Presentation sanlab workshops
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This document summarizes a game design workshop held in Gebze, Turkey in 2011. It introduces two game designers, Artur and Aleksander Sierżęga, and provides details about their game design experience and favorite games. It also discusses topics like prototyping games, what makes mobile games popular, different types of gamers, and developing game mechanics and aesthetics.
Presentation sanlab workshops
- 1. Game Design Workshops Gebze, 2011
- 2. ARTUR • I’m Artur, known also as Sam-ur (yeap, read too much Tolkien in youth). I’m also a game designer with ~5 years of experience. My two great passions are: games and running.
- 3. • I worked on some really great projects. The most known are: – The Witcher (cancelled XBOX port): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShavN9hAVe8&feature =player_detailpage • The Witcher 2: – The Witcher (cancelled XBOX port): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShavN9hAVe8&feature =player_detailpage • Anomaly: Warzone Earth (iPhone version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1kcruB1XD0&feat ure=player_detailpage
- 4. What are my favourite games? • I don’t really have one… But there are some games that walk after me since the time I played them: • The Sting: Old game where I’m a thief planning burglaries. This planning part is really great and interesting game mechanic. This also gives you total control over the time. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryivvJSyEJ 0&feature=player_detailpage
- 5. • Primordial Soup: Board game in wich you play an amoeba trying to evolve as the best specie. It has really interestig mechanic simulating eveolution and you have many, many combination of genes, so almost every game you can create something different. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRGbY2S M7do&feature=player_detailpage
- 6. • Cannon Fodder: A really old game that I remember playing as a kid. That was a blast to play. You’re controlling couple of army guys by dragging your mouse around the screen and you had to destroy enemy soldiers, trying not to die. A truely legendary game. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ob73lgv E0M&feature=player_detailpage
- 7. Aleksander Sierżęga • I design games 9 years. I've created many simulation, business, educational, video and board games. I'm a sociologist. Graduate Institute of Applied Social Sciences University (specialization "Negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution".)
- 8. What I do • I'm: owner of Simulation Games Manufacture coowner of Crazy Rabbit Lab and coowner of Klasosfera Limited president of the executive board of Polish Educational Portal „Interklasa” Foundation
- 9. My projects I designed (not alone :) all games for the „School of Negotiations” - one of the biggest negotiations training school for bussines executives. „Power manager” - board game about Renewables sources of energy for childrens „Proteus” - tactical training game for crysis management teams on local level „Crazy Rabbit Contest” for Iphone (memory/logic game) Keri Tap Christmas” for Iphone (logic game)
- 10. Favourite games Pac Man – yes i know :) America's Army Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Civilization IV Rick Dangerous (anybody remember that one?) Heroes of Might & Magic III
- 11. What is a game? • A game has “ends and means”: an objective, an outcome, and a set of rules to get there. (David Parlett) • A game has six properties: it is “free” (playing is optional and not obligatory), “separate” (fixed in space and time, in advance), has an uncertain outcome, is “unproductive” (in the sense of creating neither goods nor wealth — note that wagering transfers wealth between players but does not create it), is governed by rules, and is “make believe” (accompanied by an awareness that the game is not Real Life, but is some kind of shared separate “reality”). (Roger Callois)
- 12. • Games have four properties. They are a “closed, formal system” (this is a fancy way of saying that they have rules; “formal” in this case means that it can be defined, not that it involves wearing a suit and tie); they involve interaction; they involve conflict; and they offer safety… at least compared to what they represent (for example, American Football is certainly not what one would call perfectly safe — injuries are common — but as a game it is an abstract representation of warfare, and it is certainly more safe than being a soldier in the middle of combat). (Chris Crawford) • Games are a “form of art in which the participants, termed Players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” (Greg Costikyan)
- 13. • Games are a “system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman). • "A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Clark C. Abt) • Game is a set of rules and/or conditions, established by a community, which serve as a bounded space for play. (Corvus Elrod)
- 14. What game designer does?
- 15. Top iPhone games
- 16. Mobile gaming? Let's see! • http://antyweb.pl/wpcontent/uploads/2011/07/mobilnarozrywka.j pg
- 17. What makes those games so great? • If I would know the answer I would be a rich man ;) • But many of them are simple. When games are simple many call them casual games, so games for casual players. • But iPhone game market is developing and I can see two player groups in here: casual and hardcore players (these are not typical PC hardcore gamers, but they also love challenges, even if not so big as PC’s HG).
- 18. Casual Gamers • Casual gamers are for sure the biggest group. They like simply controlled games (i.e. in game you have to just tap). Those games should be shiny and graphicaly pleasing. They should future some cute character. Story isn’t needed. They should consist of micro-challanges, that is if level would be too long the game would become boring to casual gamers. They like challanges that they can beat in max two, maybe three tries. • Those games should be simple to uderstand, that is the best if just y looking at a screenshot you will know how it plays. • They play couple of hours a day, mostly during the way to work, waiting in restaurant, etc. • Cut the rope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xPUdFaraoQ&feature=player_detail page) and Fruit Ninja (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hUTC1Edyo&feature=player_detail page) games are great examples of this.
- 19. Hardcore Gamers • They don’t care so much about graphics, but they love innovative gameplays or/and some big involving games; • Those gamers love ports of PC/Console games; • If they will meet big challenge they will get mad, but in the end they will beat it; • They play many hours a day, mostly at home playing in time spans of hours; • But most times on iPhone there is rather a mix of hardcore gamer and casual gamer.
- 21. Prototyping games • Your every game concept should be made into playable prototype in couple of minutes; • Just use a piece of paper, some counters, dice and try to connect it together with rules that will make your game concept alive; • It has to be playable, but not in a perfect sense, you will worry about: balance, graphics, number of content later on;
- 22. • Making physical prototypes is fun and you will just mechanic of the game (no graphics, no sound, no hard things to implement); • Also „if you can play it, you can make it”; • By constantly prototyping, using iterating process you develop your game faster and you can really cheap change something or even the whole game concept; • Programmers will know much better how this game should looks like when they will actually play it, even if it would be only rough prototype – it’s better then Game Design Doc.
- 23. • It’s good to keep this prototype simple, that is firstly to implement just basic mechanics, core gameplay and then to add just one mechanics, playtest, see if it fits and then add next game mechanic; • This way it would be simpler to solve problems with game systems, game balance, because you will know exactly how every one mechanic works in your game (what’s it’s purpose). • OK. Let’s make some prototypes now!
- 24. Developing Game Feel • We know already how the gameplay plays, that is also what’s the basic feel of the game; • Now we have to dress this game in some ‘fency clothes’, that is we will work on: graphics, music, levels, interface, story, characters, etc. • In this this stage graphic artists will create some conepts, sketches set in the game world and game designers will write some descriptions, stories and they will think on levels for this game (because levels also tell the story by themselves, if not the most important one).