Guest Post: Learning Through Games

How much thinking is allowed in games? What many don’t know is that we think a lot when we play video games. Whenever we make a decision, face a beast, or strategize, we are thinking.
Many don’t know that thinking/ learning is the primary reason for fun. Learning may not sound like a lot of fun, as school pops into one’s mind, but the learning in school isn’t the learning you do in games – or in life, for that matter.

People play games much like toddlers go through life – we examine a situation, predict the outcome of a certain action, test it, and examine the results. Whether it’s trying to bring down a boss in Super Mario Galaxy 2 or releasing a balloon into the sky, we are still learning.

Games have been testing learning and thought more and more lately. People have obtained headaches after playing games like Braid or Portal. Challenges in these games require the gamer to think and learn more than ever before, and people have fun – learning is fun.

But if learning is fun, why is school so boring? Because we don’t learn in school – we cram, memorize, and follow an algorithm… that is not learning! I am here to propose that if school was set up more like a video game, school would actually be fun, and there would be no divide between smart and stupid people.

The first order of business is making the material matter to the player – making the material important. Good grades can be important, as they avoid consequences, regret, and a whole truck-load of negative feelings. A student may be motivated by grades, but that does not matter – a student must be self-motivated in order to succeed in school (or just have a skill set for following sets and cramming irrelevant information into one’s head, the modern definition for smart).

How do we make learning important to the student? The answer: by simply having the student learn organically. That means, you learn by doing. When humans learn, we use the scientific method (even though we might not be aware of it). First, we notice a problem or challenge, like portal puzzleneeding to get from one side of a room to the other without landing in the acid between the two sides. Next, we hypothesize based on previously learned information, thinking, “Maybe if I put a portal on this side and that side, I will end up on the other side.” Then, we test; we shoot the portals and jump through. Finally, we analyze the results and what we hypothesized (it worked). At that point, the player has learned – one can transport to a new area by laying portals on opposite walls. Even if it didn’t working, the player learns that the converse is true, bringing him/her closer to the answer.

At that moment when you find yourself on the other side of the room, chemicals of pleasure are released into your brain, rewarding you for the mission accomplished and motivating you to learn even more. After learning about the portals, you now have this concept tucked inside your head for the rest of the game. This is something that you won’t forget, because you have learned it by doing.

How can we use this method, for instance, to teach a child how to add two numbers? We can make a game! Why? Because a good game can organically teach and make learning the information important and fun.

I know that about half of my readers just rolled their eyes. “Educational games are boring!” Mostbad example of learning educational games are boring because they didn’t do it right! A game that simply puts two numbers on the screen and tells you to enter the result is not organically teaching. You can do that in real life! Games like these do not utilize what video games have to offer.

Let’s imagine a medieval game, in which the protagonist is doing the usual thing – defending villagers and defeating evil. We can throw in a learning challenge that teaches something very applicable in the real world. Let’s say you need to cross the river, but an obstacle is keeping you from crossing, like the sailor can’t figure out how much to cost for both the protagonist and his sidekick, or whatever. Suddenly, knowing addition becomes important, crucial to the player’s progress in the game. When given a reachable problem in an open environment to experiment and apply the scientific method, as well as a good streaming dose of feedback, the player will figure it out for himself/herself.

This can apply to all subjects on all levels. For an English crossing river gameexample, let’s the player must crack a riddle written on a secret cave, but the riddle has a word the player does not know. At this point, the player will either look up the word and apply his/her new knowledge (good), or by cheating, guess, and realize what the word meant later (great!). The player will have a better chance of remembering this word in the long term, as he/she discovered it by doing (not by repeating the word and definition a hundred times before the test).

These are not the strongest examples (revealing those would reveal my ideas), but I can tell you that the most important thing is making the learning crucial to progress in a game, and there are ways to do it without tacking on lame puzzles (trust me). It is very important not to add foolish puzzles that, for some reason, demand that you know what 8(3+4) equals. This area, creating challenges and setting up mechanics in a way that makes experimentation and solving fun and organic is the most challenging and important, but also what could drive games like these to revolutionize everything.

Education fits very well within video games, but for many reasons. Video games also have a great learning curve. What you learn at the beginning is constantly tested, the player is required to build new concepts on top of older ones, and in doing so, can face new, tougher problemszelda puzzle (does this not sound exactly like Legend of Zelda?). They’re even set up similarly – Challenge (problem), level (chapter), boss (test), final boss (final exam). The only difference is that in school, you have to learn before you do – taking notes, reading a lesson, etc. In a video game, you learn and retain all this by yourself. The reason why books come with lessons before the practice problems is that the student has no way of learning the material by doing the problems (no feedback, boring, and not motivating).

It is my hope that people begin to see beyond the criticisms like violence and addictiveness of video games, and see the great opportunities in them, like the ability to facilitate learning. I envision a modern education system that does not teach, but rather modern learning homeworkfacilitates the learning of students through video games (digital interactive learning environments – DILEs). I see a future where students look forward to school (crazy, right?), and not see it as a five-day crawl between weekends. Video games even propose to fix many other broken aspects in school, like the focus on following a series of steps (plugging in numbers, which, honestly, computers are better at) and lack of creative problem solving, doing something without knowing how to ahead of time (the thing we need most for twenty-first century jobs).

We are facing a complete revolution of school, video games, jobs, and life. The possibilities are endless, and there are many ways to facilitate learning through video games (I’m holding onto my secret ideas until I am in a situation in which I can make them a reality). Think about it.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

Guest Post: Rethinking War in the FPS

Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield have shown that war games, done right, can be amazingly fun and wildly addicting. They do this because they are designed well, and the concept of it all opens up a lot of fun possibilities for the designers to work with. But through the many iterations, with many more to come, and a lack of emphasis on story, designers have dulled the terribleness of war.

That is not a good thing. Just to make sure we’re clear here, I have no problem with games focusing on war. I just feel that the with light-heartedness some companies put into their games, they are missing something incredibly moving.

First, let’s put war into perspective. In war, multiple countries ask or force millions of men and women to fight one another with weapons that blow holes in people. Millions of young lives come to an end for the better of the country.

In war, people go through traumatic experiences. People lose limbs, are given quick surgery so they can get back up to help, watch friends die, and go through absolute hell. The lucky ones come back, and the absolute luckiest come back in one piece. Some, after war, cannot sleep. Others cannot be in public. Some go through flashbacks, completely losing grip on reality.

Words cannot describe how terrible it is, a lot worse than the armed forces commercials make it sound, not because of the physical demand, but because of the psychological torture one experiences on the battlefield. How much of this do video games take into account? Not much.

When you play Modern Warfare 2, you do not think about any of this. The story is more like a James Bond movie than a war story. There are many things designers can do, if they are willing to step outside the ditch they have dug out for war games, to refresh and make right the genre. We need to reexamine the blueprints of the modern war first person shooter.

First, designers need to change the way they show their enemies. When you infiltrate a camp in a usual game today, you are made to believe that everyone you are about to kill is a dirty, rotten, cocky scumbag, as if that justifies killing them. The designer is telling you it is morally acceptable to kill these people, using some of the same methods that wrestling-writers use to make you root for a certain person, the good guy.

The designer should avoid giving you these thoughts. The player should know that he is probably killing respectable people, men AND women, who probably have loving families at home like you. Instead of doing this, designers have twisted them into the generic “bad guys”, either to make the player believe in his cause or to make what the player is doing morally right, somehow.

So, I want to see the occasional enemy pull out a picture of their family after being shot. I want to see the youth in their face. I want to see both sexes on the battlefield. Before infiltrating, I want to watch from afar as the “bad guy” picks up a piece of trash, or horses around with his/her friends.

Secondly, the overall story, the war, needs to be a little less cut and dry. In Modern Warfare 2, the good and the bad is carved out very bluntly. Sure, there is betrayal and going undercover, but I am talking the issues – the reason you’re fighting.

It should be possible that your country is wrong. The right-wrong question in the game should be open to moral debate. Maybe there are rumors that you’re country is fighting for the money, not for the good of people. By leaving this question open, and removing the black and white approach on all levels, we allow the player to question the morality of it all on his/her own. This is one of the things you think about in war – am I fighting for the right and just side? What would it be like to fight for a side that people didn’t support (Vietnam?).

Also, designers should put more focus on the character, or, if the design is aiming to put you in the role of a generic person, you. When you are running through a dark jungle, you should see things in the darkness. When you are in an intense situation, your aim should be trembling. Your charcter is not a superhero – he’s just a regular guy in an extreme situation.

If the designers choose to have a protagonist with a strong story, we should learn his/her backstory. Seeing a picture of his kids might make me be a little more hesitant to running through the front steps of enemy territory rambo style. Every soldier has a story, and experiencing it can fill a gap long present in war games and motivate the player to do what is right, to survive, or whatever.

Things need to seem out of control. Checkmarks kill the player’s feeling of uncertainty. You know exactly where to go at all times in today’s games. What if you are given only a generic location in which to search for something, or you’ve been told something wrong. You want to keep the gamer on the edge. He/she should never feel completely comfortable with what is happening.

Finally, gamers should witness some of the horrific events that real soldiers go through. Seeing a dead family sacrificed in order to get to the bad guy would be a life-changing experience. Actually playing an accidental role in such a thing would make you ask even more questions. Is what I am doing right? The use of moral choice, the same concept used in games like Bioshock and Infamous, would work very well in this genre. By the end, it should be up to the player as to whether he/she wants to fight or not.

Game designers need to get out of the clichés they have dugout for themselves. The designer, instead of sticking to the usual formula, should experiment and try new things. Pull a Metroid, when we realize we’d been playing as a girl. Make the player question something he/she has not questioned before, in previous games and in real life. Even above that, developers should encourage innovation and change if the designers believe it will better the game.

The designer should take the gamer through what it means and feels like to be a soldier. The player should be questioning his/her actions throughout the game, and making believable enemies and a complex story can help this. You should see the psychological effects of war on your character, and at times, the game could become into a sort of survival horror game. More uncertainty would also help add to the game, both in ethics and in tasks. The game should be throwing things at you to make you reconsider your actions in the game and your beliefs in the world.

This being said, I am aware that too much of this could drive the player from the game, pushing the horrors of war a little too much. When you picture this different kind of war fps, you shouldn’t picture running through the jungle, over carcasses from the school you just bombed. You should picture something little more gradual.

When the game starts, you could have no reason to question anything your government is doing. In many stories of war (Red Badge of Courage), the character goes into the experience looking forward to the heroic adventure he/she is about to go through. This would be a perfect metaphor as to what the player pictures as he/she puts the game into the drive.

The game could start like the regular war shooter, with obvious good and bad. As the game progresses, smaller things might occur to make the player think. Seeing a friend’s legs get blown up, seeing things moving through the trees, helping an injured child, beginning to realize the corruption on top, and beginning to understand how terrible war is could make the player think.

Combining this with a good, thought-provoking story, including the slow realization that your country Is doing bad things, could set up the player for the ultimate moral dilemma in a game. Do you decide to go with your country’s plan, which will kill many innocent lives, or do you stand up against it?

I do realize the large conflict a game like this would cause. Morally, I think it is okay to portray war through a video game, especially if the designer makes it a goal to force the gamer to reexamine assumptions about war and life. In fact, I thinking making a war game like this would be more responsible if anything, as you would better show what war really is. This may be considered bad, but it would better than portraying war as a heroic trek, not taking into account the death and destruction. This has been a hot topic since Six Days in Falluja, but I hope I’ve represented the case well.

These are some things to think about while you are preparing to make another general rehash of what’s already been done. I believe we can combine a genre that many see as thoughtless and all gameplay, with the ability games have to make you think and open your mind to create something that will shine as one of the most respected games to date, while keeping the gameplay fun.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

Guest Post: Design Your Game — Ideas

Ever wanted to design your own game? Most people who are interested in game design have had an idea for their own game, but where do we get these ideas? How can we make them better? This chapter in the Design Your Game series will concern ideas and where to look.
Ideas come from everywhere. They can come from other video games, other forms of entertainment, or just life. Shigeru Miyamoto once had the idea for the game Pikmin when he was weeding his yard!

If you are looking for a game idea, just live your life, and whenever you do something, ask, “Could that be a game?” This is part of the game designer mentality. Game designers are always looking for new sources of fun in the world around them. Mowing the lawn might not be a very fun game, but what about the things you are mowing? The bugs might be fleeing for their life beneath your very nose. What would it be like to be a bug in the suburbs? And that is how the process goes.

Many games are thought of by playing other games, but you have to be very careful, because if your idea and soon-to-be game is too much like the preexisting game, it may get lost in the shuffle and be seen as a knock-off.

You need to be constantly examining the living and nonliving things around you, things on the news, daily activities, and using your imagination, much like Shigeru Miyamoto did, to create a solid game idea.

Now, once you have a game idea, don’t stop. At this point, you should write NOTHING down, but keep it all in your head. Think of new possibilities within your game idea. What if the weeds I pulled were creatures? Maybe there were different kinds. Some might like water? Some could be fast? Strong? Maybe you have to collect them and use them to complete challenges. Or what if they followed you around and you could use them in large quantities? But what about a story… Why are you doing this… Maybe you want to get back home, because there was an earthquake while you were out of town? Or maybe you’re on a new planet as an astronaut! Maybe you have to explore the planet… or, better yet, you have to find the pieces to your broken spaceship!!!
See how a simple idea of weed creatures can mutate into an entire game! This process, of course, took place over longer periods of time, but until you think you have a solid concept which includes basic gameplay (mechanics and challenge types) and a basic story, do not right anything down – nothing is permanent, and once you write it down, you will hesitate to change it — TRUST ME. Mull it over in your head.

Take some time to do that, and write down everything you thought of when your concept has met the requirements I gave. If you want to submit your concept for my feedback (I will not steal it – I promise), please do so below. You can even choose to have it have a chance to be published in this series as an example (you can choose not to though). Also, unless you are very lucky, it is going to take a long time for you to get to the point to write it down, so don’t rush. People who already have ideas: try to evolve them if you can, make sure you have no gaps, and make sure it isn’t already a game. If you want a really good chance of getting it published (but do so anyways if you can, as it will help me criticize it), enter how your idea evolved and where you got it from in the coments-submission section of the site.

Good Luck!

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

The Developer of Attack of the Paper Zombies Talks About His Process For Innovative Game Design

Alex talks about his process for innovative game design

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/rocket-bear-games-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Free Casual Connect Europe Videos Online…

Hey folks,

The Casual Connect organization was nice enough to make the Casual Connect Europe conference videos free for people…you can check them out here…
http://europe.casualconnect.org/content.html

Enjoy 🙂

Guest Post: Defining the Art of Games

The question of games being an art form has ensued for quite a while, but things really began to boil after movie critic Roger Ebert’s comments on the topic. Since that time, every artist, person who cares about games, and person who despises games has pitched their two cents on the subject. The polarized reaction to the debate shows perfectly the misunderstanding people have on the industry and where it’s going. Some have compared games to comic books, some have compared God of War to the Mona Lisa, and some have dismissed the importance of the debate altogether.

Out of the gate, I want to convey to you just how important this topic is. If we decide (and prove with our games) that video games are an art form, the industry is going to go down a completely different path than if we decide games are to be defined as the childish activity so many people see today (many argue that is what happened to comic books). I am not saying that if games are art, every game twenty years from now is going to be an interactive story like Heavy Rain, and that there will be no room in the market for your Halo or Gears of War. In fact, I don’t even see Heavy Rain as art! Rather, the industry will be very balanced, much like the film industry; both Inception and King’s Speech were nominated for picture of the year, and millions of people both watched and enjoyed both films. But we do not need to copy other art forms’ definitions and label them games’. An art game doesn’t mean a game with lots of metaphors, cutscenes, and no action (or fun). That is not what makes games art.

In many people’s defense of video games as an art, they have cited things such as the beautiful cities of Assassin’s Creed, the brilliant writing of Red Dead: Redemption, and the meaningful stories of Mass Effect 2. They have stated that, yes, it takes only one artist to make a painting, but sometimes tens (if not hundreds) to make a game. They have stated that while a movie usually has under one thousand lines of dialogue, Mass Effect 2 had 130,000. Yes, it takes artists and writers (both artists in their own fields) to make video games, but that doesn’t make video games art! I saw a painting in the museum level of Uncharted 2, and while the painting was a work of art, that didn’t make the game art! These arguments come from people (many of us, by the looks of it) who don’t understand what art is, which is understandable, because the idea of a new art form is so alien to us. The newest form of art (besides comic books, which are not considered art by many) is the film, and that was nearly one hundred years ago. It is time we looked deep into what art is, and what it means.

The main criteria of an art form – it must interact with a person’s deep self, including both senses and emotions, in a way specific to that medium. Paintings and photographs interact through pictures with a person’s emotions, but mostly sight, as one’s eyes move across the varying lines, giving an overall sense of beauty as the colors, shapes, and lines create balance, proportion, rhythm, unity, emphasis, etc. Literature interacts through the written word with a person’s imagery and many emotions. Music, through sound, plays off of our sense of rhythm and beat, along with sometimes telling a story and striking a chord with our emotions. Food interacts through taste and smell, among other things. Film interacts, much like photography, only with moving shots, series of pictures. So what is the point of games?

Video games are not solely what you see, hear, taste, smell, feel, or think – the point of video games is what you do in them – they interact through play. The gameplay, an interaction model between mechanics, your actions, and the game’s response are how games, this new art form, interact with the player. This is hard to visualize at first, as nearly all games are not in any sense of the word art, and many of those that are weakly and minimally match the description.

Recently, the game Heavy Rain was hailed as being the most artistic game to date and the grandest example of what games can be, but for what reason? Yes, the game had a good story, and yes, it looked good, but these things are nonessential as to whether a game is a work of art or not. That is measured by what you do in the game, but what you did was so heavily restricted due to the story that was trying to be told. If anything, you are supposed to base the story off the game (gameplay), not the gameplay off the story! Upon saying this, the game did make some progress to art. The drug problems one of the characters faced required you to succumb to addiction was interesting, and forced you to see something, drug addiction, that can only be truly seen through the eyes of an addict, THROUGH GAMEPLAY. And the game did push the boundaries in terms of stories that games can tell, with themes of child abduction, prostitution, drug use, etc. And I am not eating my words here – the story doesn’t make art. But for games to be an art form, there cannot be limitations placed on them, dictating what they can/can’t cover (Michelangelo did not have the Italian Censorship Board hide certain parts of his creation). At points, I think the game took itself too seriously, and throughout, the game was too focused on story and being artistic. But why am I addressing this game? I do not want doomsayers to point to this game and shout, “Every game will be like this in twenty years!” When I say games can be art, I do not mean they will be boring (in terms of gameplay)! There are some really great examples of games as an art form – some of which you may not have considered before.

The game Missile Command, released in 1980, is one of the greatest examples of meaningful gameplay. Escapist’s Extra Credits recently did a show on this topic. You are given three bases, and must defend six cities. You must defend these cities and your bases from the nuclear bombs raining down from above. There comes a point when you must decide how to play – do you focus your efforts on defending one city, on saving humanity? Do you try your hardest to protect everyone, no matter the risk? Do you value a base, needed to defend all of the cities, over one city? The moral dilemma isn’t presented as a good/evil choice to be solved with a selection, rather you play it out, sometimes unaware at first that the game’s strategy is actually how you solve the dilemma. The game has a lot to say about the destruction of war and inevitability of death, all though play, not graphics, sound, or story. Its purpose could not have been conveyed like this through the written word, music, or picture. This is a work which could only have been made as a game.

Text adventure Photopia, released in 1999, emphasizes the innocence of a young girl through play (***SPOILERS***). In one level, you play as the girl’s father, answering her curious questions about life, the universe, and everything. In another level, you play as a character in a story the young girl is telling a child while babysitting, playing through a story only a child could tell – a beach made of gold coins, etc. The first level of the game was played through the POV of a man in the back of a truck being driven by a drunk man, before it crashes. Later, you play as an unknown man in a hospital, after surviving a car accident, learning that a girl also in the car was killed. In the pivotal level, you play as a man driving the girl home after she babysat you young child, and, in my experience, I realized as I was driving that the girl was going to die while I was driving. I did the obvious thing: I entered “brake”. I halted in the middle of an intersection. A car slammed into me, killing the girl while I would survive. The guilt I felt at that point is unrivaled for me today, even in real life. That guilt could only be felt through the art of the game, and the anger I felt toward the drunk driver, who destroyed the young girl whose innocence was built upon the entire game, is only rivaled through actual events. This game is not a story, nor a song, nor a movie – it is a game, and only a game.

A more popular example of art in games is Half Life 2, released in 2004.You begin the game in City 17, just one of the many places dominated by the totalitarian rule. In the beginning, you meet people who have gone insane. You watch as a guard beats a person, and if you interfere, you are next to be beaten. You are defenseless and have no weapon. Walking around a city square, everyone you talk to is afraid, hushing you, glancing behind themselves for cameras. A guard forces you to pick up a can and throw it away. And in the middle of the square: a huge video screen, broadcasting the leader filling minds with propaganda. On your return to the square, after starting a revolution, a group of the very people who were too afraid to speak to you tears down the video screen, cheering as the dust settles, and later joining you. The people under the chains of the rule and their own fear start out on their own and unmotivated, but later group together and help you fight off their suppressors, a team. This is just one of the things in the game that shine through the game through play (I could do a whole article on just this one game as a piece of art).

All of these games are games. They are not stories told as games, or movies gameified. They are games, and they all influence people’s thought/emotion/senses. They are all art, and there are many more (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and Silent Hill come to mind first). But what about the games that aren’t art? What about your Call of Duty’s and Super Mario Galaxy’s? These games are not art, but they are still great games and they are still very fun. It is vital that people know that games can be art, but there is no way that all games will be art at any point in the future. Just look at other forms of art. Star Wars is the favorite movie franchise of millions (it’s probably the most loved movie franchise ever), but I do not consider it art. Most movies are not art, but that doesn’t make Star Wars any worse than Schindler’s List! Both kinds of movies can coexist in the same medium, and the same is true for games.

And to game designers, the artists of the video game medium: design your game almost solely with what the player will do in mind. The story, music, graphics, etc. all improve the game, but do not make it. Heavy Rain was obviously designed with the story in mean, leading to boring and meaningless (at times) gameplay. Designers can come up with a great idea for a game system through an idea for a story or setting, but if the gameplay just serves as an excuse to make that story a game and cannot survive on its own, there is no real point to the game, whether the designers are trying to make art or just fun. For this reason, I believe that Heavy Rain should have been a novel or a film (probably a novel), as the gameplay did not really enhance the experience – it is like any other movie-game, only with a higher budget.

This extreme focus on the DO in games, on the definition of games, opens the doors wide open for new kinds of games that we have yet to discover past the clichés of many recent games and of works of other media. Before making a game, ask yourself whether the game would be bettered by the fact that it is a game, that the game is a game, and could not exist as any other form of entertainment.

So yes, games can be art, but no, not all games are, and we have just begun our course of discovering just how PLAY can be utilized to do things that no other media can, to express ideas that have never been so clearly presented, to make us feel and think things that we have not even imagined yet. The future is bright for the medium with the interaction of the highest potential – not words, not sounds, not movement, not taste, not visuals, but PLAY. Now excuse me, I’ve got some Bulletstorm to play.

Dylan Woodbury lives with his family in Southern California. He runs http://dtwgames.com, a game design website that posts intriguing new articles every week, both beginner’s tutorials and theoretical ideas. He also has an interest in writing, and is planning his first novel. His primary goal is to change the world through video games.

Paranormal Activity: Making Augmented Reality Games for the iPhone…

Here’s the first interview from GDC 2011…an interview with one of the founders of Ogmento…he talks about developing social, mobile, augmented-reality games…

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/ogmento-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Mobile Game Community Project: Whatever Quest

At the Game Developers Conference, there was a whole summit on Smart Phones and I got a chance to talk to a fair amount of mobile game developers. I think it’s interesting to see that mobile may play an important part for game developers.

Last year, the podcast show tried to do a community game project. It didn’t get as much feedback from the community as hoped…so this year, we’ll try something different. We’ll focus on a mobile game and see how that goes.

The community game this year is called “Whatever Quest” ….and can be found on the Android market. It uses the sensor systems of smart phones to drive the game. “Whatever Quest” turns everyday life into a quest.

In the next few weeks, I’ll go into more details about the game design and look for feedback on ways to enhance it 🙂

“Whatever Quest” is meant to be a public service project…with the aim to get people to use it for their everyday activities.

You can download the game in the Android Market. Right now, it has a one-star review. It’s not perfect, but gotta start somewhere 🙂

Design Suggestions for Online MMOs, Part 2

A discussion about techniques and strategies to promote your MMO 🙂

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/i-play-fb-part-3.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Design Suggestions for Online MMOs, Part I

A discussion about techniques and strategies to promote your MMO 🙂

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/i-play-fb-part-2.mp3

Or listen to it here…