Talking About These: Video Games and Moral Choices

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on the industry and design.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"Episode Eight in my series of video "lectures," co-written with game designer James Portnow. It's time for another Game Design Corner episode, where we look specifically at elements of game design."

Via Talking About These

Please Finish Your Game

Chris [Hecker] focuses on solving hard problems at the intersection of gameplay, aesthetics, and technology. He is an outspoken advocate for pushing the current boundaries of design and interactivity, in the hope that games will eventually achieve their full potential as a medium. (--chrishecker.com)

"My rant at the 2010 Game Developers Conference was entitled Please Finish Your Game. A gentleman in the audience was nice enough to video it for me: [...]
My rant is about how I'm worried about the fixation on development time these days, both in the indie community, and in corporate games."

Via Chris Hecker's Website

Jesse Schell: "Design Outside the Box"

Jesse Schell currently holds the title of Professor of Entertainment Technology (specializing in Game Design) at Carnegie Mellon University. Before that, he was Creative Director at the Walt Disney Imagineering VR Studio, where he worked for seven years as designer, programmer, and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest (Disney's chain of VR entertainment centers). He has been lead designer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Buccaneer's Gold, a virtual reality attraction at the DisneyQuest interactive theme park in Orlando, Florida, which won a Thea from the Themed Entertainment Association. (--MobyGames)

'Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular "Facebook Games" era.'

For the record, I am convinced that he is *not* really excited about it (as the general buzz over the net seemed to understand), but quite the opposite, he is throwing a fist of alert at the chin of the current generation of game designers and developers.

Via G4.

Peter Molyneux on God-Games [extract]

Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987. Molyneux provided the original concept for Populous, the first god game for the personal computer. Released in 1989, Populous was a major success for Bullfrog and went on to sell over 4 million copies.

Electronic Arts, Bullfrog's publisher, acquired the studio in January 1995. Molyneux had become an Electronic Arts vice-president and consultant in 1994, after EA purchased a significant share of Bullfrog. Molyneux's last project at Bullfrog was Dungeon Keeper, which was released in July 1997 to high critical praise.

Molyneux left Bullfrog in August 1997 to found Lionhead Studios. (--Wikipedia)

"Peter Molyneux is one of the best-known names in the international world of computer games. In this lecture on God-games he stressed the importance of belief and peoples need to believe. As designers, particularly with regards to visualisation, the more real a representation does not necessarily mean it is more believable. This is otherwise known as the 'canny valley'. Whats more important then is 'fanning the fires of belief' and creating an unforgettable experience."

The audio is awful and the cut is really short, but he manages to say a couple of interesting things.


And here is another cut of the same lecture, a bit overlapped with the previous, but quickly advances to new parts.



Via Design London

Talking About These: Video Games and Choice

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on the industry and design.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"This is the fifth entry in my series of video "lectures," made in association with Gamasutra and James Portnow, game designer and founder of Divide By Zero Games."

Via Talking About These

Game OverThinker: Ep. 32 "I Heart Bayonetta"

Little does the world realize that The Game OverThinker is actually a mild-mannered film and video game geek named Bob, who creates longform rants on the minutia of game culture when he ought to be working and makes videos out of them in order to ignore his crippling writer's block.

In this video, he speaks of a character about which tons of words have been said, but nothing beyond the wall of triviality of the mass media, and much less about the underlying design of the character.

Via The Game OverThinker

Louis Castle on Rapid Prototyping

In 1985, Louis Castle and Brett Sperry set to work in a garage in Las Vegas. From those humble beginnings came Westwood Studios, one of the most successful entertainment software companies in the history of the industry. (-- MobyGames)

"The Global Game Jam present's Louis Castle on Rapid Prototyping to help you get ready for GGJ2010."

Via GarageGames

Game OverThinker: A Tale of Two Games

Little does the world realize that The Game OverThinker is actually a mild-mannered film and video game geek named Bob, who creates longform rants on the minutia of game culture when he ought to be working and makes videos out of them in order to ignore his crippling writer's block.

'"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" and "New Super Mario Bros. Wii." The two biggest games of the Holiday 2009 Gaming Season. Side-by-side, point-by-point... and they might have more in common than you think!'

Via The Game OverThinker

Knytt Stories Design Tour

Another Design Tour, made by the Wolfire Team. This time on Knytt Stories, by Nifflas Games.

"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."

Via Wolfire blog

David Perry on videogames

David Perry (born 1967) is an Irish video game developer who has created dozens of computer games, the best known of which include Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah, Wild 9 and Enter the Matrix. He also founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Shiny created games for many internationally known brands and companies, including Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures, and Warner Bros. In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services to computer gaming. (-- Wikipedia)

"Game designer David Perry says tomorrow's videogames will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences -- more involving and meaningful to some than real life."

Will Wright on Spore, SimCity, and the Sims

John Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor, and author. Currently founder and chairman of Federated Media Publishing, he is also a founder and executive producer of conferences in the media, technology, communications, and entertainment industries as well as "band manager" with BoingBoing.net.

Will Wright has become one of the most successful designers of interactive entertainment in the world. He began working on what would become SimCity—The City Simulator in 1985. Using a complex technique, he found a way to bring realistic simulations to desktop PCs. Previously simulations of this sort were only available to the military, scientists and academicians. However, using an easy to use graphic interface, the world of simulations opened up to consumers.

"Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, the Sims, and now Spore, speaks with pundit John Battelle about the creative process, user-generated content, and much more."

Talking About These: Facing Controversy

Let's jump in time a bit to present the last TAT lecture; later on we will complete the ones in the middle.

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"Episode Seven in my series of video "lectures," made in association with James Portnow, game designer and founder of Divide By Zero Games."

Via Talking About These

Gactivism, gametivism... activist game design: Harpooned

It’s not very often that you come across an activist game that skillfully incorporates its message with its gameplay, and rarer that they’re so much fun as Harpooned. Take control of a Japanese research vessel and extinctify some whales in the name of science (and selling cat food.) (-- 1Up)

"So it’s a controversial and emotional issue in Australia, however for the rest of the world it’s not newsworthy and I suppose most people never give it a thought. I decided to make a game about whaling and specifically about Japan’s claim that their whaling is scientific, to draw international attention to the issue. Games have the ability to reach a younger and broader audience than newspapers or television and a game distributed on the Internet can have a truly international impact."

Gish Design Tour

This third design tour published at Wolfire blog, was about Gish by Cryptic Sea.

"I asked Edmund McMillen (co-creator of Gish) what he thought, and he said, “I thought it was a well thought out critique of the things that made Gish an important indie game, and also pointed out its flaws in realistic way. Everything you said is totally what we have been talking about for the past few years, so I think you were spot on.”"

Via Wolfire blog

Cooperation and Engagement: What can board games teach us?

Matt Leacock is a principal designer at Yahoo! Inc. When he's not designing social platforms and products for Yahoo!, he dabbles in board game design.

"In February of 2008, Matt Leacock released Pandemic, a board game where players cooperate to save the world from deadly diseases that threaten to wipe out humanity. The game has been enthusiastically received, with its first printing selling out in less than a month. Matt will discuss how being an interaction designer affected the game design process as well as how cooperative games can point to new models for engagement in online systems."

Talking About These: VG and Learning

Daniel Floyd is the creator of an animated lectures series where he expresses a fresh and in-depth view on industry trend topics.

Recently graduated from the Univerity of Georgia, he received a bachelor's degree in Drama, focusing in Digital Media, and is currently pursuing a carreer in the videogames industry as an animator.

"The third entry in my series of video "lectures," made in association with EDGE and game designer James Portnow. Format inspired by Zero Punctuation reviews.

For the first time, NOT made to be presented in a classroom."

Via Talking About These

Indie Prototyping & Innovative Games

Former Game Developer magazine code columnist and 2006 IGF Design Innovation winner Jonathan Blow, has suggested that games are approaching the level of societal influence of other forms of art, such as films and novels. One example that Blow cites is World of Warcraft, which he labels "unethical", stating that such games exploit players by using a simple reward-for-suffering scheme to keep them in front of their computer.

In his view, developers need to think about what reinforcement the games are providing players when they reward them for performing certain actions. He emphasized that there was a need for developers to design inspiring new games using "innovative, ethical and personal art." (--Wikipedia).

"Part of the 2007 Independent Games Summit, held at the Game Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco, March 2007: Indie Prototyping, Braid, & Making Innovative Games (Jonathan Blow, Number None) [...], discusses the deliberate methodology behind his indie game prototyping. He shows how he conceives, develops, and tests out indie concepts in playable form, and discusses how you know when a prototype is working, and where to take it from there, demonstrating multiple in-development prototypes (including Braid) along the way."

Game Interface Design Profile

Jason Wozencroft is an award-winning art director/creative director with over thirteen years of interactive media experience. His talents include art/creative direction and team management. His collaborative style and ability to motivate teams towards a common goal has led to a legacy of successful large-scale projects. (--twentytwomedia.com)

"Donna Park goes to A2M studios to learn about the design process of game interfaces. We get specifics of the very impressive interfaces from Ironman and the upcoming WET."

Game Design with Will Wright

Will Wright has become one of the most successful designers of interactive entertainment in the world. He began working on what would become SimCity—The City Simulator in 1985. Using a complex technique, he found a way to bring realistic simulations to desktop PCs. Previously simulations of this sort were only available to the military, scientists and academicians. However, using an easy to use graphic interface, the world of simulations opened up to consumers.

"In this lecture, recorded in November 2003, Wright discusses various aspects of game design, human interfaces, artificial intelligence, metrics, simulation and the future of gaming."

World of Goo Design Tour

Second video of the Design Tour series, made by the prominent indie team, Wolfire.

"Whenever I play a game, I look for design lessons that I can learn and apply to my own games. Recently, I decided to show these lessons in the form of a video tour of games that make interesting design decisions..."

Via Wolfire blog