First Day GDC:
First Day GDC:
At the new hotel no wi-fi so I'm writing this in the XO 'write activity' and hoping I can copy paste it tomorrow.
Here's the first day report of the Independent Games Summit:
I'll skip the more businessy sessions and just give the highlights...
Scattershots of Play - Potential of Indy Games
Three game designers including Toronto's Jonathan Mak creator Everyday Shooter discussed issues in game design that have been on there minds lately. Some interesting tidbits on intrinsic rewards (eg. the joy and feeling of accomplishment you get from solving a puzzle) vs extrinsic rewards (the keen new outfit you unlocked for solving it) which seems to be an emerging hot topic these days. Jonathan had an interesting point about the importance of art and sound to games. There's a common practice in discussions of game design to try to separate the formal system of a game from it's art and sound design, treating the later as extraneous to the core essence of the game. However that visual and aural feedback is really essential to what many games are. Guitar Hero and Rythem Tenganko (sp?) are good examples of this. Great games that if art and music were stripped out would amount to a simple count down to a button push. Interesting stuff.
Evolving Aquaria
Aquaria looks like a pretty amazing 2D under water fantasy exploration/adventure game, I've seen screenshots here and there but after this presentation I really want to give it a try. It's an interesting case of an indy game that was clearly too ambicious for a first time commercial project, ran into several creative dead ends but still managed to come out in the end. Also hand painted 2D art = Yummy.
Unique Knobs for Indy Games:
The guys behind N+ (more Toronto locals!) advocated a game design approach where game designers would start by creating a new bit of technology and then find a way to leverage that new tech into a new game design. Examples given were Everyday Shooter with it's procedural graphics, N+ which used 3D colision systems in a 2D game allowing for more complex 2D level topography and portal with it's um... portals.
Postmortem: Pixeljunk Series:
I don't know if it's just me, but the most exciting thing going on in games right now seems to be the downloadable content on Xbox360 and PS3. The Pixeljunk series is a bunch of neat 2D PS3 download games so far, a racing game, a desktop tower defense style game with a hand drawn esthetic and a physics based procedural art a music platformer which looked like an animated playable trendy tshirt, all siluets and twisty plants. Neat stuff.
I ended the day eating at a fancyish restraunt and getting a peak at the world of silicon valley dotcom venture captial. Verdict, pretty weird but also interesting. Neat people and ideas.
At the new hotel no wi-fi so I'm writing this in the XO 'write activity' and hoping I can copy paste it tomorrow.
Here's the first day report of the Independent Games Summit:
I'll skip the more businessy sessions and just give the highlights...
Scattershots of Play - Potential of Indy Games
Three game designers including Toronto's Jonathan Mak creator Everyday Shooter discussed issues in game design that have been on there minds lately. Some interesting tidbits on intrinsic rewards (eg. the joy and feeling of accomplishment you get from solving a puzzle) vs extrinsic rewards (the keen new outfit you unlocked for solving it) which seems to be an emerging hot topic these days. Jonathan had an interesting point about the importance of art and sound to games. There's a common practice in discussions of game design to try to separate the formal system of a game from it's art and sound design, treating the later as extraneous to the core essence of the game. However that visual and aural feedback is really essential to what many games are. Guitar Hero and Rythem Tenganko (sp?) are good examples of this. Great games that if art and music were stripped out would amount to a simple count down to a button push. Interesting stuff.
Evolving Aquaria
Aquaria looks like a pretty amazing 2D under water fantasy exploration/adventure game, I've seen screenshots here and there but after this presentation I really want to give it a try. It's an interesting case of an indy game that was clearly too ambicious for a first time commercial project, ran into several creative dead ends but still managed to come out in the end. Also hand painted 2D art = Yummy.
Unique Knobs for Indy Games:
The guys behind N+ (more Toronto locals!) advocated a game design approach where game designers would start by creating a new bit of technology and then find a way to leverage that new tech into a new game design. Examples given were Everyday Shooter with it's procedural graphics, N+ which used 3D colision systems in a 2D game allowing for more complex 2D level topography and portal with it's um... portals.
Postmortem: Pixeljunk Series:
I don't know if it's just me, but the most exciting thing going on in games right now seems to be the downloadable content on Xbox360 and PS3. The Pixeljunk series is a bunch of neat 2D PS3 download games so far, a racing game, a desktop tower defense style game with a hand drawn esthetic and a physics based procedural art a music platformer which looked like an animated playable trendy tshirt, all siluets and twisty plants. Neat stuff.
I ended the day eating at a fancyish restraunt and getting a peak at the world of silicon valley dotcom venture captial. Verdict, pretty weird but also interesting. Neat people and ideas.