GDC Next Week, NINJA time!

It's a pretty stressful week. In fact, it's been a couple of pretty stressful weeks... Lots of projects, deadlines, assignments, etc. The overwhelming workload might have had a chance of getting to me if my mind wasn't solely focused on one thing: GDC. I'm going up to San Francisco next week to attend the 25th annual Game Developers Conference, and I can't wait! Ever since I decided that my future was to be in the games industry, I've wanted to attend GDC as it's the largest gathering of developers, designers, artists, producers, business-types, and well anyone related to the wonderful world of game development that exists! The week long conference comprises of a ton of fascinating lectures, round-tables, interviews, and post-mortems amongst many others, but has always been a bit difficult to go to due to expenses (it's not cheap). 

This year however, things are a bit different. I learned that if I am accepted to be a volunteer for the event, then I am granted an all-access pass for free (~ $2000) if I work for a total of 20 hours during the conference. Sounded like a pretty sweet deal, so I went for it, and was fortunate enough to be accepted! Success.

But then things got interesting. There's a specific event at GDC called The Experimental Games Workshop, or EGW. Basically, EGW is a session where game developers can talk about experiments that they are doing with games they have created. It's a bit complicated as to how this came up, but about a week before the proposal submission deadline, I decided that I had something I wanted to talk about. So I wrote a 5 page proposal, and to my utmost surprise... I was selected! Not only am I going to attend GDC, but I'm going to be a speaker as well! Well, the presentation is only 10 minutes long... but I'm speaking nonetheless! Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked. So I thought I'd write about what I'm going to be presenting on, and share a bit of my thoughts on it.

...

I've been thinking a lot about physical folk games lately. We’ve all played physical folk games, especially when we were children. Games like Tag, Red Rover, Capture the Flag... they bring back some fond memories don’t they? Unfortunately, most of us tend to let them go as we grow up, just as we stopped going to playgrounds to crawl through tunnels and plunge down slides. “Ninja” is a similar game of this category, but with one exception – I know of more adults than kids who play it. Ninja is part game, part theatrical performance; crowds larger than the number of players participating tend to gather, most of whom inevitably join the game as well.

So, what exactly is Ninja? Think of it as a free-for-all turn based combat game, driven by reflexes, finesse, but most importantly, style. Players start the game by forming a circle, and on the count of three, jump into a ninja pose. The more ridiculous the pose, the more respect earned from onlookers. Players then take turns making one fluid movement in order to eliminate opponents out by striking their hands with their own, all the while acting like a ninja. If a player is being attacked, he can evade with one rapid movement involving only his arms. There is no referee; all rules are monitored by players and the crowd alike. Often players can get away with much if they provide enough entertainment with their attacking and evasive maneuvers.

Once the game has boiled down to two remaining players, a duel takes place. The players walk to the middle, put their backs together, and jump into action when the crowd yells “3…2…1…NINJA!” The opponents face off in a flurry of excitement until only one remains. The players take a bow, and the curtain falls.

I've experimented quite a bit with Ninja. I run weekly games here at my university, but have also started various impromptu games in largely public places. No matter what time of the day, or who chooses to participate, the result is always the same: people love it. I mean people of all ages and professions - I've had people in suits play with teen skaters. It's really remarkable. There's something about it that appeals to almost everyone.

I think this was largely due to the theatrical aspect of Ninja - the part that makes it unique. Most games are only fun when you are the one playing them, but Ninja is such a spectacle that it taps into people’s love of watching skill, style, and drama. And on top of all of this, there’s an incredibly low barrier to entry for becoming an actor in the show! Anyone can participate. The game is physical, but doesn’t require great physical ability - you play completely at your own pace. Because you can only move when it’s your turn, or when being attacked, and both of these movements are generally quick, the game’s not very physically tolling (though, believe me, it can be if you choose it to be!)

Finally, I think Ninja allows people, no matter how old, to feel and act like a 12 year old in front of a mirror with no one watching. The games industry is so focused on getting wider demographics into digital games, but a lot of people have forgotten about what they grew up doing everyday during recess on the playgrounds at school. Most people haven’t played a game of Tag or Cops and Robbers in years. From what I’ve seen from these “experiments”, I think Ninja can make a lot of people experience that joy all over again.

Trilogy

@echo "Hello World"

So, here I am, ready and enthused to be writing about the art and science of game design for the next fifteen weeks. I am not worried about this topic’s ability to fuel me with ideas and interests for this duration, as it has already been doing that for the last six years. What was once a fan oriented fixation has become an academic and professional focus. Though my academic discipline is more concerned with game development, and is far more technical in nature than the lofty abstractness of design, my passion has always been with the latter. As a result, I’d imagine that most of the essays and posts I will write here will not be about the technology that allows for digital games, but rather the games that stem from the technology... though perhaps I might be tempted to write about the implications of what this developing and complex technology can do for the evolution of game design.

In case you are curious as to what game design entails, you can think of it as the craft of creating interactive experiences between users and systems in which there are goals. The ways in which this is does varies greatly among different platforms; board games ‘play’ very differently than physical games such as tag or capture the flag, or commercial digital games such as Super Mario Bros. I am mainly interested in digital games, but that is not specifying much. Digital games come in all shapes and sizes depending on their genre, how experimental they wish to be, the audience they are geared towards, their budget, and much more.

Topics which I have interest in potentially covering include, but are not limited to, education and game design, digital immersion, and critical analysis of both modern and recent commercial and independent games. Game design is an extremely topical subject as its medium is constantly evolving. Furthermore, I am actively developing games and interactive experiences, so I look forward to writing about my thoughts regarding my own works as well.

One of the key responsibilities of a game designer is to produce a game design document for the project at hand that the whole team must follow. This document is often large and incredible detailed, and it is crucial that the vision of the game is delivered to the team. I hope that this course will help my technical writing ability, but also my thought process in creative expression so that I effectively communicate my visions as well.





Video Game Land is Sexy, didn't you know?

“Sexy Videogameland.” 

What a name, huh? According to Leigh Alexander, this very curious name was chosen for her personal side project blog because she felt like video games aren’t “perceived as "sexy"” by the masses, and because she isn’t afraid to address sexual issues that concern games. Yep, SVGL might be a tiny bit different than your everyday gaming blog, and that’s because its author is a tiny bit different than your everyday gamer. Leigh (pronounced “Lee”) is a video game journalist, and one of the best in the industry at that.

She’s the news director of Gamasutra.com (the essential game developer news site), a monthly columnist at Kotaku.com (an extremely popular gaming blog), and has had her work appear in the LA Times, Wired, Slate, and much more. You could say she’s kind of a big deal. I follow Gamasutra and Kotaku almost every day religiously where I am sure to read her posts often enough, so the obvious question arises: why do I still look at “Sexy Videogameland” even though I can read her articles elsewhere? I confess that one of the motives is due the title itself, but more importantly, Leigh’s doing this blog for herself. She’s not making any money off of it, she’s not trying to impress anyone, and she sure as hell isn’t afraid to speak her mind. 

 

Her blog eventually boils down to a collection of posts about things she just felt like writing about. Most of these of course have something to do with games, but a lot of times they concern music, or just really random personal interests. Even within the topic of games, they range from personal memories of great experiences, to commentary on the industry, to even recommendations and reviews. For instance, in the post “Hairy Palms”  Leigh comments about how the Spike TV Video Game Awards, while highly criticized as being immature and degrading, might be hinting to an uncomfortable reality that respectful supporters of the medium try to forget. “We spend a lot of time saying “video games aren’t like this” and yet the stereotypes persist,” she says, “Maybe video games are like this, we’re a vocal minority. Isn’t that a terrifying thought?”

To the layman or the non-gamer, this might seem normal and well… pretty much obvious. To the many developers that pride themselves and the medium on how it’s maturing as an art style however, this event was seen as a serious blow. She quotes a particularly striking line of the New Yorker profile of Nintendo head honcho Shigeru Miyamoto: “The best analogue for [video games] combined disreputability and ubiquity may be masturbation,” and believes that if your reaction is to blatantly disagree with that view, then “you’re in denial”. That’s not something you’ll often hear from a journalist dedicated to the gaming medium.

 

On quite a different note, the post “Social Behavior” delves into her design insights, where she identifies what really engages her in social play. Instead of the usual process of joining an online lobby of a game today, she fondly recalls how social gaming used to take place in its older form. 

“How did you learn how to get the whistles in Super Mario Bros. 3? How did you learn which walls were breakable in Symphony of the Night? How did you get infinite lives in Contra? You didn't look it up on the internet back in those days -- you heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend. Someone told you. Someone showed you. One day, you had a pal over, and you had the controller in your hand when he told you where you were supposed to stand to get something neat to happen.” 

Leigh posts frequently on SVGL, but not as much as she used to. There have only been 2 posts from her this year, but last year she was shooting out one or two posts a week. This is still shy of the 2-3 posts a week of the previous year, and the year before that had almost twice the amount. I’m sure that all kinds of people read her blog, but I feel that the core demographic includes gamers between the ages of 16 and 28. In particular, her posts probably appeal to a lot of female gamers. In a field where the core market is male dominated, it’s very interesting to have one of the leading voices come from a woman. 

 

I want to make it clear that Leigh’s blog, though also on the topic of games, will not be very similar to mine in terms of content. As I mentioned in my previous post, my blog will be more about the science and art of game design rather than my thoughts of the gaming industry at large. However, I feel like there are a lot of things Leigh does that inspires me in how I wish to write. I really admire her frankness, and her fearlessness in expression. She talks to her audience in what I believe is her real voice, and I really respect that. I don’t know if she’ll be attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year. If she is I’d love to give her a high five or something.

Links:

http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2010/12/hairy-palms.html

http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2009/11/social-behavior.html

The Voice of Veteran Design Experience

Brenda Brathwaite blew up the universe. It happened almost nine years ago. Well, actually, you blew up the universe – but Brenda made you do it.

Say wha-?

Maybe I confused you a little too much. You see, Brenda’s a veteran game designer. She’s been doing her thing for over thirty long years, over which she has created the notable Wizardry series (amongst many others). Still lost? In the eighth installment of the series, the developers decided to make the player do something drastic at the end of the game: blow everything up.

On the 20^th of December 2009, Brenda wrote a post titled ‘Blowing Everything Up: From AAA to Freedom’ in her blog, ‘Applied Game Design’, which attempted to answer the question “Why, Brenda… why’d you do it?” This might seem a bit funny, but when you really get down to the issue it’s almost like asking an architect why he asked the tenants of his building to knock it down for fun, or a sculptress why she asked her audience to leisurely smash her beautiful work of art.

“The whole universe – planets, people, long story lines, subquests, potential sequels and everything – turned in a giant cloud of cosmic particles,” she writes. Brenda’s aware of the emotional weight her fictitious world held; it seems like the list following the initial hyphen is floating through her mind as she writes the sentence. The fact that she brings up “potential sequels” makes me feel quite sad, despite never having played the series at all. There’s a notion of hope for the future being crushed.

But just when the emotion sinks in, man is she quick to get detached! Just two sentences away, she almost jeers at the memory, “There were a variety of ways it could go, but baby, it was going. BadaBoom.” Sounds kind of like a soldier telling stories about ‘nam, right? This juxtaposition in her voice gives her a tone of experience, as if she's done this so many times that she's now desensitized to the emotional weight of her work. Further on in the post (after she addresses the main issue regarding her world-destroying decisions) she mentions how:

“blowing up the universe was a radical solution, but it may have been the only one, and it serves as a decent metaphor for my return to full-time game development.” 

I’m sorry, blowing up the universe is only a decent metaphor for get back into your job? Geez. I can’t help but be impressed by the confidence that statement holds. I mean, you have to be thoroughly convinced that what you do is damn important, and that you’re damn good at doing it to be able to say something like that.

Hopefully you’re getting a taste of Brenda’s personality by now. I’ve actually heard her speak live on two occasions, and it’s amazing how similar the tone of her actual voice is to the one that’s being produced in my head by her writing.

A good example of another trait shown consistently in her writing can be seen in her most recent post named “Developing Self-Discipline,” which jumped online on the 16^th of January. In this post, she recollects a time when she worked for Electronic Arts, and made a decision for the betterment of the project in spite of the fact that “had [she] not done it, NO ONE would have known”. Her use of caps lock here makes her words have noticeable presence. “Duh dude. The letters are larger.” That’s not what I mean. Normally caps locked words can be read as LOUD SHOUTING or AGGRESIVENESS, BITCH! I don’t think that’s what she’s going here.

From her writing, I perceive Brenda to be a really, really passionate person. When I read “I had it FINISHED,” or “It was going to affect EVERYTHING I’d already written,” I take the stresses on the words to be one of suggestive empathy. I know what she’s talking about – I can feel it. I’m thinking to myself “ugh.. it’s like that project where I knew I had an A… I knew I would make my professor happy… but I spent the whole damn night trying to fix a bug that no one would have ever noticed in a million years.” But you know what? It was worth it to me. And it was worth it to Brenda.

“I vividly remember everything about that moment. Where I was sitting, what I was doing, what work the decision would affect.”

The weight of the situation still vibrant in a not too distant recollection comes through with her punctuation in the latter sentence, as her thoughts aren’t gathered and collected. It’s more like a jagged view at the images in her memory. The verdict?

“My only responsibility was to do it right for the game. That is what I was hired to do.”

The factual delivery of her resolution resonates so well with me. It’s like there was nothing to it. Her sense of justice is so prominent; she had to do it because it was the “right” thing to do. She makes it seem like once she got a clear passage to her “guiding conscience”, there was so second-guessing.

These attributes of confidence, justice, and experience just pour through all her writing. I feel good reading through it – it’s almost comforting. One day I want to write with the confidence she has, but I’ll have to earn it first. As for Brenda… well… she’s been there, she’s done that. She’s created universes, and she’s destroyed ‘em.

BadaBoom.

Links:
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/developing-self-discipline/
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/blowing-everything-up-from-aaa-to-freedom/

The Voice of Brenda Brathwaite

Brenda Brathwaite blew up the universe. It happened almost nine years ago. Well, actually, you blew up the universe – but Brenda made you do it.

Say wha-?

Ok maybe I confused you a bit too much. You see, Brenda’s a veteran game designer. She’s been doing her thing for over thirty long years, over which she has created the notable Wizardry series amongst many others. Still lost? In the eighth installment of the series, the developers decided to make the player do something drastic at the end of the game: blow everything up.

On the 20^th of December 2009, Brenda wrote a post titled ‘Blowing Everything Up: From AAA to Freedom’ in her blog, ‘Applied Game Design’, which attempted to answer the question “Why, Brenda… why’d you do it?” This might seem a bit funny, but really when you get down to it, it’s almost like asking an architect why he asked the tenants of his building to knock it down for fun, or a sculptress why she asked her audience to leisurely smash her beautiful work of art.

“The whole universe – planets, people, long story lines, subquests, potential sequels and everything – turned in a giant cloud of cosmic particles,” she writes. Brenda’s aware of the emotional weight her fictitious world held; it seems like the list following the initial hyphen is floating through her mind as she writes the sentence. The fact that she brings up “potential sequels” makes me feel quite sad, despite never having played the series at all. There’s a notion of hope for the future being crushed.

But just when the emotion sinks in, man is she quick to get detached! Just two sentences away, she almost jeers at the memory, “There were a variety of ways it could go, but baby, it was going. BadaBoom.” Sounds kind of like a soldier telling stories about ‘nam, right? This juxtaposition in her voice gives her a tone of experience. Further on in the post (after she addresses the main issue regarding her world-destroying decisions) she mentions how “blowing up the universe was a radical solution, but it may have been the only one, and it serves as a decent metaphor for my return to full-time game development.” I’m sorry, blowing up the universe is only a decent metaphor for get back into your job? Geez. I can’t help but be impressed by the confidence that statement holds. I mean, you have to be thoroughly convinced that what you do is damn important, and that you’re damn good at doing it to be able to say something like that.

Hopefully you’re getting a taste of Brenda’s personality by now. I’ve actually heard her speak live on two occasions, and it’s amazing how similar the tone of her actual voice is to the one that’s being produced in my head by her writing.

A good example of another trait shown consistently in her writing can be seen in her most recent post named “Developing Self-Discipline,” which jumped online on the 16^th of January. In this post, she recollects a time when she worked for Electronic Arts, and made a decision for the betterment of the project in spite of the fact that “had [she] not done it, NO ONE would have known”. Her use of caps lock here makes her words have noticeable presence. “Duh dude. The letters are larger.” That’s not what I mean. Normally caps locked words can be read as LOUD SHOUTING or AGGRESIVENESS, BITCH! I don’t think that’s what she’s going here.

From her writing, I perceive Brenda to be a really, really passionate person. When I read “I had it FINISHED,” or “It was going to affect EVERYTHING I’d already written,” I take the stresses on the words to be one of suggestive empathy. I know what she’s talking about – I can feel it. I’m thinking to myself “ugh.. it’s like that project where I knew I had an A… I knew I would make my professor happy… but I spent the whole damn night trying to fix a bug that no one would have ever noticed in a million years.” But you know what? It was worth it to me. And it was worth it to Brenda.

“I vividly remember everything about that moment. Where I was sitting, what I was doing, what work the decision would affect,” she writes. The weight of the situation still vibrant in a not too distant recollection comes through with her punctuation in the latter sentence, as her thoughts aren’t gathered and collected. It’s more like a jagged view at the images in her memory. The verdict? “My only responsibility was to do it right for the game. That is what I was hired to do.” The factual delivery of her resolution resonates so well with me. It’s like there was nothing to it. Her sense of justice is so prominent; she had to do it because it was the “right” thing to do. She makes it seem like once she got a clear passage to her “guiding conscience”, there was so second-guessing.

These attributes of confidence, justice, and experience just pour through all her writing. I feel good reading through it – it’s almost comforting. One day I want to write with the confidence she has, but I’ll have to earn it first. As for Brenda… well… she’s been there, she’s done that. She’s created universes, and she’s destroyed ‘em.

BadaBoom.


http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/developing-self-discipline/
http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/blowing-everything-up-from-aaa-to-freedom/

Sexy Videogameland

“Sexy Videogameland.” 

What a name, huh? According to Leigh Alexander, this very curious name was chosen for her personal side project blog because she felt like video games aren’t “perceived as “sexy”” by the masses, and because she isn’t afraid to address sexual issues that concern, or are present in, games. Yep, it might be a tiny bit different than your everyday gaming blog, and that’s because its author is a tiny bit different than your everyday gamer. Leigh (pronounced “Lee”) is a video game journalist, and one of the best in the industry at that. She’s the news director of Gamasutra.com (the essential game developer news site), a monthly columnist at Kotaku.com (an extremely popular gaming blog), and has had her work appear in the LA Times, Wired, Slate, and much more. You could say she’s kind of a big deal. I follow Gamasutra and Kotaku daily almost religiously where I am sure to read her posts often enough, so the obvious question arises: why do I still look at “Sexy Videogameland” even though I can read her articles elsewhere? I confess that one of the motives is due the title itself, but more importantly, Leigh’s doing this blog for herself. She’s not making any money off of it, she’s not trying to impress anyone, and she sure as hell isn’t afraid to speak her mind. 

 

Her blog eventually boils down to a collection of posts about things she just felt like writing about. Most of these of course have something to do with games, but a lot of times they concern music, or just really random personal interests. Even within the topic of games, they range from personal memories of great experiences, to commentary on the industry, to even recommendations and reviews. For instance, in the post “Hairy Palms” (http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2010/12/hairy-palms.html) Leigh comments about how the Spike TV Video Game Awards, while highly criticized as being immature and degrading, might be hinting to an uncomfortable reality that respectful supports of the medium try to forget. “We spend a lot of time saying “video games aren’t like this” and yet the stereotypes persist,” she says, “Maybe video games are like this, we’re a vocal minority. Isn’t that a terrifying thought?” To the layman or the non-gamer, this might seem normal and well… pretty much obvious, but to the many developers that pride themselves and the medium on how it’s maturing as an art style this event was seen as a serious blow. She quotes a particularly striking line of the New Yorker profile of the head honcho of Nintendo: “The best analogue for [video games] combined disreputability and ubiquity may be masturbation,” and believes that if your reaction is to blatantly disagree with that view, then “you’re in denial”. That’s not something you’ll often hear from a journalist dedicated to the gaming medium.

 

On quite a different note, the post “Social Behavior” http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.com/2009/11/social-behavior.html) delves into her design insights, where she identifies what really engages her in social play. Instead of the usual process of joining an online lobby of a game today, she fondly recalls how social gaming used to take place in its older form. “How did you learn how to get the whistles in Super Mario Bros. 3? How did you learn which walls were breakable in Symphony of the Night? How did you get infinite lives in Contra? You didn't look it up on the internet back in those days -- you heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend. Someone told you. Someone showed you. One day, you had a pal over, and you had the controller in your hand when he told you where you were supposed to stand to get something neat to happen.” 

    

Leigh posts quite a bit on SVGL, but not as much as she used to. There have only been 2 posts from her this year (understandable, given the fact that it is only the 21^st day of the new year!), but 2010 saw 81 posts from her. This is still shy of the 122 posts of the previous year, and the 236 posts of the year before that. I’m sure that all kinds of people read her blog, but I feel that the core demographic includes gamers between the ages of 16 and 28. In particular, her posts probably appeal to a lot of female gamers. In a field where the core market is male dominated, it’s very interesting to have one of the leading voices come from a woman. 

 

I want to make it clear that Leigh’s blog, though also on the topic of games, will not be very similar to mine in terms of content. As I mentioned in my previous post, my blog will be more about the science and art of game design rather than my thoughts of the gaming industry at large. However, I feel like there are a lot of things Leigh does that inspires me in how I wish to write. I really admire her frankness, and her lack of fear in expression. She talks to her audience in what I believe is her real voice, and I really respect that. I don’t know if she’ll be attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this year. If she is I’d love to give her a high five or something.

@echo "Hello World"

*Press Enter to Play*

I have specifically chosen this particular WRIT 340 section as I knew beforehand that students would not only use blogging and other online mediums for developing their writing techniques in a more modern and contemporary fashion, but more importantly because they would be able to choose the topics they were going to be writing about. This to me seemed crucial, as I do not plan on becoming an acclaimed writer (that too in areas of which I have possibly minimal interest) and felt that if I am to be taking a writing class, it may as well be relevant to what my main passions and interests are. Being a Computer Science (Games) major and therefore part of the Viterbi School of Engineering, my advisor and various others had pointed me in the direction of the ‘Writing for Engineers’ section, but the idea of writing technical documents about more core and traditional forms of engineering seemed drab. 

So, here I am, ready and enthused to be writing about the art and science of game design instead for the next fifteen weeks. I am not worried about this topic’s ability to fuel me with ideas and interests for the duration of this class, as it has already been doing that for the last six years. What was once a fan oriented fixation has become an academic and professional focus. Though my academic discipline is more concerned with game development, and is far more technical in nature than the lofty abstractness of design, my passion has always been with the latter. As a result, I’d imagine that most of the essays and posts I would write in this class would not be about the technology that allows for digital games, though perhaps I might be tempted to write about the implications of what this developing and complex technology can do for the evolution of game design.

In case you are curious as to what game design entails, you can think of it as the craft of creating interactive experiences between users and systems in which there are goals. The ways in which this is does varies greatly among different platforms; board games ‘play’ very differently than physical games such as tag or capture the flag, or commercial digital games such as Super Mario Bros. I am mainly interested in digital games, but that is not specifying much. Digital games come in all shapes and sizes, depending on their genre, how experimental they wish to be, and the audience they are geared towards.

Topics which I have interest in potentially covering include education and game design, digital immersion, critical analysis of both modern and recent commercial and independent games, and much more. Game design is an extremely topical subject as its medium is constantly evolving. Furthermore, I am actively developing games and interactive experiences, so I look forward to writing about my own works and thoughts as well. 

One of the key responsibilities of a game designer is to produce a game design document for the project at hand that the whole team must follow. This document is often large and incredible detailed, and it is crucial that the vision of the game is delivered to the team. I hope that this course will help my technical writing ability, but also my thought process in creative expression so that I effectively communicate my visions as well.