Gamescom 2011

Gamescom

Wow Gamescom, Where to start, I guess the best way would be explaining how I got there.

I booked a coach trip from Ipswich to Cologne with eurolines, I would leave Ipswich at 15:35 on the Friday and travel overnight to wake up at 9:10 local time on Saturday, I had to make a change at Victoria Coach station in London, this meant waiting around for 2 hours but it wasn’t too bad, as I just stuck some music on.

I tried to get as much sleep as I could on the coach (this was my plan for travelling overnight) however we had to stop for passport control about once every 1-2 hours which meant getting off the coach, we had to leave the coach as we got on the ferry which also meant I couldn’t sleep so my plan had failed as I only ended up getting around 2 hours sleep

Upon arriving I met up with my Germany friend who was also attending the event, we had to walk across a huge bridge which covers the Rhine

As Gamescom is a fairly big deal in Cologne (everyone knows about it, you can ask anyone for directions and they will know where to point you) there were adverts and signs all over the place, we followed them and were faced with our first big shock, there must have been well over 2000 people outside, people were queuing up to get their passes and wrists bands out of the area! There was an underpass of the bridge which people were queuing down.


Luckily I had printed off my pass before going so we could skip all that, there was an area inside where you could pay to store your bags/coats, it cost 2 euros which was a fair price so we paid to leave our bags there because of the sheer mass of people, if outside was anything to go by having a backpack would have been a nightmare. Next we proceeded to the barriers which scanned the bar codes on our tickets, this was fairly straight forward and we got in with no problems, we were still surrounded by hundreds of people at this point.


We thought the best thing to do would be to have a walk around and see everything and then try to play some stuff, as we got closer and closer to the halls and amount of people started to intensify but nothing could of prepared me for what we saw as we reach the corridor which connected Hall 6 and 9

Now this picture still doesn’t do it justice as the overhead walkway blocks the view of the rest of the corridor, there were more people below the stairs we were on and even more at the end since the corridor bent off to the right. Below I’ve marked what you can see on the picture to give you an idea of scale the red block is what you can see in the picture.

This picture still doesn’t quite do it justice but it will have to do as the amount of people was simply indescribable, each hall was absolutely huge, you could hardly see from one side to the other and you certainly couldn’t make out details in the distance (or perhaps that was just my eye sight)

Part of the Nintendo Stand, note this was only a section of their presence there

It took us nearly an hour to walk around Hall 9 which was one of the more popular Halls (off the top of my head I can remember it having League of Legends, World of Tanks, Firefall, the ESL finals area, Guild Wars 2, 2K Games, Blizzard and loads more)

When we were almost back to the entrance of this Hall I got a text from another friend of mine who had just arrived saying that he couldn’t get in as they had closed the gates to try and limit the amount of people inside, we continued to walk around (I say walk, it felt more like swimming through people) There were small outside sections which were used mostly for food areas and to just have a bit of a break, this was also packed but not as bad as inside so we went to have a sit down after our marathon-esque walk around the Halls, I was pretty thirsty by this point (I’d left all my water in my bag like an idiot) so I had to fork out 3 euros for a 0.5L bottle of water, I was slightly disgruntled by this but didn’t really have a choice.

After a short break I got another text from my friend saying that he had got in so we attempted to meet up, I only know this guy from playing games with him online and judging from facebook pictures he was mid height, longish hair and told me he was wear a light blue shirt. He text me to say he was by a huge World of Tanks advert, since he hadn’t been around the event yet he didn’t realise there were just shy of a million of these, after a few more texts trying to get a more accurate description of his location we realised he was where we had entered... in the sea of people. So I then had to try and meet someone I only know from online, have only seen from facebook pictures and was wearing a light blue shirt just like 600 other people in that corridor.

Finally after what can only be described as an epic battle for space on the floor to put my feet, I feel a tap on the shoulder, it was him. He was wearing a blue, white, grey and green check shirt, had short hair and was speaking so quietly I couldn’t hear him. I slapped him for being what I can only describe as a noob and we set off again, walking round the Halls trying to take everything in, we reached the Battlefield 3 stand which we were all fairly keen to play and asked the booth babe who was standing next to the line how long it would take to get in, she said they were stopping people queuing as it was currently 6-8 hours and since it was nearly 12 o’clock the event would close before people at the back got a chance to play, we then started to realise that this was the case with most games.

As me and my friend were determined to play something we spotted that a game called Firefall had lost a huge section of its queue to the League of Legends booth throwing out t-shirts and posters, we decided to jump in while we could, we queued for about 30-40 minutes and then we were escorted into the booth to play we were pleasantly surprised when we were allowed to play for about 25 minutes which was nice as we got to have a proper look at the game.

The heat and tiredness were starting to set in, we went to the Sony Ericsson booth to see if we could get one of the foam Minecraft pickaxes that people seemed to have but were told they cost 19 euros, we called it a day at that and started to make our way to the exits, it took us about 40 minutes to get out with our bags and one of my friends kindly helped me to check into my hotel, it was a very nice family run hotel and I had my own kitchen in my room, as time was getting on my friend had to leave so I said my goodbyes (they were leaving early in the morning) had a bit of food that I had taken with me and went for a shower, I was so shattered that I had a shower, watched a bit of Ocean’s 11 in German and then went to bed to prepare myself for the next day which I wasn’t overly excited about since I can’t honestly say I had enjoyed the Saturday.

Sunday began with me packing up everything in my hotel and heading down for breakfast, I was a little nervous as I don’t speak German and the people at the hotel didn’t speak English so I was relying on the language of point, but wow Germans know how to have breakfast, after being shown to my seat I was presented with, 1 plate of various meats, 1 plate of various cheeses, 1 plate full of bread and other smaller nibbles, a pot of tea, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a boiled egg. I didn’t know where to start but I ate as much as I could, paid for my room and headed off for my final day of Gamescom!

Upon arriving I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot less people than the day before, I went through the same procedure as the day before with dropping off my bags and ventured further into the event. I was able to walk around a lot easier however it was still pretty busy, as I play a lot of League of Legends I decided to check if their booth was quieter and thankfully it was, after a while I managed to get fairly close to the front and got a couple of freebies! I also got my arm bitten in the process and had a small 9-10 year punch and kick me to move out of the way, as the amount of freebies they started to hand out increased so did the pushing and shoving so I decided to get away before it got violent, apparently Germans love t-shirts that are too small for them and will argue for 10+ minutes over who actually caught it!

Next I headed over to the Star Wars: Old Republic booth as I am looking forward to this game a lot, they were doing a live demonstration moments after I arrived which was great to watch, the crowd didn’t seem hugely interested in it (maybe because it was being explained in English) but as soon as someone brought out a box of T-shirts they went nuts.

My day continued in a similar fashion, I looked at as much as I could since I could actually get close to the stands now, as I started to walk towards the ESL final area I noticed there was some League of Legends on the big screens, it was actually the grand final and I had only missed a couple of minutes, I managed to sit right near the front and got to watch 3 very enjoyable games, however I missed the last 5 minutes of the final game as I had to run (literally) to get my coach back home.

I made it

Just

So that concludes my first Gamescom event in 2011, I could write so much more but I will leave it here as it is getting late and I’ve got Multiplays i43 to go to tomorrow!

Thanks for reading

Luke ‘Vazzan’ Botham

Key Stage One Essay Review

To start off with I think it would be a good idea to give a general introduction to the Key Stage 1 game we have been creating then I can dissect it to explain some of the major design issues we encountered while creating it. In its very basic form our game is a “Pipe-dream” style game, the player places tile pieces onto a grid which form a circuit for an electrical current to flow, creating a full circuit completes the level whereas breaking the circuit will cause you to lose the level and have to start over. The player is aided by a Mentor who gives advice on placing pieces and generally guides the player through each level if they get stuck. In this form it is a very simple concept, there are obviously other things which you must do to complete the game to make it both challenging and fun, as we we’re making this game for Key Stage 1 students we had to find a balance between difficulty, simplicity and fun, make the game simple and fun wouldn’t make it very involving whereas making it difficult and fun would make it possibly too complicated for a Key Stage 1 student.


This was our first major design issue, this became apparent during the concept stage of development, we played around with a lot of ideas but some were scrapped due to them weighing the game down in one aspect, we felt that changing the simplicity and difficulty the game would be easier at a later stage (as in changing a few lines of code to adjust the difficulty) but what we needed to focus on was to make our game “fun” however we have been taught throughout the course that using the word “fun” when designing a game isn’t a very good idea, it is a bland word, on its own it doesn’t mean anything and can’t be easily described.


Greg Costikyan article – “I have no words, I must design” focuses heavily on the true meaning of a game so I will use this as an example and hopefully I can show how we decided that our game would be fun, he describes a game as “an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal”. (Greg Costikyan, 2004, Page 24) There are a lot of long words in this sentence and unfortunately I can’t explain it without explaining each individual word;


Interaction – how a player interacts with a game, how they learn the game works, the player must understand if they do X then the game will respond with Y, we chose to use a Tutorial to do this


Endogenous Meaning – This means that something that has value in the game world doesn’t necessarily have value in the game world, this is important as it will help draw the player into the game, for example we added Medals for completing levels in certain times, outside of our game they don’t mean anything, however in our game they mean that you can advance to the next level or that you have completed the level in a certain time frame.


Structure – The structure of a game could also be described as the rules or mechanics, so that if player does X then Y happens, again we used the Tutorial and progressive difficulty increase to do this


Struggle – This is almost equal to difficulty, if a player doesn’t have to struggle to complete a game then it isn’t really a game, struggle makes a game interactive and challenging. This was very a difficult subject throughout our games development (possibly even after our final version) by making the game too difficult KS1 children would struggle too much and would not enjoy the game so it would lose its “fun” aspect which is what we want to keep. However by making the game too easy children would lose their interest in the game which would also lose the “fun” aspect. I will talk about this more later


Goals – These define what a player is actually doing in a game they must complete X to achieve Y Goal, this must be made clear to the player as this will influence how they play the game. The goals we’re explained during the Tutorial.


From these points above we could say that yes we had a game, but was it going to be “fun” and interesting for children


Going back to what I had previously said about Struggle, this is a key factor in what I believe makes a game fun, if a game is too difficult it becomes stale and boring, if a game is too easy then it feels more like a boring chore which you just complete to see if it will get any better at a later stage. We decided to implement a timer as the main struggle in the game; this would enable us to tweak the timer to adjust difficulty at a later stage.


We then moved onto how the game would look visually, and after some research we had done into other Key Stage 1 games we noticed that the graphic’s and sounds for Key Stage 1 games played a huge factor into what made a game fun! If the graphics for the games we played had been any different we would have found the games too easy, but we could put up with the low difficulty since the games were visually pleasing and rewarding.


We then started on setting an art style which we would follow throughout the game, with having Tom White in our group who is an incredibly skilled 3d modeller we decided to build our style around his 3d models which we use in a number of places. We also took inspiration from other popular children’s games and cartoons, such as Jimmy Neutron and to a lesser extent Scooby Doo; we liked the colours in Scooby Doo as they were simple yet pleasing.


This can be linked to remediation, which means when something from one form of media is used in another, we hoped to convert the 3d style of Jimmy Neutron which was a popular TV series into our game, we feel that this has been achieved fairly well, there was other notable games which we could of used as a basis for our art style however we really liked the bright colours, bold shapes and overall appeal of Jimmy Neutron so we decided to use this as our base to build on. Our choice of colours could also be linked to remediation.


The colours we used were picked purely because they were neutral, we wanted our game to apply to both a male and female audience and having a simple neutral palette was one of the ways we did this, we had also considered things such as player name input and picking between a male and female character however we felt that if we left this out then there would be no gender specifics for the game and that it would appeal to anyone. We also took special care in the toys we picked as “levels” so that they could apply to both genders.


When designing our game we had talked about adding a story to keep the players involved, however in the end we didn’t have a set themed story and have left it to be player driven. We got this idea from a Doug Church article where he says "The narrative thread, whether design-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward towards completion of the game"(Doug Church, 1999, Page 5) What we took from this is that you don’t have to have characters with complex dialogue or an involving story if the game doesn’t require it, we felt our game didn’t require a story so we left it to be player driven, these is a slight design driven story in that the layout of the house has certain toys in it and there is our character Mr Spark who helps guide the player but it isn’t a set in stone dialogue after dialogue story.


I’d now like to talk about where our game would fit in a genre.


It became apparent in the concept (and design) phase that our game was a bit difficult to place in its play style, we looked back to the readings we had done on Paidea and Ludus styles of play, Paidea in its most simple terms means play for pleasure, you can play the game any way you wish, Ludus means you are more constrained with your choices and are given a clear path which will lead you to a firm ending (Winning or Losing)


It didn’t take us long to realise that our game sat nicely in the middle, in that what you have to do in the game is a clear example of Ludus where the player is made to understand what they must do to win, however the player can decide how they go about doing this, there are very few boundaries limiting how the player interacts with the game, this gives each level a mixture of both Ludus and Paidea play styles, this will hopefully help to add replay value (a player could attempt to complete a level in a different way)


The next thing I would like to talk about which was possibly a design flaw but somehow slipped past into the later stages of the game is our choice of toys/appliances for the children to fix, we originally had the idea of fixing household appliances but didn’t think this was very appropriate to tell Key Stage 1 children to fix things such as TV’s, lights and kettles.


We fixed on the “rooms” in which each different “level” would be placed, we decided on; a child’s playroom, garden and kitchen, we felt this would give us a wide variety to different toys/appliances. The main problem we noticed with this was that we were asking children to fix kitchen appliances, this of course is very dangerous as (going back to Endogenous Meaning here) in the game world this is fine but most Key Stage 1 children wouldn’t be able to easily distinguish between a fake toy in the game and a real life object in their parent’s kitchen. Using 3d models to represent these toys also didn’t aid in this as they looked fairly realistic, however we overcame this by have all the toys put onto a very toy like kids kitchen play set, the play set along with the bright colours on the toys made it very clear that these were toys the children would be fixing and not in fact real objects.


To finish up with I would like to explore Marc LeBlanc’s Taxonomy (Greg Costikyan, 2004, Page 26) which we first read about in a Costikyan article, LeBlanc states that a game is made up of 8 elements which can lead to a positive experience or “fun”. These are;


• Sensation: game as sense-pleasure


• Fantasy: game as make-believe


• Narrative: game as unfolding story


• Challenge: game as obstacle course


• Fellowship: game as social framework


• Discovery: Game as uncharted territory


• Expression: Game as soap box


• Masochism: Game as mindless pastime


Well with our game I believe we had added a good amount of Sensation in that there is positive and negative feedback along with pleasing visual design and assets, Fantasy we have also covered with making our own small game world with different levels and objectives, our game has a strong player driven Narrative. There is just about the right amount of Challenge for Key Stage 1 Students. The game was created with timers to add both challenge but it also adds to Fellowship as players can try to beat their peers. Our game has a progressive unlock level system; this covers Discovery as the game world is slowly unlocked. Expression I believe is how the player perceives themselves in the game world, in our game we hope they perceive themselves as the assistant to Mr Spark as he fixes the toys. Submission is when the player lets themselves slip into the game world, which if everything has gone to plan should happen.


If all the facts above are true and people agree with them then I guess we can say we successfully made a “fun” Key Stage 1 game.




Author: Doug Church
Article Name: Formal Abstract Design Tools
Year of Publication: 1999




Author: Greg Costikyan
Article Name: I have no words, I must design
Year of Publication: 2004

Music, also a little bit of film

Music is something everyone is familiar with, but I’d like to talk about the different styles of music and their relation to films, we covered briefly with Matt Applegate why certain types of music are used in trailers or films, calming music mixed with graphic or violent scenes help to keep the viewer on edge which also helps keep their attention, an example of this is the Gear of War trailer (I know I’m not supposed to be relating to games but it’s just this bit) where it mixes the gun violence with Gary Jules – Mad World.


One of my favourite film trilogy’s of all time is easily Lord of the Rings; the story is incredible and is mixed with some brilliant acting and characters. But one of the things I love most is the music, composed, orchestrated, conducted and produced by Howard Shore, every piece beautifully matched to the film but also incredible to listen to on its own. Featuring everything from flutes to anvils you get such an incredible range of different sounds and when pieced together carefully they provide an epic track to match what is going on in the film, I can sit and listen to the music and imagine the scenes through in my head, that’s not because I’ve seen them a good number of times but because they just fit together so incredibly well.


In particular my favourite piece is The Bridge of Khazad-dûm as the music changes so rapidly and is really powerful


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUIZvAe3RBg

Extreme Sports

I’ve always been a huge fan of extreme sports, with particular interest in BMX and skateboarding, I’ve tried both myself to varying degrees of success but after a while I realised I’m too afraid of getting hurt, I’ve often been able to record a good video or take a good picture so I started looking at perhaps filming people while they BMX or skateboard.

I was interested after seeing some incredible shots and some breathtaking videos, since I have a fairly basic knowledge of skateboarding (I don’t mean that I’ve completed every Tony Hawks game, even though I have) I thought I might be well geared towards this, as if someone does an impressive trick over a gap that doesn’t look possible to jump normally, chances are they aren’t going to do it again just so you can get your shot.

That is one of the things that interests me a lot in photography and filming of skateboarding, some people are only able to pull off something once so you have one chance to get the picture you want, I see that as a challenge and I think it would be an incredibly rewarding challenge.


Below are a few videos which I have watched time and time again


Danny MacAskill – Inspired Bicycles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o


Danny MacAskill – Way Back Home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj6ho1-G6tw


Rodney Mullen – Unbelievable

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBJ6z4cu9qI


IsenSeven Films – Lets Go Get Lost

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FE6txbMq4


IsenSeven Films – Don’t Panic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwXwwA7d4Hw

Ancient Games, They're pretty old so I think they've waited long enough for a blog post

I've slipped with blog postings as the course has advanced so now it is time to sit down and catch up on what I should have been posting on a regular basis.
So here it is, my blog post on Ancient Games



The Ancient Game of Ur

Recently in lectures we had a look at the Royal Game of Ur, The game was discovered in Sumeria, in the royal tombs at Ur and is suspected to be from pre 2600 BC, making it possibly the oldest board game to ever exist!

The original board was not found with playing pieces however others were found and contained 2 sets of counters which were black and white (indicating it was a 2 player game) and 3 dice which are tetrahedral in shape (triangular in less fancy terms)

Due to the age and discovery of the game board and pieces it is hard to imagine how it was originally played, there were no rules found with the board, there are a number of different sets of rules which have been created based on the layout of the board and the number of pieces, we played a few games using a rule set we were provided however the rules weren’t 100% clear to us so we interpreted them as best we could and had a go at playing.

The rule set we used was that all pieces remained off the board at the start and your objective was to get your 7 counters to the end of the board before your opponent, we learned that you could stack counters on top on each other, you could roll again after landing on a certain square and that you could knock your opponent off the board sending that piece back to the start.

The results were interesting, it certainly seemed as if it had been cleverly thought out and the rules did seem to work with the board and pieces however personally I felt as if the rules back in 2600 BC could have been slightly different as they may not of had some of the standards we see in board games today, for all we know it might not have been turn based back then!



Senet

Another game we played was Senet now I have already told you that Ur is possibly the oldest game in existence; however Senet begs to prove me wrong with evidence dating it back to 3100 BC!

Senet is similar in some ways to Ur; perhaps Senet was the inspiration for Ur, you have 1 board, 7 pieces of 2 colours and dice, the board again hints that you must get from 1 side to the other and this time all your counters start on the board. Towards the end of the “path” that is the game board are special squares which upon landing on give either positive effects or negative ones, a couple of the squares are really quite nasty forcing you to move pieces back to the start!

Onto the rules, all the counters are placed onto the board in a certain fashion depending on the rule set, you move by rolling a dice and upon landing either a 1 4 or 5 you get an additional roll which you can use on either the same piece you just moved or on a different one entirely, once you have 2 pieces next to each other they are considered safe, when safe these pieces can’t be swapped by your opponent as this is what happens when you land on the same square, if you are able to get 3 pieces adjacent to each other you are then not able to be passed allowing you to tactically block your opponent.

The rules were very good however some misunderstanding on our part led to the game ending very quickly. All in all it was very interesting to play these games which have been around for a truly incredible amount of time.

The Man, the Mystery, Banksy?

I’ve always been a huge fan of street art, I don’t mean pointless graffiti that is just an eye sore or profanities sprayed across road signs, I mean real art, stuff that is clever and makes you think, stuff that is beauty and makes you stop to take a picture. That world to me can all be summarized by one man and only one man truly stands out for me and that is the legendary Banksy

His true identity is not known however he is believed to have originated from London, his graffiti has been seen by many as Marmite, you either love it or hate it, but I hope by this point you can understand that I am absolutely blown away by it. Some of Banksy’s most well know art pieces include his Pulp Fiction piece featuring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta holding bananas instead of guns, this was painted over and removed by the Transport of London but then tagged again by Banksy only this time featuring the duo in banana suits instead, some of his other most famous works are the kissing policemen, rats and monkeys normally painted with ingenious messages nearby, the princess Diana £10 notes (although we are lead to believe these didn’t have the affect he originally wanted) and one of my favourites Balloon Girl which depicts a young girl reaching after a heart shaped balloon which she has let go, it paints a very powerful message.

The thing I like most about Banksy is his animosity, most of his work is used to paint a message that nobody has the guts to say out loud, he uses his art to say what everyone is thinking but doesn’t have the power to say, he doesn’t do it for money, he doesn’t do it for the fame, he does it because he can and that it what makes it so good. Can you truly say if someone gave you a stencil, a spray can and a blank huge wall with no CCTV that everyone in the morning would be able to see, that you wouldn’t be tempted to give it a go, to paint a message that everyone could see but nobody could blame on anyone? I know I would but perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it, if I own up and say “yes” I would graffiti an image of a man with a bandana around his face, holding a bouquet of flowers as if it was a Molotov cocktail onto a wall, perhaps it wouldn’t be the same, for one I wouldn’t be experienced enough and would get caught.

Banksy work isn’t simply limited to spray cans and walls, he has also been responsible for a film, books, fake bank notes, replacing CD’s in music shops, putting an inflatable Guantanamo Bay Prisoner into Disneyland and so much more.

Love him or hate him, Banksy is certainly an icon for one reason or another

Personally I can’t wait to see some more incredible pieces of art which make me smile and make a lot of people angry.

Sound Sessions - A short summary

Sounds Sessions with Matt Applegate

Before I had started the course I had heard about Matt Applegate however I didn’t really know much about him, I was very excited to hear that he would be teaching us in sound workshops, firstly we started looking at Star Wars the Clone Wars cartoon, at first I thought it was a bit strange but as we got into it more and it was explained I could see the relevance to sounds in games and what we could learn about them from watching this cartoon, since all the sounds in a cartoon are man-made so to speak, if you don’t put in a sound to a cartoon there is no sound, whereas if you were to film something in real life you would have natural sounds like footsteps, background noise and breathing. All these sounds are natural however in a cartoon and even in games there are no natural sounds, they all have to be recorded, edited and placed into the appropriate place.

The next thing we looked at was game trailers, we took a lot of time watching the gears of war trailer, the music in the trailer is Mad World which is smooth and calm track, when you put this with the guns and violence of gears of war it was strange how it worked, the music was there to make you feel calm and at ease whereas the video itself was aimed to put you on edge, this made the trailer really grab my attention as I wasn’t sure how to perceive it.

A few weeks into our lessons we started learning about Foley Artists, these are people that make the sounds that go into games/cartoons and movies, they produce sound using strange objects such as pieces of glass and vegetables and then edit these so they can be used in whichever way they are needed. We had a go at making our own sounds using a Foley Artist kind of method with varying degrees of success, our zombie sounds involved us moving around a room, groaning and then trying not to laugh at each other. We made a laser gun sound similar to one found in star wars, this was done with a metal slinky and a plastic cup, I personally was shocked by this as it sounded perfect without any computer editing and I’m still currently on the hunt to find my old metal slinky so I can sit there for hours of end producing sounds to worry my parents and confuse my neighbours.

I have really enjoyed the sound lessons we had with Matt Applegate and I believe what I have learned will be very valuable for the future, I have also learned that a Stargate opening is just a toilet flushing through a low pass filter, I can no longer watch Stargate properly, Thanks Matt