Finally here is a cut of the latest Amaze Games Culture Circle from Berlin. The topic is about Money and Games – and how they possibly can interact. A really interesting topic, in my opinion – not only because of the upcoming Gamification debate that is already happening. Have fun watching. If you have opinions on that, feel free to write a comment. Or to like it on Facebook or even Flattr.
I want to highlight the recent works from Ishac Bertran. It seems, that he wants to find new aspects in glitches, combining glitch with different materials. Lately he was experimenting with a damaged flatscreen from the trash. Now he jumped into “Generative Photography“. It’s a mixture of fast-paced animations, that create “glitches” by photographing them.
“Digital drawings are sequentially projected on to a screen in a dark room and photographed using long exposure times. As in generative art, this photography technique uses an algorithm that is polluted with a certain randomness. The randomness comes from rendering imperfections and the asynchrony between the frame rate of the video signal and the refresh rate of the projector.”
Interesting works! There is also a long picture-thread with explanations in Ishac’s blog.
Yes people, I did it! I finished a game for the Global Game Jam! It is a two-player-game and some sort of “space-fighting game”. (The topic of the game jame was “Extinction” by the way). Since I had extremely limited time at this weekend, I decided to make a game I can assemble in 30 minutes or so. In the end it took me about 8 hours.
This game reflects my growing interest in “fighting games“, that developed over the last 10 or so months. I like the idea of games, that do not have a “optimum strategy” to win the game, like “knowing and mastering all secret moves” or “pushing the button faster or harder“. The idea of having a game, where you can combine tactics to always make a turn on the game against your enemy was and still is of high interest. I am also thinking about stuff like the “All in” at a poker game: you can always be the matchmaker and win epic or fail miserably. Ok, enough of the theory.
“An Accident in Paradise” is a 2-player space-fighting game for iPod Touch and iPhone. You play with another human on the iPod as a playboard. The bullet strength is determined by the time-interval between the single shots. Stronger shots extinguish weaker shots. There is no optimal strategy to win, but you have to examine the enemies moves to decide, what works best for you to hit the enemy ship. Unfortunately there is nothing to play on the web right know, because I made this on the iPod Touch device only. I am heavily thinking about polishing the game a little bit and ship it with the Apple App Store. But this won’t be within the next 3 weeks.
Ah, I had a great inspiration this weekend by Sven Väth’s first album “An Accident in Paradise” from 1993. I can still recommend this 17 year old record much, much, much. Here is the title-track “An Accident in Paradise“, but for more popular I suppose is “L’Esperanza“.
Global Game Jam Link: http://globalgamejam.org/2011/accident-paradise
PS: Later this week I will post about other interesting submissions of the Global Game Jam Cologne. Thanks again to the Cologne Game Lab to make this great event happen once again!
This is a guest-post by Brice Morrison from The Game Prodigy.
As a game developer, which of these sounds more desirable to you?
- A really fun 5 minute game that took ten hours to make
- A really fun 5 minute game that took one hour to make
Assuming that they are equally enjoyable to the same group of people, most of us would go with the one hour version. Sure, in nine more hours there is a lot that can be done. You can add more artwork, add social aspects, add multiplayer or extra modes. But if we are just focusing on fun, which I believe tends to max out on a relatively small scale, then time of of the essence, and if you only have an hour or so, you want to put it in the right place. As game developers, our time is very valuable.
Screenshot: Momiga
At The Game Prodigy Blog I found a posting, that analyses the success-criterias of the “sandbox-game” Minecraft. Indeed, I think this is only a starting-point for a deeper analysis, but at least it is a good a starting-point!
This are the rules, they figured out:
“Catering to the Prolific 1%, and making sure that the Sandbox has a lot of Sand.”
Read the whole article.
Unfortunately making games is much, much work. Execution takes for more time, that having great ideas. But if you ever stuck on having cool ideas (for example at one of the “make a game as fast-as-you-can” events), let’s use this tool! With the game idea generator you can generate hundreds of cool game ideas in no time: Just press the button for having another one! Why not make a “calm, music game combined with sports game, set in space.” Or go with “ugly, boring, adventure game combined with FPS, set in a slum”? Hard choice..
Wow, I can feel the creativity floating around here and there suddenly now! I don’t know, who came up with this idea first, but following this thread at the cocos2d-forum and the Streamingcolour-generator, this thing was inspired by the Creative Unblock generator and made first by Streamingcolour. Struct made a similar one, that seems to be a rewrite of a flash-based version, he made two years ago. (Thanks Nico for the hint.)
“Beet Fleet” is the name of a work, that was made Filip Kostovic as a result of the Bachelor course of studies Game Design 2010 at the HdK Zürich. The sort of game uses two turntables as input devices, that controlles the action on the z- and x-axis. The visuals are abstract and strong, with parallels to Tron or Rez. The longer I think about this, the more it seems, that Beat Fleet is a consistent extension of the basic idea of Rez, taking real “analog” hardware controller into account. Will DJs keep on playing games in the future at work? Also check out the other works, they all look interesting. (via)
