Reality is a Game

Game thinking from Adam Clare

Tag: The Stanley Parable

DiGRA 2015 Keynote Presentations

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On 17/08/2015

In Events, Video

DiGRA runs a conference ever year investigation the world of gaming. The DiGRA 2015 conference was themed around the diversity of play and they recently put the keynotes online.

Two presentations were particularly interesting and I figured I’d share them here.

This first talk is actually the final one of the conference. He says that games are framed uncertainties and explores that concept in a rather intriguing way. He actually asks the question “what makes this madness so enjoyable?”

DiGRA2015 – KEYNOTE – Markus Rautzenberg – Ludic Epistemology in an Age of new Essentialisms from Centre for Digital Cultures on Vimeo.

Markus Rautzenberg “Ludic Epistemology in an Age of new Essentialisms”
Markus Rautzenberg is a German philosopher currently working at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2007 he received his doctorate degree in philosophy with a thesis on a ‘Theory of Perturbation’. He received a DFG-doctoral scholarship at the graduate school ‘The Staging of the Body’ and a DFG-postdoctoral fellowship at the international graduate school ‘Interart’. His main fields of research are media theory, picture theory, aesthetics, the relation of iconicity and knowledge, epistemology and game studies.

In this next talk I really like the connection between delivering narrative while having cohesive and complementary game mechanics. I don’t agree with everything she goes into, particularly around The Stanley Parable, regardless it’s a neat presentation.

DiGRA2015 – KEYNOTE – Astrid Ensslin – Videogames as Unnatural Narratives from Centre for Digital Cultures on Vimeo.

Astrid Ensslin “Videogames as Unnatural Narratives”
Astrid Ensslin is a Professor of Digital Culture and Communication at Bangor University (UK). Her research sits at the interface between videogames and electronic literature, and she is currently running an AHRC-funded project on ‘Reading Digital Fiction’ (with Sheffield Hallam University and various non-academic organizations). Her main publications are ‘Literary Gaming’ (MIT Press, 2014), ‘The Language of Gaming’ (Palgrave, 2011) and ‘Canonizing Hypertext’ (Continuum, 2007).

You can view the rest here.

Two Different Postmortems On Two Indie Games

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On 06/11/2013

In Business, Design, Video Games

Postmortems are always helpful in understand how other game developers work and what issues they brush up against. It can be very illuminating when multiple studios run into the same problems. They are also useful if you’re thinking of getting into the games industry to see if those problems are even ones you want to tackle.

The great folks at DrinkBox are always looking to be better than they were the previous year. Chris Harvey, from DrinkBox wrote a great postmortem on Guacamelee! for Indie Games. It goes into great detail and address many things that arise during production of a game.

Their art style for the game evolved from a cutesy look to a more adult look, with (surpassingly) the tech team making a first pass at some of the art.

thanks gamasutra!

While this success was naturally a result of the talents of the art team, it also depended on a cooperative back-and-forth between the art, tech, and production departments. In particular, over the course of Guacamelee! we changed how effects were developed, counter-intuitively putting the development more into the hands of the tech team and then letting the art team direct refinement.

He even shares internal issues that any company runs into when it grows. The studio had an informal work structure which works quite well for small teams but inevitable breaks when the company grows.

During Guacamelee!, we encountered difficulty scaling this approach. Some new members of the team struggled to find their place alongside peers when working without a clear authority structure. Lacking the confidence to navigate disagreements constructively, in frustration these team members sometimes ignored decisions or emotionally disengaged from certain tasks. As a result, we’ve begun to put a clearer authority structure in place for the team, and we’ve become more aware of the need to monitor personalities and provide ways for people to make their concerns known.

For a much shorter read, check out this reflection on the release of The Stanley Parable. This quote sums up their overarching message:

[If] you make the marketing material interesting on its own, it’s irrelevant whether it “sells” your game. Our focus was always on creating content that was on its own fun for people to experience and to be a part of, with essentially 0% of the design aimed at trying to get the game to sell.

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