Alt+Games is a blog about games by a couple of gamers. Role-playing
games , computer and console games , board games etc. Focus on games that
enable playing together , whether in the same room or over the net. We
try to feature interesting stuff you don't hear from elsewhere.
How do you know that something is “hip” and “cool” in indie gaming society? Well, you hop on a band wagon a bit too late, as I did, since Minecraft seems to be the next big thing in gaming society in general. Ugly? Well, sort of, if you’re accustomed to modern photorealistic gore splatters. Java? That’s not a real programming language for games! Well, that may not be the most efficient, and yeah, it might stutter sometimes. Should be banned as illegal narcotic? Hell yes.
The player interacts through the game, does something,
the game responds to the action,
the game provides feedback on the results
player interprets the feedback and essentially creates a model of how the game works in similar situations.
The player learns a singular skill by looping through this sequence multiple times. This is called a skill atom. An example from DanC's article is from a Mario Bros-like platformer game.
Learning successive skill atoms usually requires the player to have mastered some of the more simple skill atoms. The example (this one too is from DanC's article) is also from a platformer.
DanC suggests improving the method of game design by designing skill chains out of these skill atoms and designing the game mechanics and levels based on those. This sounds like tremendous advice for designers of video games.
I recently got thinking that the same kind of feedback loop, only possibly more complicated, happens also in role-playing games. I got to thinking about this as I was trying to come up with an article on how to get the most of the excellent modern war role-playing game Shell Shock.
We started a Dogs in the Vineyard game a couple of weeks ago with a character creation session.
This was the first time I played RPGs since Senja was born.
Matti (being the GM) explained the game briefly and then we went through the character creation process. By my suggestion we then proceeded to talk a little bit more about the game and our expectations before creating the characters. We read bits of text from the rulebook and the introductory one-page pdf and we talked about the tone and style of the game we would like to play.
After that we started the actual process of character creation. We had agreed that we all wanted a colorful group of Dogs with some variety and difference of opinion in it. We ended up choosing different backgrounds for each one. Each player bounced his ideas of character concepts aloud at first. Then we kind of went through informal question rounds of 1) what kind of character I'm thinking about and 2) what kind of Dog this character is (each one adding a different viewpoint for his character's dogness and saying how it differs to the others characters).
After that we started to fill out the sheets. This was also quite collaborative as we asked for second opinions on stat allocations and trait naming quite a lot. After we had filled out the details each of us presented his character briefly.
The final part of the evening was playing out the initiation conflicts of the characters. That way we got to try out the conflict system in action. What we found out that the initiationconflicts were pretty tough; I think no-one won his conflict. The other thing we figured out was that losing 'just talking' conflicts was in fact mostly advantageous as the character got experience but there was really no danger of major fallout. We immediately decided to look for conflicts to lose in our game :)
Our group of Dogs turned out pretty interesting. There is one half-mountain folk dog, a sullen goth-type dog with a great legacy and no social skills to fill the boots of her mother (!), a former street urchin with a lot of repressed hate and one quarter-back type youngster that is ready to make the world a better place for everyone (that's my character).
We've now played one session of the game; I hope to be able to write a little about the actual play later.
Evoke, the new serious alternate reality game by Jane McGonigal, kicks off on March 3rd. That's next Wednesday, folks. I'm interested about experiencing and dissecting the game and I hope that you are too.
So, what's in the genre definition serious alternate reality game? Alternate reality games (Wikipedia) or ARGs use real world as a platform and leverage multiple media to mix fictional elements with the real world elements. Serious games are essentially games for other purposes than pure entertainment. McGonigal puts Evoke in her 'Invent the Future' category of games. The previous major gamein the similar vein McGonigal was involved with was World Without Oil (Wikipedia), which received wide media coverage, but contrasting reviews about its effectiveness of actually fixing the world.That's what I thought, at least, but turns out that I can't find the reviews I seem to remember. Here's one example of a review of World Without Oil calling the game basically a bore.
Anyhow, when I've discussed this game and similar games with people (there was a discussion on Ropecon and we had a reading group session last Autumn in Helsinki that included a lot of talkabout this matter) and read other discussions, such as this on on Story Games that have included critical viewpoints of the ability on these kinds of games to have an effect of fixing the real world.
This is why I'm particularly interested in exploring the game. I'm interested in discussing the game with other people with a critical
eye on the effectiveness, impact or the idea of this game. What does it
do well, what does it lack, what is it made of and so on. I've already signed up for the game and I hope you do as well if you want to discuss it with me.
The discussion I'm proposing can take place in blogs, forums or even face to face when possible. I really think that McGonigal's views on games changing the world are valuable and worthwhile, however I'm not sure that World Without Oil or Evoke represent the pinnacle of this frame of thinking. And I'd like to leverage people to think about what direction the pinnacle might lie.
Are you interested? Please sign up to the game and let me know!
There's really not that much info on what the players will actually do in the game, even what kinds of elements they will interact with. Here are some resources to Evoke (see the web site too) and McGonigal's thinking about world-fixing games in general:
My family just received a new member this Monday. It is a baby girl we like to call X (there's a bit of mystery for you :), Supergirl and The Thing. Everyone involved is fine and in good health.
On much smaller news Alt+Games also got a new graphical look last Weekend. I was never completely happy with the old one, mostly because of the wacky banner graphics I threw together (sorry 'bout that :). The template is Jamba from JoomlaShack with a green-black color scheme, the Alt+Games logo is based on the old one but this time it's sleek, cool and toned down and not ugly at all.
The icon banners in the right-hand top corner of the site are new too, there will be more of them later. Most of the banners are based on icons from MySiteMyWay , a very good source for royalty-free icon graphics.
There's potential for more changes, we'll see about the schedule. Maybe our Supergirl can help.
Alt+Games is a blog about games by a couple of gamers. Role-playing
games , computer and console games , board games etc. Focus on games that
enable playing together , whether in the same room or over the net. We
try to feature interesting stuff you don't hear from elsewhere.
After that we started the actual process of character creation. We had agreed that we all wanted a colorful group of Dogs with some variety and difference of opinion in it. We ended up choosing different backgrounds for each one. Each player bounced his ideas of character concepts aloud at first. Then we kind of went through informal question rounds of 1) what kind of character I'm thinking about and 2) what kind of Dog this character is (each one adding a different viewpoint for his character's dogness and saying how it differs to the others characters).