gewgaw

Super news from the world of Noby Noby Boy (have you read all the DIY stuff???) – they have reached Jupiter!!!

This means that Saturn is … just around the corner! When was the last time you stretched your Noby? Head over to the PS3 and check in – craziness awaits!

Gama posted an in-depth interview with Keita re: the Nottingham park project. It does a great job of capturing his current state of mind.. especially as it relates to his feelings about being a “game” designer.

I liked this part especially:

After the press conference, one of GameCity’s organizers drove Takahashi to the local art store where he filled his basket with crayons, stickers, pens, sheaths of paper and, of course, a coat hanger. Then they took a taxi to this room, and closed the door behind him.

It’s hard to shake the feeling its precisely this sort of largely directionless creativity, free from the constraints of financial targets, demographics and brand-building that has brought Takahashi to this unlikely nook on the other side of his world.

In answer to his deflected question about what I think makes a good playground, I suggest that I’ve always enjoyed a sense of progression, where one object leads to the next, giving the participant a sense of journey, like a playful assault course.

Takahashi doesn’t respond at first, mulling it over, perhaps masking a sneer. “If there’s a pattern embedded in the design of a park, the danger is always that all of the kids just end up doing the same stuff…” he murmurs.

It’s this sort of aimless approach to game design that frustrated some players and critics with regards to his most recent title, Nobi Nobi Boy, a game that’s difficult to articulate within the usual parameters of success and failure. And yet, this dislike of the order and rigid structure of mainstream games seems to imbue every aspect of Takahashi’s approach.

It’s hard to put a project like the park into words.

I spent most of Sunday with Keita at the park site & studio – and I still am not sure how to describe it. After exploring the grounds, reviewing his sketches, drawing, playing with clay and then discussing the whole thing over ramen… I felt like I had a strange, foggy tangle in my mind. So many things to consider! Days later, that sense of … complex hugeness, is still with me.

Over the last few years, what I’ve come to appreciate most about Keita is his enduring patience – and ability to calmly contemplate huge, tangly messes. What makes me anxious and compulsive… he can sit with, quietly. Stuff that’s chaotic and overwhelming washes over him – and is transformed into something better. In no small way, it is this patience that makes our friendship even possible.

Walking back from the studio, we talked about this: the quiet center of his style (slow burn… gradually coming to an idea) the loudness of mine (flashes & sparks… an explosion from compressed inputs). He likes to tease me about my brashness… and I, his silent brooding. But in the end – these are strengths, too.

And for the park… an open-ended, visionary task – a designer like Keita is the perfect fit. Because the inputs are overwhelming, chaotic, fuzzy, strange. And you just have to be one with the space and all of its possibilities – until the idea emerges from within.

I was genuinely touched to read this interview, which gets at the heart of Keita’s gifts – and challenges within the context of our industry and even, this project. It’s nice to see a piece describe his process (and its context) with such tenderness and respect.

Home and recovered (mostly) – to find more goodness from GameCity in my inbox! For starters, Tony has updated his blog and site to include the awesome results of the SpiteYourFace “BrickStock” animation workshop:

Also, Brandon posted a piece on the Elite paper-folding event, and BoingBoing ran a piece on the 15 pixel megamix (flOw? C’mon now, readers!)..,

And Rex posted a super cool pic from our panel – with some great additions!!

Sugoi!!!

Greetings from Nottingham – host of GameCity 09!

This year’s festival has been a fantastic blend of talents – wonderful animators, artists, game designers, hackers and academics from around the world. Even tho we are mid-festival, I wanted to take a break and report on its fantastic events!

This is in no small part due to the blend of talking and performance that permeates the festival. Today, for example, I attended a panel on creating media about/for games which featured a live performance of GameBoy synth, and showcased the festival’s “mega=mix” of pixel-art tribute animations:

These were created for the festival by the same amazing team behind the Oxfam “Face the Music” spot – which takes basic game concepts and blends them with a message about climate change to create something truly remarkable:

But that’s just the beginning! Other performances included live playthroughs of Crysis (!!!), karaoke, the passionate singing of game reviews, and the especially cool paper folding session (plus artful arrangement) that culminated in a session about the glory of Elite.

And – as part of my visit, I conducted a live performance of Flower, which was truly wonderful. Not only was the game projected on lovely gauze screens in a beautiful old building… but as I played, flower petals were dropped from above, floating down into the atrium.

My favorite part of the experience was definitely the sound – which filled the hall, reverberating and mixing with the voices of spectators. That was really spectacular. Post-performance, we had a few questions about our new game (sorry – it’s still under wraps!), requests for more Flower content (maybe, someday!) and many lovely compliments.

Many thanks everyone who worked so hard to create Flower (you guys just ROCK!), the team that helped set up the performance (it worked!!) – and of course, to all who attended (you were fantastic)! It was such a pleasure to play for everyone and I think it’s definitely something we should do more often, with all sorts of games.

Finally – three cheers to the organizers of GameCity! Congratulations on creating a wonderful mix of discussion, debate, performance and play!

This just in – there is a super comic from our friend Gabo over a Treee – all about what it’s like to play Flower! A super special gift, made for Jenova’s birthday!!!

So…. click the picture if you don’t mind a little spoiler….

*YAY GABOTRON*

Great post on Attract Mode about the impromptu party-game of Tuning which emerged during the post-IndieCade BBQ @ Casa Roja!

Awww – I miss you all so much! Here’s to great adventures and wonderful creations. See you @ GDC!!!

Warren’s new game is now officially announced, and on the cover of this month’s Game Informer. Fantastic, fantastic news!!

In addition to coverage of the game in the mag – GI has posted a piece on Warren’s relationship with Mickey (includes a great video interview) which is EPIC in and of itself. Watch and you’ll see that his dedication to creating a fantastic tribute to Mickey comes from a deep, deep love of the character and of animation, in general. Yes, really, seriously!

On a recent trip to the park (to see the re-vamped Fantasmic show), Warren shared his encyclopedic knowledge of the company, characters, films and rides. What’s more, his genuine enthusiasm came through in every interaction with guests, staff and the park itself. Browsing pins near the Haunted Mansion, stopping to admire the afternoon parade, cruising through It’s A Small World… nothing passed without insightful, passionate comment. I can not *wait* to play the finished game!!!

So excited to see this awesome effort finally getting out there in the press. Congrats to Disney and the whole Junction Point crew!!!

We did it! IndieCade 2009 was a resounding success, full of awesome games, laughter, clowns and balloon animals.

Ok, maybe not clowns and balloon animals – but… chalk drawing, full-contact stick figures, poetry, creative shouting (”F*** You, It’s Art!!”) and of course, miles and miles of Indie developer love. Beginning the the super-fun Micro-Talks session at our opening party, through the awards, conference and closing party – it was a blast.

And who do we thank? The amazing, talented and inspiring game creators who made our celebration possible. Without you it would just be beer and finger-darts.

Presentation coverage includes a write-up of the Fresh Perspectives for First and Third Person Shooters” session, the iPhone Art Showcase, as well as some great coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

And on top of all that? Noby Boy decided to stay with us in sunny California! Visitors to TGC will find him swimming around on my desk, amongst all the toys and to-do lists. So best!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out – and for all the fantastic support from our local friends and devs. You make it easy to love being Indie!!

I’ve posted my last two talks, with notes and a few fixups for broken or missing fonts/pix. These are both works-in-progress… UX is the more polished, I think… but time will tell. I learned a TON in the process of writing them, delivering them and discussing them with the UX community.

Both trips were wonderful, especially the part where I got to meet and exchange ideas with people who are not in my own industry. Special shout-out to everyone who wrote following both talks – nothing is better than hearing from people as the ideas evolve in their own heads – especially when they continue the dialog with refinements, suggestions and questions. If I haven’t written back it isn’t because I’m not going to – it’s cause I’m busy with upcoming IndieCade events – and just plain old work!

For those of you who don’t have time to download and page through all the slides – the gist is that being at TGC has exposed me to the idea of “juicy feedback” – a squishy term that feels fun to say and is even more fun when in the game. The first talk explores my search for a way to relate “juicyness” to the MDA framework, and the second blends this more with notions about how UX & Game Design are converging.

A huge bonus for set of trips was that I got to spend some quality time with the folks from Stamen and BERG (formerly known as Schulze & Webb). Ben, Mike, Webb and Jones each had very interesting and helpful things to say – and speakers/attendees from both events (including folks at Last FM, Sifteo, Mint.com, Adaptive Path and Nokia) gave me a lot to look forward to.

I’m really grateful to live just a short distance (in the design continuum) from such wonderful people. Thank you for being so “juicy”!

In prepping for my UX talk, I came across this great post on what it takes to be a great UX designer. Concidentally – this is *also* what it takes to be a great Game Designer.

I get asked about this topic often – especially in email, from aspiring designers & students.  So – here is a slightly streamlined version – with a few key edits to emphasize the connection:

#1: A Deep Understanding of People
If you don’t understand people, you won’t be a good game designer. It takes talent and empathy to understand how people enjoy playing – and to play with them! This isn’t something just anyone can do.

#2: Competence in the Basics of Procedural Design
Designing a process/system of rules is difficult! You need tools to help you define and structure your work. For me, this means breaking designs down into three elements: mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. For you – it could be just about anything! Whatever works: find it, and get comfortable with it. Procedural Design is an art – but it is also a science!

#3: An Awareness of and Interest in Technology
It isn’t essential that you code every day – but it is essential that you are fluent in the tools and technologies of your medium. Period.

#4: Verbal & Visual Communication Skills
Game Design is all about abstractions… until suddenly they are concrete and very expensive to fix. You must be able to clearly communicate your ideas and the research findings they’re based on before that happens.

You must be able to verbally describe everything from squishy player motivations to rigid, detailed sequences of events. But words can have different interpretations – so you should be able to supplement verbal communication with visuals. You don’t need to be an artist, but you do need to be able to sketch your ideas on a whiteboard and create clean, clear prototypes on paper.

#5: Moderate Familiarity with Business, Deep Familiarity with Your Business
You need to understand the basics of how the business world works in order to effectively elicit and understand business goals. On top of that, you need to be familiar with why your customers find your games valuable. To do that, you must deeply understand the commercial context in which they are acquired, shared, enjoyed and discussed.

#6: The Ability to Quickly Learn a Subject Matter Area
Game designers must understand and craft the player experience from multiple perspectives. Deep knowledge of relevant subject matter creates context for that understanding. Read widely, experience widely – and you’ll often have good backup material in a pinch!

#7: Mediation, Facilitation, & Translation Skills
While player goals can be uncovered through empathetic, open-minded research, business goals are often much harder. Different disciplines & departments often have different or even conflicting goals. Keeping these groups on the same page is critical. On top of that, then you have to make it work in whatever technological context is required. This job is not easy.

#8: Curiosity, Creativity & Vision
You need these 3 skills to innovate consciously and (more importantly) to encourage innovation in others. This means having an ability to envision the big picture and the drive to craft details – from system designs to tuning targets.

#9: Passion
Game Design is a worldview – something you just can’t turn off.

Passionate Game Designers constantly watch people & analyze their behaviors. They can’t help but redesign bad experiences in their heads after suffering through them – or sifting through good ones to find key learnings. Obsession with details, especially the “why” of things – this is what ties it all together.

If a passion for Game Design is all you have, that’s a good place to start. That passion will drive you to cultivate the rest and success will soon follow.

I ended up using this example as a key point in my talk – to underscore how UX designers and Game Designers are essentially the same thing. It created a great launch pad for the dialog I had in SF about why “juicy feedback” isn’t just a game thing – and why being a “gamer” is actually crucial to good UX research. So lucky to have found it!!

Huge kudos and thanks to the original author, Fred Beecher who took the time to write these down in the first place. You are a fantastic communicator!!

Silvio’s team has gone live with their latest project – now available for the iPhone!

Do you love vinyl toys? Do you love having fun? Then what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Kellee went to GDC Europe last week – where discussion of TGC’s Flower began with the David Cage’s keynote talk on meaning in games:

Cage said, baldly: “Most games have no meaning”, and games don’t generally have anything to say — “you just spend some time getting excited shooting and jumping”, most of the time.

The Quantic Dream head added that he believed that games’ narrative structure is broken. As opposed to simultaneous narration and action in movies and books, cut-scenes split up the action in games. So, Cage concluded: “No-one cares about the story because nobody is there for the story.”

He added that most game characters must be close to caricature — to look like what they are. They also tend to need a simple goal, and need to look good for a teenager. In contrast, many movie characters have a background, a motivation, have relationships, and are created to generate empathy.

In further controversy, Cage suggested that, most of the time, game art is mediocre compared to other art forms. But some games can compare because they have “developed the emotional side”, he said, citing Ico, Shadow Of The Colossus, Rez, Katamari Damacy, and Flower.

So, said Cage, we have some decisions to make. Shouldn’t we start thinking about social emotions, if we want to evolve? “Do we want to be toys, or art?”, he asked provocatively. “Maybe there are books that you’ve read that have changed who you are.” Shouldn’t games do similarly?

How about the sandbox versus the rollercoaster? Contrasting with CCP’s EVE Online talk earlier in the day, Cage feels that, since “nobody conceived this experience for you,” it may fall flat. Whereas, in the rollercoaster, you can’t go wherever you want, but “someone designed the experience for you to be optimal.”

These are two different approaches, and Cage believes that the rollercoaster is the one he tends towards. Why? Because people want to play for just 20 minutes at a time, not necessarily for many hours or to find there’s nobody in the sandbox to play with.

How about journey vs. achievement? Cage said he believes many adults care more about the journey, with emotional highs and lows carefully mapped out, and cited Flower as a great example of that.

Kellee continued this discussion in her own talk – a postmortem of the Flower development process that highlighted the team’s search for meaningful gameplay that provides players emotional shelter – instead of the typical frustration/reward cycles in many game designs:

Santiago said that what the team found out is that “sometimes, hard fun is the enemy”, and going towards known mechanics can actually be a handicap. She said that fun is just a small subset of possible mechanics, and that Flower was carefully tuned to give the player an engaging journey.

This in-game journey that players took in the downloadable PlayStation 3 game wasn’t necessarily a conventional one, but was carefully managed to heighten emotional intensity by the game’s end.

The conclusion was that extremely rapid iteration and playtesting — whether in Processing, Flash, XNA, or PS3 — was what really helped to hone PSN standout Flower.

Great to see that the team’s efforts at pushing through a variety of mechanics to find the ones that supported their aesthetic goal has paid off – as it did with other games Cage mentioned in his talk (all personal favorites, as regular readers know). Three cheers for iteration, subtractive design, and the focus on player experiences! Here’s to continued efforts and new adventures!

:)

Damion’s posted a good follow-up to the rants I posted the other day re: games as art. Thanks for the link, Soren!!

Update: Borut has also made some comments – kapow!

Jeff’s posted an article on the profit margins for indies across platforms.

Awesome Sauce!!

You can check it here

I might just marry the reverend.

:)

This response is also interesting… kind of like ‘Yeah, art games that are good are hard’ – which we all know is true. My take might be that ‘I look forward to seeing them evolve’ rather than ‘Most of the pitches out there suck’…. but at least the dialog is happening!!

Great to hear people discussing the value of games-as-art up on Destructoid! Go go go!

So Awesome!!

“So in conclusion THIS GAME MUST COME OUT”

(GI piece here) (Joystiq here) (Kotaku here) (Escapist here)(1Up here)

Last night we had an IndieCade meeting at the house and as part of the work, were discussing our core values as an event. In touching on our “is” and “isn’t” lists I randomly suggested that we are “not gameists” – in that we don’t define what’s viable as a festival participant by a particular, pre-concieved notion of game. I said it as a joke, but as we talked it through, it gathered a bit more steam.

I will be pondering this a bit as we head off for the TGC company retreat today. Gameism. What defines gameism? Are you a gameist? Discuss!

Kellee is giving a short talk tonight at Ignite, LA - on the subject of game design. Specifically – why everyone should learn how to do game design – because it motivates people by giving them pleasing things to learn and do!!

So, today after biking home I was thinking about game design (in anticipation of her talk) and realized that I had to water the plants out front – as it’s been hot as hell, and they are wilting.

Prior waterings have been filled with frustration – mostly due to our crappy old hose and spray attachments, which required all sorts of work to untangle and use. This weekend, however, I decided to splurge and replace both the hose and spray attachments, and bought this:

In short: IT FUCKING ROCKS!!!

So – if you do any gardening you know that watering is necessary, at times – but boring as hell. Unless you have someone to spray – like young children (ahh, remember those family carwashes??) or helpless pets (sorry Mika!) it’s mostly about trying to control the amount of water that’s blasting out of the nozzle w/o cramping your hand.

Enter the Dramm Revolver – which comes with 9 settings (just like the fancy shower heads we use on ourselves!!) including: Fan, Cone, Center, Jet, Mist, Soaker, Flat, Angle, and Shower. Yeah yeah, I can hear you out there – sighing out loud and thinking this is a useless set of choices but my friend, YOU ARE WRONG!

Now that I can choose between a light mist, a full soak with hardly any outward force (great for watering hanging baskets!), angled streams (save your wrist – aim straight but spray at 60 degrees), and so on – each element on the front porch was a new challenge – a challenge I COULD WATER WITH GLEE!

Thus begins my new sometimes-post series: I LOVE YOU, GAME DESIGNER! The designers of the Dramm Revolver have transformed a tedious chore into a fun game that I can play against myself (use the most obtuse setting for the most boring chore, for example) – and now – other people in my household. That’s right, Juli – you’re going to have to out-water me next weekend.

:)

Three cheers for good design! It makes everyday chores fun, makes you feel smart – and motivates you to try to improve. WOOTS!

Petri has posted a time-lapse video of his desktop, taken over the course of his last prototype.

Bonus: you can download the game now and play it for yourself!

Mega Bonus: you can play the rest of the “unexperimental shooter” games too! 2D strikes again!