Author Archives: joshg

11.13.07
by

Wanted: Indie Game Developers

Want to get started in independent game development? Live in the Fraser Valley somewhere near Abbotsford? First Shot Games is looking for people who would like to make it actually exist in more than just my imagination!

I’m looking for collaborators to help make the indie dream come true. My own skill set is mixed and I’m essentially looking for people I can work together with in an interdisciplinary way – in other words, I’m not picky about whether you’re a programmer, sound artist, 2D artist, modeler, level designer, game designer, etc. What I’m really looking for is to create an environment where we can all learn something from each other and work as a group to come up with well-designed and polished small-scale games.

I’m not recruiting to hire, because this isn’t yet a funded company. This isn’t a day job. I’m looking for people willing to get together and potentially work in their spare time or part-time to try and get an indie game development company off the ground for either a share of future profits or as a partnership.

I do have a plan for a marketable educational game, targeted at high school science departments, to get things off the ground. I just can’t stand working solo and get squirrelly when there’s no one around to bounce ideas off of and collaborate with. (Otherwise I’d gladly be off in my little corner pushing out this game idea I have and keeping the revenue for myself.)

If this sounds interesting to you and you live in the area, fire me an email (josh # thoughtlost . org) and we can meet up for coffee!

11.04.07
by

Why I’m wary of Facebook and OpenSocial

From jill/txt:

What of privacy? What of the fact that social networks aren’t always a one-size-fits-all proposition? Just two days ago, danah boyd wrote that she is having to limit her “real” Facebook profile to real, f2f friends only, and that she is creating a second Facebook profile for her professional connections.  …another example of this jarring of networks that should never have been connected: the teacher whose young students find her friends’ profiles and are horrified at them. Will OpenSocial allow for the distinctions between different kinds of friends?

My Facebook presence is pretty minimal, largely because even after digging around in all of the privacy settings I could find, I still don’t feel confident that I know how much of my private life will become public if I push it into this social web space.  I’m already involved with one group who are trying to move their online presence onto Facebook, and I’m unsure how involved I want to be because I don’t know if topics I reply to (on personal faith issues) will end up published on some push-media personal news feed that my professional contacts will end up seeing.

I think I’ve narrowed down what becomes public and what doesn’t, but I’m inherently paranoid about this sort of thing and I’ve taken the time to narrow down what gets pushed onto my news feed and what doesn’t.  What is this system doing to people’s lives who don’t have the technical know-how or the privacy awareness to take advantage of these options?

Having the network of friends-connections shared between websites makes me even more wary, despite the advantages.  Do I need to track down and manage privacy settings across every possible site that’s using OpenSocial to maintain control over what gets pushed into public view?

10.22.07
by

Escalating Office-isms

Here’s a game I came up with last night (with the help of my lovely wife) for subverting the office water cooler into something more interesting.

Escalating Office-isms: A game for the modern office environment.

Two or more people are required to play Escalating Office-isms. Players should be loitering by a water cooler, next to the copier, or some other suitable location for office small-talk. Waiting in an elevator has the added bonus of giving you a captive audience for your game performance, but the drawback of an artificial time limit (although advanced players will bypass this by simply riding the elevator up and down repeatedly).

The game begins by one player making a casual statement about somebody else in the office, or a fictional character spontaneously written into your office context. The statement must contain at least one name, and at least one “office-ism”, ie. an office buzzword. Buzzword examples are listed later, but the best ones are often those which stand out from your own office experiences.

The next player must make a follow-up statement which includes at least as many office buzzwords as the previous statement played. It must also refer to someone within the office, fictional or otherwise. Fictional names are preferable as it adds a level of misdirection for anyone listening, as well as allowing for more flexibility in play.

Most importantly, the name included in the response must begin with the last letter of the name last spoken in the previous statement. A statement may mention more than one name, but the first proper name used must follow this criteria. Only first names should be used during the game to keep this rule’s difficulty reasonable. If a name has more than one viable spelling, any plausible spelling is allowed to structure the response.

The game progresses with each player in turn responding to the previous statement played as above. In the case of more than two players, players can respond in any order, or spontaneously agree on a clockwise or counterclockwise play order. Players must use non-verbal cues to come to this agreement if they do so at all; the intention being that, while all players are aware of the game’s rules, game play begins spontaneously in the correct context and without any additional clues to others who may be nearby to alert them that a game is being played.

During game play, all players should maintain a straight-faced, casual but serious tone.

Play ends when players finally give in and go back to work (considered a loss), or when one player keeps a straight face while making a statement that causes other players to crack up laughing (considered a win). Bonus points for all involved if a random passer-by is drawn into the conversation; extra bonus points if the random passer-by is the one who cracks up laughing while all players remain straight-faced. Super intense bonus points if the random passer-by unknowingly responds with a well-formed statement.

An example of a few rounds of play, with office buzzwords in bold:

Player 1: “Were you at this morning’s meeting? I thought John’s action items were highly questionable.”

Player 2: “That is so true! I was just telling Nigel the other day that we need to stay focused on our mission statement.”

Player 1: “We could all learn from Linda’s example. Her action items are so dynamic!”

Player 2: “She needs to work together with Arthur on the project; we need to bring our resources together to maximize our synergy.”

Note that acceptable buzzwords will vary and are subjective. If a player responds in a way which implies a miscount the previous player may repeat his statement, adding emphasis on the words or phrases he considers valid. eg. “I think you misheard me – her action items are very dynamic!” If the responding player still does not seem to agree on the buzzword count, the earlier player should concede to the responding player to allow play to continue as smoothly as possible.

This was inspired by Rules of Play‘s suggested exercise of creating a Site-Specific Resistance game design. If you have fun playing Escalating Office-isms, or have any questions about the rules, I would love to hear from you!

10.18.07
by

Portal’s Feminism

Portal is simply fantastic. The game play is incredibly well-polished; the puzzles are fantastic; the portal gun is tons of fun; the style and writing are hilarious. You really should go finish the game just for the credits alone (no, I’m not kidding, although don’t go digging up spoiler videos because you really need to play the game through to get the full comedy impact). So now that the context has been properly set, I want to dig into something I’m not entirely certain about.

What the heck is Portal saying about gender and femininity?

Spoilers after the break – if you haven’t played and finished the game yet, go do so! Then come back. Continue reading →

10.17.07
by

References for my TWU “Digital Games as Communication” Presentation

This post is a collection of links to stuff that I mentioned during my visit at Kevin Schut’s class on Digital Games as Communication. The talk was, roughly, on creative process in the mainstream game industry vs that in independent development, plus a look at what the indie game scene is shaping into today (or at least the parts I’ve found out about so far).  If there’s anything I mentioned that you can’t find here or via Google, or if you have any other questions, drop a comment here or email me at: josh at the domain thoughtlost dot org.  (Does that even fool spambots anymore? I have no idea.)

Linkfest begins after the break.

Continue reading →

10.08.07
by

NYT on Halo 3 in Christian Youth Evangelism

What a weird article.

Not once does anyone in the article ask the obvious question – “Why Halo?” If the violence of the game is a concern, why don’t they simply play something else? A church I used to attend had video games in their youth drop-in area, but they deliberately avoided M-rated titles. People still had lots of fun. This was in Canada, so the usual choice was a hockey game, but surely a football game would have the same effect south of the border. But I guess too many of us evangelicals have bought into the idea that we need to ride the hype bandwagons to be “relevant” to kids, instead of teaching them to step back and think critically. Bleah.

The repeated use of “Thou shalt not kill” was also just weird. Talk about what morals the game is passing on, or whether we should be exposing kids to more media violence. Don’t try to clumsily equate killing sci-fi aliens in a game with a literal act of murder. I guess it’s true that the game may be passing on morals and values which encourage violent response, but I don’t see that as a given. Are you even killing humans in Halo 3? I guess in deathmatch mode probably; I haven’t played a Halo game yet, I’ve been too distracted defending the intelligence. (No, TF2 probably shouldn’t be used in youth outreach programs either.)

I’m still a little muddled when it comes to how I want to respond to an article like this. Part of me wants to ask if this would be just as controversial if the youth group was being taken out for a game of laser tag* or paintball**, which are arguably more realistic experiences of gunfighting (especially paintball). I’ve taken in enough gamer culture over the years that it’s hard for me to drop the defensiveness that rises up when it feels like video games are being scapegoated.

But I do believe there are reasons why we should be concerned by what messages and values violent games are bringing to kids. I just don’t think that the outside-perspective analysis given by sources like this NYT article capture the depth of the issues.

For a better example of what I’d like to see more of, in Hartmut Gieselmann’s recent paper, “Ordinary Gamers – The Vanishing Violence in War Games and Its Influence on Male Gamers”:

But when you take a closer look at war games, you will realize that the violent scenes that are shown there are not nearly as gruesome as in fictional games featuring monsters and vampires.

…violence will only be recognized as entertaining for the gamer… when he (much more than 90 Percent of war gamers are male) can draw a strict line between the real world and the non real gaming world – otherwise he would be scared by what he sees and stop feeling comfortable.

…By just pointing at the most violent games, critics overlook that war games have a much greater impact on gamers’ opinions and their world views because they do not show the actual violence.

Which is more dangerous in the hands of our children – fantasy-setting violence which jars the senses, or toned down violence depicted in real-world settings which numbs us to the ugly reality of real warfare? (Answering “both” is fine; it’d be an improvement over most critics and watchdog groups who fixate only on the most bloody games.)

I clearly can’t end this in a way which wraps up my thoughts into a coherent conclusion, because I don’t yet have one. How about I just end off by saying, anyone who buys Halo 3 for a youth group and hands it uncritically to 12-year-olds that I know and care about will probably get a scowl and a talking-to from me. Grrr!

(re: GTxA)
*which is awesome, by the way.

**which, when I played for the first time about four months ago, hurt like heck and left a still-visible mark on my body. Also the masks fog up in the first 30 seconds which is lame. My ideal solution: outdoor laser tag.

09.18.07
by

post-game art

Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised. Soon the film theoreticians asked the same ill-considered question with regard to the film. But the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child’s play as compared to those raised by the film.

– Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (emphasis added)

And have we asked that question about games yet, or are we too busy debating with film critics?

08.02.07
by

Getting it

Ian Bogost’s newest Persuasive Games column up on Gamasutra discusses the phenomenon of game industry folk (press especially, it seems) placing the demand on educational or editorial games to “err on the side of more fun” when choosing between fun and educational.

To quote a quote from the column:

There is a maxim I hear frequently in the serious games circles, most recently repeated by Tim Holt in a discussion of the Slate article on Raph Koster’s website. Says Holt:

If you have to make a mistake in the fun versus educational balance, it’s better to be a bit too fun and a bit less educational than the other way around.

It’s a sentiment that seems hard to argue with, if you assume the goal of games is simply education, or fun, or both. If we rephrase this value statement by replacing “educational” with “editorial,” in the case of newsgames for example, it becomes far less persuasive. Education, fun, or other possible experiences might season an editorial game, but who would deny that the latter is its primary goal?

 

First of all, while I know that both Bogost, Holt and others are generally speaking about which is more prominent in a game design’s mixture of “fun” and “educational / editorial”, it’s hard to respond to this in a way which doesn’t emphasize the this-vs-that nature of the entire discussion. Let me get this out of the way first – fun and educational are not always at odds with each other! There are always design tradeoffs and choices to be made between any number of elements in a game, but let’s not sign up for the “FUN vs. THOUGHT” cage match on next week’s pay-per-view.

That said, what is the role of fun in a primarily educational or editorial game? Not that fun isn’t a self-justifying goal, but it might be worth noting that fun serves a very specific purpose in a teaching or expressive game. Basically, it keeps people playing long enough to get the point. Let’s try expressing that as a nice little theoretical statement:

An expressive game should aim to be fun enough for the player to stay engaged long enough to get the message. (For games which instill player engagement through some means that may not fit your definition of “fun”, substitute “interesting” or “engaging” or what have you.)

Hmm, maybe I should just drop the f-word altogether:

An expressive game should attempt to keep the player engaged in the act of playing at least long enough to get the message.

Hey, now we don’t need to have this “fun” vs “thinking” cage match at all!

So if someone gets bored and quits before they actually receive what you were trying to communicate, then perhaps the game could’ve used some work to make it more engaging. Making it more fun would be the most familiar way to do so.

Of course it’s useful to note that if the point of your game was to communicate that something is incredibly boring and frustrating, then the expressive game doesn’t really need to keep the player around for long. Although I suppose if they want to include a message of drudgery and monotony in there, they could use promised-fun techniques – you know, the ones that keep you playing MMORPGs through the slow grinds. “Keep going, Mr. Kinko’s employee, and maybe someday you’ll be a lvl70 Manager!”

So when someone reviews or critiques an expressive game and faults it for not being fun enough, my question is this: did they get it? If they did, then what obligation is the game under to continue being fun? Or is the real problem that those who review and report on games think themselves obliged to continue playing the game for some arbitrary standard length of time to give a “proper viewpoint” on the game, leading them to continue being bored long after the average player has decided to take what they’ve learned and move on to other fun things?

05.16.07
by

Vancouver IGS

Hey look, there’s a writeup on the game development conference I attended two weeks ago that I felt like blogging about but couldn’t figure out what to say! I missed the keynotes for the most part – work, commute, etc, whatever – but here are some of my highlights.

The session on agile development was pretty good, especially Relic’s success story. Also the final speaker from UBC was simply an amazing speaker, had the best use of PowerPoint I’ve ever seen, and dissected the bizarre pseudo-political spreading of the “agile” meme with such skill that I honestly wish I had that his presentation captured on video somewhere so that I could just point to it when people get confused by all the agile buzzwordology.

The pre-production tricks session was also pretty cool, mostly because it reminded me of a lot of good ideas I’d seen before and forgotten, plus hearing the story of Need for Speed: Carbon’s design team testing out a car customizing feature idea by having a “race” by pushing cardboard boxes around was hilarious. Also the NfS designer talked about how they used a board game prototype to test out their fairly risky feature of introducing a mild strategy element into their latest racing game. Not a new idea to me at least, but it was a great success story. They also used the technique of having one player be the “real” player and the rest use some general guidelines for how they make strategic choices to act out the part of computer opponents. I’d thought about trying this when I whipped up a board game prototype of a single player video game in the past, but wasn’t sure how fun it would be. I never had a group working with me to test it out on, so it was cool to hear that it worked out really well for the NfS team.

The MMO design session was another highlight, although mostly for the unusual reason that I hadn’t realized Sherwood Dungeon was made by an industry veteran living in North Vancouver. I had just heard of the game a couple weeks before the conference and was already impressed that it was the work of a single person. He shared how his games are already profitable and achieve a high amount of traffic simply by creating a linking policy that allows portals to place his game within a frame and keep their own ad and portal content around the game window as long as his own banner ads are kept intact below the game itself. Apparently he’s managed to get traffic equivalent to being on one of the top games portals by accumulating traffic from dozens of smaller portals instead, and all with little or no negotiation required. He’s also done a lot of work done to keep the game small and immediately accessible (no download, no credit card, just type in a player name and start) which had made it all come together into a working indie business model.

That pretty much sums up my favorite parts of the conference. Oh, and the burger buffet lunch on Friday was INFINITELY better than the pasta-on-saucers and (I kid you not) mashed potatoes in martini glasses they served up on Thursday. Thank goodness there’s a decent sushi restaurant within a block of any location in downtown Vancouver!

05.06.07
by

Massively Multiplayer Online Vanity

Random brief thought after reading this Joel on Software blog post, specifically this story he quotes:

“A number of years ago a programmer friend of mine worked for a company that was brought in to optimize the elevators in a San Fran hotel. After doing their due diligence/study, they had the hotel install mirrors in the hallway where the elevators were. By the time the visitors were done preening, the elevator had arrived. Human engineering at its finest.”

I just attended a game dev conference in Vancouver which included a panel on MMO design, plus I’d just been skimming Terra Nova before catching this in my feeds. So naturally I read this great story and started wondering – how much of an MMOs success really depends on simply how cool you’re able to make your character look (and by extension, how cool and varied other characters around you look)? After all, good game design is all about “human engineering” of this sort, and MMOs in particular need to pull all kinds of attractors in to get people to stick around through the Long Grind.