Presentations at Klagenfurt (Austria) and Prague (Czech Republic)

Last week was awesome! I did two presentations in two great European universities, and I will talk a little bit about the experience and share the content in this post.

1. Klagenfurt

In April 15th, I did a presentation at the 3rd Klagenfurt Game Jam. The event happened at Alpen-Adria-Universität and had many serious discussions about games, gaming concepts, games and accessibility, gamification and much more. I want to thank my friend René Schallegger for the invitation and support in this amazing experience.

My presentation was about my new game, Rock Flickz (which will be in app stores by the end of April) and how we can use a mobile game for music advertising, entertainment and business. You can see the presentation below:



2. Prague

I took a train in Klagenfurt and went straight to Prague for another presentation. This time, I was invited by my friend Daniel Riha to talk to some students from the Charles University (Faculty of Humanities) about "Game Interface Design". Another excellent experience that I want to share in the presentation below:



I think my curriculum has just risen some levels =)



#GoGamers

What we can learn from the old RPG solo adventure books

If you are an old school gamer and a RPG fan like me, you have probably played in the 80’s or 90’s some of the classic solo adventure books created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, named Fighting Fantasy Collection. These authors disseminated a very unique kind of entertainment in the form of books. Using the idea of non-linear narrative they materialized some stories where the reader (or the player) could take decisions, combat enemies (rolling dice) and obtain different kinds of equipment for his/her journey (that could be controlled using a special character sheet). One of my favorite books from this collection is The Temple of Terror (LIVINSTONE, 1985).



This narrative fits in the idea of ergodic literature, proposed by Aarseth (1997, p.1), because of the unusual effort readers/players must put in text to advance in the story (roll die, take notes, read the pages without logical order etc.). In Temple of Terror the player will be a warrior entering an adventure inside the Temple of Skelos to fight the evil sorcerer Malbordus. Using a clever system based on choices and number of pages, players must use their memory, solve puzzles and get lucky in the dice to defeat the monsters until reaching the dungeon of Malbordus.



Entertainment aside, rests a question: what lessons this kind of ludic experience can teach to us to develop or study games? Here are some points to think about:

1) This kind of book is perfect to deconstruct. To learn from failures is essential to draw a map. This map is the game’s script. Through it, it’s possible to understand the complex “decision trees” created by the author.

2) After playing the same adventure a number of times, you’ll see strong points and weaknesses of the narrative. You can mark the frequency of combat, dialogues and achievements to have a notion of how to balance your game between different features.

3) Temple of Terror, specifically, is an exercise of suspension of disbelief. Can you imagine a dungeon full of goblins, demons, skeletons, dragons and other fantastic beings living in a healthy way? Makes no sense if you think rationally, but in this format it makes all the sense. The script is a little bit naïve, but, on the other hand, it is an exercise of fantasy fiction for young audiences.

4) There’s a crisscrossing between how a book like this is created and how a complex videogame script is created. Basically, both are narratives. So studying different formats will help you have “fuel” to compose new ideas for new games.

5) IT’S FUN! So don’t waste time. If you have never played a solo adventure game, buy a book and try now. During the experience, ask yourself: why books like this one made such success in the past? Where’s the fun factor in them? How we can use them to create games for mobile phones, consoles or board games?



The challenge is yours.

#GoGamers

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Reference:

AARSETH, Espen. Cibertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. The Johns Hopkins University Press: Maryland, 1997.

3rd Klagenfurt Game Jam

From April 15th until the 17th, the 3rd Klagenfurt Game Jam will happen. Klagenfurt is an Austrian city and gathers people who likes games and wants to create, test and talk about them.



What is a game jam? It is a gathering of game developers for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 72 hours. Game developers are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, and others in game development-related fields. The term “game jam” is a composition of the words “game” and “jam session”.

Starting on Friday, the topic will be revealed to all participants at the same time and random groups will brainstorm games. Then, after the ideas are pitched, the teams will emerge around ideas and games will be created. Finally, on Sunday, the projects are presented to a jury and the most awesome project will be awarded with a prize.

Parallel to the game jam, there will be lectures about the gaming universe. With great honor, I would like to share that I was invited to give a lecture about game design process and business model. I’ll talk about my new game ROCK FLICKZ developed by SIOUX, the keynote is entitled “The Rock Flickz Case - using a mobile game for music advertising, entertainment and business model”. Looking forward for this great meeting!



Click here for the official site and here for the complete program.

#GoGamers

LIFELINE

LIFELINE (3 Minutes Games, 2015) is a mobile text-based game focused on a narrative with a very simple gameplay. Written by Dave Justus, the plot is about an astronaut (Taylor) trying to survive in a strange place after a spaceship accident. To survive, he needs your help to take some decisions inside a claustrophobic alien ambient.



The gameplay is always based in two decisions presented to the player in the end of certain speeches from the astronaut. The idea of “decision trees” (that we have already discussed here) is the interaction’s core inside the gaming universe. The astronaut will always offer two options to the player to continue the history with different outcomes. The image below shows the main idea of the gameplay:



But, beyond the very immersive narrative, that game has a very different component: the real time between astronaut’s actions. In some moments in the story, it’s possible to ask the astronaut, for example, to climb a mountain. The game stops and after 3 hours (the time Taylor took to climb the mountain) he starts a new part of the narrative. So, many decisions in the game are affected by these kinds of choices.

To understand the game better, check the official trailer below:



In a time full of complex games, it’s very good to find some elegant and simple game design based in a good narrative.

#GoGamers

He’s selling potions

Merging narrative with puzzles

A few posts ago (here, here and here), we discussed about puzzles, how to create them and what makes them challenging and immersive. Today, I want to talk about how a puzzle can be an interesting narrative component inside a game.

We have lots of examples, but let’s focus our attention on one specific series of games, so we can think about how puzzles can intersect with an action game: let’s talk about Resident Evil’s fourth edition.



This game (and many others of this genre) focuses its gameplay in a balance between action scenes full of despair and introspective moments, where the player must take a breath and calmly think of how to solve certain puzzles. In the example below we can see this: it’s a puzzle that uses lights inside a church. After the enigma is solved, the player triggers a new scene of action.



In a game like Resident Evil 4, the puzzles create a kind of a break in the frenzy action with zombies and other creatures. Those moments are very strategic to calm down the players and prepare the story for the next step.

Different from other shooting games, Resident Evil’s series uses the puzzles as a tool to its storytelling. Each mystery solved leads to an important narrative piece to explain the main plot. Another point deserves a highlight in RE4’s case: the gaming producers use different kinds of puzzles to test players’ “powers”. As Koster (2005, p.152) reminds us

“The toughest puzzles are the ones that force the most self-experimentation. They are the ones that challenge us most deeply on many levels – mental stamina, mental agility, creativity, perseverance, physical endurance, and emotional self-abnegation”.

There are many possibilities and many combinations. Let’s discuss more how puzzles can merge with different kinds of gaming plots.

#GoGamers

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Reference:

KOSTER, Raph. A theory of fun for game design. Arizona: Paraglyph Press, 2005.

Gaming quotes

"Someday, if society allows it, games will have their Skakespeare"

Raph Koster IN: A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2005, p.219)