Game Design Advance

Every now and then the internet lives up to its mid-’90s, utopian advertisement and a random internet search will lead you to something unexpected and fascinating. In just such a situation I found an article entitled Virtual Fandoms; Futurescapes of Football. Written by the geographer John Bale, the essay touches on what he calls the ‘placelessness’ of some sports, specifically Football, and the problem spectators present when it comes to “fair play”.

There are a lot of interesting points throughout the piece, at least to someone like me who doesn’t know much about sports.

I don’t know when it was published (the most recent citation is from 1995) but my first thought was how he would react to the phenomenon of professional Starcraft players and tournaments in South Korea. Completely isolated from their spectators by hermetically sealed bubbles and earphones, playing on a perfectly even playing field, this sport and its athletes seem like they would be closest to his ideals.

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Greg Trefry’s love child The Come Out & Play Festival has been nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in the entire game oriented world: The 2008 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. This is really a great moment to recognize the effort that Greg and his counter parts have put into putting Big Games/Urban Games onto the gaming map. Catherine Herdlick, Nick Fortugno, Mattia Romeo, and Peter Lee all deserve credit too. Congrats and can’t wait to be at next year’s festival!

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I gave a presentation at my work today (Kognito Interactive) about my experience at the GLS a few weeks ago. The aspect that the conference left me thinking about most is the idea of assessment in education and in game simulations. In a sense, assessment is the solution to and obstacle blocking educational reform. After the jump, the text from my presentation:

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Of the blogs I’ve been following recently my current favorite is Versus Clu Clu Land, written by the mysteriously named Iroquois Pliskin (if you catch the reference you get a good idea of his taste in games). About a week ago Iroquois posted a short piece drawing an analogy between Jazz and video games.

Music has always seemed an appropriate metaphor for games to me, and I think the post does a good job of touching on the interesting design tension inherent between structure and improvisation. Unfortunately it gets caught up in the over-blown ‘narrative versus interactivity’ dichotomy at the end and doesn’t speak to what I think is the more interesting logical conclusion: that playing a game is a form of performance.

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One of the hardest things to do as a game designer is the balancing act between being clever and being obtuse. Sitting with our own ideas for too long we often start to subconsciously justify our decisions, thinking that they’re more obvious than they are. We’re then flabbergasted when other people don’t immediately grasp the things we thought were simple.

Brenda Brathwaite considers the same question on her blog, Applied Game Design, and comes to the conclusion: “change your design, not the player.”

While I think that a large part of games actually is about changing the player’s natural instincts and inclinations, or at least tweaking them a little, she is right when she maintains that the solution is not trying to press your point. It’s better to simply give in and try something different. There’s a good chance that in the end it’ll make for a better game. Failing that, it’s always good to work with tangible design challenges.

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Mark Essen, also known as messhof, is one of the only true rockstars of game design. Not in the sense that he is incredibly famous, but in the sense that he turns out brief but blazing examples of creativity that seemingly fly in the face of tradition. If that weren’t enough, he has successfully gotten his games acknowledged as art. Not by seducing Roger Ebert, but by getting his games shown in an actual museum.

This coming Tuesday, July 15th, the Brooklyn-based museum Light Industry will have a talk by Mark Essen as well as showcasing five of his games, including two new ones. You can also check out Essen’s work at his website. Hope to see you all there!

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David Sirlin’s long-awaited, online collectible card game, Kongai, has finally been launched over at Kongregate. After initially finding the game uninteresting I was convinced by our friend Nash to give it another try. I’m glad I did, because it really is a great game.

Unfortunately the great game is hidden under a terrifying interface, making the best way to learn the game an in-person tutorial from someone who already knows how to play (which is actually a lot like real card game). On top of this there’s a lot of lag and a few server glitches right now that might cause you to lose games even when your victory is imminent (this seems to happen less on ranked matches). Also, there’s no ability to play with your friends, which is ironic for a game hosted on a social software site. Finally, the card distribution is draconian, so when someone uses an incredible combo on you it’s basically impossible to throw together a deck and try the move out for yourself.

None of that, of course, is David Sirlin’s fault (except maybe the interface stuff) and he deserves credit for creating a really compelling and rewarding game. Everyone should try it out.

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Here at the Games-Learning-Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin there has been a lot of discussion and presentations related to how games and education should mix. We’ve got your standard games and education evangelists (like Jim Gee, Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman, etc…), a plethora of academics presenting research, and a few folks like me who mainly design games. The conference seems to be part pep rally, part best practices, part mingle fest, with not enough attention given to “how to talk to school administration about putting games into the classroom” and “when and when not games should be used in the classroom.” The conference center was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (and it shows, truly special architecture) and so I’m worried he’s rolling in his grave as I never heard a single person mention form has to meet function in game design (especially for education). That’s really my only criticism at the moment, on the whole the conference was a joy to attend. I’ll post more in the coming days about specific lectures and the conference highlights.

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In honor of Independence Day, I’m posting my latest game, in its own way a rumination on the nature of life, liberty and freedom of speech in the 21st century. This is basically what I wish I could’ve finished in time for my thesis, and while there’s still a few typos and errors here and there in the text that I’ll be fixing as I go along, I can honestly say that this is a game I stand by (even if it is a work-in-progress until I decide otherwise).

Click the picture to open the game. For the uninitiated, here’s the essentials– press the arrow-keys to choose phrases, press the spacebar to speak, and press the enter-key to cancel your phrases and choose something else, or move to the next screen of text. Up says Yes, Down says No, Left asks a Question and Right gives an Answer. Whatever you do, don’t run out of light-bulbs.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Until next time, pleasant dreamers, be thankful that the founding fathers managed to establish at least one semi-regular three-day weekend…

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Designer and textbook author Chris Bateman has a post on his blog Only a Game challenging Sid Meier’s famous maxim that “a game is a series of interesting decisions”. To his mind there are plenty of games that succeed without featuring decisions that are particularly interesting, such as rhythm games like Guitar Hero.

Maybe it’s time to start delineating between ‘games’, ‘puzzles’, and ‘activities’; or would that simply confuse the matter further?

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