Prince of Persia meets Another World

Creators of two of the most beautiful games ever made are interviewed together here. Eric Chani, author of “Another World” and Jordan Mercher, author of “Prince of Persia”.
This are two games that I recognize as true examples of art in videogame. Atmosphere, gameplay, characters, level design, story, music, everything that makes for a great experience in gaming is present in both of this titles.

S.O.S.! Este juego intenta educarme!

Los videojuegos nos obligan a prestarles una gran dosis de atención (haciendo uso de varios sentidos a la vez) desde que presionamos START, lo que no es poco teniendo en cuenta que día a día aumenta el bombardeo de estímulos de distintas fuentes que recibimos. Es por esta capacidad que constituyen una poderosa herramienta para la educación.

Entendiendo lo anterior propongo hacer del uso del alcance de los videojuegos una responsabilidad a la hora de desarrollar nuestros productos. Sin perder el foco en el entretenimiento que deben proveer, porque cuando lo pierdan también lo hará el poder que poseen.

A lo largo de los años 80´s y 90´s cientos de juegos pasaron por nuestras manos, capturaron nuestra atención por horas o días y de una fracción de ellos aprendimos algo sin quererlo. Desde la necesidad de reconocer solo en el afán de jugar nuevas aventuras gráficas que aún no habían sido traducidas al castellano, otros ganaron conciencia de la importancia de la materia prima, lo imprescindible de generar el máximo valor agregado de ellas y el buen manejo de recursos para hacer crecer una organización, cientos de títulos despertaron en millones de jóvenes la curiosidad por la literatura y el arte de la narración, conocimos en detalle los mecanismos que mantienen en vuelo a máquinas de decenas de toneladas, trabajo en equipo y cooperación, etc.

Los que en décadas pasadas aprendimos sin darnos cuenta hoy tenemos la posibilidad de conocer mas a fondo los mecanismos que ayudan al aprendizaje, así como las herramientas para producir juegos que hagan uso de ese poder. Muchos de los títulos que publicamos día a día se olvidan del alcance que tienen, mucho mas allá del entretenimiento.

En el pasado las novelas fueron estigmatizadas como pasatiempos de señoras, una coincidencia con los casual games actuales. Hoy nadie se atrevería a decir que las novelas son entretenimiento para señoras (al menos no todas), quien sabe en que pueden devenir los Casual Games una vez que se eche por tierra la pacatería que los envuelve hoy? Estamos siendo parte activa de un momento clave en la evolución del medio de los videojuegos.

Mi propuesta es que diseñadores, programadores, artistas, músicos, etc, tomemos como una responsabilidad el incluir algún elemento en nuestros productos que provea al jugador, que está otorgándole toda su atención a la acción que se desarrolla en la pantalla, la posibilidad de descubrir algo que vaya mas allá de una sesión de juego entretenida.

It´s fun and it matters

Did you ever text a sms while driving? Do you know the dangers of distracting driving? Maybeou do, maybe you don´t, maybe you think you do. Well, luckly we have games today. Not to play on the cell while driving, but to teach us things.
The New York Times created a game to test multitasking skills. It´s very interesting to try out and see what happens. You are driving a car and need to change lanes in order to cross open gates in the road while texting on your cellphone.

A good example of games that are fun and important to play at the same time. Here´s the link to Gauging Your Distraction.

Seen in vgresearcher.

Mind Games

As I said in recent posts I´m becoming more and more interested in education and games, and their connections. I´ve been doing some research and I´ve found out that fun in games resides, more deeply than I thought, in the process of learning. We´ve been using games for education and therapy for decades now, but still I need to make my own experiment about how it works, and if I can succeed at my attempt to make a game that teaches logic better than a paragraph of text.

I was thinking about making an experiment where I present a subject with two tests. The only difference in each one is on the first step. In the first one I explain in theory a logic system, in the second one I try to make the subject learn this system without speaking about it.

FIRST TEST:

1- A brief explanation about a logic system. IE: “(Picture of a chess board with numbers for rows and letters for columns) Object A can go from B1 to B8 in one motion, but it can´t do it if another object is on the way.”
2- A conceptualization of the system. IE: “In chess the Tower can go from A1 to A8 in one move, but if a pawn is on any tile from A2 to A7, the Tower it can´t pass it”
3- Three questions about the conceptualization. IE “If a Tower is at C1. Can I move it to C6 if I have a pawn on C3?”, “If a Tower in at D8. Can I move it to D1 if I have a pawn on C3?”, “If a Tower is at G2. Can I move it to A2 if I have a pawn on G5?”

SECOND TEST:

1- A small game where a car can move in straight lines over a grid. The further you take it in one move, more points you earn. If an obstacle is on the way, the car will stop.
2- idem FIRST TEST
3- idem FIRST TEST

After a few hundred people takes the test I will know:

1- Games teaches better than text.
2- Text teaches better than games.
3- Games teaches better than text, but the one I made was poorly designed.
4- Text teaches better than games, but the one I wrote in the test was confusing.
5- I need to make at leas 100 of this tests to find out something valuable.
6- It´s all pointless, “Yes, games are better, but we can´t make children play with cars to learn everything”.
7- It´s all pointless, “Yes, games are better, but we woun´t make children play with cars to learn everything”.
8- It´s all pointless.
9- This actually may be interesting.
10- I´ve made the experiment and in the process learned many things. Luckily I did it without paying attention to the endless reasons why it was pointless.

Financial Crash – Game Over

In 2008, with de9a18studio, we made Financial Crash- Game Over, a small strategy game. We were in a time when games seem to pour out of ourselves like sweat. Characters, gameplay, story, gags, voices, music, everything seemed to find it´s way in our non stop production line. This one was born, as I recall it, from an impulse. I thought of making a game in 3 days and that was all we need to get started.
I started drawing and animating while Matias typed away the code. The idea and gameplay evolved at the same time. The gameplay was simple, nothing very original really. What was special about the project was it´s mood. The background music was an important ingredient, the mellow melody combined with the fast paced action and the topic of the story, as I see it, made a beautiful mix.
We signed up the game for the “CODEAR – Single Boss” competition in ADVA, and got a good deal of interesting comments about it. We came out in 4th place, which was a unexpected, but the best thing by far was the discussion that the game generated among the users of the forum.

If you have 5 minutes to spare, here is ” Financial Crash- Game Over.”

Understanding Tower Defence

I´m designing a tower defence game, so yesterday I played some of the more popular ones:
“Onslaught”
“Turret Wars”
“Bloons Tower Defense 2″
“Desktop Defense”

By far, for me, the most addictive one was “Desktop Defence”, I got really hooked the first time I played it long time ago, and now the same thing happened, I couldn´t leave it. Wave after wave I saw how the enemy units got blasted by bullets, laser beams and all sorts of things, how my army got bigger and stronger, adding units and upgrading them.

And now I´m trying to understand why it´s so addictive, such a simple gameplay.
As I see it, the main reason is that we just love to see things grow. The other thing that we love is discover.
(Statement power ENGAGED)
“Grow and discover are the two main forces behind every game ever made.”

Tower Defence just cut off the remaining skin and give us an overdose of growing. Yet another example of game-drugs.

Addiction-Based Game Design by Jeff Vogel

A quote from Jeff Vogel´s recent article about Addiction-Based game design:

“If a game doesn’t need to save your progress or scores to be fun, it’s fun isn’t addiction based. It might be addictive, but it is that way simply because it’s fun.”

It´s worth a good reading.

Make an idea work in a real world

It´s hard enough to come up with an original idea, try to put it into words and make it work. But that´s nothing compared with trying to pitch it to the people with the means to make it a real project.

You´ll have to water it down, change it, twist it, fire it up and blow it in parts, reconstruct it, paint it in other colors, pait in back to it´s original ones, expand it, condense it, make a businessman like it, make an ordinary man like it, make the wife of a farmer like it, etc.

I´m living that right now. An idea that was born from emotion it being changed and twisted constantly to adapt to a market that works on tight formulas. At first, I was annoyed but it. Now I know, sometimes, being able to know the heart of the idea and keep it alive throughout a long process of modifications is the most important thing when trying to do something new. If we can do that, half the way is done.

It´s about bringing an idea to the real world. Everybody can have brilliant ideas that they alone comprehend, the magic resides on knowing how to traduce it to a language that everybody understand and can relate to.

Braid pc

Acabo de jugar Braid (PC), después de leer decenas de artículos sobre Jonatan Blow, el gameplay, la estética, la música, los puzzles, ver videos y todo lo que esto trae en cuanto a anticipación de un producto, puedo decir que igualmente me impactó.
No voy a repetir los análisis que se hicieron mil veces, simplemente tengo que dejar asentado que queda demostrado que “design matters”, en todos los aspectos.
Cada día veo juegos salidos de la misma matriz, se está gestando una especie de lista de “normas de efectividad” que todos parecen seguir al pié de la letra, y nadie intenta sacar un pié afuera.
Después de jugar Braid reaparece la sospecha de que todavía se pueden hacer cosas que valgan la pena.

Game design

Hay cosas que me preocupan y otras que simplemente ocupan mi mente.
El problema base del game design es de las que me preocupan. Armé esto solo para empezar a pensar con orden.

Game Design – game over