My Games Design

I'm on a break for the holidays so thought it was about time I wrote something about what I've been playing over the last couple of months. I've left Spore off this list as I've only recently gotten in to playing it again and want to post about it in more depth later on. Since September, I've managed to complete two games. The first is episode two of the Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (PC version) developed by Hothead Games . You join Gabe and Tycho again on their quest to find the giant robot destroying New Arcadia (and which destroyed your house in the first episode). Basically, it was more of the same as the first episode but I'm not convinced it was quite as fun. At least in terms of the turn-based combat, I got more out of the mimed attacks and colourful clown blood spatter, than I did of beating up rich snobs and mental patients (cue ethical discussion here...). I did enjoy it though, because of the humour that co...

Ok, so this isn't the 'games I've been playing' roundup I've been meaning to do but I've got a rotten cold at the moment and so that's going to wait until my head is a little less foggy. But a friend of mine did send me a link today for a pretty cool game that I thought was worth sharing: Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo In addition to Echochrome and World of Goo there does seem to be a fair few simple yet elegant physics types games out there at the moment. They seem to engage people very much in a problem solving way i.e. on a tactical and spatial level and with less emphasis on have to hit the right buttons at precisely the right time. I guess, along with my masters project and the reading I've been doing, I've been thinking a lot about the different ways in which games engage and how these can be related to learning. The question "how can digital games support learning?" now seems ridiculously vague. It would be bette...

Lately, I've been doing a bit of thinking about Alternate Reality games . I was introduced to them last year but in the last few months I've heard about them at a conference (see previous entry for thoughts on ECGBL), watched two very different ones unfold, and been along to the Sandpit during the London Games festival . I've also been lucky enough to have had conversations about them with Justin Pickard and Juliette Culver , who have been involved with Superstruct and Operation Sleeper Cell respectively. Now Superstruct is similar to World Without Oil (and both are projects that Jane McGonigal has been helped create and run) in that it involves imagining yourself in an alternate reality crises - in this case it is 2019 and the combination of five different superthreats mean the end of the world as we know it by 2042. Players are encouraged to write their own stories about their experiences in this possible future, and to discuss possible superstruct solutions with each o...

I was in Barcelona last week for ECGBL. This was my first proper conference and though I wasn't presenting it was pretty cool to be able to get a feel for what other people are doing in the area. In general, I enjoyed the whole thing as I got to hear from different perspectives and meet some interesting people along the way. But it was almost as people were a little too nice - there was little picking apart of ideas or applications, and I didn't hear any particularly difficult questions at the talks I went to. I'm not an advocate of being difficult just for the sake of it, but in line with Ben Sawyer's keynote where he talked about the need for constructive criticism and how the discipline needs to move on from arguments about fun and learning, it was like people were a bit too eager to pat each other on the back. I think I was expecting a little more debate but perhaps I wouldn't feel the same if I had been one of the ones presenting. That doesn't mean there w...

I finally finished Portal . It's a first person action/puzzle game, where an AI called GLaDOS challenges you to get through each of the test chambers through the use of a portal gun (which allows you to create a connection between two different locations in 3D space). Oh, and you are promised cake when you complete all the trials. I borrowed it ages ago from the library, and meant to complete a lot sooner but kept getting annoyed with certain puzzles and taking weeks off before trying them again. Now I’m well aware that a lot of people out there thought Portal was a piece of cake (pardon the pun…) and it only took them a day or something to get through the game. If anything, that’s an important part of why I just didn't give up on it entirely after the first time I got stuck – I wasn’t going to let this “easy” game beat me. But you see the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t solve the puzzles, it was that I had trouble putting my solutions in practice. I’ve never really played first...

Having grown up in Cyprus I wasn't too surprised to hear that there are no actual laws in place that regulate the selling of video games. So I did think it is a good thing when I read in the Cyprus mail that the government is planning on introducing some legislation to address this issue. However, when I read the sorts of things Tasos Mitsopoulos and Athena Kyriakidou were quoted as saying about games I couldn't help get that familiar sinking feeling I get when most politicians talk about video games. Because what they are talking about is the need to ban games like GTA , which apparently teach children how to steal cars (like it teaches you to hot wire them or something). They also refer to the sorts of games that they seem to think have been "scientifically proven" to link to the teenage rampages in America, such as at Virginia Tech. However, as GamePolitics .com rightly points out, this is not really the best example to use since the shooter, Seung Hui Cho , ...

I was in London last week for NMK's Writing for Games Event and while the event was interesting in and of itself, it's also got me thinking about the relationship between narrative and game play. The panel was pretty cool, consisting of Katie Ellwood, (who worked on Getaway franchise), Steve Ince (who worked on the BAFTA nominated Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon ), Adrian Hon and Naomi Alderman (who were both involved in Perplex City , an ARG , with Adrian as designer and producer and Naomi as a writer) and it was fascinating to hear about their different experiences. It did seem like the event was aimed more at people who were looking to break into the games industry as writers, such as Justin who I sat next too and had quite an interesting chat with afterwards. While becoming a games writer is not something I've ever really considered, I do feel I came away with a better idea about the part writing plays in the game design process. There were a couple of things that s...