Emergent Play

CANCELLEDExperimental Gameplay Sessions

michelle — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:37:57 +0000

One of the GDC’s staple presentations has been cancelled this year. The Experimental Gameplay Sessions showcases new and experimental games from indie to AAA developers. Some of the past highlights have included experimental prototypes from World of Goo’s creator Kyle Gabler, Keita Takahashi’s Katamari Damacy, and Valve’s Portal. Last year we saw The Unfinished Swan, Shadow Physics, current work and prototypes from I Wish I Were The Moon creator Daniel Benmergui, and a series of experiments from Jenova Chen and Nick Clark of thatgamecompany demonstrating early spacial movement trials for the game Flower. It is safe to say that the EGS has been one of GDC’s most popular and informative sessions for the past nine consecutive years.

I have been unable to find an official statement from GDC organizers about this cancellation but I have my theories. A forum post on TIGSouce leads me to the conclusion that with the explosion of indie developers last year, art games and experimental games have become too mainstream for the session to continue. With the advance of game engines like Blender and Unity, and sites like Kongregate, more small-time developers are swimming with the big fish. Add in sweeping rounds of layoffs from the established yet recession-hit companies and you have the perfect storm for a surge in well-executed video game originality and creativity. That being said, why kill the session quietly at the peak of its popularity and only a few weeks before GDC starts. Are this year’s indie developers too “mainstream” to be recognized at the EGS? If the EGS organizers believe that the session needs a revamp to remain at the cutting edge of video game creation, then by all means let it take place, but not at the expense of the very audience that has been its support for nearly a decade.

See you at GDC 2010

michelle — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:35:37 +0000

I’ve just made my plans to attend a few days of the 2010 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. I’m very excited to be attending this year after my amazing experience at the conference last year as an IGDA scholarship winner. Read about the 2009 trip in my Big Hadron Games GDC post.

Perplex City Starter Kit

michelle — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:00:35 +0000

I picked up a Perplex City starter kit yesterday. I got it at Drexoll Games, a fantastic little board game shop that happens to be across the street from my apartment, much to the dismay of my wallet. The pack contains:

-Issue zero of Perplex magazine
-A ten-track CD: Created by the reclusive Perplexian musician, Viard.
-A Perplex City plastic wallet for card collection
-A Perplex City tourist guide pamphlet
-Two packs of Perplex City cards
-A sheet of Perplex City stickers

Since the riddle of Perplex City has been solved and the prize claimed, the kits for the ARG (Alternate Reality Game) have been discontinued (the clerk at Drexoll was kind enough to sell me this kit for $5 instead of the regular $33) and the cards are hard to find. While fans are eager for the next installment of the game, it looks like it won’t be forthcoming anytime soon. A message on the company’s website says:

“We know that we promised you that we’d be launching Season Two this Summer; we thought we would be too. Unfortunately, this is no longer going to be possible.

We want to reassure you that this is not the end for Perplex City; we’ve invested far too much love, time, and energy in this to stop now. What we have to ensure, though, is that we are creating something that is both fun and sustainable. Right now, we need to continue thinking about and then developing before we relaunch.”

Since this message is from 2007, we can assume that the PC team are really thinking things over or the project is dead. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that we do not have to wait too much longer for the next Perplex City game.

Women In Games Vancouver Networking Event Feb. 3, 2010

michelle — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:27:41 +0000

Women In Games Vancouver hosted a networking event at Steamworks restaurant in Gastown on Wednesday night. We hosted the night to gather interest in our new committees that need volunteers and/or content. The committees include:

-Education (Scholarship & Awareness)
-Formal Mentorship & Professional Development
-Recruiting & Career (Informal Mentorship & Advocacy)
-Sponsorship & Partnership
-Networking & Events
-Online Community Management
-PR/Mktg/Recruiting

If you are interested in joining the “EH” team and participate in one of these committees, click here.

Women In Games Vancouver (WIGeh) is a group of men and women focused on the inclusion and advancement of women in video game development. The group has been active for about a year and a half, having formed from the US-based Women In Games International group.

The 2010 48-Hour Game Jam

michelle — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:13:58 +0000

This year I helped organize and then participated in the 2010 48-Hour Game Jam. This year’s Vancouver locations included the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Hack Space.

I worked in a team of four to create a game about a lowly office worker who must move boxes from one upper corner of a company to the other, all while the workday is ticking down. We formed our group Friday evening and hammered down our design by the end of the day. Saturday was a full day of work in Flash, our chosen platform. On Sunday we had a minor setback as we worked on player controls and somehow broke the game. To have a playable version, we backtracked to a copy from earlier that morning and lost hours of work tweaking movement and art. The result: wonky player controls and sometimes you fall off the world or get stuck, but since we worked great as a team, solved our difficulties and finished a playable game, we considered the weekend a success.

The Corporate Ladder team: Ryleigh Kostash, Stephen Danic, Graham Jans, Michelle Parent

Coincidentally, I was on the same team as my friend and business partner Steve Danic from Big Hadron Games.

Volkswagen’s ‘The Fun Theory’ Campaign

michelle — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:41:44 +0000

If you make something fun, will it encourage people to change their behaviors? This is the ‘theory of fun’, or Rolighetsterorin, campaign that Volkswagen and DDB recently launched in Stockholm.

The campaign consists of interactive installations in public places that pull commuters out of their daily grind by offering them new experiences with everyday actions. One such installation was a piano keyboard that appeared overnight to cover a subway staircase. According to the video this resulted in 66% more people using the stairs vs. the adjacent escalator.

A second project encouraged strollers in a park to play with a comical sound-producing trash bin. The sound effects lured the curious to pick up and drop multiple items of trash, producing another large and positive change in behavior.

Now you might wonder what Volkswagen has to do with piano stairs. The YouTube movies contain no reference to Volkswagen cars or any other sort of the usual car advertising. Modern viral advertising does not necessarily need to show you the product it is pushing, instead it develops brand personality with the viewer by showing the company engaging in seemingly philanthropic, memorable, humorous and entirely shareable actions.