Steps for a basic combat experience –
Give players an immediate read of the space
How do you optimize across multiple platforms?
Optimizing for WinXP is bad because it’s worse than phones right now
More people at the roundtable compared to two years ago. The room was too full!
Education -> Need TA students to solve real-world problems
How do you institutionally encourage this behavior?
Tech Artists are Force Multipliers, Firefighters, and Preemptive Firefighters
They MUST work alongside artists, be embedded with them (works well at Volition)
TAs need people and managerial skills
How do you test tech artists right out of school?
Games are innovating faster because teams are smaller and more agile than film
We’re seeing a lot Cinderella success stories int he strategy gaming realm, lots of one-man projects rocking the show
What Needs to Change
Soren Johnsons on League of Legends: “The facebook game for people who like games”
Everyone learned humility in the face of Facebook games
Players are interested in interesting decisions and the consequences thereof
“Co-op CompStomp”
Key Issue -> Accessibility
Will AI get better?
iPad and iPhone aren’t stealing because they serve different purposes and different audiences
It’s really all about getting everything looking juuuuust right
Photoreal is just as much an art direction decision as any other style, and there’s a lot of room to play around in that
Photoreal requires a lot of creativity, it’s not easy, very difficult to achieve
“cinematic photoreal” -> beautiful and visually distinct images
-Every film has its own unique look, and you can pick out a shot from films even if you have no contextual information at all
Photoreal can be achieved through proper application and use of:
“No dicks, no douchebags, no drama” ~ Gearbox
Gearbox encourages culture of critique through anonymous peer reviews of both person and work
Encourage mindset of “How good is that other guy, and how do I figure out what he knows?”
Have “Training Days” -> Everyone teaches something
Show and Tell days -> Art Councils in different fields that discuss techniques to better each other.
Cooking Show-type tutorials
Focus on gameplay
Puzzle Design Principles in Limbo
Went to GDC this year, had a lot of fun. Met a lot of great people, expanded my knowledge base even more.
Advice
Conference Observations
Food and Drink
San Francisco
College
This was a game created as part of the Ringling Game Design Club’s game jams. It was based on a world we created in one of the club’s world jams. In a world where a large island is surrounded by a giant wall of falling water, and a steam geyser dominates the center of the only known mass of land. Steam is both a source of power, and danger, in this harsh terrain. Nomadic societies travel the land in search of steam beds to power their lives, and all vie to control the Mother Geyser.
To this end, a group consisting of myself, Eli Allen, Garrett Stephens, Clay, and Tony Sladky developed a game we simply call “Geyser”, that would be played in this world. And so I present –
For 2 to 4 Players
Supplies –
At the start of the game, place one of your tokens onto one starting square. Then, each player rolls 1 die. The person with the highest roll starts the game. Play proceeds to left of the starting player.
The goal of the game is to reach the Mother Geyser, and hold it through the end of a round.
A round consists of all players taking one turn.
In each player’s turn they will move one piece one square in any orthogonal direction. Diagonal moves are not allowed.
If a player lands on a geyser, they may place a new token on the board in any permissible square around that geyser. You may not place this new token on a square occupied by another player.
When a player claims a geyser, they must leave at least one piece on that geyser at all times.
Two tokens from the same player may occupy the same square at the same time.
You may “battle” with another player by moving your token into a square they occupy. In this event, each player rolls one 6-sided die and adds the number of geysers they control. Whoever has the highest number wins, and the loser removes that token from the board. The winning player now occupies the contested square.
In the event of a tie, the attacking player has the option to retreat to the square he previously occupied, and his turn is over. The attacking player also has the option to try the attack again until one side loses, or the attacking player chooses to retreat.
At the end of the first round, the player who started the game rolls two 6-sided die. Add the two numbers together, and this determines which “ring” of geysers fires off, destroying any tokens occupying that geyser. For example, if a player occupies a 6/8, and the roll is two 4s, he must remove the token he has placed on that geyser. This is known as the Geyser Firing Phase.
After the geysers have fired off, the player who went first passes the dice to his left and that person will roll for the next Geyser Firing Phase. After he has rolled, he will pass the dice to his left and so on until the game is over.
In order to move into the Mother Geyser, a player must control at least three normal geysers.
If a player has one token occupying the Mother Geyser after the Geyser Firing Phase, that player is declared the winner.
Comments are always appreciated.
This has been cross-posted to the Ringling Game Design Club blog.
Geyser – The Game by Matthew Oztalay, Tony Sladky, Eli Allen, Garrett Stephens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at oztalay.com.
Below are the (still in progress) rules for a game developed by Jonathan Yao, Ben Throop, Stan Chin, and I as part of the 10th Annual Game Design Workshop. In this exercise we were tasked with, in 45 minutes, creating a game that will trigger the emotions of Schadenfreude and ambivalence in the players.
The game started with the emotions, then we moved to the theme which gave an excellent context and narrative setting for our two emotions. Naturally, this theme was a courtroom. This led us down the trail to mechanics based off Blackjack, in which the goal of the player is to There are three roles for players:
1) Judge – The Dealer
The dealer deals one card face down (the Surprise Witness) and one card face up (Evidence) to each of the attorneys.
2) Attorneys – Players
The Attorneys are the two players to the right of the dealer
These players may take the following actions:
-“Call the next witness”, the Judge gives one card, face up, to that attorney.
-“Rest my case”, the attorney believes the total value of his evidence is higher than the other attorney and will no longer call witnesses.
-“Objection!”, after both attorneys rest their case, and the jury has bet (more on this later), each attorney may “object” to another player’s piece of evidence. This card is then removed from that players evidence string and is not counted in their final total.
3) Jury – Bettors
The jury consists of all players not designated as the Judge, or the Attorneys. These players may bet on each attorney after the judge has dealt them their initial evidence.
At the Start
All players are given an amount of poker chips determined by the player, but greater than 10 “units”
Each player draws one card, the player with the card of highest value is designated as “The Judge”
In the Courtroom
The Judge deals each attorney a Surprise Witness, and a piece of Evidence. The attorney to which a Surprise Witness is dealt may look at their surprise witness, but may not reveal it to other players.
Each member of the jury, in turn, will bet on which attorney they feel has the highest chance of winning
The Defense Attorney, the Attorney furthest from the Judge, is given the choice to “Call the next witness” or “Rest my case”
The Prosecuting Attorney, the Attorney closest to the Judge, is given the same choice
This continues until both attorneys have rested their cases
The Defense Attorney is now given the chance to “Object!” to one of the Prosecuting Attorney’s pieces of evidence
The Prosecuting Attorney is given the same chance
Once both attorneys have rested their cases, and filed objections, the Jury goes into “Deliberation” in which they may place additional bets on each of the attorneys.
Once the Jury has finished deliberating, the attorneys show their surprise witnesses, and the total value of their evidence is added
Whichever attorney has the greatest value of evidence that is not greater than 12 is declared the winner
(This is roughly were the game still needs some work. We still need to hash out how this phase of the game is resolved. I encourage the participants to comment and discuss.)
After that case is resolved, the Judge passes the deck of cards to the player on his left, and player begins again.
Below are the rules to Saratoga Sabotage, the Oregon Trail-themed modification of SiSSYFiGHT3000 developed by Rory Fitz-Gerald, Jon Manning, Leo Cho, Taylor Kalajan, Ryan Milligan, and I as part of the 10th Annual Game Design Workshop at GDC this year.
Players: 4 to 6
Players start with 5 white poker chips, and five blue poker chips
White poker chips denote progress toward the West Coast, or progress points.
Blue poker chips denote supplies/ammo
Goal – Be the first to reach 12 progress points
Each player has a deck with the following cards –
Target Cards
-Red
-Blue
-Green
-Purple
-White
-Black
-Self
Action Cards
All communication must be public.
All communication does not have to be comprehensible to all players, but must be in a mutually agreed-upon language.
At the start of a game players choose their color, and place that color card in front of them on the table.
1 Round = 2 Turns
No cards played in the 1st turn of a round can be played in the 2nd turn of a round.
Turn 1 –
Players choose their action, and the target of that action and lay those cards face down in front of them.
Once all players have chosen an action and a target, all players’ actions and targets are revealed simultaneously.
Players resolve the results of their actions.
Players do not pick up the cards in front of them at the end of this turn. The cards played cannot be played again in this round.
Turn 2-
Players choose another action, and another target.
Once all players have chosen an action and a target, all players’ actions and targets are revealed simultaneously.
Players resolve the results of their actions and targets.
Players pick up all the cards they have laid down in that round and begin a new round.
If at end of a round, a player has 12 progress points, he is declared the winner.
For the purposes of action-resolution, attacks are resolved before progress points are awarded.