The Assignment

This monday we had a lecture with Ernest Adams about Art and music, he also gave us un assignment in which we were to choose a genre. We could chose from survival horror, real-time-strategy and children's non-violent game. We also had to research an artist/photographer/filmmaker and a composer/musician and finally make a powerpoint presentation. The only criterias were that it had to be a minimum of ten slides and have pictures and music.

The fact that there were hardly any instructions made this assignment seem rather tricky at first. I did not really know what to do, but I started googling the genres and I found an artist quite quickly that I liked an thought would fit perfectly with the survival horror genre. So I found some pictures I liked that went with that theme and started googling for music.
That was the part I found the most difficult as it is something I have never done or ever thought about before. After some initial searching I started clicking my way through youtube while watching the pictures, trying to find what music made me feel most uncomfortable while watching them. Finally I chose to go with György Ligeti's "Volumina" as I felt that was the song that made the most impact in combination with Federico Bebber's dark pictures.

The assembly of the Power Point was rather straight forward and just kind of fell into place once I got started and I am pretty satisfied with the final result.

Our very first game

Last week we had a seminar during which we were asked to play a game called "Sissyfight 3000", basically it's a bullying game in which the players are to gang up against each other.
Earlier in the day we had a lecture about the MDA (Mechanichs, Dynamics, Aestethics) so when we had played for a while we were asked to change the dynamics and create our own version of the game. The only thing we had to keep was the "target->action" mechanics.

Our first version was a war game called "World war 3,5" and honestly, apart from names and settings the game was not that different from Sissyfight. I found it difficult trying to change the concept into something new. It is very easy to get stuck in a thought of how it should be, I believe it is easier to create something new rather than trying to change something into something else. It became clear when we presented our games to the rest of our class as many had continued on the bullying theme.

At the end of the seminar we got an assignment to start all over and make a completely new version, we spent two long afternoons discussing and play-testing and finally came up with a game we call "Snitch™", where four players are maffia and two players are snitches. The mafia want to find the snitches while the snitches want to kill all mafia and be the only one/ones left alive. We added a bunch of cards and I think we actually came up with a rather fun game that is based on Sissyfight but different from it.

I think our group worked really well together, we have a good team and I felt everyone contributed and participated while we are also having fun. I found during the entire game developing process I had this feeling that I want to participate and I want to make my mark on the game and I really liked that feeling.

First few weeks at GAME

I have now studied game design at Uppsala University for three weeks, last week and this week I have been feeling like we're really getting started. We've had our first assignment in communications class and I personally found it very difficult to find a subject and writing a bit more scientifically about something artistic. I decided to write my popular science article about Concept Art which turned out quite well and received good critique from my group. The critiquing of other people's articles is also something challenging as you really need to read it thoroughly and think about what they have done well and to help them improve.
I have heard people saying it is boring and unnecessary but I do not agree. I believe that this course could really be useful, if not for the rest of the time in school for the rest of my life. You can always learn something and when you meet someone you should try to find what you can learn from them.

Game analysis class also seems interesting so far. Our first assignment was to go home and play Pacman and then analyze it and break it down into objects, properties, behaviour and relationships. The game looked very simple at first but when I started analyzing I just found more and more. So we all went to school with these long lists and we discussed it in our groups and finally one of our mentors reduced it to half. Perhaps we were all trying to do the analysis really thoroughly so we just overcomplicated it.
I did find it interesting that our mentors seemed to disagree upon one thing we discussed, whether the ghosts are one object with different behaviours or different objects because they have different behaviours. We came to the conclusion that it was one object with different behaviours when one of our mentors came and asked about it and corrected us, saying that when it comes to game designing they are separate objects. When we went through it all in the end another mentor corrected us back, saying that when it comes to game designing they are only one. I think that is probably the gap between artists and coders that this course aims to bridge.

I seriously have to stop now because it is getting way to long but I do have a lot more that I have been thinking about, but that will have to wait for another time.