Day Eleven : Jump Lola, Jump!

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day 11 of the fourteen day challenge).

 I'm guilty of being a person who has read more books on game design than you know, actually designing games. And every book on game design has told me that the first step in designing games is .. to design games.

I think game design is something everyone can do. It's just like singing, drawing, and writing. Everyone can do it . But to do it well requires a lot of work and sustained concentrated effort to do it well. 

Mind you, I have no aspirations of becoming a professional game designer.  I'm designing games because I enjoy learning more about games and there's nothing like trying a craft yourself to really appreciate the art and the science that goes into it all.

I was telling a friend that I see my particular role in the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge as the person that lowers the bar and in doing so, hopefully lowers the threshold of what others might think is the minimum amount of effort and time in order to participate in game design.

What I am unable to commit to quality, I have endeavored to make up in quantity. I've already created a street game.  I've started on a Twine game - but I might not finish it because, oddly enough, I find that in order to be an entirely text based narrative game, there is a considerable amount of work that must go into the story in order to make the decisions presented to the player, as meaningful choices.

It was much easier to create my first video game, using MIT's Scratch:

Day Ten : A Work in Progress

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day ten of the fourteen day challenge).


It's a work in progress.

Day 9 : Being a Student of Games

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day nine of the fourteen day challenge).

I'm came back from vacation late this afternoon and so this evening I did mountains of laundry and other chores while listening to various game-related talks to keep me in the spirit of game-design.

I follow Jane McGonigal on Twitter and yesterday she retweeted this recommendation:

Man, this talk by @danctheduck is so incredibly good. http://t.co/7ojfUPclcD(and-Stop
— Adriaan de Jongh (@AdriaandeJongh) August 24, 2013

And I watched it - it being "Create New Genres" by Daniel Cook (no, not that Daniel Cook! The Daniel Cook who wrote that awesome essay about games as a life-long hobby). I almost didn't because I was underwhelmed by the beginning of this Game Developers talk from last year but I'm glad I stuck with it.  In fact, it gives a nice context to the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge.

Cook believes that there are three levels of game designers : apprentice (who copy), journeyman (who copy but extend and polish) and true game masters who invent. (This makes me feel better about my largely derivative attempts at game design. I'm a student! This is how I am learning).

Anyways,  Cook forgives students who copy games but he has no love for those companies ("clone factories) that simply grab another designers game mechanic and add different artwork. (This only seems to apply to video games. Around the 54 minute mark, Cook points out that board games have mostly unique mechanics that are rarely copied). I didn't realize this, but this practice occurs because games aren't really covered by patents because they are not 'useful inventions'.

I'm hoping to eventually spend some time working through the idea of games *becoming* the economy of the post-scarcity age but it must wait.

I was hoping to end this post with some related insights from the video that personally set me on the path of exploring the world-saving potential of games: Jane McGongial's 2008 talk at the New Yorker Festival of the Future. Unfortunately, that video is not working for me now.  So I will download Twine instead.

Day Eight: Cha

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day eight of the fourteen day challenge).

Day Six : Rabbit Rabbit

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day five of the fourteen day challenge).

Hopefully, I will find some time to sketch out some design mechanics and investigate html5 game engines tonight. Before I do so, though, I thought I write down some more moon-related ideas so I can get my self-imposed daily game design blogging challenge over with...

RABBIT RABBIT

In the West, we sometimes make mention of a Man in the Moon, but really it's just something that people say and doesn't carry much resonance. Same thing with the whole idea of 'the moon is made of cheese.'  Other than being a comical premise in kids cartoon shows, again, it's not something that carries much cultural weight.

In Japan, Korea and China, it's understood that there's a rabbit in the moon instead. I have no idea to what extent this story has sway over Asian cultures, but I do know that this why Sailor Moon has a cat companion named Luna and has a nickname of Bunny. 

At the beginning of the month, I like to say 'rabbit rabbit' but evidently this has nothing to do with the rabbit in the moon. 

FULL MOON NAMES

According to the Farmer's Almanac, the native peoples of North America generally named the full moons of the year as follows:

January : Wolf Moon

February : Snow Moon

March : Worm Moon

April : Pink Moon

May : Flower Moon

June : Strawberry Moon

July : Buck Moon 

August : Sturgeon Moon

September : Harvest Moon

October: Hunter's Moon

November : Beaver Moon

December : Cold Moon

And at one time, I meant to make my own moon names, but I never got beyond March, which I renamed, Pothole Moon.

Day Five: Gone Home to Make Games

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day five of the fourteen day challenge).

I have to admit, what I really want to do is not work on my game(s) tonight.  What I really want to do is download Gone Home and play it all through the night.  I so very want to do this because I recently read this essay called Grunge, Grrrls and Video Games: Turning the dial for a more meaningful culture that personally resonated with me  and well, this The Gone Home video promo is the most riot grrrl style now video game I have ever seen. Add to the fact that I'm currently writing this from the bedroom of my parents house and feeling the effects of that sort of time-travel sickness that you get when you go back the home of your childhood, and well, I think you can see why I'd be all over this game right now.

But I'm not. I started looking at possible game engines I could use to make a game and it's clear to me that I've got a lot of work ahead of me if I want to make even a simple video game.  I will most likely work out some ideas on paper first and only then, try to make them come alive on screen.

I had mentioned previously that I was thinking about a moon-influenced mechanic. On a lark, I looked up tide charts online which eventually led me to this lovely animation that illustrates how the earth's waters rise and fall based on the alignment of the moon and sun.  I'm sure it's possible to plug in the necessary equations to mimic this affect in a game engine is possible (like this lovely video that highlights the force of gravity) but it's probably not going to happen for me. Not at this rate.

Day Four : Star of the Wars or the Tiny Games People Play

So it's day Four of my two week 'Pretend to be a game designer' challenge and I haven't made much progress today because I spent most of my hours packing and driving most of my family up to see the grandparents. I'm having difficulty finding the time to make that epic game.

So today I will concentrate on a Tiny Game.

My kids have no trouble at all making little games to play.  One of their favourite games they love to play is played over a meal at the dinner table is this:

BROKEN OR NOT BROKEN

Player One bites/pretends to bite a cucumber or carrot or other piece of food and then shows it to Player Two and asks 'Broken or Not Broken'. Player Two guesses whether the food is whole or has been bitten in two. Player One reveals outcome. Repeat. And repeat.

And while I have had trouble getting started in my game design ambitions, my daughter has no trouble designing games out of anything in front of her:


Part One:

Part Two

But it isn't just little kids who delight in these Tiny Games.  Bigger kids do too. My sister's good friend went to Camp every summer and she seemed to know a million games for a million situations.  Here's one of the games I remember her telling me about.

(Um, it's another game that's played at the dinner table. Also: don't tell my kids about this game!)

COLOURS
Whenever someone at the dinner table yells COLOURS, everyone has to stick their tongue out. The person with the most different colours of food on their tongue wins.

And even bigger kids love these silly tiny games.  In fact, even adults.  For example, I am just one of 1226 adults who backed the Tiny Games Kickstarter because I just love the idea of "an app that gets you playing the perfect game with your friends: wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever you're doing."

Before the lights are out, I will make a Tiny Game.

Day Three. There`s a moon in the sky called the moon

(As part of the Hackforge Summer Games Challenge, I'm trying to design a game with the theme of light and darkness by August 31st. This day three of the two week challenge).

So we went to the zoo today instead of designing games. It's night now. The day is almost over. In fact, it's really dark outside now and it's way past my bedtime.

And tomorrow is the full moon.

There are eight phases of the moon in Western culture:

• New Moon
• Waxing / Young / Crescent Moon
• First Quarter
• Waxing / Gibbous Moon
• Full Moon
• Waning / Gibbous Moon
• Third / Last Quarter Moon
• Waning / Old / Crescent Moon

I want to make a specialized deck of cards that involves waxing and waning shadows over the moon. If just to make a game that provides the opportunity to have moves such as TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES and for someone to throw down their cards and shout 'TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART!' 

Also. I would nice to the moon as a sort of clock in a game.

Or in the game, each player has their own moon clock and there would be some dynamic that would allow players to have their moon clocks in sync with each other.

And I admit, when I first thought of this, I was thinking all about women's cycles but now I think it could be a neat power-up dynamic.  When moons are in sync, they would have more ... pull

I suspect there are lots of games with moon-related mechanics (even excluding the obvious ones that involve werewolves).  But I know of two games that make use of a moon dynamic. 

1. Sword & Sworcery :: certain events can only occur when the moon is in a certain phase
2. Kingdom of Loathing :: the two moons named Ronald and Grimace affect gameplay

I think this quotation explains why I want to make a game involving the moon so much...

“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.”

― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony