COMP4431 Game Design Workshop

Galcon (one of the games we looked at in class) is now available for your iPhone.

I’ve finished marking all your assignments. You should be able to collect you marks online. The final mark is tentative - at the moment it has not been scaled, but it probably won’t change much.

I want to say that I was very much impressed by the quality of your work, especially in the post-mortem reports. A lot of thoughtful reflection was shown by everyone.

Brad Hall has asked me to show some games for Open Day. With your permission, I would like to show The Great Big Rescue and Cuddly Climbers. (Kangaroo’s Nuggets might be a little more difficult to put on show.) It’s not until September, so if either group does any further work on the games in the meantime, I’d be pleased to have an updated copy.

Over at the his Fullbright blog, Steve Gaynor has posted a Call to Arms for designers to start addressing some of the more difficult aesthetics such as “loss” or “duty” or “patience”. He now has a dozen design sketches contributed by students and designers around the world.

I stumbled across the Retro Sabotage website today. You young whippersnappers may not remember these games, but you may still appreciate some of the interesting twists they have put on them.

I’ve arranged with Steve for us to visit Microforte next Friday (Jun 13) at 3pm in their studio in Glebe. Please let me know whether or not your can make it at this time.

The address is:

Level 3, 431 Glebe Point Road, Glebe

We might as well meet there.

Some ’serious’ games to try:

Ideological games

• The McDonalds game by Molleindustrie
• Darfur is Dying from mtvU
• Climate Challenge from the BBC
• America’s Army from the US Army
• Antiwargame by Josh On
• September 12th by Gonzalo Frasca

For more games see the Social Impact Games catalogue.

Arthouse games

• Passage by Jason Rohrer
• Stars Over Half Moon Bay by Rob Humble

It seems that I’ve asked you to include a design diary in both the original design report and also in the post-mortem. There’s no need to submit the same thing twice. You only need to include a diary in the post-mortem if you’ve done further design work since the prototype.

David McDonough (a student of the game design program at the Savannah College of Art and Design) has written a thoughtful blog post about being a game desginer. How can you justify such a ‘frivilous’ pursuit in an age with so many people in need? This kind of question has troubled artists throughout the ages. What is your answer?

What’s happening this week:

• On Wednesday night Steve Wang from Microforte will be our guest. He will be talking about working in industry. There will be an opportunity for you to present your games, if you wish. He will be deciding the winner of this year’s prize.
• Dan Staines from the School of Philosophy will also be visiting to talk about serious games.
• On Thursday night we will be having a debriefing session in which you get to comment on and evaluate the course. Carol Russell, our Learning & Teaching Fellow, will be running a focus group and asking you questions. Please come along. Your feedback will help me improve the subject.
• After the debrief we will be heading to the Unibar for drinks and games. First round on me.

If you’re interested in continuing to practise your game design skills, the Game Career Guide has been providing regular “game design challenges“. The latest one is to “Design a game that teaches Shakespeare’s Hamlet using only original text as dialogue.”