Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Game Design Challenge: Merry Christmas

Last week I submitted my second entry to Game Career Guide's frequent Game Design Challenge feature. The theme this time was "Merry Christmas" with the goal of, you guessed it, designing a Christmas themed game. Unforgettably my submission was not chosen among the top entries, but I was very happy with my design so I'm still posting it here!

My primary goal was to incorporate the themes and traditions of Christmas into the gameplay itself, rather than simply slapping a Christmas skin on top of a conventional genre. Secondly, I wanted the game to be about Christmas as a whole and explore what the holiday means to different people around the world, rather than just focusing on a single subset such as elves and Santa or the Christian mythos.

Thus was born World Wide Christmas, an "annual global collaborative social game". A game designed to  connect friends, family and strangers, study different cultural influences on Christmas, and make real-life differences in the lives of the players and others.

I was inspired to take this unconditional approach after reading Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken, a fascinating book about how games and lessons learned from them can be used to make the world a better place. In the book she examines a variety of examples of how games can (and have) been used to build communities, improve quality of life, and encouraged people to achieve amazing things together - in virtual worlds AND in the real world.

I had never contemplated designing a game like this before, so it was a great exercise in thinking outside my comfort zone and a very enjoyable experience. I wanted to incorporate so many ideas from Reality is Broken that it was difficult to cut it all down to just 500 words!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

I Was Used and Abused By My Asari Girlfriend

The vixen in question

By Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy

Liara and I have always been close. In the three years we’ve know each other we’ve been through a lot - Geth invasion, Reaper attack, interplanetary espionage, and now all out galactic war. That kind of thing brings people together no doubt - but I never expected us to become romantically involved.

Sure we’ve always been good friends, but even when I first knew her I only had eyes for Ashley, and Liara seemed preoccupied with her Prothean research. She even said that she found me “fascinating” because I was “touched by working Prothean technology”. If her fascination with me was based solely on my connection to the Protheans, then thinking back now I can see our relationship was doomed from the start.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Resurrection and R.O.B.

After nearly three years of neglect I have decided that it's about time I resurrected this blog. In that time I have shipped two more games, worked for two different companies (and seen the Australian industry collapse along with those companies), and travelled around Europe on two separate occasions. So in the spirit of pairs this post is also a two-parter.