CHURN

Creativity, Games and Making Them

[davidchircop]

The Re-Imagining of Imagination

So there’s a thing I noticed, It might be just me, but people who never drove a motorcycle had a harder time for about 3 mins figuring out how the game works. One of the goals of my game was to make something completely accessible by a large variety of people, even those who do not like games in general. It’s a fun activity after all, with little elements that make it overtly gamey in any way. 

But the Motorcycle theme, even in the sort of double abstraction that my game has seems to have, sort of works out. It’s interesting, considering its an abstraction of a fantasy. It would have been more ‘realistic’ in a way if a Button is used to accelerate. Sure, most motorcycles are accelerated through a rotating handle, some others have small pedals for acceleration. However, one could say the mode of acceleration in a motorcycle resembles more the pressing of a button or the pulling of a switch than the screaming your lungs out.

My Game, therefore, is a re-imagining, of an imaginary mode of driving. Sort of like an Imagine-ception. It does not seek to abstract in an operable  form the act of driving a motorcycle. It seeks to abstract the act of Imagining that you are driving a motorcycle. That is kind of fascinating, and the actual reality of it only hit me now. 

That’s where the accessibility and the wide appeal comes from, because although not everyone has driven an actual motorcycle, or is capable of doing so, everybody can Imagine that he/she is driving a motorcycle, and the most frequent way where one ‘Plays’ as though he is driving a motor vehicle is by assuming the driving pose and making the characteristic engine sound. 

Therefore, as a bonus, here is a video of my Mum, playing Motorshoutist. A person who does not really drive motorcycles, and does not play games. She also does not use computers. She’s done nothing of this before. This is all imaginary to her...

[davidchircop]

So I got the bikers to play it...

Sometime last week, I went to a biker’s gathering at the Local Moto Guzzi Club. I took my Game with me. We ate pizza, they sung Kareoke, then I asked them if they wanted to try my game.. 

It wasn’t the easiest going of all, the think is when there is a LOT of chatter in a small room the controls may not respond as well. Espescially if the player keeps a constant note, the game has trouble isolating it from the chatter. It’s easy to notice, the ones with a voice that blends in with the rest of the chatter, is the hardest to detect.. my voice seems to have least of a problem with that. 

I made a video of it.. Here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXLdwvefbQo&feature=youtu.be

[davidchircop]

Let’s Play - Motorshoutist

This is great just to look at...

Most interesting take away.. my dad couldn’t let the kids play :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYPUd389hzY

[davidchircop]

Motoshoutist - Continues

In my last post on the progress on “Motorshoutist” I spoke about a video I was making and thanking my dad for being in it. That video was made, and displayed around and about. 

You can watch it here if you like - it has my dad dancing in it, so it’s awesome. 

Thing went far ahead from then, I had to actually start making the game, with my (very) limited set of programming skills, and by taking up about 60% of google traffic to Malta, I had managed something. 

After that I set out to testing it with a variety of different audiences. My muse sure liked it. He thought it was awesome, but it would be interesting to see how the game would be received with completely different audiences too. 

It’s good to consider my dad’s background. It’s kind of hybrid. He works with computers every day, all the time. But his use his limited to e-mails and word processing. Definitley not a gamer, although not completely out of connection with technology.

I observed the game with two groups; children, who are constantly engaging with video games, and the other extreme, Someone who has no knowledge of technology, video games or even motorcycles. 

I’ll post a video of both of these later :) 

-Daivd

[davidchircop]

I Like Saving Small Children

Corrypt is not by any means an “easy” game. The puzzle elements are mind-bending, the Magic elements completely chaotic, the anarchy of corruption is the most apparent and readily visible statement the game makes, at least in my opinion. 

For me, what was ludicrously weird, is the part where you save a small child.  What is different here is that the child has a set of unique characteristics;

1. It is the only intractable element, except magic, that can be moved from screen to screen. Well magic, cannot be moved, as such, it is more like persistent from screen to screen. The child is not persistent, so yes, i would say that it is the only object capable of moving from scree to screen

2. the child, although acts like a block, in most terms has the change that it follows the controller on two axes and not just one. The blocks can be pulled and pushed. The child drags along even sideways. 

This has the beauty of presenting the vulnerability of the child. The child feels sticky, attached to the player. Getting the child to stop following you is a choice, an effort. One has to get the child in a particular position and then almost slide him off, as if you are trying to brush him away. 

The child is also a burden, it is hard to move around, with this child physically attached to you, and his vulnerability, and lingering persistence almost prevents him from ever arriving to his mother. The player needs to go through repetitive “Shrugging off” of the child and has to go through various detours to be able to bring him to his mother. It is almost the child does not even want to get home, he’s happy tagging along. Why did he escape anyway... why did the child not want to get back to his mother? what did the mother do to the child? and why does the mother reward you with a path with access to the magicians, while telling you to stay away from them. Almost like tempting you, or daring you, to go talk to the magician. A little bit like showing you a big red button of doom and asking you not to press it.. 

there is something fishy going on there.. the mother has a secret..

[idg5202]

Comment on: The Chinese Connection

[idg5202]

It may be true that the games have a western influence, after all the were developed in the west, and I suppose it would be a little bit hard to be completely impartial. However espessically in CS:GO, playing the terrorists never felt like being the bad guy for me.

 It is strange because when I played the game for the first time, I was somewhat hesitant to play the terrorists, rather than because the game presents them as the bad guys, more so because of the mental model that I have of terrorism.

 After I played the game, this diminished, and eventually I had no trouble with playing the terrorists, because in my opinion the game does non make any insinuation that terrorists are bad. Yes, they do plant the bomb, and the counter-terrorists need to diffuse it, but that action in itself feels more to me like a role related thing.

 I mean, yes, terrorists plant the bombs. But it’s more like a role they play for the purpose of the Sport that is in the match. It’s hard to explain, but just because they are planting a bomb, out of any context whatsoever does not imply any good or evil for me. While playing as the “Good Guy” in, I don’t know.. say Metal Gear Solid, or splinter cell, or even uncharted, I had to plant bombs many a time. The ACT of planting a bomb, does not insinuate anything if taken in a context of a very sports oriented match.

 Yes, you are playing the terrorists, but the terrorists are not terrorizing anything but the counter-terrorists, the opposing team, and Vice Versa.

 CS GO feels so much more like a well regulated sport than Battlefield does. The fact that there is no destructible  landscape, smaller maps, more limited controls, and all the other differences, give it a very competitive sporty feel. Battlefield is more fluid, more story oriented (if you could say that) and although it has a lot of the team VS team thing going on, the lack easily apparent “strict” rules  make it feel more like a simulation, which carries more weight in theme than a sport.

[idg5202]

Wait, I never said that the design of CS:GO makes you necessarily feel as a bad guy when you play as a terrorist; I wrote that, intrinsic in the design, there is a clearly “evil” faction and that it is portrayed through stereotypes. And this can influence the game experience. This means that, since the simulated task is something usually done by evildoes (I think we can agree that planting a bomb is an evil action, can’t we?), the team is also labeled as so. It’s interesting, though, that the perception of that action is banalized from the overall design of the game to the point that you identify it as a part of the CS sport. I would like to hear a more detailed take on the same aspect in BF4 too, to be honest.

[davidchircop]

BF4 probably has even less of a consequence re: Americans VS Chinese. The two factions are mostly just teams again, as Matthew frequently points out, (And i agree) it feels like dudes on a map shooting each other with non-lethal weapons. 

My point was, in the end, that design choices (being them aesthetic, dynamic, or mechanic) can influence the game experience with regards of portrayal of actions, and factions. You yourself said that the first time your mental model of terrorism influenced the choice, but after the first play as planting-bomb-team, that feeling disappeared. My concern was that, and how maybe another person - from another culture, one of those portrayed in the games - could react to that. Think of a CoD game where Maltese people are the bad guys, and your culture is summarized in a couple of bad actions such as killing of innocents or raising an army of ponies. The influence that game could have on you would be very different, I bet.

Of course it would be different, I’m not disagreeing with you. But as you said, the implication of discrimination of terrorists was an inference I myself made, and not the game. I was being biased towards viewing the terrorists as the “badder” of the two. I was just observing how the game’s design did not imply any of that, and it was me, and my preconceptions that were pasted onto the games to create that anti-identification. Also, i’d love to hear how you feel about the “planting a bomb” thing. You said earlier that planting a bomb is something that you feel automatically inferences terrorist or “evil” action. But in BF4, for example we still plant bombs on each other’s bases. Planting bombs in itself is not something reserved to terrorists, (although it is so in CS:GO, which I believe is the point you were making before) is this what you find discriminatory? that in CS:GO the terrorists are always the ones who plant bombs? That is true. But again, its an association I made myself. The terrorists are not planting bombs for an evil motive, other than to win the match. 

[idg5202]

I woke up this fine morning with great ambitions of productivity. I set the alarm early, from the previous day. I went off an bought myself some good arabica ground coffee, medium grind, the way I like it. I charged my laptop, so that I have some hours without a single distraction.

I woke up, and...

[idg5202]

As I read this woeful form,

Of words and rhyme, bookworm’s porn,

I wonder how these poetics exist,

and how easily the meaning shifts.

>

I understand how easy and clear,

a reader’s mind sets up for fear,

the poetic form, like a lurking beast

pounces around to disrupt the feast.

>

Art is...

[davidchircop]

To the most compliant muse in the world... somewhat

It may be true that my dad does not have that much time on his hands, hates video games, and just wants to ride his bike when he’s not at work. But today I got him in costume and filmed him playing my very crude prototype, which turned out quite well. Im going to try to use the footage for the prototype tomorrow, if I manage to get the edit done in time. 

He already loves the prototype... 

  Of course, it’s me so the game is a little weird, but there is a motorcycle in it and he loves it already :D :D and that’s what’s best! 

It’s a lot simpler in complexity (to play, not to code) than i had originally thought. A small 20 second event, which i managed to capture on video completely instantly changed the idea. He loved it even more than anything else we had thought about. Today he mentioned that when it is done, he wants to take it to the club, so that all his friends would play it. Which highlights the importance that I implement a local multiplayer mode. Even if I have to make the game simpler, I would still want to implement some sort of mode where him and his friends could casually compete. It’s what he loves the most, familiarity, simplicity, and things.. I’m going back to editing my video now. I will post more in detail about the game at a later date. But this is a small thank you note to papa, for being compliant and wanting to be in the video. 

It’s gonna be awesome :) 

[davidchircop]

Son, I have returned... WITH YOUR PROBES

My Pseudo-probes have returned!! Lets see what we got. Actually I believe it would make more sense to recap what we asked for first. As I don’t think I have clearly specified it yet:

List of Most important items you need to take on a motorcycle journey.

List of crappy things that can happen to you on a motorcycle journey.

List of Great things that can happen to you on a motorcycle journey.

5 photos of the most memorable moments of the trip. Good or Bad does not matter.. Just memorable.

Anything else you feel you should add, or would like to put in. 

I added that last point because I wanted to allow a certain sense of freedom. I had to keep in mind here that I am completely un-cultured when it come to motorcycle journeys. I understood from the beginning that adding that last question would mean that because there is no specificity it would return no result, however, giving my muse the freedom at this point was important. I made sure to tell him that these are guidelines, try to follow them to help you, but if at any point you want to slightly deviate you are free to do so.

In the end, my muse did not deviate all that much. He followed the instructions, all 5 of them pretty closely. One thing I noticed though, is that he didn’t spend too much time pondering about these. I saw him working on it a total one 1 time, the next day after I gave him the tasks. Two days later he gave me two lists and told me, “the other material is on it’s way, you just wait” 

When they went on the journey last summer, were 3 people. What I didn’t know was that one of them had an action camera attached to the handlebars at some points in the journey. A few days ago, this friend of his showed up at my place with an external hard drive. “You have 30 Gigs of photos and footage of the trip there”. I stared at him for a moment, I realized he would need to stay here for a few minutes at least until all that copied onto my hard drive, so I invited him in for a coffee.

At this point then, I’m left with these –

  Three handwritten lists of good stuff and bad stuff that can happen on the journey.

The actual checklist that my father used to go on the trip, with all the items he took and with the names of the people who had them. This thing followed him all the way to the north cape.

A DVD with photos of the trip (I know I asked for 5, but I got 3,000 instead)

A 30 GB folder with more photos and a little bit of footage

    Yesterday my dad came up to me and said: “Dave, what you have is only a little bit of the video, because he forgot to copy most of it… he will bring me the rest of it next week”

What I’m afraid of is how the heck am I going to go through all that video and choose the good stuff.. most of it is just… long winding roads with mountains in the background.. or else.. im sure I can do something cool with a video like that… hmmm mmm mmm

 One thing that I noticed is that Dad, really really has a managerial sort of look towards things. Firstly, the things that he needed to do himself, he did them quick and in one go. No questions asked. Secondly, HE STILL HAD THE CHECKLIST HE USED ON THE TRIP!! Thirdly, he delegated the work! Whatever he did not feel like doing (looking through photos to find the best 5), he called a friend and delegated the work to him.

Maybe, i’ll end up using that when making the game.. I think he would enjoy being overseeing everything, making sure that all is working well.. 

we’ll see

-D

[idg5202]

I Believe we can all agree that most game scholars tend to study game audio as a complement to visuals. Most articles about the use of sound in games (and most articles on games in general, for that matter) seem to focus mostly on games with a 3D world and a 1st person perspective. Many talk...

[davidchircop]

Hold still, I shall now Probe you… *smacks rubber glove*

Its been a bit of a hectic two weeks with Dad, spontaneously he brought up that he may be travelling, so everything for the last week or so, meetings became more sporadic and long distance.

  I needed to find a way to put use to cultural probes, already knowing what he wants the game to be about. He could meet up for a few hours one day and he showed up with this new CD he had just gotten from his friend, with all the photos of the All the Way Up journey, he seemed exited, so I went with it.

  The next hour or so, was spent him showing me the hundreds of pictures stored on this CD. We talked about preparation when motorcycling, dangers, risks, and events that happened to him that were most disabling for the journey.

  So I asked him to select a few events that he recalls. Good ones, Bad ones, anything that stuck to his mind. Not necessarily to be in the game, but to see what sort of things a motorcyclist would remember.  

  After a few hours of him talking, I wanted to skew the conversation back onto games. I gave him Oregon Trail, and asked him to play it using a Think Aloud protocol. I chose this game, because, firstly it is about a journey, and secondly the gameplay is not too complex for him who does not play video games all that much.

  I asked him what iconic game he remembers the most from when we sometimes used to play games together when I was kid. He mentioned Ace Combat, a Arcade/Flight simulator game with military airplanes and missiles and stuff. Back then he was into the Air-Show and aviation. That love seems to have now been replaced with motorcycles.

  What is pretty evident I believe here is that his “love” for a game is only slightly related to gameplay when compared to theme.  He seems to love ace combat, and flight control, because they were about planes. Now that he likes motorcycles, he wants a game about motocycles. What I can say for sure is that an Oregon Trail clone, will not really work that well. He seemed to hate the gameplay or simply selecting options. (Words like “this is boring”, “Oh that’s it?”, “How did he break his arm?? What the hell?” “I want to go hunting… why do I have to wait till I run out of food?”.. I’m not sure if that only because he doesn’t give a flying crap about Oregon and the significance that journey has to our friends in the US. Would it work better if we swapped the theme around to motorcycles.

  NEXT TEST! And please someone give suggestions if you have… Games about motorcycles.. not Moto GP style, something different..

  So! Maybe the game has changed slightly now.. he mentioned that the most important thing is planning… what if we make a strategy game.. about planning a ride.. and then seeing it play out? Like planning the routes, resources, ect..

  Hmm, “That’s interesting” I said.. maybe…

“Leave it to me, I’ll make you a list”

  A few days later he came back with a list… but that’s a completely different blog post…

[davidchircop]

Minimal, Elegant, Expressive... Fast

It's been my fascination, the minimal, for way too long of a time.

Almost everything I do has somewhat been influenced by the beauty of it. Not solely in the aesthetic sense, but in terms of functionality, easy of use, and perfection in-general.

Yesterday I came across this mobile game - Blek

Apart from the obvious similarities in the way it looks with my recent board game "...and then we held hands...", I was also fascinated by the simplicity of the gameplay. 

Perfection is impossible, but Minimalism is a good way to simulate it. 

When I play games like Schotten-Totten, Battle Line, Lost Cities, yes I know, I'm mentioning a lot of early Knizia games. But these games' ability to work well and give a reasonable amount of depth with so little rules, that in itself, leaves me wanting more. 

That is possibly why I was intrigued by this week's reading about fast prototyping. Sometimes simple works, things just fit together to give you that feeling of being greater than the sum of it's parts. If you add more bulk, it may in fact be just Bulk, no substance, it may not in fact enhance the experience at all. 

World of Goo, Swords & Soldiers, Pullblox, Osmos, Collision Effect, Super Hexagon, Duet, Boson X and to an extent even Autumn Dynasty. One simple concept, polished up to near perfection.

You will notice, that all of this games are either Mobile exclusive or work really really well on Mobile. Specifically iPad (With the exception of Pullblox)

And thats basically it. The touch controls of the iPad, in a way, limit the developer to that minimalism, to inspire them to create a simple concept that Just Works.

Also, a special mention here - To you who translated Limbo to iOS - Touch Controls Perfection. Respect. 

-D

[idg5202]

To take things to a more traditional level, even board and card games express this level of dependency.

[idg5202]

- For some reason my comment erased itself -

I was thinking of the very same topic earlier, today. To be more precise, it was when reading about Nitsche’s dinstiction between...

[davidchircop]

I would look at that more in the sort of procedural generation sort of way. Eclipse and Carcassone are in a way a Rouge-like, in the description of space Aarseth writes. More so Eclipse, where you are moving a unit in 2d space and that space is generated randomly as you pass through. Its quite a common mechanic in Board Games featuring exploration. Kevin Wilson's Civilization the Board game has it as well.

I never did see those games in this way before though..   

[davidchircop]

MuseSearching - Part 2 - Dad

In a previous post, I spoke about my considering choosing my grandma as a muse for a game. That contact I had with her showed quite an interesting option. Designing a game for a granny would be fun and definitely a different thing to explore. However, I do not want to simply settle on that without considering a few more possibilities.

Which brings me to my Dad. 

I knew that if I asked him what he would like a game made about, he would undoubtedly say a loud resounding "Motorcycles!". And that's okay, I was prepared for that. I knew there was no way in avoiding that, no use putting the words differently. What he suggested after that though, is what I was not expecting.

My Father, about 4 years ago, a little before turning fifty, suddenly woke up one day and decided that he would now like to become obsessed with motorcycles. It was sudden and unexpected. He had owned a motorcycle in his 20's and had mentioned it sporadicly here and there, but there was no sort of foreshadowing for what seemed like a spontaneous, impulse thing. 

Fast forward a few months and my dad is president of a biking club and a full on "Motorcycle Activist". He became involved in international activities and started organising all sorts of events. Last year though, my dad did something that I have to say, is pretty cool.

He took his relatively small 750cc motorcycle and drove from the southernmost part of Europe (Malta) all the way up to the highest point (most northern) in Europe accessible by land - the North Cape (Norway)... and back! No less than 15,000 km, without support vehicles, just two friends, also on motorcycles. They camped up in a different place every night and drove through most of the morning. It took them a little over a month.

He asked me to make a game about it, to commemorate their journey, his biggest adventure. 

There is just so much stuff in something like that. Themes of epic adventure, combined with mid-life crises and the beauty of childlike obsession, slotted into two slices of the white bread of everyday life. 

I said nothing for a while and thought about it.. and then told him;"I like it, at least in this journey you don't get Dysentery" 

....you see what I did there....?

[thedenofgames]

Revenge of the Seagulls

For my second blog post, I will write about the fantastic adventure of creating a video prototype for a fictional idea for a game…involving angry seagulls.

As part of our lecture in Experience Design, we had to come up with a video prototype of a fictional concept for a game related to an image showing a seagull, a hand and the ocean. Therefore, I teamed up with 2 other members and got to work on an idea.

Read More

[davidchircop]

Following Luke's post on our game, here's our video! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV2Pe-SFsco&feature=youtu.be

[idg5202]

Comment on: The Magical Threshold

Can The Real Slim Shady please stand up, please stand up?

I am not entirely sure why I thought about this particular song as I was about to write this blog entry. At the end of the day, I wanted to write about my understanding of Presence and Immersion for the Analysing Player Experience...

[davidchircop]

The magical threshold

Now that you put it that way, Tamborini's mental model could be used to describe the cultural background I mention in my post. So the mental model would denote your willingness to take a participatory role or a more spectatory role. 

Its your mental model which decides the viability and effect the fourth wall would have on you as a player/viewer and the degree of presence in the game.