Taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming, I was hired on (or will be soon I guess) through the Utah Game Forge to create a web-based game for the National Energy Foundation about the safety of natural gas. Right now it looks like I'll be starting sometime next month, with a pretty hard release date of July 18th. I'll be working with Amy, which is great, and this will count as my required internship for the program, as well as paying me a little bit of money. I'll be working with an artist and an engineer, and maybe a designer, although I would like to do the design myself really.
That's really it for now, more information as it becomes available!
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
A Wild Industry Panel Appears
Tomorrow is the industry panel where we pitch our games and the powers that be (read: Bob, Roger, Mark, and Craig) decide which games go on to be the Cohort 3 thesis games. As far as we know we could have all four games get past this first gate, or as little as two.
The pitches from last week went well, kinda. The first pitch was really bland. Brianne and I both presented, and the pitch, to put it in the words of Roger, "felt like homework". And it did, that was completely fair. This was partially by design. Both Brianne and I like to make the first pitch rather rough and get a lot of feedback. I've felt in the past that making the initial pitch too polished tends to make the feedback less influential. However, the pitch was...pretty rough, and we needed a lot of work.
First issue was that our presentation didn't make sense with two people. We didn't really have any banter, it was mostly just trading slides. And it really clashed with the idea that our game was this solitary experience where you feel the music. So we ditched that idea and decided that I would present by myself. Next was the just the look and feel of the presentation. We needed to spice it up and really play to our strengths, rearranging some things and showing off the game earlier. So, I got to work on the awesome color scheme for our presentation, changing up the logo just a tad, coloring the vinyl record in the background, messed with the equalizer art, and took a couple videos. After we put some time in, the presentation ended up looking really great. Below is the final presentation, ready to be presented tomorrow (which was very similar to the presentation on Thursday, minus a couple placeholder pieces and whatnot):
And for very busy people, here are the two gameplay videos in the presentation, for your viewing pleasure:
So our pitch on Thursday went much better. In my own personal estimation, we went from maybe the worst presentation to probably the best presentation (although they were all really great). We focused our message and laid out our game with surgical precision. After Thursday, we're feeling really good about where we stand in the thesis game selection process. Tune back next week and find out how it went!
The pitches from last week went well, kinda. The first pitch was really bland. Brianne and I both presented, and the pitch, to put it in the words of Roger, "felt like homework". And it did, that was completely fair. This was partially by design. Both Brianne and I like to make the first pitch rather rough and get a lot of feedback. I've felt in the past that making the initial pitch too polished tends to make the feedback less influential. However, the pitch was...pretty rough, and we needed a lot of work.
First issue was that our presentation didn't make sense with two people. We didn't really have any banter, it was mostly just trading slides. And it really clashed with the idea that our game was this solitary experience where you feel the music. So we ditched that idea and decided that I would present by myself. Next was the just the look and feel of the presentation. We needed to spice it up and really play to our strengths, rearranging some things and showing off the game earlier. So, I got to work on the awesome color scheme for our presentation, changing up the logo just a tad, coloring the vinyl record in the background, messed with the equalizer art, and took a couple videos. After we put some time in, the presentation ended up looking really great. Below is the final presentation, ready to be presented tomorrow (which was very similar to the presentation on Thursday, minus a couple placeholder pieces and whatnot):
 |
| Check out the presentation here. |
So our pitch on Thursday went much better. In my own personal estimation, we went from maybe the worst presentation to probably the best presentation (although they were all really great). We focused our message and laid out our game with surgical precision. After Thursday, we're feeling really good about where we stand in the thesis game selection process. Tune back next week and find out how it went!
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Pitch Pitch Pitch!
Since the last post, we've been working hard getting everything in the game that we wanted to present for the upcoming industry panel. Right now we're still figuring out a couple things, such as the pitch adjustment and the laser obstacle, but we're getting there.
I've been busy working on our pitch with my fellow co-producer, Brianne. We were treated with a little bit of a surprise this week when we learned we would be practicing our pitch twice next week (with an audience). The first will be this Tuesday with Bob, Roger, Mark, and Craig. On Thursday we'll be pitching to the Cohort 2 students. This should allow us a decent amount of time to get feedback, process it, and make the necessary changes to put our best foot forward for the third pitch, to the industry panel on Monday night.
Brianne started the pitch, using Prezi again (which, on an unrelated note, I have really grown to love their presentation software), and I've been working on getting the talking points down and figuring out how to best explain our game. Brianne and I are happy with our current thesis now, after hours of debate and refinement:
How does Flow enhance the synesthetic experience of music?
and our slogan, which captures the essence of what we're going for (and a little art style thrown in:
Overall, this week has been a little quiet. We've been busy, but mostly everything is going according to plan. The calm before the storm so to speak. Next week: the storm!
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Watcha Been Playin'
That title's like every podcast's intro to what they've been playing, so I'm going to steal it for cultural and ironic significance. Also, be forewarned that these types of posts will not be quite as serious as my development posts, but I think it's good to have some fun now and then.
As a busy grad student I don't have a ton of time to play games, but I do try as much as possible to play at least a few hours a week. And if I wasn't trying to catch up on six-year-old Sci-Fi television in the form of Battlestar Galactica (which is so awesome, until like the fourth season) I might have more time for games. But like in my previous post, there needs to be a time to experience all media, and not just video games. Such a heavy cross to bear, I know.
But when I have been playing, I've been playing all the hits from 2009, namely Assassin's Creed II. That's right, I have my fingers directly on the pulse of today's youth. I played through the first one last year, so at this rate I'll never catch up if they keep releasing one every year. At least they changed to a different protagonist with AC3, or they were going to have to start aging Ezio in real-time.
There's a lot of buzz around this franchise, and while the first one most-definitely had its faults, it showed a ton of potential. ACII has so far taken that potential and ran with it, for a little bit at least. The locomotion is still great. I did feel like most of the game I was just pressing forward and holding two buttons to make Ezio climb stuff or jump on stuff, but it still felt good. However, something changed once I learned how to jump up and grab on to ledges (from the thieves guild in Venice). All of the sudden I had to recognize when I could make a jump and grab a ledge, and there was a certain satisfaction with the timing of the button presses. It felt like I was really climbing, and not just directing Ezio to go climb a building. There's a certain tactile connection. I wish there was more of that throughout the entire game.
The side missions still kind of blow, yet my incessant need to complete all of the content in a game is driving me to find every treasure and carry every letter.
As a busy grad student I don't have a ton of time to play games, but I do try as much as possible to play at least a few hours a week. And if I wasn't trying to catch up on six-year-old Sci-Fi television in the form of Battlestar Galactica (which is so awesome, until like the fourth season) I might have more time for games. But like in my previous post, there needs to be a time to experience all media, and not just video games. Such a heavy cross to bear, I know.
When I don't watch the Admiral is disappointed.
But when I have been playing, I've been playing all the hits from 2009, namely Assassin's Creed II. That's right, I have my fingers directly on the pulse of today's youth. I played through the first one last year, so at this rate I'll never catch up if they keep releasing one every year. At least they changed to a different protagonist with AC3, or they were going to have to start aging Ezio in real-time.
Assassin's Creed 3? Nah man, that's too new. I'm into that retro stuff.
There's a lot of buzz around this franchise, and while the first one most-definitely had its faults, it showed a ton of potential. ACII has so far taken that potential and ran with it, for a little bit at least. The locomotion is still great. I did feel like most of the game I was just pressing forward and holding two buttons to make Ezio climb stuff or jump on stuff, but it still felt good. However, something changed once I learned how to jump up and grab on to ledges (from the thieves guild in Venice). All of the sudden I had to recognize when I could make a jump and grab a ledge, and there was a certain satisfaction with the timing of the button presses. It felt like I was really climbing, and not just directing Ezio to go climb a building. There's a certain tactile connection. I wish there was more of that throughout the entire game.
The side missions still kind of blow, yet my incessant need to complete all of the content in a game is driving me to find every treasure and carry every letter.
"Hello. I'm an assassin out for revenge against the people who murdered my family.
Oh, I have some mail for you!"
There is tons of promise still, but I feel like they blew it here a bit. I don't want to carry letters, or race the locals. I'm an assassin. I should be assassinating people. Because that's what I do. However, I do love the "build your own villa" system, where I make the town better and reap some profits. The system is a little underdeveloped though. I'm already super rich, and I can't really spend money on anything else. So now I just keep collecting money and buying all the courtesans I want...or something.
One of my favorite parts of the first AC was the actual assassinations. It was so cool to collect evidence, actually read it, and determine a way into a compound or around a gathering of guards to take down my target. It wasn't perfect, but it was by far the best part of that game. That made me feel like an assassin. I'm actually quite disappointed that the assassinations in ACII or mostly walking up to a guy, pressing a button, and then running away or fighting (neither of which really matters). On their way to making the game more streamlined and interesting, I think they lost something that made the first game special. I also have a feeling that it's never coming back, and there's no way I'm playing the first AC again. So, maybe there's future project idea hanging around that mechanic.
Well that's all for now. Next week I should be done with ACII, and I might move on to ACII: BroHood. Or I might get in some Borderlands 2. See you next time.
One of my favorite parts of the first AC was the actual assassinations. It was so cool to collect evidence, actually read it, and determine a way into a compound or around a gathering of guards to take down my target. It wasn't perfect, but it was by far the best part of that game. That made me feel like an assassin. I'm actually quite disappointed that the assassinations in ACII or mostly walking up to a guy, pressing a button, and then running away or fighting (neither of which really matters). On their way to making the game more streamlined and interesting, I think they lost something that made the first game special. I also have a feeling that it's never coming back, and there's no way I'm playing the first AC again. So, maybe there's future project idea hanging around that mechanic.
Well that's all for now. Next week I should be done with ACII, and I might move on to ACII: BroHood. Or I might get in some Borderlands 2. See you next time.
Busy Busy Busy
I realized today that it had been quite some time since I last updated my blog, and I am way overdue. I'm going to do my best to update this once a week. My team's thesis game has been eating up a lot of time, but we're making terrific progress.
We started with the original idea, which I outlined some in my last post, and through a ton of deconstructing, brainstorming, more deconstruction, and more brainstorming we've come up with a pretty great concept, one that I think is getting more and more refined. When Jason came up to me with the synesthesia idea and a grinding mechanic, I latched on to something that I didn't quite realize: I wanted the player to experience music in a way that clashes with how society now treats it. Today, music is all about quick access, giant libraries, shuffled and curated playlists, portability, headphones, .mp3's, .acc's, iPods, iPhones, and Spotify. There was a time, even when I was younger, when we didn't take music for granted. The accessibility of music now is terrific, and I wouldn't want to lose it. But I fear that we've lost the idea of experience, and not just in music. We listen to podcasts and music as we stream movies and television and write on our blogs and update out Tumblrs and play FarmVille and chat with our friends while taking pictures of our food to upload to Instagram while we live tweet our dinner date. We don't take time to have an experience with anything. At some point I realized that this game was in direct response to this idea of the always connected brave new world we live in. There's some quality to just experiencing a thing, taking it in completely and fully. I want our game to be about inhabiting a space where music is listened to and not just heard, so completely that the player sees the music, feels it. The real question is how do we use the immersive nature of games to submerge the player in the synesthestic experience of music while not distracting her with too great a challenge or bore her with too easy a task? We need to nail the flow of the game just right to bring the player into the experience.
So enough pontificating. What are we doing to see this goal realized? We've broken down the core mechanic to surfing or snowboarding (as opposed to grinding) in a half-pipe, where the player needs to move left and right to avoid static electricity obstacles, which will send the player in a direction or slow her down randomly. Its mostly the same idea but with a few twists. In the interest of not duplicating work, and promoting our awesome team, I've linked the wiki I created (with the input of the team) here. And here's a screenshot for the lazy (although we have a great deal of information there so I do recommend reading it):
We started with the original idea, which I outlined some in my last post, and through a ton of deconstructing, brainstorming, more deconstruction, and more brainstorming we've come up with a pretty great concept, one that I think is getting more and more refined. When Jason came up to me with the synesthesia idea and a grinding mechanic, I latched on to something that I didn't quite realize: I wanted the player to experience music in a way that clashes with how society now treats it. Today, music is all about quick access, giant libraries, shuffled and curated playlists, portability, headphones, .mp3's, .acc's, iPods, iPhones, and Spotify. There was a time, even when I was younger, when we didn't take music for granted. The accessibility of music now is terrific, and I wouldn't want to lose it. But I fear that we've lost the idea of experience, and not just in music. We listen to podcasts and music as we stream movies and television and write on our blogs and update out Tumblrs and play FarmVille and chat with our friends while taking pictures of our food to upload to Instagram while we live tweet our dinner date. We don't take time to have an experience with anything. At some point I realized that this game was in direct response to this idea of the always connected brave new world we live in. There's some quality to just experiencing a thing, taking it in completely and fully. I want our game to be about inhabiting a space where music is listened to and not just heard, so completely that the player sees the music, feels it. The real question is how do we use the immersive nature of games to submerge the player in the synesthestic experience of music while not distracting her with too great a challenge or bore her with too easy a task? We need to nail the flow of the game just right to bring the player into the experience.
So enough pontificating. What are we doing to see this goal realized? We've broken down the core mechanic to surfing or snowboarding (as opposed to grinding) in a half-pipe, where the player needs to move left and right to avoid static electricity obstacles, which will send the player in a direction or slow her down randomly. Its mostly the same idea but with a few twists. In the interest of not duplicating work, and promoting our awesome team, I've linked the wiki I created (with the input of the team) here. And here's a screenshot for the lazy (although we have a great deal of information there so I do recommend reading it):
Credit for our awesome logo goes to Brianne
Right now we have the Wiki, but we also have a Google Group for nice and easy email communication to everyone on the team (which is linked on our Wiki) and a team blog with thoughts from the team (which is also linked on our Wiki). Brianne and I have just tried to make communication very easy for everyone, with plenty of ways to express your thoughts or share interesting finds. We've also tied in our scrum process to the wiki, with a small task list to keep things going forward.
As a small team we've been very agile, if not Agile with a capital A, meaning that we've taken the spirit of the Agile development process but maybe the process. During our prototypes last semester, I tried to get people to use my scrum documents with very little luck. Given that our team is literally the same as a prototype team would have been last semester but with an extra producer, we have taken a more organic approach to team tasks. We also know our team and know what they're capable of. None of them need much oversight and everyone is really into this idea. So for the moment, we've given very large tasks to our engineers and ourselves, with stand-up meetings to discuss what's going on and what we need to do. Its worked out great so far, but the minute we pass this first gate, especially if we pick up more people, we're going to implement a more rigid scrum process and schedule to ensure we hit a nice feature-lock come alpha.
And to prove it, here's a short video of our first real playable build, with the player movement in (including speeding up and slowing down) and obstacles that move the player in a random direction. Also, that sweet half-pipe was created and textured by me, so I guess that Game Arts class is helping me already.
So check out the Wiki. and the team blog. My next post will have a little more levity, where I talk about a game I've been playing recently, among other things.
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