IGDA Nanocon Notes - The Lens of Truth

The Lens of Truth: Real World Adaptive Level Design

Speakers: Chris Totten (Art Director E4 Software) and Josh Lynsen (Creator of StreetPass Network)

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How did we get here?

                How Chris got here:

Architecture Masters -> self education in Blender -> Teaching on game development -> writing on game development -> doing game development

Be self-motivated.  Put the time in.  It will work for you if you keep your head down and hit the grind-stone.

                How Josh got here:

                                Take the skill in your day job and apply it to what you want to do in game making.

                                Do things that apply to a part of game making.

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Use virtual clues for real-life treasure.

How to deal with structures that already exist

                Use Urbanism

                                - Large spaces can keep people away from each-other

                                - Paths, districts, nodes, landmarks allow for meeting

                Connectivity

                                - Cell phones/internet create a damaging interaction issue

Adaptive Game Reuse - take a game and re-center it around a place

                1) Games that enhance

                                - Simple mechanics to real-world situation

                                - Ex: item finding to explore locations

                                - Ex: virtual art/characters in real locations

                2) Games that pervade

                                - Events can only be executed in specific locations

                                - Going from point A to B affects the virtual world

                                - Ex: passing someone in life gives virtual goods/action

                3) Games that rehabilitate

                                - Jane Megonigle

                                                - Works on games that makes the world better

                                                - Gamify basic actions in a positive way

                                                - Ex: Tombstone Hold'em, Cruel to be Kind

                                - Gamifying a common feature/location

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Chris and Josh: Creating a ‘Hometown social game’

            1)      Goals

                                Revisit hometown and bring welcome visitors

                                Support local business and institutions

                                Inject new life into smaller/shrinking cities

                                Maintain links to - and value - your past

            2)      Platform

                                Facebook, Google Plus or other social network

                                Any communal posting area that supports photos/discussion/moderation

            3)      Guiding principles

                                Large amount of local control

                                Encourage tourism as much as revisiting

                                Especially support volunteerism

                                Especially support local festivals and city events

            4)      Example point system for pictures taken:

                                2 - you in town

                                5 - you and local landmark

                                10 - you supporting local business

                                50 - you volunteering at local charity

                                50 - you at local festival

            5)      Rewards

                                Game enjoyment and community support

                                Gold, Silver, Bronze involvement rankings

                                No specific leader-boards

                                Less about competition, more about involvement

            6)      Notes

                                No specific hometown?  You are a nomad player.

                                National chains ineligible for business photos.

                                Chambers of Commerce could be local bases.

IGDA Nanocon Notes - HvZ

Humans vs Zombies - How to Train your Dragon

Speakers: Joe Sklover and Chris Weed (Game creators)

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"We don't regret anything we've done." - "We f-ing love it."

Follow your own path:

1.      You have to really love it

2.      Be strong in the hard parts

Confessions of the Creators:

1.      Hate the gun culture

a.       permeates everywhere

b.      has been a hassle of the game being banned some-places

2.      It all started with an excuse to use a bunch of Nerf guns

a.       Toys R Us was closing and having a sale

b.      That night had everyone getting shot

c.       Morning after, it seemed everyone forgot about their Nerf guns

Post Nerf Night:

1.      What excuse can we use to shoot friends with foam?

2.      What if we had to sneak-up on people?

3.      What if you were on a team with your roommate?

Rules of the first game (Let's Assassinate Your Friends!):

1. On a team with your roommate
2. Use Nerf guns
3. Only a certain number of lives
4. Only score if you shoot someone if they don't know you are there

Patches after day 1 disputes:

Even if you see someone, you have 2 seconds to be shot.

People ended-up paying much more attention to the rules.

Players got very invested.

Final Patch:

If you know someone is there, 3 fingers on your head makes you invulnerable to being shot

Result:

Everyone was having 3 fingers on their head

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What worked?  Didn't?

        1. What if you added zombies to it?

a.       Resulted in HvZ rules later that night

        2. There is no perfect rule-set

a.       Too subjective

        3. Don't make it such an exclusive community

People seemed to want to be involved in a game

        1. Let's make a game that is a little bit bigger!

        2. The rules were 7 pages long

a.       most of it was explination

b.      'Cry' rule: something, sometime, will upset you - take it in stride

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MODERATING EARLY GAMES                    

HvZ Game 3:

        1. People felt like veterans

        2. Vets started to play their own way

        3. Non-mod friends should be used to place mission items

        4. 1st safety rule:

a.       a human ran into their car to escape from zombies

b.      zombie jumped on the hood

c.       human started driving!

        5. 2nd rule:

a.       high-speed chase of zombie and human!

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MISSIONS

How to play HvZ

        1. Play to win

a.       Human:

                                                               i.      don't be seen

                                                             ii.      don't be heard

b.      Zombie:

                                                               i.      can't blame the stalker

        2. Play to have fun

a.       Arguably the way to win

Missions offered to reward game participation

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SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

Team bought Night Finders for the administration

Had all players outside the meeting room to cheer after the meeting

Town-hall meeting of +200 persons to help address 3 complaints

The only person that couldn't be helped had PTSD :(

Showed that the game has a responsibility to the community

School admin would warn (advertise) for the game before its start

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COMMUNITY AND GROWTH

When it's your project, it's easy to be defensive of it (other schools wanted to play)

Creators would just give advice and simple software resources

                "open-sourced the game"

                now have innumerable amount of iterations

                                new rules

                                planned missions

                                slight mechanic changes

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GNARWHAL STUDIOS INC

After graduation, what are we to do with our lives?

        1. Could have taken more control of the game

a.       "We don't want to be a vendor"

       2. Decided to let people work with the creators

a.       Collect all information

b.      Give the information

c.       "Become the hub"

Started Gnarwhal Studios Inc.

        1. Spread the game

        2. Support inclusiveness

        3. Keep it free

        4. Protect player-base from exploitation

HvZ can act as a platform to make

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CONCLUSION

"The thug life ain't easy."

We aren't classically successful, but we are happy.

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Questions

Was the first game really intense?

                Ya, but people still went to class.

What emergent narratives have you seen?

                In a ‘meta’ sense, people become friends with who they play with.

                People take on the roles of acting like friends, and it exists!

                Intercommunity support between HvZ locations.

How did no-formal game design training apply?

                There was a little read after the fact.

                It's awesome to see games taken more and more seriously.

                Games have been around since the dawn of society-theory wasn't needed then.

                Don't need theory, but it helps - be spontaneous and have fun with it!

Bullying?

                Verbal abuse from non-player characters.

                It's a good skill in life not to care about that.

                'Commando' humans can be bullies in-game.

                Some places trade freshman as resources.

Have ethics broken-down in some games?

                Team picking early-on.

                In the end, the best strategy is to work together.

Ideal number of players for HvZ?

                With enough intuition and experience, it can work for any number.

                No 'real' optimal player number.

IGDA Nanocon Notes - Game Magic

Game Magic

Speaker: Jeff Howard (Game/Narrative Professor – Dakota State University)

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Preface:

1) Game Magic Systems - representations and design in games

2) Magic books

Game magic and magic books are interrelated - learn about one, learn a lot about the other

1)      Player fantasy - fall inside of a book

2)      "All fantasy creates an alternate reality; All occultism creates both augmented reality and alternate realities; Games can do both"

3)      Augmented reality - projection of virtual info onto the real world

a.       Magicians have been trying to do this for millennia

4)      The Tree of Life is an overlay on the existing world

a.       The ToL has numbers, colors, letters, and information that represents real-life forms and functions

Read: Alan Moore "The Voice of the Fire"

Magic overlays a vision of imaginary symbols onto the world; concepts are drawn from this that cause results that otherwise may not exist

LED contacts; Google glasses

1)      Sight - The Eye of Horus

a.       used to represent mathematical fractions

b.      used to represent senses

2)      Evil Eye - focusing hard enough to 'see' a symbol in your world

Gestural systems trace symbols into the world - can be 2D or 3D

Grimoire - Middle-English for grammar

1)      combine symbols to construct meaning

2)      energize imaginative practice

3)      a guide to doing things in the world

4)      not all are created equal

a.       many are poor

b.      the few good are really good

Books:

Occult authors/books/publishers create interactive experiences; game designers can learn from this!

                Living                     - give into the book (falling into stories)

                Demon                 - enslaved by it (falling into stories)

                Talismanic           - take from the book (etc.)

Final thought:

Computer Programming is like communicating with a spirit; it needs to be precise, and if it is successful, it will do what you need it to do in extraordinary ways.