened was when our team made a shrine to Nicolas Cage. Tim and Dan had come back from a hunt for food. When they arrived, we arranged it all at Nicolas Cage's feet. I cant' help but feel that what had a lot to do with this was the fact we had only had 3 hours sleep the night before.<br />
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Finally, politics and tea are two very necessary things to game design, especially if it is 2 in the morning and we're sitting in the corridor.<br />
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<b>- Lessons Learnt -</b><br />
1. Being just a designer is sometimes not enough. Having a secondary skill such as production, modelling, art, programming, ect. really helps when the project moves from the creative to the implementation stages and back again.<br />
2. Sketching skills are essential for communication. There will be many times where team members will say "Huh? I don't understand that". At which point being able to sketch it out on paper or perform it using paper craft really helps clarify.<br />
3. Patience, clarity and tact. Disagreements happen at which point it is always better to listen than to speak. And when you speak, always be clear and respectful with your arguments. Getting emotional or stubborn in these situations is the number one way to failure.<br />
4. The enjoyment of the team comes first. Everyone has to feel like they are making a game they feel passionate about. Therefore, finding a game that everyone agrees on will always give much better results.<br />
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<b>- Showcasing -</b><br />
At the end of the jam, everyone gathered to showcase what they had made. I was so impressed by all the different interpretations of the theme. The energy and innovation was stellar and we all had a really good laugh. <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/jam-sites/brunel-university-london/games">All the games Brunel University students did can be found here.</a><br />
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There are two games I'd like to highly recommend people. Those are <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/nope">Nope!</a> and <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2015/games/tribe">Tribe</a>. After playtesting Nope! I had to take a long moment with Tim to recover myself by how blown away I was by it. Game design at it's finest! And Tribe was an absolutely insanely fun experience when played in a room full of people, all shouting at the tribe leader on what they should do.<br />
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Congratulations to all Brunel students who participated in the Global Game Jam! We can all be super proud of our work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-55363772579563447932015-01-20T23:57:00.001+00:002015-01-30T22:56:56.749+00:00Digital Games: Week 17<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The weekly game challenge has begun. For the first game we were to create a game that goes down to the most basic game mechanic of all: the pleasure of clicking. Together with Olga and half an hour of fun, we created a simple game aimed for quick impulses and rapid clicking.</div>
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The premise is simple: Click on the bubbles to pop them. Stop them from touching the ground. Things get quicker and more complicated as the timer runs.</div>
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Strangely enough, it's one of the first times I've worked completely procedurally. Olga sketched the idea in a second, I made a prototype in 3 minutes, the rest of the hour was spent refining and adding features to it depending on the playthroughs. It was an incredibly fun process!</div>
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A few of the things that changed along the way: At first the bubbles moved upward when you clicked on them. However we found the popping more satisfying in a popping-bubble-wrap sort of way. We added bigger and smaller bubbles along with a health bar that dies from every hit. There are different colour bubbles that have power-ups. For example a yellow bubble swipes the screen clean, an orange one slows the bubbles down and a pink one puts you in super mode. There is also a big boss that takes 20 clicks to kill. We also added in a hardcore mode with more bubbles and insane clicking.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Mu_YMCVqxrYXNfc1BVSVJxUjg/view?usp=sharing">Play the game here.</a><br />
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Theory started with the question "What is play?" an hour lecture and another hour discussion on Huizinga. The class ended with a round of "2 truths and 1 lie" around the room, a game popularised by Game of Thrones. Every player has to state three facts. Two of them are true, one is a lie. Everyone has to guess which one is the lie. I thought a semester into the course, we'd all know each other pretty well but deep stories were revealed about people that day.<br />
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Next weekend is the Global Game Jam 2015. For 48 hours, the labs will be filled with students designing and making games and I am one of them. Along with all the fun things happening, I will be tweeting about the event as much as possible and blog about it when it ends. Really looking forward to it!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-74758919287341502132015-01-16T14:09:00.001+00:002015-01-16T14:35:38.581+00:00Film and storytelling in the Oculus Rift<p dir="ltr">Before Christmas the news of the first feature film for the Oculus Rift was making its rounds on virtual reality news feeds, DreamWorks campaigned with a VR demo and Christopher Nolan made his trailer for Interstellar an Oculus Rift exclusive. While this was met with overwhelming positivity, I was curious yet sceptical of using virtual environments with traditional filmmaking techniques.</p>
<p dir="ltr">My main concerns were:</p>
<p dir="ltr">1. The storyteller does not control the camera, the audience does. As such, the traditional frame breaks down. The story is not told through the 2D composition of the camera but through the 3D positioning of spatial qualities. The reading of these qualities depends entirely on the audience.</p>
<p dir="ltr">2. The shot is continuous. Such a sensory immersive device as the Oculus Rift marries spatiality with the body. As such, sudden cuts and edits, the essence of filmmaking, can make users feel jarred and disoriented in virtual landscapes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Recently I've discovered that I was not the only one to have these concerns. In fact, Toni Dove and Michael Mackenzie said the same thing in 1993. When creating the interactive virtual environment "Archaeology of a Mother Tongue" they "required entirely different ways of editing narrative in space than the cinema". In the words of Margaret Morse:</p>
<p dir="ltr">"The landscape itself was continuous, without cuts or edits. It was the gaze of the visitor with a head-mounted display, scanning the landscape that selected what would be seen on the monitors in the helmet and projected on a screen for a larger public. Duration, or the pace of the narration of the story, was individual and variable, depending as it did on the curiosity of the visitor and his or her skill in releasing narration from objects in each of four different worlds."</p>
<p dir="ltr">If Hollywood wants to tackle virtual reality as a medium to tell stories it must go beyond traditional film and look at games, theatre and architecture, who's knowledge is based on spatiality and spatial storytelling.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Our entertainment is being shaped by technologies and, despite the apparent cynicism, it is these concerns that constantly pike my interests. I am hopeful to join an industry that can collaborate in many ways to push forward how people connect over ever evolving storytelling mediums.</p>
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I have had some spare moments to look back at the past blog posts and evaluate how the last semester went. Firstly, a few changes will be made for the upcoming one:<br />
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1. My tasks for each week got very tunneled towards the end of the semester where I would spend one week working solely on design or solely on theory. This produced less preparation for the other class I was not currently focusing on on that particular week. As this course is so quick paced, this behaviour created gaps. For the following semester I will cut my week into smaller pieces and divide it more equally between theory and design.<br />
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2. At the beginning of the course I set myself to make a game every week. This did not end up happening. The next semester has a game a week as a requirement for the design module which will help greatly in achieving it this semester.<br />
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3. Weeks at this course tend to end up running from Wednesday to Wednesday as deadlines and first classes begin on that week day. Writing blog updates on Sunday would break the flow of the week and therefore from now on I will be writing them on Tuesdays.<br /><br />Secondly, I can't even begin to express how much I enjoyed the last semester. Course mates were absolutely stellar and our professors even more so. There have been crunch nights and plenty games too and I loved spending time on both equally as much. The amount I've learned and grown has been beyond what I expected coming into the course and I can only hope to keep the enthusiasm going.<br />
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The above picture is my room in Spain and the many, many post-it notes I used to plan my theory essay.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-33352232185742772014-12-16T00:16:00.000+00:002014-12-16T00:16:06.530+00:00Digital Games: Week 12 - Worlds of Etsy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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All of this week has been one final rush towards the pitch. The entire team was running on very little sleep and plenty of enthusiasm for the last few days as we pushed each other forward with kind words and the occasional tea. When the pitch rolled over we had a prezzi that flowed with fantastic art, a demo, trailer and boxes filled with candy, a leaflet and even some merchandise plushies.</div>
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Toni introduced the project with a moody campfire story set in the Worlds of Etsy that called the audience for an adventure. Giovanni and Pong followed with an overview of Etsy and our game. Jacob explained the aesthetics then I did a letsplay of the demo. Below are some screenshots of the demo.</div>
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I didn't have time to playtest it and so design a streamlined experience that could be handed to newcomers however: The professors let out a little "Aha!" moment as I was playing and commentating the demo that made all those hours fighting with the program and wrestling bugs worth it. They laughed at the cute animations Pong did, completely understood the mechanics I programmed, and were amazed at Jacob's environment art. (I think I even glimpsed a little nod of approval between the professors.) The demo was absolutely vital!<br />
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To top it all off we finished with a trailer that had Giovanni working nights and me beaming with enthusiasm when he showed us the final version. But that is not all, for the questions and answers we gave each professor a goodie box with a plushie of the main character, a handout with all the vital information and some candy. The candy might be a bit much but we were so happy to see one of the professors put his plushie in his front pocket, much on the candy as he asked some great questions. I couldn't be happier with our team and the amount of work we put into this! Now to take a short break, take the criticism along with the enthusiasm and put it all into our design document.</div>
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The team:</div>
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<b>Toni - Organisation Management</b>, created the overarching narrative, marketing of the game including creation of plushies and kept us all sane.</div>
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<b>Pong - Presentation Management</b>, designed and made the prezzi presentation, design of the handouts, co-designed levels, character illustration and animation.</div>
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<b>Jacob - Lead Artist</b>, made the world incredibly pretty, co-designed demo level, environment and concept art.</div>
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<b>Giovanni - Cinematic Designer</b>, everything in the trailer is his magic, co-designed levels, narrative implementation, owner of the coolest mug in the lab</div>
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<b>Rosa - Technical Artist</b>, programmed the demo, co-designed levels, manager of asset pipeline, and provider of tea and squeals.</div>
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And of course the amazingly talented Annabelle of Brave Young God who kindly produced the soundtrack to come with the Worlds of Etsy. <a href="https://soundcloud.com/braveyounggod">Listen to her soundcloud here and send her some love!</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-57157307592690219922014-12-08T01:30:00.000+00:002014-12-08T01:30:27.345+00:00Digital Games: Week 11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been crunch week as the team and I work towards the final pitch. Many hours have been spent in the labs, programming in the levels and fixing bugs. Luckily, a few undergrads decorated the labs, giving the place a very cozy and festive mood that helped all of us power through the final stretch.</div>
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A week in and this is what my work space looks like. As for the code, I have 150 lines of conditions on MMF. Most of the week I spent sipping tea in the late hours of the night, wrestling with a bug in the game. When I finally beat it, I jumped out of my chair and screamed in joy only to realise I had many startled faces staring back at me from behind computer screens.</div>
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But not all has been hard struggles (though 80% of the week has). We had an absolutely excellent theory class where we recapped on all the methodologies learnt throughout the semester and solidified them, all while eating delicious cookies Kelly had baked. In design class we created fireworks using fast loops. Then later at night, we played some board games with festive drinks and food.</div>
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This week's guest was Steve Stopps, producer of Lumo. He ran us through the production of the game Lumo Deliveries, what worked, what didn't and the secrets of how they managed to get in the app store's front page three times. Steve is an absolutely amazing speaker and I highly recommend every games student who has the chance to go listen to him talk. My notebook is now filled with his production wisdom sprinkled with a few of his quotes.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7471991661961185018.post-89624397786626007212014-11-30T22:21:00.000+00:002014-11-30T22:21:19.407+00:00Digital Games: Week 10<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Such a busy and fulfilling week with London events, writing Gantt charts, pseudocode and wrestling MMF. The once only personal weekly goals have transformed into a team chart as the five of us team members work towards the final presentation on the 10th. We continue to work wonderfully together and its fantastic to see how each of us chip in with our strengths.<br />
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Most of my time was spent organizing the assets to be completed for the demo, allocating these tasks to the team and working on MMF. Two days in and I already had a box that would pick up other boxes into their bag and drop them. A day after that and Pong created the cutest animated character for the game complete with running, jumping, grabbing and falling animations.<br />
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Most comers and goers of the Brunel game design lab know that I now live among the computers. Interesting events tend to happen around you while working on MMF, reading and typing up theory or playing a new game. This week we had university wide League of Legends tournament, organised by Iva and streamed on twitch, Eddie showed off game trailers on the new TV screen and the monthly show and tell Steam games version played and commentated on Shovel Knight.<br />
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In class, we briefly explored some of the roles of the games industry. Thoughts about life after graduation followed me during the week. A few classmates mentioned they could really visualise me in the role of a producer and I have to agree, as a jill-of-all-trades that can get very enthusiastic among people, the role seems to fit perfectly. However I still really enjoy writing about games so I feel either academic or games journalist needs to be a part of me as well. Either way, I will not be limiting myself and continue taking on those tasks that I love doing, regardless of where they sit in the games industry. I'm open to surprises.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0