{"id":103,"date":"2008-02-18T20:39:04","date_gmt":"2008-02-18T19:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/index.php\/2008\/02\/18\/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-1\/"},"modified":"2008-02-18T20:50:09","modified_gmt":"2008-02-18T19:50:09","slug":"gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2008\/02\/18\/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-1\/","title":{"rendered":"GDC08: Scattershots of play &#8211; potential of indie games &#8211; 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Summary<\/h4>\n<p>A very broad range of ideas on what should shape game design at a fundamental level. I greatly enjoyed this for the way it jumped to a bunch of related but competing ideals and perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>Also very interesting for including a 20-minute section on How to Design for Alternate Reality Games (not billed as such, but that&#8217;s what it was: a theory on how to think when designing ARGs).<\/p>\n<h4>Sections<\/h4>\n<p>Section 1: Flow, and how to evaluate games<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/index.php\/2008\/02\/18\/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-2\/\">Section 2: Games break down into inputs and outputs<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/index.php\/2008\/02\/18\/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-3\/\">Section 3: Theories of design for Alternate Reality Games<\/a><\/p>\n<h4>Speakers<\/h4>\n<p>[1] Kellee Santiago<br \/>\n[2] John Mak<br \/>\n[3] Pekko Koskinen<\/p>\n<h4>Section 1: Flow, and how to evaluate games<\/h4>\n<p>How do we measure games?<\/p>\n<p>Katamari Damacy (KD) valued as &#8220;a few hours of short, sweet entertainment&#8221;, but also &#8220;something you go back to again and again&#8221;. How does that makes sense?<\/p>\n<p>I spent more time playing KD than God of War (GoW), but the latter was $60 as opposed to $20.<\/p>\n<p>Is time the way we should be measuring the value of a game?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/FlOw\">Flow<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tried to design Flow as something you COULD play over and over again, but would potentially play very differently every time. Many players didn&#8217;t notice this because of the strong simple central gameplay.<\/p>\n<p>[2]<\/p>\n<p>Play value may be more important in terms of &#8220;how much longer afterwards you continue to remember \/ think about it&#8221;, like books and films that make you go away and think afterwards, long after you&#8217;re no longer experiencing the entertainment.<\/p>\n<p>[3]<\/p>\n<p>How you&#8217;ve been changed by reading a book is a way of measuring its value\/effect, but this is something we don&#8217;t do with games.<\/p>\n<p>This is sad, as games have much more potential to affect players.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe its necessary to talk about the number of horus of gameplay, and the replayability, to market and sell game, but I don&#8217;t think it has any value for the design of games.<\/p>\n<p>[2]<\/p>\n<p>You play a game differently by knowing what&#8217;s going to happen next, so replayability actually is very important, potentially. e.g. why are you able to study and re-study a great book over and over again, how do you not get bored \/ seen it all after the first few times?<\/p>\n<p>[1]<\/p>\n<p>KD made me think how even we in the industry don&#8217;t place enough value on the &#8220;meaningful content&#8221; &#8211; the fact that we only set a price of $20 suggests we&#8217;re not thinking it ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>[3]<\/p>\n<p>If we approach the player as &#8220;was he entertained? Was he feeling good afterwards, was he taking anything in?&#8221;, with design I think we have to look sometimes at the ACTUAL effects that took place &#8211; what skills did the player experience, what did they learn while playing?<\/p>\n<p>[2]<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think about the player too much when I design games, but that&#8217;s because I guess I just design for myself, mostly.<\/p>\n<p>[3]<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting thought that you can make world design part of the game design. Designing the game-world so that the rewards are integrated into it. World could be small-enviroment, I mean it abstractly.<\/p>\n<p>[2]<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s just another tool, non-intrinsic rewards. It gives some extra meaning to the game. e.g. Geometery Wars (GW) uses points to show that it&#8217;s about perfecting a certain skill.<\/p>\n<p>[1]<\/p>\n<p>Extrinsic rewards either tap into Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or into competitiveness.<\/p>\n<p>If that&#8217;s what you WANT to tap into, go for extrinsics, otherwise you have to think more about what exactly the rewards are encourgaging in the player.<\/p>\n<p>[3]<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t actually think how many rewardlike elements there in the game. For instance, in GW the size of explosopns., the graphic effects, are rewards in themselves. The glorious mega explosions are a special reward too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary A very broad range of ideas on what should shape game design at a fundamental level. I greatly enjoyed this for the way it jumped to a bunch of related but competing ideals and perspectives. Also very interesting for including a 20-minute section on How to Design for Alternate Reality Games (not billed as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}