Cyber - reflection

I'm glad to be done with it. My work on it's been an educational mixed-bag, and I've taken a lot from it, but I'm happy to see it behind me now.

On the Cyber project i worked on a wide variety of things. I've done only a little bit of modelling for it as that was handled primarily by the animation students. Mostly, I cleaned up scenes, installed colliders, and tested physics. That last part took the most time. Cyber kept falling through the ground, and when it finally seemed like we were progressing somewhere, the whole level gets corrupted. Fun times.

Still, as I said;I've taken a lot from it. I've learned what works for bringing things into Unity, how to manage the hierarchy of the engine, and I messed around with combining controls with various restraints when Cyber was in a first-person view.

In the second semester I was back to debugging on a physical level, trying to find work-arounds for stubborn controls. Since we were using a modified preset 'Island' model, we stuck Hax (Cyber's nemesis) on top of a heron with code to run away already on it. That worked okay. I think we eventually ended up using placement markers, but we all moved on to a different level of the game as the hunting one was causing to much grief for too little progress. I did a bit of modelling for the new level.

That was my experience working on Cyber. I would like to see it finished at some point because I feel we've let the police down with what's been done.

Disney Girl Game -Aladdin Themed

In a recent Rapid Prototype session, my group came up with a few ideas for games targeted towards preschoolers, and also towards preteen to early teen girls. Of the different ideas we came up with, the one I was most interested in was the preschooler game for computers about Abu the monkey catching things.

In the game you play as Abu throught he various scenarios from the Aladdin film. Abu moves across the bottom of the screen following the mouse cursor as things fall towards him from the top of the screen. Players are required to achieve a goal stated at the beginning of each level, be it catch so many objects, or try to get as many objects as possible within a time limit. Players are rewarded visually with the fruits of their efforts.

I wouldn't be a difficult game at all, either to play or produce. However, it still sounds like it would be a fun game that could challange early elementry age children for personal bests.

Millenials

Millenials, or Generation Y as they are sometime refered to, are people born between 1985 and 2001. They are a generation explosion brought on by the grown Generation X, the children of the Baby Boomers. This generation is identified primarily by their ease with technology, primarily with peer-networking.

Something Millenials have grown up with is the rapidly developing medium of video games. Video games are at a point now where they can be anything from entertainment, to broader thing like communication tools and businesses.

Millenials have grown up during an 'everyone wins' movement in sports, where you get a trophy just for participating. This is now a common feature with games. X-boxes have a'Gamer Score' awarded to players for completing specific tasks, and the Playstation 3 has 'Trophies' for the same purpose. These provide longterm proof of achievment for many gamers as these awards are on display.

A poll done in 2007 found that 90% of the young workforce listed 'fun' as one of the top five most important aspects of a workplace. Businesses are recognizing this, and many are adapting their workplace to better hold this new wave of workers, mostly in ways that cater to people with longterm goals, but with a desire for immediate reward. This structure is found in all games; A final goal with several smaller goals leading up to it.

Essentially, Millenials tend to be people with short term desire, but have an eye on some distant prize.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y
http://modite.com/blog/2007/08/07/how-video-games-can-show-us-how-to-engage-generation-y-or-anyone/

Prototype - Out Dig

Out Dig is about you and your rival archeologists searching for a single relic. Whoever finds it will achive fame and glory.

Game pieces: 48 tiles, 1 treasure tile, 1 starting tile, 1 event deck, 6 player tokens, 1 treasure token, 1 4-sided dice.

Setup: Place the staring tile near the edge of the playing area with it's path facing inwards to the playing area. Shuffle the remaining tiles and place them face down where all players can reach them.

Shuffle the Event Deck and place it face down next to the the Tile Deck. Each player draws 3 cards from the Event Deck.








Playing: At the start of a players, they draw a Tile from the top of the Tile Deck and place it next to another Tile already in play. The lines on the tiles must be touching. Tiles cannot overlap each other. Also, the player may draw Event Cards at the start of their turn until there are three Event Cards in their hand.

The player then rolls the dice and moves up to a number of spaces equal to the roll, then ends their turn. The next player to the right takes their turn.

Event Cards: Event Cards can be played by anyone at anytime, but a player can only play one card a round (1 round = everyone takes a turn from the time the card was played). The card's effect is resolved immediatly, and the card is then put into a discard pile. If a Player needs to draw an Event Card, but there is none left, shuffle the discard pile

Winning: The first player to land on the Treasure Tile recieves the Treasure Token. If that player returns to the Starting Tile while they possess the Treasure Token, they win.

Examples of Event Cards:

Landslide: Move a player token other than your own that just rolled to move to another tile. They do not get to move.

Block the Path: If a player attempts to move through a space your player token occupies, end that player's movement.

Brush Off the Dust: Look at the the top 2 tiles in the Tile Deck. Rearrange them in any order.

Pick and Shovel: Instead of rolling the dice, move your player token to one of the tiles in play farthest from the Starting Tile. You cannot move to the Treasure Tile.

Buried Alive: End the current players turn.

Unproffesional Conduct: Take the Treasure Token from a player who occupies the same tile as you. They cannot be in the middle of moving.

What is a game?

In 1994, in British role-playing magazine 'Interactive Fantasy', and article titled 'I Have No Words & I Must Design' was published. It asked what made a game a game, and pointed out how the idea can be misconstrued.

It starts with what a game is not; a puzzle, a toy, or a story. A puzzle is a set obsticle that, once overcome the first time, presents no challenge. A toy is an object, and can be used in games, but is not a game unto itself. A ball was used as an example; it can be used for soccer or bowling, but by itself is not a game. Finally, a game is not a story in that a game is interactive. It shouldn't play out with the same cresendos each time, nor should there be a set direction. These three 'nots' boil down to the first thing that a game needs; participation. Players need to interact and have control in a game. They need to have defined goals, not abstract ones like in Sim City where there is no goal but what you make. There needs to be opposition. People crave challenges, and while cooperative play is nice sometimes, there is no greater challenge than another human mind.

More elements of what a game is are resources, an attachment to the tokens, and information. Resources make people think strategicly as they do not want to be caught short handed, nor do they wish to lose. They will think, 'Do I use this now, or wait for a more opportune moment?'. As for the tokens, if players feel a bond with them, they will be more protective about losing them. This can make for dramatic moments where sacrificing a few can save most of your tokens, or you can risk big to keep everything. Finally, information about everything thats going on in the game must be streamlined and simplified, yet still get across everything that is important to the player. In an RTS you can't be wasting time scouring through dropdown menus looking for statistics on your tank units.

The main point that the article comes back to is that people need to be able to participate and make the game their own in order for something to be called a game. This isn't excluded to the tokens and dice, but interactions with the other players is just as vital. Without them, your just playing alone. Sure you can feel good about getting that hi-score, but who were you playing with? Who cheered you as you teamed up on the head player, or who set up that crucial decision that cost you those hit points? When a game has it's elements then fun can be had.

Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation is an issue that is addressed often in these days of being a 'Global Village'. Many people feel that they a being robbed of their cultural aspects only to have them be abused and commercialized. In most cases this is true it seems, but in other cases it can be an acceptance and welcome of differences.
In the video game industry, cultural appropriation runs a full gambit from artistic and respectful to rude and offensive. This is primarily to help players identify with what's going on usually through stereotypes or cliches. This includes Mario (Super Mario Brothers - Nintendo) speaking in a New York/Italian accent, or having the black character rap during the credits (Gears of War - Epic Games, Call of Duty 4 - Infinity Ward). Games fall back on stereotypes time and again because it is easy, but is it right.
The sad truth is, no matter what you do, someone is going to get offended. Be it someone calling racist (Resident Evil 5 - Capcom), or complaining about representing holy symbols in games (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Nintendo). Rarely are the arguments grounded, with ignorance of games and their plots/history still prevailent in news media. However, it goes to show that the best intentions and even non-intentions can go astray, often with a single opinion sparking the fire.
The are some games that take good approaches to introducing people the other cultures. Muramusa: the Demon Blade - Vanillaware is an action/rpg title for the Wii which explores classical Japanese mythology in a style meant to resemble traditional watercolours from ancient Japan. Another title is Assassin's Creed - Ubisoft. While it does take some liberties with the events of the Crusades, the different cultures are represented well with no side being clear good guys or bad guys, making the player question if they are doing the right thing along the way. On top of that, when the game is loading it states that the game was developed by 'a multicultural team of various religious backgrounds'. This was to show that research was taken seriously onto what aspects of the various cultures were depicted in the game.
I feel that cultural appropriation is alright so long as it is done with respect and consideration. If an ethical group does not agree with your depiction of them in a game, find out why to try to compromise. Unfortunatly, as strong as the push is for games to be 'art', they still stand as a business first, and with freedom of speech being what it is, studios can't really be stopped completely from doing what they want. Still, respect is a cornerstone to understanding, and should always be taken into consideration.

Sources:
wikipedia.org
gamesradar.com
IGN magazine
gametrailers.com

Quest for the Holy Grail

This is a quick board game based off of Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail. It required that there be branching paths and that the players have a taboo of some kind. To achieve these design objectives, I had the first section of the game to be linear, and then players had to choose a trial from the movie as their final path (the beast, the chasm, or the bridge). Each space on the board had a silly task for the player who landed on them to perform (singing or discribing the sound of a landing cow). Each player started the ame with 3 Chances. If they refused to perform a task, or landed on a Chance losing space, then they lost a chance. If a player said 'it', then they would lose their next turn for each time they said 'it'.

The rules for the game are as follows;

Ye are upon a quest for the Holy Grail. Thou shalt begin thine quest by placing thy playing piece upon the Castle space. Thy comrads and thyself shall determine turn order by rolling a die of 6 side, with the highest number rolled going first, and the others following in a clockwise fashion. Each player has 3 Chances. Ye shall not have 4 Chances, and 5 is right out. Ye shall lose a Chance by failing to perform a task, or by simply being terrible at rolling die of 6 sides. Once all ye Chances are lost, thou must return your piece to the start of the game, or to the last Cross you crossed. A word of caution; 'it' is a forbidden word, and will cost ye thy next turn to speak this word. By the way, who was reading these rules to everyone? Anyway, whosoever lands upon the Holy Grail wins. Now get to it. (Did ye fall for that?)

Below is an image of the board. Anything can be used for pieces.