tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19368042952769259012024-03-05T00:19:57.981-08:00Livio's Gaming BlogDevelopment, design, and analysis.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-81235046631218584762014-06-25T21:58:00.000-07:002014-06-25T21:58:26.305-07:00I'm Moving to a New Blog!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFTV8Knq0mdS7kK7r7TLNebmX1fKyppDzb4D1V3Dgp99GcBGLRXjgMcj-xmsnSSQrK4mXmy_M1UfIdyYLaQf8q-EAeKQYXzAGh2cUSV3p0Nb-TeJg7fluEK27rkYlFVSJPvZ0dc1I4okJL/s1600/teleport-time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFTV8Knq0mdS7kK7r7TLNebmX1fKyppDzb4D1V3Dgp99GcBGLRXjgMcj-xmsnSSQrK4mXmy_M1UfIdyYLaQf8q-EAeKQYXzAGh2cUSV3p0Nb-TeJg7fluEK27rkYlFVSJPvZ0dc1I4okJL/s1600/teleport-time.jpg" /></a></div>
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I've moved to a new blog! Here's the link:<p style="text-align:center; font-size:1.5em"><a href="http://superheroesinracecars.com/" target="_blank">http://SuperHeroesInRaceCars.com/</a></p>
I plan to keep this site up for the sake of not breaking any links that might be pointing to this one.<br />
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Still waiting for part three of the <i>Magnet Ball</i> articles? <a href="http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/25/magnet-ball-postmortem/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full postmortem!</a><br />
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<a href="http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/19/start-your-engines/" target="_blank">Click here</a> to read about what I have planned for the new blog (and why I decided to make a new blog in the first place).
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-70165345173009933532013-05-22T19:28:00.001-07:002014-06-25T21:58:45.196-07:00Magnet Ball Postmortem, Part 2This article has moved! Read it here:<br />
<a href="http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/25/magnet-ball-postmortem/">http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/25/magnet-ball-postmortem/</a><br />
Sorry for the inconvenience!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-23078096142371429712013-05-01T19:55:00.000-07:002014-06-25T21:09:40.816-07:00Magnet Ball Postmortem, Part 1This article has moved! Read it here:<br />
<a href="http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/25/magnet-ball-postmortem/">http://superheroesinracecars.com/2014/06/25/magnet-ball-postmortem/</a><br />
Sorry for the inconvenience!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-84352080487915392682013-04-10T14:19:00.000-07:002013-04-10T02:24:38.413-07:00It's Time to Revive this Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWUzubVS2r4NLUct4x9VSM0GwNVwP_9gIVfmiYTRENr0YOdtf5r68j0XbtOqG49O4MTF56KaS1DqScWDUtUE3ASbSZRmddJVNEHklVuGDDWN4_xEuEw8JrSAdsooPBk1fehzKg1Aah8Kcg/s1600/LakitusavingMario.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWUzubVS2r4NLUct4x9VSM0GwNVwP_9gIVfmiYTRENr0YOdtf5r68j0XbtOqG49O4MTF56KaS1DqScWDUtUE3ASbSZRmddJVNEHklVuGDDWN4_xEuEw8JrSAdsooPBk1fehzKg1Aah8Kcg/s1600/LakitusavingMario.png" /></a></div>
It's been eight months since I last updated this blog! That's basically almost an entire academic school year. So rather than doing <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/everything-ive-been-doing-lately.html" target="_blank">what I did last time</a>, where I wrote an 1800-word blog post that basically said, "I'm busy," I'm instead going to talk briefly about some of the near-term plans that I have for the future of this blog.<br />
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The main reason why this blog grew inactive was because almost all of my posts tried to become super-huge, mega-articles, and that habit just became too impractical to maintain. I've talked about this problem before, but bad habits are hard to break, especially when you feel like you have to maintain a consistent style of content across the whole blog. I've tried writing smaller, less significant posts before, but I never really liked them because they felt like they were out of tune with the rest of the blog.<br />
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One of the good things about coming back after such a long hiatus is that it's a lot easier to stop worrying about things like that, which gives me the freedom to develop a new style for the blog that will end up being more engaging for my readers and less painful for me. I'll probably still end up writing some long articles every once in a while, but I'm also looking forward to writing some shorter ones.<br />
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I will also try to remember to post more about myself every once in a while, especially when interesting things are happening to me. I've always been somewhat opposed to writing posts about myself, mainly because I always saw the core content of the blog to be about game design and development rather than about me. Although, I've now realized that this is a really silly sentiment to have when writing for a blog that's named after yourself, and it's especially silly when considering that most of my readers would definitely be interested in my personal updates since most of them know me from outside of this blog.<br />
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So what topics can you expect me to write about in the near future? Well, at the current moment, I've been working on a postmortem for <a href="http://interguild.org/magnet-ball/" target="_blank">Magnet Ball</a>, which was the game that I made for this year's Independent Games Festival. Since that's definitely going to be one of my super-articles, I'll likely release a smaller post before I'm finished with that article, and such a post may end up being as short as this one.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-46913340015449667662012-08-08T13:05:00.001-07:002012-08-23T15:37:36.447-07:00A Retrospective of SISTA's Game Design Workshop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As I mentioned last month, the University of Arizona’s new <a href="http://sista.arizona.edu/" target="_blank">School of Information: Science, Technology, and Arts</a> (SISTA) has been organizing a Game Design Workshop for kids. The workshop was a one-week summer program that aimed to teach kids about game design and development, and I was lucky enough to have been hired as a teaching assistant for it. There was one other TA, as well as three instructors, which meant we were a team of five teachers in total.<br />
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Our biggest challenge was the fact that this was a brand new workshop being run for the very first time, so we essentially had to design it from the ground up. The bulk of the work was done by the instructors, while we TAs were given specific tasks to learn Stencyl, take notes on our experience, and design some lessons for it. During the several weeks before the workshop started, we were mostly working remotely, using online tools like Google Docs to collaborate. During the final week of preparation, we all met up to bring everything together and to "test" the design of the workshop so far by running through a mock version of it. The workshop then ran for two sessions, where each session lasted for one school-week (five days), and then end with a big playtesting event, where all of the parents and relatives could come in to play the students' games.<br />
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So was the workshop a success? Many of the people involved—from the kids, to their parents, to the rest of the SISTA faculty—were blown away by how amazing they thought the workshop was. The positive feedback was pretty consistent across both sessions, and it’s been immensely satisfying to read through the anonymous surveys that we’ve been collecting.<br />
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In this post, I’ll point out the various aspects of the workshop that I thought made it work so well, while also pointing out the various problems that we failed to avoid. Even though I found the typical postmortem format to be pretty useful when writing this, this is more accurately described as a retrospective. I'm not really in a position to be able to speak for the entire team, and since part of the goal of this post was to critique my own performance as a TA, I've added a few self-evaluation sections as well.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>What Went Right</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">#1: Smart Planning and Adaptability</span><br />
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Even though having two sessions meant that we had the opportunity to improve the quality of the second week based on the mistakes of the first, we never saw that as a fallback for a potentially low-quality workshop. We were personally motivated to create a great experience for these kids, regardless of which session they were in, and the week of preparation and testing before the first session was a huge help towards achieving this goal. We were able to find and fix dozens of small but significant problems that simply could not have been foreseen without actively testing the workshop’s design.<br />
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Once the workshop started, we continued to tweak its design by ending each day with a debriefing session, in which we would analyze how the day went, how to improve it for next time, and what we should change for the following day. These sessions also allowed us to exchange feedback on each other as well as share our concerns on how certain kids were doing. This system allowed us to be surprisingly flexible so that we could adapt quickly to problems as they came up.<br />
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For example, during the first week, we found that long lessons weren’t working so well, so we switched to a more lightning-fast, straight-to-the-point approach. This resulted in the creation of most of the slideshows on the Resources page of the workshop’s website (which hasn't been made public yet). The students could then access this information at any time, and we would often point them to these slides whenever they had a question that was related to them.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UfUYxdx6aQeYns_MR7Yf2IhVn1MF7qVGP2kQrM4AGbg/edit" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTDhRrrvf4KnSQSKS99FVI_Kzzy7zgdPs4FBzv0Gcj13kXXqt32K4zyJ36jdvdqECSCFwXsWc1S3gRugYyHuyevq-ivq064w2LAyDeQE8amVwPYJgEh3byCbJHlV7lHtLArj8DSE22XrXW/s320/slideshow.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The new slideshows were designed to be short and simple.</b></td></tr>
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The daily debriefs were especially useful during the second session, because they allowed us to adapt the workshop to a significantly different group of kids. The first session was a much tamer and more balanced group, and at least a third of the students were girls. But the second session was made up entirely of boys, who were generally older, more energetic, and more chaotic overall. And for some reason, this group was advancing through the content at an alarmingly faster rate than the previous week.<br />
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We knew we had to make a lot of changes to adapt the workshop to this new group of kids. But this was a good thing, because it meant that the second session ended up being much more tailored to the kids’ specific needs than the first session. During the first session, our main concern was about trying to fit the content that we thought was important for the kids to learn, while the second session prioritized the topics that the kids were getting the most out of. This allowed us to drop several segments of the workshop that simply weren’t working very well, and the result was a workshop that focused more on practical skills in the end.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">#2: The Kids Learned a Ton!</span><br />
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The kids were able to learn an incredible amount of content within just five days. They learned how to make games using <a href="http://www.stencyl.com/" target="_blank">Stencyl</a>, how to draw their own animations in an image editor called <a href="http://pixenapp.com/" target="_blank">Pixen</a>, how to create their own sound effects using <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">Audacity</a> and a microphone, and how to create their own music using <a href="http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/" target="_blank">GarageBand</a>. We never got around to teaching them how to use <a href="http://thirdcog.eu/apps/cfxr/" target="_blank">cfxr</a> (the Mac port of <a href="http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html" target="_blank">sfxr</a>), but there were some kids who found the program on their computers and ended up teaching themselves how to use it. Most of the kids also learned how to use Stencyl’s built-in (but deeply flawed) image-editor called <a href="http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/pencyl-image-editor/" target="_blank">Pencyl</a> for the sake of its text tool, which is a feature that Pixen lacks.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqfuRKYnlos_-nSQIUsioqih-bMeBG3Pj-qBoPDhEnKdMiHNjKUMqcozzH2RJKuCXrEPEuo00RyJgcCGERr4SG-ln7h4W1p1bb6kDCatxraPUBfWgx_S7rRw9CFUO_r7f65zJ-hzCDfI4U/s1600/ed_1_track.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqfuRKYnlos_-nSQIUsioqih-bMeBG3Pj-qBoPDhEnKdMiHNjKUMqcozzH2RJKuCXrEPEuo00RyJgcCGERr4SG-ln7h4W1p1bb6kDCatxraPUBfWgx_S7rRw9CFUO_r7f65zJ-hzCDfI4U/s320/ed_1_track.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>There was something magical about making your own sound effects.</b></td></tr>
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The fact that they learned so much within a short amount of time probably helped the kids feel like the workshop was an immensely valuable experience. We were worried that they would fnd the pacing of the workshop to be overwhelming, but most of them actually found it too slow, which was what forced us to increase the pace. There are several possible reasons for why this worked so well, most of which will be hinted at throughout the rest of this article, but one of the most important factors was the fact that the workshop was very hands-on. Letting the kids experiment with new concepts was usually more effective and time-efficient than talking about them.<br />
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The workshop was pretty expensive ($250 per student), and while this was actually cheaper than most other summer programs, we were worried that parents might not feel like they were getting their money’s worth. This was partly why the kids received an entire bag full of supplies and SISTA merchandise, including a reusable water bottle, a 4GB flash drive, a game design notebook, a workshop t-shirt, and much more. But because the workshop was so intrinsically valuable on its own, I feel like the merchandise will instead do a pretty good job of reminding the kids of the experiences that they had here, and hopefully it means they’ll be less likely to forget the things that they learned.<br />
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What these kids accomplished during the workshop was nothing short of amazing. To be able to come up with a game idea and build a digital prototype with decent animations, sound effects, and music in just a few days is something that only the best game designers can do.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">#3: Stencyl is a Great Tool</span><br />
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Of all the tools and resources that we used in this workshop, the game-making tool was perhaps the most important decision that we had to make. We needed a tool that would allow the kids to make a game in less than five days with minimal problems, while also being easy enough to use that the kids would feel encouraged to keep making games once the workshop had ended. Some of the biggest problems of SISTA’s new game design class last semester were directly caused by the decision to use GameMaker. At any one time, there were conflicts with up to four different versions of the program: PC Lite (v8.1), Mac Lite (v7.0), PC Pro (v8.1), and Mac Pro (v7.0). The gap in features between the Mac and PC versions, combined with the gap between the Lite and Pro versions, were infuriating.<br />
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Stencyl, on the other hand, avoids that problem beautifully. Unlike GameMaker, Stencyl seemed to have been designed to work first on Mac, and then it received one of the most flawless ports to PC that I’ve ever seen. The developers even transferred over subtle effects from the Mac interface, such as the ability to click-and-drag the entire window around by grabbing any piece of the window, not just the top bar. And rather than creating a disparity in features between the Pro and Free versions, Stencyl Pro simply offers the ability to publish your final game to certain platforms, such as iOS.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYHqvsMZQY2HExpGibWSZ5PRlFN2__2CXUGH-jcYhiy8l4zBvs-KYafOmOC7AZZfI3V3Rkd_TbEMMcifeppxZnFDqlVAIZV5tzVB4eV2MVEnrhytzAQBGgMQFVgNx61sUzQuQ05RO0wB5/s1600/stencylimg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxYHqvsMZQY2HExpGibWSZ5PRlFN2__2CXUGH-jcYhiy8l4zBvs-KYafOmOC7AZZfI3V3Rkd_TbEMMcifeppxZnFDqlVAIZV5tzVB4eV2MVEnrhytzAQBGgMQFVgNx61sUzQuQ05RO0wB5/s400/stencylimg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>“Of course you can download Stencyl at home. And it’s <em>exactly</em> the same!”</b></td></tr>
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The consistency of all of its versions is just one example of Stencyl’s amazing dedication to a great user experience. The developers have clearly put a lot of thought not just into the program’s interface, but also into the intuitiveness of its basic features and core systems. With other tools, especially with GameMaker, you often get a sense that the features and systems were too heavily influenced by engineering concerns rather than with the user’s perspective. Stencyl’s design feels like it prioritized the user’s perspective above all else, and while it must have been incredibly challenging to develop, the result feels much more natural and inviting.<br />
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I could write pages and pages about Stencyl’s design, in order to explain exactly why it’s so well done, but that’s outside the scope of this article. There are still quite a few problems with it, however. But because the developers seem to genuinely care about their users, I’m confident that Stencyl will only continue to improve as new versions of the program are released.<br />
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It was amazing to watch the kids use Stencyl throughout the week. While we tried to help the kids as they got stuck on problems, many of them found the joy of what it’s like to persevere through a tough glitch all on their own. We even had to force some of them to take breaks, or else they would have kept working all day, even skipping meals if they wanted to. They were becoming typical programmers without even realizing it.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">#4: Frequent Breaks and Outdoor Play</span><br />
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Some of us were worried from the very beginning that the kids would be spending an unhealthy amount of time in front of a computer at this workshop, so we made sure to plan several non-computer activities into the schedule, including board-game playing, brainstorming exercises, snack time (not to be confused with lunch time), and even outdoor play. As we continued to adapt the workshop, we started to add spontaneous optional breaks, such as a random outdoor walk, or more outdoor play time. Some of the parents were actually concerned about outdoor play, because it meant we were taking their kids out into the deadly Arizona heat in the middle of July. Fortunately, the kids all had their own water bottle, and we always went to a space that provided plenty of shade.<br />
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Breaking up the workshop into several events also helped us maintain an engaging sense of pacing. Towards the beginning of a session, we would notice that there were some segments that just felt like a long grind because there weren’t enough changes within a couple hours. However, towards the end of a session, we found that the kids would actually start to prefer the long grinds, because they wanted to get as much work done on their games as possible before presenting them on Friday.<br />
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When this happened, we decided to give them their work time, but we also provided more optional breaks. Usually about half the class would decide to take these breaks, and we would even try to convince some of the more hard-working students to see why it was important to take breaks. Most people have a terrible sense of how to stay productive, so it was nice that we were able to provide a good example for how to get a lot of work done in a healthy way.<br />
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I personally thought that both the indoor and outdoor play times were the most fun parts of the workshop, not just because they allowed the kids to socialize with each other, but because they were often about getting them to create non-digital games. It’s a ton of fun to mash-up a few games together and to be able to see what happens almost immediately, without having to program it. In other words, they weren’t just playing games; they were playing with game <i>designs</i>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hIk_YUeAEEusF_Qy925UuUnRYk4Igsrt1tYPI_ED9r8PBmfidrLV-NmfYOTHtWZo6UhUgb1hXJ7tsFqRVV1zM7mC-YahRwbDMr6nox8gbS-qcGbOPgqgM_SnKgUslq99em22MbRjVCeO/s1600/diagonal1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1hIk_YUeAEEusF_Qy925UuUnRYk4Igsrt1tYPI_ED9r8PBmfidrLV-NmfYOTHtWZo6UhUgb1hXJ7tsFqRVV1zM7mC-YahRwbDMr6nox8gbS-qcGbOPgqgM_SnKgUslq99em22MbRjVCeO/s320/diagonal1.gif" width="318" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Diagonal Chess was a popular favorite.</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">#5: A Five-Person Staff</span><br />
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It might have seemed excessive to have had three instructors and two TAs for a group of 20 students, but it was necessary considering the amount of things that we were doing during this workshop. Most of the time, it felt like we were really a team of four, because Kelland Thomas’ lessons on sound effects and music were basically guest lectures since he wasn’t very involved with designing and running the workshop (he still contributed enough to be worth counting, however). Meanwhile the other two instructors, Jane Strohm and Derek Green, contributed the valuable skills and experience that really made this workshop work in the first place.<br />
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It’s hard to assess the value of the TAs from within a TA position, but we were able to take a lot of the workload and stress off of the instructors, which probably made the scope of the workshop much more manageable. It was easier to organize outdoor activities when you had more people to regulate the kids, and it also meant that at any time we had at least two people going around the room answering questions, even if we were in the middle of a lesson.<br />
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It kept the lessons running smoothly because there were less class-wide interruptions. If some kids fell behind, we could help them catch up without impeding on everyone else’s progress. If some kids were ahead, usually stuck on a problem that required a more advanced understanding of Stencyl, we were able to teach them advanced concepts, many of which were never formally covered in a lesson. Because some kids ended up learning more than others, we encouraged the kids to ask each other for help, and we awarded the more helpful students with "badges", represented by stickers on their nametags that advertised the skills that they had mastered.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2012/07/ua-hosts-video-game-design-workshope-for-local-schools" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx4-bctWf5Q5r_G4rVK3za188Wsv46qZidas3Kj594ZJbRYY7HV_CeXoeuXlar3p3doQlHxSYti7pWLawNf6lxNmqX72vqXKcItxkzVXIXUGMj-tRae47UdNeTSTBay-vx521a3OTQqZ8u/s320/13011_gamedesignf.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Derek (not a TA) explains a glitch to a student. (Photo by the <a href="http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2012/07/ua-hosts-video-game-design-workshope-for-local-schools" target="_blank">Daily Wildcat</a>)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The TAs were more than just a helping hand, however. The position was pretty demanding, because we were asked to do a lot to help plan the workshop. Both of us TAs maintained large Google Docs of notes about specific topics and concerns about the workshop, and we also developed many of the resources on the workshop website. I personally enjoyed the workload, because it made me feel like we were an actual part of the team, rather than servants or subordinates.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Self-Evaluation: What I Did Right</b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#1: Avoiding Some of my Weaknesses</span><br />
<br />
Before the workshop started, one of my major concerns was that I wouldn’t be a very good public speaker. In the past, I’ve struggled with not speaking loud enough, and sometimes making the conscious effort to speak louder will make you self-conscious enough to make you feel awkward. Fortunately, I had already built up resistance against the typical fears associated with public speaking by giving plenty of presentations at <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/" target="_blank">my club</a> during the past school year. Unfortunately, I never really fixed my habit of not speaking loud enough, since I would often be so focused on what I was trying to say that I would forget to keep my voice up.<br />
<br />
So it was a huge help to have the instructors giving me the feedback that I needed whenever I spoke to the class. Our solution was to have someone stand on the other side of the room and make gestures whenever they had trouble hearing me. It also helped that running the workshop demanded a certain level of energy output from me, so I was more likely to feel natural putting in the extra energy needed to speak loudly. I still think my speaking could have been a lot better, but I’m putting this under the “what went right” category because I see it as an overall improvement.<br />
<br />
Another major weakness that I was worried about was the fact that I’m generally really bad at explaining things. That’s partly why I put so much effort into this blog, because if I don’t, then everything will come out disorganized and confusing. One of the tasks that the TAs had was to give at least one lesson on any topic, and while I had many interesting game design topics that I wanted to talk about, my attempts to turn them into clear, coherent lessons that were less than 10 minutes long failed terribly. What went right in this case was the fact that I avoided this risk by sticking to much more practical topics, such as how to do specific things with Stencyl.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8BHNnGcW8bF2jMqYU8yjAWwZEmVd_ayJiMFLCmMp1vE4lh67ICPOxREBChJTDNpHYj6hKzBXt3EdiqeIlIsCaIsq3ViNrkY85ejXLWKWQrUBZ9VkvbKZkdOtLOA1jFIjpkoAGkt3Ef-jq/s1600/lessons.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8BHNnGcW8bF2jMqYU8yjAWwZEmVd_ayJiMFLCmMp1vE4lh67ICPOxREBChJTDNpHYj6hKzBXt3EdiqeIlIsCaIsq3ViNrkY85ejXLWKWQrUBZ9VkvbKZkdOtLOA1jFIjpkoAGkt3Ef-jq/s400/lessons.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Many of our lessons ended up dissolving into slideshows for<br />the Resources page, especially during the second session.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#2: Honing my Debugging Skills</span><br />
<br />
While the idea of going around the room and answering questions might not sound very demanding, it’s actually a very hectic job. These kids were programming a game using a tool that was completely new to them, and because they were allowed to go at their own pace, they were running into all sorts of weird glitches and problems. Sometimes they made a simple misstep and made a trivial mistake, but other times they were playing with multiple features that they had no introduction to and had managed to turn their game into a tangled mess of glitches.<br />
<br />
After just the first day of this, I was surprised by how quickly and efficiently I had become at debugging these games. Once you see a few common mistakes, you tend to develop a subconscious glitch-hunting routine that helps you find the problem as fast as possible, and then the rest of the time is spent trying to make sure the student understands what was wrong and how to fix it. The amount of glitches that I solved in a typical session, combined with the speed with which they were solved, sometimes made me feel like I was at some kind of debugging olympics.<br />
<br />
As the workshop went on, I made an effort to improve my teaching skills while debugging. I would try to ask the student more questions, such as “do you know how to do this?” or “do you know what this means?” Something that may have helped was the fact that I truly thought many of the things I was teaching them were interesting, and I would sometimes go on tangents about how I thought a certain feature in Stencyl was cool or lame. Some kids really did find the enthusiasm of my explanations entertaining, and there was even a short-lived running joke about one of my solutions that involved the use of trigonometry.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#3: Becoming the Stencyl Expert</span><br />
<br />
While Stencyl has many built-in features to help you learn how to use the program and to help you ask for help, there aren’t that many resources out there at the time of this writing that will help you learn the intricacies of its deeper features. Because of this, a truly deep understanding of Stencyl is pretty hard to come by, since you mostly have to figure things out on your own. I was probably the one person on our team who got the farthest in understanding Stencyl (although Derek did pass me for a while).<br />
<br />
It may have been my love for Stencyl that drove me to keep learning about the platform, but my respect for the developers also made me want to contribute more to the Stencyl community. Before the workshop began, I was submitting bug reports and posting feedback on some of the starter guides. During the workshop, I took some of my more complicated solutions to student problems and turned them into behaviors, which I then posted onto StencylForge as well the workshop’s Resources page. My behaviors became more polished and less glitchy as I made more of them, and some of the jokes embedded into their design bring back good memories about how much fun the workshop was.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Rh8mqa2tJDkR2zCSdWZ2GmkF2SUqv9TdDlMBJqM8Jufw2AdRoUejdbrYP5EtMgPxoqy6btkQIIJSfcUhoe8gtH1WYImpEUJLQJkYhfRsUoKH4eJZegG6qSdp-TibGzYeL2dL-ZY1n2Mc/s1600/behaviors.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Rh8mqa2tJDkR2zCSdWZ2GmkF2SUqv9TdDlMBJqM8Jufw2AdRoUejdbrYP5EtMgPxoqy6btkQIIJSfcUhoe8gtH1WYImpEUJLQJkYhfRsUoKH4eJZegG6qSdp-TibGzYeL2dL-ZY1n2Mc/s400/behaviors.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Apparently chickens really can fly.</b></td></tr>
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<br />
I started to notice that the more confusing problems were frequently forwarded to me, and even some of the students started requesting my help specifically. For better or worse, if a kid asked for help, I typically wouldn’t leave their side until we fixed their problem or until I got interrupted by something. There was only one time when I told a kid that I couldn’t figure out their problem, and that was partly motivated by the fact that he would rather talk to his friends rather than participate in the debugging process.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>What Went Wrong</b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#1: Did we Handle Debugging Wrong?</span><br />
<br />
This isn’t really something that went definitively wrong, but it’s a question that still worries me. As I mentioned previously, when the kids ran into a problem, we would point out the problem right away and explain it to them. There were even times when the problem was so advanced that we knew they couldn’t get things to work on their own, so we would often fix things ourselves, sometimes writing new behaviors for them to use.<br />
<br />
There are probably teachers out there who would cringe at the idea that we did some of the work for them. The computer science department at the University of Arizona strictly trains its TAs to never solve any of the student’s problems for them. Instead, they are merely there to help student ask the right questions in order to guide them through the debugging process. I personally think that’s pretty cool, because not only does it prevent the TAs from accidentally doing the students’ homework for them, it’s also meant to teach people how to be a better debugger.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with this approach. First, it’s very time-consuming, and we just didn’t have the time for such a roundabout way of solving problems. Second, this process can be pretty demotivating to someone with no programming experience. Most of the time, students just want to know what they’re doing wrong, and when they can’t get direct feedback on that, they get frustrated. If we had used the more indirect approach, it’s likely that we would have left these kids with a bad first taste of programming. Their experience would have been largely defined by the ugly problems that they got stuck at, rather than the triumphant pride of having built something as complicated as a game.<br />
<br />
However, I’m still worried about this for some reason. Did some kids become so reliant on us fixing things for them that they won’t have the confidence to keep making games outside the classroom? Did some kids feel like we helped them so much that they don’t feel like it’s their game anymore? Maybe I’m just being too cynical, because it’s probably the exposure to lots of problems and their solutions that helps a programmer develop their debugging skills. We even took the time to have a few lessons about troubleshooting and debugging strategies.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/interguild.org/presentation/d/1cDebSNAV1EQrLuE317ujzzq0u8SMMPV_M3oMexl_gP8/edit" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhtacvB0vnjUT_mZP0f1VJpr4HNzXZlF6jx0yUWK1PzYgUwQUjJbCAPQMnl7I73zKzb7QrabRJlVkoyRltJ2wLjtPlGCV3p9l0Y-EBCn20Nd_Ydda30QsWI8dwcPeE_-zpaeeaSJ9ts8XG/s320/debugging.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>From the slideshow on troubleshooting.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I also know that many kids were actually pretty engaged while I found their glitches for them. They were usually genuinely curious about what was wrong with their game, and it gave them a chance to see how messy the debugging process really was. Whenever I had to implement a more complex solution for them, they would watch me code in front of them, and some kids found my tendency to think out loud while working to be hilarious. I know that some of them actually did learn something from the complex solutions, because I would later see some of these kids trying to implement something similar into their friend’s game.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#2: Some Kids Didn’t Get Enough Help</span><br />
<br />
Now this is a real problem. Because there was such a high demand for help, we TAs naturally tended to help only the students who asked for it. There were some students who were struggling but were just too shy, or too focused on something else, to ask for help. Some of us were careful enough to take the time to try to find and help these kids, but for the most part, the rest of us were too caught up in the debugging spree to do the same. We almost didn’t realize this problem existed if it wasn’t for some of the parent feedback that we got during the first session.<br />
<br />
I still feel really bad about this mistake, because it wasn’t until the end of the second session that I started to fully understand the problem, despite the fact that we had discussed the topic earlier at one of our daily debriefing sessions. That’s why I wrote more about this under the “What I did Wrong” section.<br />
<br />
The rest of the team, however, did a much better job reacting to this problem. Jane, especially, seemed to be the most alert when it came to finding kids who were secretly struggling. She would even email their parents early in the week in order to figure out how to deal with some of the kids. Some of them just weren’t as interested in the workshop as others, and there were also a few kids who needed a boost in confidence. Many of the parents were very impressed by how much effort we were putting into their kid.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#3: The Side-Effects of Adaptability</span><br />
<br />
While the daily debriefing sessions were part of what made the workshop so successful, we actually made so many changes with the second session that we started to lose track of things. Even though we took care to write down all the modifications that we were making in advance, we never really wrote down the modifications that we made on the fly. We often needed to change things in the middle of the day, because the second session was progressing faster than we expected. We started to lose track of what exactly we had taught the kids, and we couldn’t rely much on memory because of how easy it is to confuse memories of one session with another.<br />
<br />
We had a general idea of where they were with the content, but when it came to specifics (such as whether or not we taught them about collision groups), things started to become unclear. Although by the time we noticed these unintended gaps in the curriculum, it was unclear whether any action should be taken, because not only had many of the students learned the material from the TAs, others had also learned it from the slides on the workshop’s Resources page.<br />
<br />
While this confusion over what exactly had been taught didn’t lead to much trouble in the end, it’s still a pretty embarrassing problem. I’m sure the instructors were more on top of this than I was, and maybe I just have bad memory. But if we had known we would be making so many changes to the workshop during a single day, we probably would have done a better job of documenting what we had actually accomplished, not just what we planned to accomplish.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#4: Not Enough on Design?</span><br />
<br />
One of my major concerns during the weeks before the workshop was that there was going to be too much about how to use Stencyl and not enough about actual game design. We actually had quite a few design-oriented activities, but I sense that many of the kids didn’t really make the connection between that content and their own game project. This makes me think that they probably didn’t take much away from these segments.<br />
<br />
There was one segment where we tried to make the kids fill out a small design doc template about their games before officially starting to make them, but there was quite a bit of resistance because most of them wanted to just play around with Stencyl and see what was possible before making design decisions. The irony is that this was actually a really smart decision on the kids’ part, because it’s a perfect example of the <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/06/deconstructing-iterative-development.html" target="_blank">iterative development process</a> followed well.<br />
<br />
The kids wanted to experiment with Stencyl first, because they inherently knew that there were a lot of risks with not knowing a tool’s limits. They knew that fleshing out an idea too early was probably a waste of time if they were forced to change key aspects of it later. This is actually the exact same process that I followed when making <a href="http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/13834" target="_blank">my own sample Stencyl game</a>. The only difference was that I simply had a few more iterations, and I had even saved copies of some of those iterations. We could have made a potentially great design lesson out of these events and resources, but we just didn’t have the time.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKinQeak1K8X39jeN9QOBUGYSN6Kc2qqTkixPzmrFhJzO-6LetSf0H_OmHaf__5lKXOLRjJAJo-XshJoZWYzNIOgxY-bN_07ztX25OP9KVXj0qMOD60KpNB79wJtkPb6JQacnk1AMkEA1/s1600/getthegem.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKinQeak1K8X39jeN9QOBUGYSN6Kc2qqTkixPzmrFhJzO-6LetSf0H_OmHaf__5lKXOLRjJAJo-XshJoZWYzNIOgxY-bN_07ztX25OP9KVXj0qMOD60KpNB79wJtkPb6JQacnk1AMkEA1/s400/getthegem.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Do you recognize some of those sprites?</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We were starting to think that the kids were so preoccupied with learning how to <i>make</i> a game that there wasn’t much room left for learning how to <i>design</i> a game. You can’t really understand how to design a game until you know how to make one, so perhaps the low emphasis on design was for the best. There’s been much talk about organizing a more advanced version of this workshop in the future, and perhaps that session could be completely design oriented. Design is a tricky subject to teach because it can be hard to keep everything grounded in practicality. Fortunately there are a lot of potentially great lessons we could hold that link back to the students’ experiences in this workshop in order to teach them more about core design skills.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#5: The Loose Ends</span><br />
<br />
Despite its great success, the workshop’s design could still use quite a bit of polish. For instance, despite being really cool, the avatar cards were never really used again after the first day. Many kids also made the mistake of overestimating the scope of their games, so we should have made it clearer that they were only making a prototype of a game. And while we tried to improve this during the second session, we still feel like we didn’t emphasize the importance of playtesting early enough. The list of problems goes on, but it’ll probably take several more iterations to stamp out all of these smaller problems.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHSkPS75l5G58QsxXG2dwXSlmz9gXr1veqPnrqM9lhS_gkdfz0zKb_Qsc9zB-CwQbt08IR75sv6yvuaG1UcIfM03Iux4_SIiL6etT2fyZRjsAUUhKNgfMqzU3g4cQR-Kc2sgaFqs6QFwC3/s1600/avatarcards.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHSkPS75l5G58QsxXG2dwXSlmz9gXr1veqPnrqM9lhS_gkdfz0zKb_Qsc9zB-CwQbt08IR75sv6yvuaG1UcIfM03Iux4_SIiL6etT2fyZRjsAUUhKNgfMqzU3g4cQR-Kc2sgaFqs6QFwC3/s320/avatarcards.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Some avatar cards</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Also, while a lot of people are excited about the success of this workshop and what it means for the future of SISTA, I think it’s worth remembering that SISTA still doesn’t have an experienced game designer on staff. It would be unwise to get too excited about the future of SISTA’s game program until that basic problem has been fixed, but I also hope the great success of this workshop will be a huge help in recruiting such a person. Perhaps this person is already reading this very blog post?<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Self Evaluation: What I Did Wrong</b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#1: There Were Some Kids that I Didn’t Help</span><br />
<br />
As I mentioned earlier, I really regret how I failed to notice that some of the kids were silently struggling with their games. A lot of times if a kid gave up on a problem and needed help, they would often start working on a different part of their game. This was very deceptive, because they would appear to be very productive despite the fact that they were frustrated. And as the student became more absorbed into what they were doing, they were less likely to remember to ask for help when one of us passed by.<br />
<br />
The only way to even notice the problem would have been to start a conversation with those kids by asking them how their game was going. Some of us adapted well to this solution, but I really failed to do that. Part of the reason may have been because I was usually on high demand to fix things, but I was also remarkably impulsive about which student I would go to help out next. I almost always went to the first student who I saw was asking for help, and while I learned to prioritize students based on how rarely they ask for help, I was still only giving help exclusively to those who asked for it.<br />
<br />
On the positive side, I feel like I got to know some of the kids who frequently asked for help really well, and there would even be times when they would raise their hands just because they wanted to show us a cool thing that they made or a tough problem that they solved. But I really should’ve noticed that something was wrong when I realized that I barely knew anything about the quieter kids and the games that they were making.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">#2: The Need for More Data</span><br />
<br />
There were several times during the workshop when I wished I had maintained more data on how I was doing. The first metric I wish I had was how much time I was spending per problem, because I was worried about the impact of my “don’t leave until it’s fixed” style of answering questions. Next, I found myself wishing I had maintained a list of which glitches I was fixing the most, because I really wanted to write some kind of FAQ guide not just for the workshop’s website, but for the Stencyl community as well. And now, in hindsight, I wish I had kept a metric on which students I was helping the most, or more importantly, which ones I weren't helping enough.<br />
<br />
I always assumed that maintaining such metrics would have been impractical (or just plain weird), but it really would have required nothing more than a simple notepad and a few extra seconds per question. I may have been more aware of the mistakes that I was making, and the simple act of slowing down to accurately measure my performance would have also helped me to stop being so impulsive about which kids I chose to help.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />
<br />
This workshop was technically my first real job, and even though it helped put every single one of my side projects on hold for a while (except for this blog, apparently), it was one of the most valuable experiences I've ever dedicated myself to.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-49596845853189155612012-07-19T00:30:00.000-07:002012-07-19T05:22:04.571-07:00I've Gone Viral! . . . In China?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5sSSU3h-oaDAXYWbQtwJmJe8MJHAq7IlJu4IggkCiPY6v4X62zVVncsXmq0buEdWSVnsNl3GGvVdJOgxDIZK4A4x1yDoX7QnDh_rTZwOsJkaLDi34E4FBV_fdT7GgbecaR8TRIjJJko3g/s1600/super-smash-bros-brawl-lucas-and-kirby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5sSSU3h-oaDAXYWbQtwJmJe8MJHAq7IlJu4IggkCiPY6v4X62zVVncsXmq0buEdWSVnsNl3GGvVdJOgxDIZK4A4x1yDoX7QnDh_rTZwOsJkaLDi34E4FBV_fdT7GgbecaR8TRIjJJko3g/s1600/super-smash-bros-brawl-lucas-and-kirby.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
This blog really doesn't get much traffic at all. I get anywhere from 2-20 pageviews per day, and that number usually spikes up to around 40-60 views on the days following a new post. The "low season" in between posts isn't completely dead, because plenty of people seem to land here from Google Images. For instance, I got an interesting spike in traffic last month when <a href="http://extra-credits.net/" target="_blank">Extra Credits</a> started a <a href="http://extra-credits.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2782&sid=65ae245a3da70fc9de383fdb17cd6c86" target="_blank">T-Shirt design contest</a> and apparently a lot of users were landing in my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/viral-spreading-of-online-lecture.html" target="_blank">History of Extra Credits</a> articles looking for images.<br />
<br />
However, these mini-spikes in views usually aren't very significant compared to the traffic I get from subscribers every time I post. So imagine my surprise when I noticed a spike that was slightly bigger than the usual new-post spike. This spike happened just a few days before I posted my most recent post, and that should have been part of a really low season since I haven't posted an update in over a month. After looking into it, I found not one, not two, but <b><i>three</i></b> websites with articles linking to me.<br />
<br />
Long story short, someone seems to have translated my article on <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">How to Think Like a Designer</a> into Han Chinese. And since then, it's been getting passed around and reposted on multiple Chinese websites.
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;">My Rise to Fame</span><br />
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(<b>Warning:</b> Chinese websites have a reputation for being risky to visit, so be aware that you are clicking on the following links at your own risk!)<br />
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The phenomenon started last Thursday when gamerboom.com posted an article called <a href="http://gamerboom.com/archives/56702" target="_blank">阐述优秀设计师应有的思考立场及创作态度</a>, and they even took the time to post the original English version within the same article. Two days later, leiphone.com reposted my translated article, this time with slightly better formatting, in an article called <a href="http://www.leiphone.com/0714-danice-designer-think.html" target="_blank">优秀设计师应有的思考立场及创作态度</a>. The virality of the article must have been reaching its peak at this point, because it was only a few hours later when alibuybuy.com republished my article under the title <a href="http://www.alibuybuy.com/posts/74894.html" target="_blank">优秀设计师应有的思考立场及创作态度</a>.<br />
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Of course, this was all done without my permission. I even checked my spam folder, and it doesn't look like anyone even tried to notify me that they were about to repost my article. I have no hard feelings, though, because they were respectable enough to give credit and to link back, so it's not like it was blatant plagiarism. Of course, the reason I found these sites was because I got traffic from them, so I really don't know anything about the sites that didn't link to me or if they even exist.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A Good Time to Make Some Edits</span><br />
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Putting the ridiculousness of this event aside, I've decided to use this as an excuse to finally remove all of the random bold formatting in some of my old articles. If you've ever gone back and read through any of the articles from 2011, you'll notice that I had a habit of taking seemingly important sentences at random and making them bold. The reasoning was that this blog was originally created to fulfill <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html" target="_blank">class requirement</a>, and since I was writing some rather long posts when compared to my classmates', I figured some people might want some kind of mechanism that would help them skim through the "important" parts faster.<br />
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Even though I always cringe at the random bold formatting now, I've always resisted my urge to go back and edit those posts because it just feels wrong to edit such an old post for such a trivial reason. It just feels like a wimpy thing to do, as if I'm trying to hide the flaws in my past work, which runs directly counter to one of the tips that I gave in my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-think-like-designer-applying.html" target="_blank">How to Think Like a Designer</a> article.<br />
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But you know what else runs against those tips? The fact that I lost sight of my audience by ignoring how annoyed they were by the random bolding of sentences. And if people are still finding my past articles helpful, then that's all the more reason to fix that design problem.<br />
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Of course, the downside to fixing this problem is that several years from now, someone's probably going to dig this up and accuse me of helping communists.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-45097311598832397672012-07-16T01:00:00.001-07:002012-08-23T15:33:41.820-07:00Why I'm no longer Skeptical about SISTA's new Game Design Workshop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU_KnwLN1JsT0lq12lStoWHtFCw0IhjRCgdxydpkkHg3hqJbdq6bexeHXgJvJkbpSKCfzjAe7pWv5Wfgp1pwaywnvZmvrXDM91t77BhwUB_aRSqslosrHxor-aKs2ZTrOXwkCXtv-gULv9/s1600/sistagdw.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU_KnwLN1JsT0lq12lStoWHtFCw0IhjRCgdxydpkkHg3hqJbdq6bexeHXgJvJkbpSKCfzjAe7pWv5Wfgp1pwaywnvZmvrXDM91t77BhwUB_aRSqslosrHxor-aKs2ZTrOXwkCXtv-gULv9/s1600/sistagdw.png" /></a></div>
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<i>[This article explores some of my fears and predictions about the workshop. To find out how it actually went, <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/08/game-design-workshop-retrospective.html">click here</a>!]</i><br />
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Starting tomorrow, the University of Arizona's <a href="http://sista.arizona.edu/" target="_blank">School of Information: Science, Technology, and Arts</a> (SISTA) will be launching its first <a href="http://www.sista.arizona.edu/content/game-design-workshop" target="_blank">Game Design Workshop</a>. It's a one-week program designed for kids between 6th and 12th grade, and it's being run for two consecutive sessions. I volunteered to be one of the two teaching assistants helping to run the workshop, and our latest assignment is to write a reflection on how we think the workshop might go. One purpose of this reflection is to produce a more visible representation of the work I've been doing so far, which makes this assignment a perfect fit for a blog post!<br />
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Given how busy I've been all summer, I was starting to think that I wouldn't be able to update this blog again until fall, so I'm glad that I was able to use this assignment as an excuse for a new post. Plus this gives me a good chance to practice writing posts with smaller scopes. Most of my posts tend to start out with a vague plan that I'll just talk about everything I want to say on a single topic, and then I'll figure out how to merge them all into a coherent thesis later. It is an absurdly slow process, and it's about time I stopped doing that.<br />
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For instance, this post started out as a list of predictions about how the workshop might go, plus some descriptions of the interesting aspects of the workshop's design woven in. Fortunately, I had enough sense to realize that the workshop would probably be over before I could even finish such a post.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;">My Biased Perception of SISTA</span><br />
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Anyway, when I first heard about this workshop a few months ago, my most immediate concern was that it was going to have the same low level of quality as everything else I've seen SISTA do. I've taken only two of their courses so far, and they both suffered from the same problems: they were brand new courses being taught for the very first time, and the teachers had little to no prior experience teaching. Because SISTA is such a new department, it hasn't yet had the luxury of having its courses refined throughout the years by experienced professors. Even the <a href="http://www.sista.arizona.edu/" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">department's website</a> is pretty badly designed, which makes it an ironically fitting portrayal of how the department is still setting itself up.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjetB5QgaPL5kjR-5uR1QApF7BpjPC1CNcJ97F7hQXiPqPOH_16tpunUd2wXVDzd5jn4aQdjqy8jSqS162QwRf__e3BYVvNQ40N5gITGxFvtu5VRBZrpqFEY-8FJ0AK_Fixgu-02f-AUM0y/s1600/sista.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjetB5QgaPL5kjR-5uR1QApF7BpjPC1CNcJ97F7hQXiPqPOH_16tpunUd2wXVDzd5jn4aQdjqy8jSqS162QwRf__e3BYVvNQ40N5gITGxFvtu5VRBZrpqFEY-8FJ0AK_Fixgu-02f-AUM0y/s400/sista.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Is that a marquee?</b></td></tr>
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Last semester SISTA held its first game design course, and while they have plans for more advanced game development courses in the future, the department is severely limited by the fact that they don't have any experienced game designers on staff. So in order to meet the demand for these courses, the department had a recent PhD graduate teach himself game design in a few months and then attempt to pass on the knowledge to students. Because there was clearly not enough time for him to truly understand the field, the only feasible strategy was to somehow take a shortcut by trying to figure out how to teach game design without having to deeply understand it.<br />
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The alternative, however, would have been to simply cancel the class, which probably would have deprived the department of some of the funding that it needs to expand. From what I understand (and I'm not a very credible source about this), the University of Arizona funds its colleges based on how many credit-hours they teach, so if a department needs more funding, they can get it by providing a greater number of courses, rather than improving the quality of existing ones. The sad part is that SISTA's strategy to "expand now, improve later" is probably causing serious damage their reputation. The low quality of their inherently popular elective courses simply reinforces the perception that ISTA isn't a real major.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What Causes a Class to be Bad?</span><br />
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I've taken some amazing courses at this University, but I've also taken enough bad courses to make me wonder what kind of system could produce such a wide disparity of results. I wondered why departments and schools seemed to continue to hire bad teachers and why they didn't seem to be doing enough in terms of quality control. And while I still don't have a solid understanding of those problems, working on this workshop has helped me realize a much more important problem: most teachers follow a terrible design process.<br />
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In my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/06/deconstructing-iterative-development.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, I talked about the typical design process and the pitfalls of trying to apply it directly to a game development process. It's wasteful to wait until the game has been significantly implemented in order to start assessing your design, so to avoid that problem, game designers build crude prototypes that can allow them to quickly test certain design decisions without much time or effort. The idea is to decrease the amount of time between your iterations, which allows you to fit more iterations into your development, which in turn leads to a better end product.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitJxaujSAE9AEgl-lxx7Hub5xY4WXY-SZWoMfzGfQgWt6JiKJP3YpZNJ9Oqj8fiWPC7DH-A6LsdY0uB-FA19stwerB0RhjiQtJ26nmU6l1MSvAP52KOY55jo4TldrKqc_5WO1g7AX0326T/s1600/Wall-of-Text-Run-Away.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitJxaujSAE9AEgl-lxx7Hub5xY4WXY-SZWoMfzGfQgWt6JiKJP3YpZNJ9Oqj8fiWPC7DH-A6LsdY0uB-FA19stwerB0RhjiQtJ26nmU6l1MSvAP52KOY55jo4TldrKqc_5WO1g7AX0326T/s400/Wall-of-Text-Run-Away.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>This is what my last blog post looked like.</b></td></tr>
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Most teachers seem to perform a similar mistake, except it's much worse because they seem to wait a full year (or a semester, if they're lucky) in between their most important iterations. There's this frustrating notion that I sense from teachers that it's okay for a class to be terrible on its first few runs. Few of them seem to realize that they can literally save <em>years</em> worth of time if they were more strategic about how they tested their courses.<br />
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Unfortunately, this is most likely a systemic problem, because as far as I know, it doesn't seem like teachers even get paid for all of the hours it would take to properly prototype a course. Furthermore, teachers get surprisingly little amounts of feedback on how they're performing, which just makes their iterations even more worthless. I'm disturbed by the fact that every time I hear about feedback in the educational system, it's presented as if it's some kind of novel idea.<br />
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These are all very deeply entrenched problems that are much more complicated than I understand at the moment. Even though I don't have any large-scale solutions to these problems, I wanted to at least point them out, because the reason why I became so optimistic about SISTA's new Game Design Workshop was because we actually managed to avoid many of these problems.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Why this Workshop will Work</span><br />
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It's been over two months since I first learned about this workshop and since then we've been planning, researching, and discussing aspects of its design through emails and Google Docs. But I feel like none of that was as productive as the full week of in-person prototyping that we just finished.<br />
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Prototyping was made easier by the fact that we had four people dedicated to this project. Not only was it essential to testing all of the group activities, but having this many perspectives allowed us to find several problems that we wouldn't have noticed otherwise. We were also fortunate to have been able to learn from the mistakes of last semester's game design class, which everyone on the team attended, in one form or another.<br />
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I'm also surprised by how solid of a team we've managed to form. The fact that I've been using the term "team" should be evidence enough about how dedicated everyone is to the workshop. Even though Jane was clearly the one leading the whole thing, we never felt like we were "just TA's". Perhaps it was because this was the first iteration of the workshop that our roles felt all the more important, especially since there wasn't a well-established template to follow as with the longer-running courses.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyw4TG6WaoOiRRu_9OzQ8pGlWyW_5OO5xNWee_m8nznmxkEEzt0NBhw1pOgWibZ8c6rQwZKmB9-iGcIZ4jOQVqrS1bUXjmtkpv0pDIIyFMaUeZzylQgOM2GUtkRehOhidxlB0M_UnmMYM/s1600/Stencyl_Behavior-Designer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyw4TG6WaoOiRRu_9OzQ8pGlWyW_5OO5xNWee_m8nznmxkEEzt0NBhw1pOgWibZ8c6rQwZKmB9-iGcIZ4jOQVqrS1bUXjmtkpv0pDIIyFMaUeZzylQgOM2GUtkRehOhidxlB0M_UnmMYM/s400/Stencyl_Behavior-Designer.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Plus, Stencyl is amazing! But that's probably a topic for a future blog post.</b></td></tr>
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But I think the main reason why I have so much confidence in this workshop is because I just have a lot of confidence in Jane. I don't want to sound like I'm sucking up for the sake of a better grade, but it's just refreshing to be able to work with someone who is clearly concerned about the quality of the final product. She has a lot of creative ideas, but unlike most people with ideas, she actually has the teaching experience and the design skills to make them work.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To Be Continued...</span><br />
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This will likely turn into a series of posts, especially if we're going to have to write post-workshop reflections as well.<br />
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<i>[Edit: <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/08/game-design-workshop-retrospective.html" target="_blank">Click here</a> for the followup article!]</i><br />
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By the way, I mentioned a lot of systemic problems with American education in this post. If you have experience teaching or TA-ing, or if you're just a frustrated student, I'm really curious to about what your experiences with these problems were, so please post about it in the comments below. If you live outside of the United States, feel free to talk about how much better your educational systems are.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-75598935899462265142012-06-08T14:11:00.000-07:002012-07-10T18:36:54.802-07:00Deconstructing the Iterative Development Process<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;">This post actually started out as a retrospective for the game I've been working on for my </span><a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/everything-ive-been-doing-lately.html#more" style="background-color: white;">internship/independent study</a><span style="background-color: white;"> with </span><a href="http://rivermanmedia.com/" style="background-color: white;">Riverman Media</a><span style="background-color: white;">. At first I was planning to write on everything I've learned during this semester, almost like a postmortem for a project that isn't over yet. But such a post would have probably ended up being a loose collection of small tips, and I prefer to use this blog to explore deeper topics. So I decided to write on the biggest and most confusing problem that's been bothering me all semester: how to properly use the iterative development process.</span><br />
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In the past few years, I've seen at least three memorable explanations of the iterative process, and most of them were too complicated to be practical. It wasn't until I read <a href="http://artofgamedesign.com/" target="_blank">Jesse Schell's</a> description of the process that I started to believe that I finally understood it, but when I tried to apply it to this project, it just didn't <i>feel</i> like design to me. I have experience designing things in several different media, but for some reason, I felt like I was having trouble migrating my usual design perspective to a long-term game project.<br />
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The more I explored this problem, the more I realized how shallow my understanding of this process was. I had learned a lot about the surface details of this process, how to use it, and why it worked. But I didn't really understand why this process was designed in the way that it was or how to fix it when something went wrong with it.<br />
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I eventually answered these questions by trying to design a brand new development process that would work for me. I was basically trying to reinvent the wheel, so it was little surprise that I arrived at the iterative development process as my answer. But along the way, I was finally able to wrapped my head around how this process is really meant to work. I decided to turn this exercise into the premise for this post, and the result is a guide that teaches this development process by focusing on its design rather than how it's used. In other words, it's the kind of guide I wish I had read before starting this project.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;">Introduction to Development Processes</span><br />
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Most discussions about development processes seem to be tailored to a business or scientific perspective, which tends to make them unnecessarily confusing, in my opinion. I'm much more interested in the practical side of this topic, so I'm going to focus mostly on how you can relate this knowledge to your own work.<br />
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It can be pretty hard to think about development processes if you don't already know how to observe your own workflow. Once you can see more clearly how you work and how you solve problems, then you can start improving both your efficiency and effectiveness when working. More importantly, you can start learning how to use new workflows, much in the same way that you can learn how to use a new tool.<br />
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Here's an example of a workflow or process that you're probably familiar with, since it's usually the "default" process that most would people tend to use when they try to make a game for the first time:<br />
<ol>
<li>Decide what you want to do (Design),</li>
<li>Figure out how to do it (Plan),</li>
<li>Do it, and then you're finished (Implement).</li>
</ol>
Part of what goes wrong with many amateur game projects is that people want to feel productive when they work, so they will often breeze through the first two steps in order to get to the implementation phase as soon as possible, probably under the presumption that this is where the "real" work is at. But this common problem is just a red-herring, because you really shouldn't have been using this process in the first place. This particular process is known as the Waterfall model, and it's actually pretty infamous in the world of software engineering.<br />
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While it may seem like an intuitive plan to follow, the Waterfall model just doesn't support large projects very well. Large projects require a lot of design and planning, and this process practically discourages real design work from happening. You can only improve a design <i>after</i> it has been implemented, and when you design everything up front, you're forced to make a million assumptions about what works. And once you start making assumptions, you're no longer designing the game—you're fantasizing about it.<br />
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Some people try to fix the waterfall model by adding a few extra steps to the end so that there's some time left over to fix the problems that inevitably surface during the implementation phase. But this is like putting tape over a leak, since it doesn't fix any of the structural problems inherent in the design of this process. In order to really fix this problem, let's try to design an entirely new process to work with.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To Design a Process</span><br />
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It's pretty scary how something as invisible as your own workflow can derail a project. And the prospect of designing such a thing can also be a little intimidating. Fortunately, because we're only interested in the practical side of this discussion, I would argue that we shouldn't worry too much about accuracy when describing processes. This is why my description of the Waterfall process may not match what you'd find on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model">Wikipedia</a>, for example.<br />
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So if we're going to design a new process, let's begin by figuring out the core traits we'd like this process to have. First, we'd like to fix the biggest flaw of the Waterfall approach and make something that encourages a healthy design perspective. Next, the process must be realistic in terms of the amount of time and resources that it takes to develop a game. Finally, this new process must be able to compete with the intuitiveness and attractiveness of the Waterfall model, or else it would take too much discipline to follow and leaves you feeling lost as you follow it.<br />
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The reason why the Waterfall model is so attractive is because the entire process can be abstracted into one simple step:<br />
<ol>
<li>Work on it until it's done.</li>
</ol>
Even though this description is much more ambiguous than the real thing, it more closely resembles the thoughts that people go through when they choose to use the Waterfall model. You can think of this description as the "theme" with which the rest of the process is designed around, because every part of the process stems intuitively from this basic plan.<br />
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The simplicity and elegance of the theme is what makes this process so invisible. The truth is that we <i>want</i> our workflows to be invisible, because otherwise it just becomes part of the work. Like a well-designed user interface, a good development process should be so easy to use that you don't even have to think about it. If you've ever tried to follow a complicated, unintuitive process before, then you know how hard it can be to keep yourself from reverting back to a simpler process during times of stress. This is exactly what happened to me multiple times during my internship, despite the fact that I had complete faith in the process that I was following.<br />
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So now we know that we're going to need a simple and intuitive theme with which to design our new process around. Since the theme will probably have something to do with our goal to encourage design perspective, the next section will focus exclusively on understanding the typical designer workflow.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Iterative Cycle</span><br />
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When you work in any design-oriented profession, whether it's in visual arts, music, film, writing, etc., you'll find that your workflow will usually simplify itself into two simple steps:<br />
<ol>
<li>Implement your idea,</li>
<li>Evaluate your idea, and then go back to step #1.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
This two-step process is typically referred to as the iterative cycle (not to be confused with the "iterative development process", which relates to software development specifically). For any given project, the designer will loop through this cycle dozens of times before arriving at a final product. Each loop through the cycle is called an iteration, and the more iterations you can complete on a project, the more it will improve.<br />
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This is why when you first learn how to write essays in school, you're usually taught to write a couple of drafts before you're allowed to create the final draft. At this stage, you've already learned how to write (step #1), but now you must learn how to find the flaws in your own writing (step #2) and figure out how to fix them (back to step #1).<br />
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The iterative process isn't always followed so formally, however. If you're writing an essay, for example, you might read a paragraph that you have just written, only to decide that you need to move a few sentences around. Every time you do this kind of on-the-fly editing, you have just completed another iteration, and it probably happened in less than a minute.<br />
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It isn't until you master the second step—the ability to evaluate and critique your own designs objectively—that you really start to think like a designer. Too many aspiring designers seem to be more interested in making all of the creative decisions behind a game, and so their work tends to be careless and filled with assumptions, almost as if they believe that everyone will magically enjoy their game in the end. But a serious designer is much more cautious. Because they are in the habit of looking for the flaws in their own work, designers will spend more time thinking about what might go wrong with the final product, which allows them to consider many design problems before they appear.<br />
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It's for this reason that the iterative cycle is sometimes described as a risk-mitigation process. Under this description, the order of the two steps is reversed:<br />
<ol>
<li>Find a potential risk in your design (Evaluate),</li>
<li>Try to mitigate that risk, and then go back to step #1 (Implement).</li>
</ol>
This description is much broader than the first. While the previous description limits itself to what's inside the game, this new definition more explicitly considers the external factors that could affect the game.<br />
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For instance, under the first description of the iterative cycle, the designer might ask questions such as: "How does this small change affect the feel of the game?", or "Is this level really as exciting as I hoped it would be?" But with this new description, a designer may now also ask: "Will players find this mechanic too confusing?", "Do we have the technology to make this feature work?", "Do we have enough money to pursue a project of this scope?", or even "Are we sure that our publisher really won't go bankrupt six months from now?" All of these risks will affect the design of the game, because there's no point in designing a game that you can't build properly.<br />
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Some people think that this kind of design perspective is pretty depressing, since it means you're always looking at the bad side of things. But in actuality, the main sentiment that this perspective brings is objectivity, not pessimism. Much in the same way that a scientist maintains a healthy amount of skepticism in order to better understand the world, the designer must also keep themselves grounded in reality or else they may never be able to face the all too common truth that their game just isn't fun yet. In other words, it's easier to accept painful information if you're actively looking for it, rather than running away from it.<br />
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I personally find both descriptions of the iterative cycle useful. Too many design questions present themselves much more naturally under the first description, and it just seems like it's more work to think of them as risks. Furthermore, not every design question might be easily turned into a risk. Sometimes you just get curious and you want to ask "what if?"<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Iterative Game Development</span><br />
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It'd be great if the iterative cycle could be applied seamlessly to game development, but unfortunately, there's a big dilemma that gets in our way. As I mentioned before, you can only evaluate a design once it has been implemented, but it takes so much work to implement a game that it'd be unrealistic to follow the iterative cycle alone. If you're not careful, you could burn through most of your time and resources on just a single iteration—at which point you might as well be following the waterfall model.<br />
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Perhaps the only solution would be to become extremely frugal with how one uses the iterative loop. Rather than taking each iteration for granted, the designer must try to minimize the cost of each iteration while also maximizing its value.</div>
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This is where the idea of rapid prototyping comes in. If, for example, all you want to know is whether or not a certain system of mechanics is fun, then you should make a crude representation of that system as fast as possible. Programming is often the slowest way to test a design, and so it's common practice for designers to build representations of their systems, which are typically referred to as "paper prototypes."<br />
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Readers who are already familiar with how games are usually made may notice that this is starting to look a lot like the iterative development process. Does this mean that we've arrived at our answer for a design-oriented, game development workflow? The way that we've reached this point gives us the perfect theme that we've been looking for, in the form of a single-step process:<br />
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Is the iterative development process really this simple? While this may not look like such a big discovery on the surface, just having this one idea being at the center of your workflow is the key to making the process become invisible. Rather than consciously thinking about what you have to do in order to follow the process correctly, your thoughts are focused on your work while you follow the process naturally and intuitively.<br />
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There are dozens of ways to break down this theme into a more concrete series of steps, and you'll probably find a way that works best for you. But since we're emphasizing the scarcity of iterations, our second description of the iterative cycle seems like a good fit:<br />
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<li>Find some of the most important risks to mitigate (Evaluate),</li>
<li>Figure out the fastest way to mitigate those risks (Plan),</li>
<li>Do it, and then go back to step #1 (Implement).</li>
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You may have noticed that this is just like the iterative cycle but with an extra step in the middle that essentially tells us to be really careful about wasting time. The first step has also been modified in order to make sure that we're solving design problems in the correct order. For example, you don't want to spend time making a few paper prototypes for a feature just to find out during the next iteration that it's too impractical to implement in code. This is actually a pretty easy mistake to make, especially if you're distracted by a low-priority design problem that's fascinating enough to make you want to solve it.</div>
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There's a lot more to learn about how to manage your iterations efficiently, but perhaps the most important thing that you can watch out for is to make sure that each iteration is made for the right reasons. If you ever find yourself making a prototype because you feel like that's what you're "supposed" to be doing, then that iteration is misguided and is more likely to be wasted. All iterations must be inspired by some legitimate form of curiosity, not by the process itself.</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-68005196108152899542012-04-07T23:55:00.001-07:002012-07-10T18:36:32.025-07:00Everything I've Been Doing Lately<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now that it's been almost two months since my last blog post, I figured it was time for a mandatory blog update. Because I don't have time right now to finish one of the longer posts that I've been working on for the past several weeks, I decided to write a quick post that will hopefully make the slowness of updates seem more justified.</div>
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There have been many times when I've wanted to post about some of the cool things that have been happening to me lately, but I just didn't like the idea of posting several small updates about them. If I did that, then the smaller updates might start to crowd out the "real" ones, which might turn this blog into a self-promotional personal blog, rather than a game design analysis blog. So to prevent that, I'll just dump everything I've wanted to say into one big post.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Game Design Research with Riverman Media</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTg0w67SHRHO1lcwd_MvVL8ViXaUdfo9kw-PDlj6nLo186wcci33f0od1WeceFpH8v_VkPKxcrBjLQG04LyDUI3v272NFEiQECztzzKmcR-8BcAMGPvVrj0twRiKE-4I5rHyuvTfadL5Qn/s1600/riverman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTg0w67SHRHO1lcwd_MvVL8ViXaUdfo9kw-PDlj6nLo186wcci33f0od1WeceFpH8v_VkPKxcrBjLQG04LyDUI3v272NFEiQECztzzKmcR-8BcAMGPvVrj0twRiKE-4I5rHyuvTfadL5Qn/s200/riverman.jpg" width="200" /></a>Some of you may remember that I teamed up with <a href="http://rivermanmedia.com/" target="_blank">Riverman Media</a> last semester to run an online advertisement campaign for them as part of a class project. Even though the marketing campaign wasn't a very good idea in the first place, the co-founder of the company, Jacob Stevens, wanted to continue working with me, so he offered me an internship / independent study with them.<br />
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Since it's more of an independent study than an internship, Jacob assigned me a project that would allow me to explore a challenging game design problem. So throughout this past semester, I've been researching, designing, and building an educational game that would be appealing for adults, as opposed to kids who are in school. It really is an incredible learning experience, not just because of the experience that it's giving me, but because I'm exploring one of the most infamously broken genres of video games, learning from their failures, and trying to come up with solutions that actually work.</div>
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The internship was originally planned to last for one semester, but I plan to continue this project next semester for my <a href="http://www.honors.arizona.edu/students/graduating.html" target="_blank">Honors Thesis</a>, which is basically a research project that students must accomplish if they want to graduate from the Honors College of the University of Arizona.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Teaching and Public Speaking</span>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7xR3Z3Z3lc" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1TVFGlGaWx5Ydh81SSrq59yqnV6O0_TFMarlYu6Xtylq5Set1gmap9bXqWOrx2u35nV6tBaRNtH82BU3kuAV6ZCr_sp-7MZzLYJ2ZPP7Eqe1GTLSlVFk0IB10Fpa2QauH06l053GniVX/s1600/ooptalk.png" /></a></div>
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I've been giving educational talks at <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/" target="_blank">my club</a> for about a year now, but we've only just now started recording them and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA3CE28C0F41BC226" target="_blank">uploading them to YouTube</a>. If you can get past the low sound quality, bad public speaking, and the fact that these videos are each one hour long, then you might want to watch these if you're interested in learning more about game development and how to break into the industry. I suggest approaching these videos as if they were podcasts, so you should find something else to do while watching them. Maybe play <i>Minecraft</i>, because <i>Minecraft</i> is a great game to play while listening to podcasts.</div>
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I wish my speaking skills were as great as my writing skills. I've definitely gotten over the fear of being in front of a crowd a long time ago, so I just need practice with speaking more clearly and designing better talks. I was hoping these videos would help me become more aware of my flaws, but I think what I really need is good coaching. This is why I've recently joined the local <a href="http://www.toastmasters.org/" target="_blank">Toastmasters Club</a> (a public speaking club), and I'm currently trying to see how much I can get out of that club without paying their dues.<br />
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Speaking at my club has really gotten me interested in teaching. It turns out that the Computer Science Department at the University of Arizona has a <a href="http://www.cs.arizona.edu/slprogram/" target="_blank">Section Leader Program</a>, similar to a teaching assistant (TA) program, which basically gives students the opportunity to teach the discussion sections of the department's core courses. Unfortunately, I've decided not to apply to this program yet because I won't have enough time for it next semester.<br />
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I have, however, applied to become a TA for the SISTA department's <a href="http://www.sista.arizona.edu/content/game-design-workshop" target="_blank">Game Design Workshop</a> this summer, but even if they accept me, I'm not sure if I can afford to pay for summer housing.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've Been Interviewed, Twice!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSXVMQa9Dgnd5hBG2iyAOZiOEr1MMkMsQ2uQgg3Y2A5VFLcioMljd8QtnEHC5GAqt3yJ-soXILwKbJP_x7hSQgH07m_FqpON78_vwXQ95aLAIChPBNmaOQYMv0rvp8jUk3eYZnBTpj_Js4/s1600/2012-04-03_19-11-15_851.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSXVMQa9Dgnd5hBG2iyAOZiOEr1MMkMsQ2uQgg3Y2A5VFLcioMljd8QtnEHC5GAqt3yJ-soXILwKbJP_x7hSQgH07m_FqpON78_vwXQ95aLAIChPBNmaOQYMv0rvp8jUk3eYZnBTpj_Js4/s320/2012-04-03_19-11-15_851.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by <a href="http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-phoenix/jesse-tannous" target="_blank">Jesse Tannous</a>, a reporter for <a href="http://www.examiner.com/" target="_blank">Examiner.com</a> who wanted to write an article about the club. He still hasn't published the article, because it seems like reporting isn't his main job and because he prefers to put extra effort and polish into his articles. He seemed like a really cool guy, and I definitely recommend checking out his work.<br />
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Earlier this week I was interviewed for another <a href="http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/index.php/article/2012/04/group_gives_video_game_design_a_place_on_campus" target="_blank">article</a>, this time for the <a href="http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/" target="_blank">Daily Wildcat</a>, which is a local newspaper targeted towards students of the University of Arizona. I'm not a big fan of this newspaper, mainly because their articles tend to be rushed and poorly written, but I'm glad this article turned out to be pretty decent.<br />
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These interviews really seemed to have come out of nowhere, because the club really hasn't done anything that was particularly news worthy. Most people seem to be impressed by the simple fact that the club has managed to stay active.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Game Developers Conference!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBOeI_zYYvSaInTtwEF-D0ZkwMlePFDRlGqEniSqpBKY36Hpm0wQNVnnamxlsgtWZI1Nd2bSTkTbR0B7GcBhtf7_8_IMZsUx-Yw-oyJYVrK-9KDw-shybzYOoPiRBL77M5YmH9yQSL_5c/s1600/gdc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGBOeI_zYYvSaInTtwEF-D0ZkwMlePFDRlGqEniSqpBKY36Hpm0wQNVnnamxlsgtWZI1Nd2bSTkTbR0B7GcBhtf7_8_IMZsUx-Yw-oyJYVrK-9KDw-shybzYOoPiRBL77M5YmH9yQSL_5c/s400/gdc.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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About a month ago, I attended the Game Developers Conference for the first time. I absolutely loved being at the conference. It was incredibly inspiring to be completely immersed in the world of game development, to be surrounded by developers from all over the world, and to talk to them about games and the industry. This trip confirmed my beliefs that this is definitely the industry that I want to work in.</div>
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The conference lasts for five days, but I was only able to attend the last three days because I had purchased the Expo Pass ($200 USD, the second cheapest pass), which unfortunately didn't even give me access to any of the talks. I tried to see if I could sneak into some of talks, but they were too heavily guarded. I definitely want to go again next year, so hopefully I'll be able to afford the Indie Games Summit Pass ($325 USD, the third cheapest pass).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ok0JTFDaUriSJKZJ6A3Hziku1-0SQCXinCq9kONmEEDyYtmJeW2hAEQdpJloRy0JSkXvLsgFBCfs0h6s3NtXH8WJRheSuNUSMp2lkkecmdTomu8o35FNfp4CkpmvuQxWn2_PSeml5Hi-/s1600/card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ok0JTFDaUriSJKZJ6A3Hziku1-0SQCXinCq9kONmEEDyYtmJeW2hAEQdpJloRy0JSkXvLsgFBCfs0h6s3NtXH8WJRheSuNUSMp2lkkecmdTomu8o35FNfp4CkpmvuQxWn2_PSeml5Hi-/s320/card.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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To prepare for this trip, I bought 250 "free" business cards from Vistaprint for about $14 USD. Their default card templates seemed to have been designed with the sole intention of being as ugly as possible, but I resisted the urge to import my own designs because that would have doubled the price. Instead, I chose a blank template, and then I spent hours looking for exploits and glitches in the template system that would allow me to add extra spacing (and even an underline!), in an attempt to improve the typography a bit.</div>
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I definitely could have networked a lot better. I gave out about 50 cards, which isn't bad, but I really should have followed up with more of my contacts once the conference was over. It was very convenient that I had spring break right after the conference, which should have given me plenty of time to follow up with people, but for some reason, I just never found the time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xzp1m54aFIgBH7_nNuMVTBeZF4CE3u5wdeI3w6vtRyTUkFlW7Ta7j4lulNCRGV3M3AoFw67y5gVqtVi_xBnMPQAT8PumSTjrVwtZMISngdFcQggLmGLxUKnnjMs2wJOOqICiU91lT9C7/s1600/pass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xzp1m54aFIgBH7_nNuMVTBeZF4CE3u5wdeI3w6vtRyTUkFlW7Ta7j4lulNCRGV3M3AoFw67y5gVqtVi_xBnMPQAT8PumSTjrVwtZMISngdFcQggLmGLxUKnnjMs2wJOOqICiU91lT9C7/s320/pass.jpg" width="207" /></a>Preparing for this trip has also forced me to finally make an <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/p/portfolio.html" target="_blank">online portfolio page</a>, as well as a fleshed out <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/livio-de-la-cruz/39/842/5ba" target="_blank">LinkedIn profile</a>, which has a very generous depiction of my work history. My main motivation for putting those things in my work history was for formatting purposes. I've never actually had a real paying job before, and this is why I don't have a lot of money. I make a very small amount of money from ads on <a href="http://interguild.org/" target="_blank">the Interguild</a>, but most of my money tends to come from random web development work for <a href="http://livio.com/" target="_blank">my father's websites</a>, or from gifts from relatives.</div>
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If you look at the top of the sidebar to the right of this post, you'll notice a link proclaiming that I'm looking for internships. That's technically a lie, because I don't really want an internship right now, for reasons that will become clear in the next section</div>
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If you want to learn more about my trip, as well as my friends' trips to GDC, you should watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i_zHZnJEkU0" target="_blank">this meeting</a> of the Game Developers Club.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Ambitious IGF 2013 Project</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTn1lTeXfjd3O-wRIh4uMpvDSLYcW1O_7AhrtUzhQB3LMWfoHCvKS6zqv2HXWNE71rQ8XQ1oHCRc_iIzvgKr7vw_H-TcPJPZAFNlgGqaofaTVVvsvCq9v34SHjYQQn1IXtBu8vly26n0v2/s1600/igf-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTn1lTeXfjd3O-wRIh4uMpvDSLYcW1O_7AhrtUzhQB3LMWfoHCvKS6zqv2HXWNE71rQ8XQ1oHCRc_iIzvgKr7vw_H-TcPJPZAFNlgGqaofaTVVvsvCq9v34SHjYQQn1IXtBu8vly26n0v2/s400/igf-logo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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At the Game Developers Conference, I shared a hotel room with Tyler May, a friend of mine and an officer in my club who wants to become a producer in the games industry. While we attended the <a href="http://blip.tv/indiegamemag/igf-awards-2012-6026032" target="_blank">IGF/GDC Awards show</a> on Wednesday night, we decided to start a project in order to win next year's <a href="http://www.igf.com/01about.html" target="_blank">Independent Games Festival</a>.</div>
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For the past month, Tyler and I have been putting tons of effort into assembling <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/projects/project-igf-2013" target="_blank">the perfect team</a> to help us get to next year's Independent Games Festival. After working on countless team projects for the past few years, I've grown really tired of working with disappointing teammates, so I saw this project as a way to work with the team of my dreams. I put extra care into designing the ideal team experience, not just for myself, but for every single one of our team members, and I'm really proud of the results so far.</div>
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At the time of this writing, we are almost done with the recruitment process. We would still like to find a musician, and it would also be nice to have an artist who can animate. Once our team has been finalized, I would like to write a retrospective of the recruitment process, because I think there's a lot to learn here about how to assemble a strong, unified team.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Everything Else...</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH09Hr1aL1lXHchx88apUosNARMX1P_noMQw4b4UyyJ7TxS1k9aaV2dAkzpY79bu2nwtWmMoBaj6YTzy6Q8-1nzWGrhHzXfW8WbLZh10bC6KmNYLzKrIAYGqn5lkVHGMFNMwHsSyl8Z7_Q/s1600/Mario-Tired.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH09Hr1aL1lXHchx88apUosNARMX1P_noMQw4b4UyyJ7TxS1k9aaV2dAkzpY79bu2nwtWmMoBaj6YTzy6Q8-1nzWGrhHzXfW8WbLZh10bC6KmNYLzKrIAYGqn5lkVHGMFNMwHsSyl8Z7_Q/s400/Mario-Tired.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Before the IGF project, I was pretty busy, but now my schedule is just overflowing with work. Normally what happens when I get busy is that I neglect some projects in favor of others, but this is the first time I've ever had to force myself to let go of some of the things that I want to do.</div>
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For instance, it wasn't until recently that I realized that I had become involved with four clubs: <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/" target="_blank">GameDev</a>, <a href="http://uofa.acm.org/" target="_blank">ACM</a>, <a href="http://sseosyndicate.com/" target="_blank">SEO</a>, and <a href="http://www.toastmasters.org/" target="_blank">Toastmasters</a>. Now I've pretty much stopped going to all of them, except for GameDev, of course.</div>
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I've also been forced to neglect the Interguild for much longer than usual, which has motivated my members to start a forum thread called "<a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/topic.php?id=6889" target="_blank">Livio's what we want him to do List</a>," which contains a list of complaints and requests that I should address upon my return. When I finally did return, it was just in time to set up this year's <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1333765739" target="_blank">April Fools Day prank</a>, which I imagine must have been very suspicious.</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
And of course, this blog is also a big part of my schedule. It's pretty embarrassing how I've been working on a post for the last several weeks that I still haven't been able to release yet. I should probably consider changing my writing style. Rather than making large comprehensive posts that present many interesting ideas, perhaps I'll start writing smaller, less ambitious posts, like this one.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-8305931126281510372012-02-12T02:56:00.000-08:002012-02-13T21:41:04.458-08:00Packaging Design: the Experience of Treasuring our Favorite Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPrpWgsX-GUOGpYWTMany94ForqzG5zHQvxwaNmJFgoCstRgLqKWuulak7m71rwefs2q1XZgUnzXECEht-a3hz9LaqWL1BahM0487bUe2oaC0ZmSnOHeTG8HnKN2aIZGQhsVDJW2tx1uMB/s1600/ZeldaSkywardSword_RotoSnipe_2_highres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihTHv72dK_7zE-z4prcsQ-hgqAUzeU9_WG8NSNyFHFoiKbI_5sGhEdRCsTpapRg2Ry5r-CvZjHLyEjVwkvfv0sCvMTyFqryVCXsC6cKynZkRvTH1xTxvJa6AQs12BEj3iBKFQhCbY7rj7x/s1600/ZeldaSkywardSword.jpg" /></a></div>Writing about this topic might seem rather unusual, especially with digital distribution on the rise. But considering how most game developers, myself included, share the dream of creating games that players absolutely treasure, I feel as though flawed packaging design is getting in the way of this dream.<br />
<br />
For example, I own plenty of games that I absolutely love, but whenever I go play some of these games, the casings that house them almost always leave me disappointed in a way. Not only is it a shame that the packaging doesn't live up to the quality of the experience as I remember it, but it almost makes me feel silly for having had such high regards for the game.<br />
<br />
While I know that game casings are primarily designed for minimizing the cost of manufacturing and distribution, I believe developers are underestimating the impact that their packaging can have on a player's experience. Much in the same way that listening to a game's soundtrack can bring back fond memories of one's experiences with a game, a well designed casing can keep a player's love and respect for a game alive long after they've stopped playing it.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;">The Problem with Most Box Art</span><br />
<br />
The physical representation of any game in a player's library will most likely be its box art. Unfortunately, box art is primarily designed with the goal of competing for attention on a store shelf.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCONJLiheoQV4MoloA7goY1dj9iHGjekZcdcwB804Z6Yk45OmN1rSP9eyPjyXiq4v3XkxDCpGqX-vPUeUaYDgEAkfmkTdXrmsQM-k3mijt8PWiXoY_Twjg9bwxZtWn9DSCy-Y8eChAmpla/s1600/shelf.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCONJLiheoQV4MoloA7goY1dj9iHGjekZcdcwB804Z6Yk45OmN1rSP9eyPjyXiq4v3XkxDCpGqX-vPUeUaYDgEAkfmkTdXrmsQM-k3mijt8PWiXoY_Twjg9bwxZtWn9DSCy-Y8eChAmpla/s1600/shelf.png" /></a></div><br />
From a marketing perspective, the main purpose of the box art is to define the brand and distinguish the game from the rest of the competition. But from the player's perspective, this results in shallow box art design that holds little emotional connection to the experience that the game delivers.<br />
<br />
If a player truly loved a game, they would want the representational piece of artwork to be as beautiful as the experiences they've had with it. Not only do most box art fail to even attempt to reach this goal, but they often present a message that works completely against the game's core experience.<br />
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For example, when I think of <i>Halo</i>, I think of lighthearted fun with friends and a hilarious physics system. However, the box art for <i>Halo 3</i> just screams "generic M-rated FPS." It's as if the game is too insecure to present itself for what it really is, and it really makes me question my respect for the game. Furthermore, this wildly contradicting message helps make the game feel more fragmented and less like a complete whole.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFTwDuUZTnOQBzbW1reWkXmAWbEEUKW0TifTod5-bHOGHzYbWvrXFJkxPv61x2_k6iNHgYwB2li_iB5yssrwvkGIaBrfMQl5SP6kMRuvoWrW4GqS-R0-4fcDtwTeZOsZ4G_0c80C02SJ2-/s1600/halo-3-20070608110351253.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFTwDuUZTnOQBzbW1reWkXmAWbEEUKW0TifTod5-bHOGHzYbWvrXFJkxPv61x2_k6iNHgYwB2li_iB5yssrwvkGIaBrfMQl5SP6kMRuvoWrW4GqS-R0-4fcDtwTeZOsZ4G_0c80C02SJ2-/s320/halo-3-20070608110351253.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><br />
The box art for <i>Psychonauts</i>, on the other hand, is one of the most interesting covers I've seen for a game. This design is filled with references to the characters that you meet and the adventures that you have throughout the experience. While these images may not hold much meaning to a new player, it does a great job in conveying the style and scale of the game. But once you've beaten the game, you can look back at the cover and be instantly reminded of all that you've gone through and how much fun the game was.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpoiNsqbiw3ugFxCBQ1WDmqRE36nR-ckDnf2bJmx0TgXl2iITTZoM__WMq3wuO5F5Wg_4n6_C6PKcCL5Hm9F7sfkBwooYRAIxg_b0YY0Wf9UpFqSGA5_fLeEmJr7qfpc9WPuQtOHDjwe4j/s1600/psychonauts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpoiNsqbiw3ugFxCBQ1WDmqRE36nR-ckDnf2bJmx0TgXl2iITTZoM__WMq3wuO5F5Wg_4n6_C6PKcCL5Hm9F7sfkBwooYRAIxg_b0YY0Wf9UpFqSGA5_fLeEmJr7qfpc9WPuQtOHDjwe4j/s320/psychonauts.jpg" width="225" /></a></div><br />
It's incredibly elegant how such a small piece of artwork can trigger so many memories and emotions, and it really encourages you to love the game even more. This is the kind of experience that all box artists should be striving to create.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A Note on Physical Materials</span><br />
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When I was a kid, my brother and I were accustomed to getting games that came in cheap little disk cases like this one:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVt_cLlTtFkz4luhE885z0aygR6GwGynVAYYCKnr5cFa6tIedKLDnbHTzWft2PY3LgsOw6rY5pI_86dDjn7jWcOGE_MlTWKH8YY1GRDhiAtsTmYI_sgB5aMMJzW-myBfHlRRjdXFB_2eMQ/s1600/testdrive5.JPG"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVt_cLlTtFkz4luhE885z0aygR6GwGynVAYYCKnr5cFa6tIedKLDnbHTzWft2PY3LgsOw6rY5pI_86dDjn7jWcOGE_MlTWKH8YY1GRDhiAtsTmYI_sgB5aMMJzW-myBfHlRRjdXFB_2eMQ/s1600/testdrive5.JPG" /></a></div><br />
The plastic was remarkably fragile by today's standards, and the cover art was printed on a flimsy piece of paper that easily fell out place. While it made for very convenient storage, the overall package felt very cheap, and this cheapness tainted our perception of our games.<br />
<br />
A few years later, my brother and I bought a GameCube together, and now our games came in these big, durable casings, which really made us feel like we were buying high-end stuff.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjsFj8OhLuqC8UNtellb9jzhChdZoRMwWUmZJa0JNMh5YjtSPlJUmpB1frQWY6pSogIOY-e3rNCe391O_glUEXWhSJ3db-ShWdyyv1ZIaUsxi1SwsUUfdNpjHgS7imxuiPGE8n8hqsJWqQ/s1600/metroidprime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjsFj8OhLuqC8UNtellb9jzhChdZoRMwWUmZJa0JNMh5YjtSPlJUmpB1frQWY6pSogIOY-e3rNCe391O_glUEXWhSJ3db-ShWdyyv1ZIaUsxi1SwsUUfdNpjHgS7imxuiPGE8n8hqsJWqQ/s400/metroidprime.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
The strength of the GameCube's standard game casing made me feel as though the disk was so valuable that it was worth protecting. In contrast, casing designs that were much less durable, such as GameStop's infamous used-game casings, made you feel as though you were holding a reject game that probably deserved to be in the trash.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Magical Unboxing Process</span><br />
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The unboxing process for a typical game is anything but magical. Part of the problem comes from the fact that game packaging tends to follow the same basic template, and so there's no sense of wonder or surprise when you open a new game. But what hurts the process the most is the fact that this template isn't even very well designed, from a user experience point of view.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/vzSwxbLWJdY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe> </div><br />
My favorite unboxing experiences were always the ones that made me feel like I was opening a treasure chest. No amount of flashy presentation can ever create this kind of experience. The only thing that defines a treasure chest is the fact that it's filled with valuable treasure.<br />
<br />
Lego toy sets are a perfect example of this concept. Unboxing a new Lego set is usually almost as fun as playing with it. Everything in the box has value because it contributes directly to the player's experience. If just one Lego piece went missing, for example, it could throw off the entire design of what you were building. Even the instruction manuals were important, as they were the key to building the intended model.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxfBB_CefFEPlTbCJvM3MpExXDWMEoLmtBSdCLKC6yomUm7WaW1dNlAtxaIHEZnLGHt4aaXqAMmWLVFH88vl9yRBl0PtLI29z-kWQxgFRkt6bga3BKUtFiV9TV53jDjQBI9o9eBSAZx3A/s1600/lego.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaxfBB_CefFEPlTbCJvM3MpExXDWMEoLmtBSdCLKC6yomUm7WaW1dNlAtxaIHEZnLGHt4aaXqAMmWLVFH88vl9yRBl0PtLI29z-kWQxgFRkt6bga3BKUtFiV9TV53jDjQBI9o9eBSAZx3A/s400/lego.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Having a box filled with treasure isn't always enough, however. The contents must be presented in a way that reinforces their inherent value, rather than being so careless as to contradict it. Lego sets accomplish this very elegantly by organizing all of the pieces into multiple bags based on size and context. This instantly makes each piece more meaningful at a glance, thus increasing the perceived value of each piece, each bag, and the entire package as a whole. If everything had simply been dumped into a single bag, the pieces would have come out of the box rather sloppily, thus presenting the toy as a mess, instead of as something worth treasuring.<br />
<br />
The multiple bags also served to prolong the unboxing experience, as the player must open each individual bag before they were ready to play with the full toy. This kind of delayed satisfaction is partly why I valued my toys so much when I was growing up, since we usually had to wait for Christmas and birthdays before we were given any new toys.<br />
<br />
Another great example of delayed satisfaction is Apple's packaging design for the iPhone. The box was especially designed so that you couldn't pull off the lid too quickly or too easily. The drag between the lid and the box created a prolonged sense of tension and build-up, so that when you finally saw the product, you were more inclined to value it. This is not something they could've done if they had chosen to use a plastic casing, which seems to be the standard for tech products.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://ntr23.posterous.com/apple-ipad-unpacking-by-lego-minifigs" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRMfMU2Nxm2B2QM300XG-gZcDEyOKC8yk4uHgeR5GavAubFnwID8FKYUDlN18nw648R_JtBrR_uMcYrZi_kJfNT9LJOLbe3IWQWKg9HwwyaHJEdlNdYiD1cJRn6MvIZ3TQIIP-iXr1CaBh/s400/ipad-lego-unboxing-mj.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Video Games as Treasure Boxes</span><br />
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The biggest problem with video game boxes is that they just don't have much treasure in them. Most players see game manuals as useless, along with any other technical guides or promotions that come packaged with the game. This leaves the game disc as the only real item of value left in the box, but by packaging it alongside so many other worthless things, it presents the disc as if it was just as worthless.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ty2_Zcc3izcxbBmp1u0-NZtZrkixllcqt7zEf4MFB1XAz1EWaY0Kx54-ohdywmhk41CcXu1lRHQPqbigsACXXl0iDth1HPt4w7QATdkAEobCEs6N6da60TlkMlC-7eDk5ukJulCCaggE/s1600/metroidprime3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ty2_Zcc3izcxbBmp1u0-NZtZrkixllcqt7zEf4MFB1XAz1EWaY0Kx54-ohdywmhk41CcXu1lRHQPqbigsACXXl0iDth1HPt4w7QATdkAEobCEs6N6da60TlkMlC-7eDk5ukJulCCaggE/s400/metroidprime3.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Some games have tried to get around this problem by packaging extra items within the box. While it's nice to get a strip of concept art or even the game's soundtrack on a second disk, such items unfortunately don't add anything significant to the experience of actually playing the game. Most of these extras are just distractions that are not aligned with the core experience that the game delivers, and so the amount of value that they can contribute to the player's experience is very limited.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrCge9nYdmkQfrgMo0zwBe5hzfHrYVLVcnueemcxVr1NhG-gLQeAYp3vU7QQ5AfUnC9zkwn47hsjIlGLwbjoFZBPqGlg_O_9lAkbRtKszYXthwhS9E3EVaCF6oQn4ocedpRZBGsbLyr9_/s1600/metroidprimetrilogy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqrCge9nYdmkQfrgMo0zwBe5hzfHrYVLVcnueemcxVr1NhG-gLQeAYp3vU7QQ5AfUnC9zkwn47hsjIlGLwbjoFZBPqGlg_O_9lAkbRtKszYXthwhS9E3EVaCF6oQn4ocedpRZBGsbLyr9_/s400/metroidprimetrilogy.jpg" width="273" /></a></div><br />
Video game casings also feature absolutely no form of delayed satisfaction. The casing is either open or closed, with no real transition between the two states. Opening a game is more of a chore than a magical experience.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Problem with Most Game Manuals</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Why are game manuals so worthless to players? Part of the reason is that most games nowadays include tutorials built into their core design, which usually eliminates the need to ever reference the manual. And even if players do get stuck, they are more likely to search the Internet for an answer.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But what really ruins game manuals the most is their tendency to hurt, rather than supplement, a game's experience. Because most games stretch their tutorial elements throughout the entire experience, manuals are often filled with spoilers about mechanics that get introduced later in the game. As a kid, I used to like to browse through a game's manual before turning it on, but trial and error has taught me to ignore manuals completely.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5xyrG4cpVMFq_z22o2FspglHAoZwRgYrg9Z4Lo-tVnEa3pD9uhf8_-TQHjZVTSS1PQm8EgWyNfJktCkU6vmsxSY-h-k6MxsjpqT23AtaJ6pDw3NCQnPTgwJGXinTYl7mb2TLNxBo0q5E/s1600/galaxy2_unboxing4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5xyrG4cpVMFq_z22o2FspglHAoZwRgYrg9Z4Lo-tVnEa3pD9uhf8_-TQHjZVTSS1PQm8EgWyNfJktCkU6vmsxSY-h-k6MxsjpqT23AtaJ6pDw3NCQnPTgwJGXinTYl7mb2TLNxBo0q5E/s1600/galaxy2_unboxing4.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It seem as though most manuals are meant to solve simple usability problems that players may have while playing the game. While I imagine this may be helpful to people who don't play many video games, I feel as though an equally important goal for manuals should be to set the player up for the experience that they're about to enter. Most usability issues that players have will come at the beginning of their experience anyway, so why spoil it for them by telling them about things they won't see for a few more hours?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Another way to make manuals more valuable is to put content in them that cannot be found within the game. My favorite example of this is the manual for <i>F-Zero GX</i>, which dedicated its entire first two pages to introducing player's to the world of F-Zero. For a game that's almost completely about the gameplay, this was one of the few glimpses that players got behind the game's fictional universe.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisfvQOqCMXuPNgK0asL6YtRLpwYg2ThAdv_-I4Rj9x1Mrpnlqr6a8uyHX6FbVaqjTkwVqMd5mzzrJJ_UHI-xVGSO5blKOe79NIy1AWAlsush-fbPrKhF3aQRaJrWfb52VGKaQjsyDy8KNg/s1600/box.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisfvQOqCMXuPNgK0asL6YtRLpwYg2ThAdv_-I4Rj9x1Mrpnlqr6a8uyHX6FbVaqjTkwVqMd5mzzrJJ_UHI-xVGSO5blKOe79NIy1AWAlsush-fbPrKhF3aQRaJrWfb52VGKaQjsyDy8KNg/s400/box.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">The manual even mixed technical game rules with imaginative elements, which really reinforced the idea that you, the player, were now in the world of <i>F-Zero</i>. When I read this manual as a kid, it served as a great hook for the experience, making me even more excited to start playing.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><i><b>4. Prohibited Actions</b><br />
<b> 4.1 </b> Boost is prohibited during the first lap of all races due to the<br />
marginal distances between all participating machines at the<br />
beginning of the race.<br />
<b> 4.2</b> If a pilot is driving in the wrong direction, the Execution<br />
Project will issue a REVERSE warning. The pilot must<br />
immediately change direction.</i></blockquote><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The Minimalist Approach</span><br />
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Here's an idea. What if we got rid of everything except for the disk? Throw away the cover art, manual, promotions, and even the casing itself, until we're left only with the game in its purest form:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWdKZPLgU7dO6kOn1ak2u2JxKi8vzaEWsRgnwRTzzZtk6YlIrQS7mv2BZ4AeiV0hum-lFA5Sas9WTomKhasSaLF50utbGcRAfpayrcTFc87hJlxSKGy6KqEG1Pt3sw_Uq9N0bSLejuaT9o/s1600/windwaker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWdKZPLgU7dO6kOn1ak2u2JxKi8vzaEWsRgnwRTzzZtk6YlIrQS7mv2BZ4AeiV0hum-lFA5Sas9WTomKhasSaLF50utbGcRAfpayrcTFc87hJlxSKGy6KqEG1Pt3sw_Uq9N0bSLejuaT9o/s320/windwaker.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The disk alone is a much more complete and elegant representation of the game. There's something immensely powerful about the idea that such a small object is responsible for holding an incredible experience. Furthermore, when it's separated from its casing, the disk carries a sense of vulnerability that practically begs players to treasure it.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgko0bTmF5E_VT5DYe0JDx_OG1m-DDwMhYRptJ3zFfXqP8ly8fWcAGu7pV6W7o0yGYNCaUesI1A-mELadUI5MWchkdZi83blWal-z4aMpa0FibyMVdS3YWTgTkRA8JvwiiOcJ1Bbrq_L3gy/s1600/transparent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgko0bTmF5E_VT5DYe0JDx_OG1m-DDwMhYRptJ3zFfXqP8ly8fWcAGu7pV6W7o0yGYNCaUesI1A-mELadUI5MWchkdZi83blWal-z4aMpa0FibyMVdS3YWTgTkRA8JvwiiOcJ1Bbrq_L3gy/s320/transparent.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
As a gamer, I've been looking for ways to represent my favorite games in a more dignified way that would hopefully undo the damage done by their poor packaging design. I've tried displaying them on shelves, moving them to certain parts of the room, and even putting them out of sight. But the idea of glorifying the disk alone is definitely one of the most compelling solutions I've seen yet.<br />
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Unfortunately, this clearly isn't a very marketable solution for retailers or consumers. And even if you're just fan, you may not be able to avoid feeling as though you are doing a disservice to the game by actively removing 70% of the physical product.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My Unboxing of </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Grand Theft Auto IV</i></span><br />
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I'll conclude this article by describing my unboxing experience with <i>Grand Theft Auto IV</i>, which came very close to being one of the best video game unboxings I've had yet. It was so good that it made me feel like a kid opening a new box of Lego. It made me forget my general distrust of manuals, and I soon found myself reading a game manual for the first time in years.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5koIr5_DVMOyEZJ0g9UGrt2mAgmVrNUxSM5KAKRNCSWZb4KTEGzBHfDVs8GILzTWxdYHKNa_Mevskh5fHfux4-WofJ4h1sYAxBfXSRxHdnECZ0dBCkPcsbo6-83Bt45rX9g0oJynViSU9/s1600/gta4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5koIr5_DVMOyEZJ0g9UGrt2mAgmVrNUxSM5KAKRNCSWZb4KTEGzBHfDVs8GILzTWxdYHKNa_Mevskh5fHfux4-WofJ4h1sYAxBfXSRxHdnECZ0dBCkPcsbo6-83Bt45rX9g0oJynViSU9/s320/gta4.png" width="243" /></a></div>As you might've guessed, this box was filled with treasure. I was still relatively new to PC gaming, so my mind was blown when I saw that it came with, not one, but <i>two</i> discs. The manual was written as though it was some kind of travel guide, which did a great job of introducing me to the gritty, satirical world of <i>GTA</i>. But the best surprise was when I unfolded a convoluted piece of paper and discovered a map of the entire game world. Opening that map of Liberty City resonated with my childhood memories of family road trips and our collection of paper maps of the United States' east coast.<br />
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With that incredible first impression, I was more excited than ever to dive into this game. Unfortunately, that excitement was crushed by the PC version's infamously painful installation process that lasted multiple hours. And when I finally started playing, the pacing of the beginning was so slow that the game felt completely limiting compared to all of the promises that the manual and map had made. What was the point of showing the player all of these options at the very beginning of the experience if most of them won't be available until several hours into the game?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0pVjc50akvPkVJEAdEWUeGEsg2G9PvZ28G7gA0Bq8XOHquIQj3Co75BGjQUv61zhlzLZAYRsxg-qMZRAt8qtvetdXrRN6IWi6bAcZlnLM16GyuNoiYKmcQJuLpptAWCzZsNvnDqFa8xDH/s1600/gta4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0pVjc50akvPkVJEAdEWUeGEsg2G9PvZ28G7gA0Bq8XOHquIQj3Co75BGjQUv61zhlzLZAYRsxg-qMZRAt8qtvetdXrRN6IWi6bAcZlnLM16GyuNoiYKmcQJuLpptAWCzZsNvnDqFa8xDH/s1600/gta4.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I'm also a bit disappointed by how useless the map turned out to be. There really is no reason to use it, because the in-game map is much more efficient. It would've been interesting if the game had found a way to force or encourage the player to rely on the printed map instead of the digital one. Not only would it have enhanced the unboxing experience even further by making the map more relevant, but it also would've helped players to feel more like foreigners in the city, the kind of foreigners who need a map just to get around. Players may even choose to write things down on their map, marking locations and paths that they believe are valuable or useful, which really personalizes their experience in the city.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Notes</span><br />
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By the way, my map idea for <i>GTA IV</i> was partly inspired by <a href="http://unboxing/" target="_blank">this video</a>. <br />
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Even though it's been almost a month since my last blog post, this doesn't mean that I've been slacking off. I've actually managed to devote 4-7 hours a week towards maintaining this blog. Writing this post has definitely opened my eyes to how flawed and poorly-planned my writing process is.<br />
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Around two months ago I began writing some large articles with the intention of analyzing games deeply. I planned to approach these games one by one, writing extensive articles about them, almost like a kind of analytical review. But around a month ago, I decided that such an approach would be daunting for both me and my readers. It's far more interesting to focus on one specific topic while drawing from multiple games than it is to focus on one specific game while drawing from multiple topics.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-30372455817706395932012-01-15T01:52:00.000-08:002012-01-15T13:28:52.611-08:00Project Aeon, and How I spent my Holiday Break<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy0UbikMX-dGDKnoCH5ksMTFsaSzysp3oxEfaS-7e3FiLEd_3H77FRif9nhOHC44KZ-PU39RHfWgpZAMRdSc2slwJQZC-w8PFBTcwVclWvwDGXk9XZyuoeaQZY2OYBU6z28eAC5T7t6jIk/s1600/demo4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy0UbikMX-dGDKnoCH5ksMTFsaSzysp3oxEfaS-7e3FiLEd_3H77FRif9nhOHC44KZ-PU39RHfWgpZAMRdSc2slwJQZC-w8PFBTcwVclWvwDGXk9XZyuoeaQZY2OYBU6z28eAC5T7t6jIk/s1600/demo4.jpg" /></a></div><br />
It's been a month since my last blog post, so today I'm going to write about what I've been doing since then. Even though I've been on break from classes for the past month, I've been incredibly busy working on a Flash game called <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1326308183" target="_blank">Aeon</a>. I first introduced this project in my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-2-tnt-ruins.html">History of the Interguild</a> series, and given that this is a blog about game development, it's odd that I haven't written more about the game that I'm currently developing.<br />
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Most of this game's production has been incredibly slow, inefficient, and just plain horrible. But recently, I managed to turn this project around while making more progress in just one month than I would have made in a full year otherwise. In this post, I'll explain the major challenges that have held this game back for so long and how I drastically improved my time management and productivity skills.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;">A Brief History of Aeon's Development</span><br />
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The idea for this game was first conceived on the Interguild forums in the beginning of 2008, and while there were a lot of people who wanted to see this game get made, I was the only one who made the commitment to actually make it. The plan was for me to program the game, while other Interguild members contributed through art, music, and eventually, levels.<br />
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I didn't begin learning how to develop in Flash until the summer of 2008. The game's progress was severely limited by my lack of experience with both Flash and programming in general. Furthermore, I spent most of my extra time during 2008 working on the Interguild's big move to <a href="http://interguild.org/">interguild.org</a>.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTgDCcHVEbcoNsrn-i8sNNQDWMfxXNKwCulJ_yOvwTa7FqKfsmovCAHAPtAVZ-VVimkrepyRR8nKsxfQ0NmbtiTX63y3c2qEnQR9iLR2AoVC7leNpPEoof4VcdbduVMuNoUtnZTls0yWE/s1600/book1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguTgDCcHVEbcoNsrn-i8sNNQDWMfxXNKwCulJ_yOvwTa7FqKfsmovCAHAPtAVZ-VVimkrepyRR8nKsxfQ0NmbtiTX63y3c2qEnQR9iLR2AoVC7leNpPEoof4VcdbduVMuNoUtnZTls0yWE/s400/book1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
In 2009, development went a little smoother, but I didn't make much progress until the summer as I spent the first quarter of the year adding features to the new Interguild website. I released the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/index.php?id=1256344578" target="_blank">first Aeon demo</a> on October 23rd, 2009. It was very primitive, but players could make their own levels (using only terrain and a movable character) while editing some basic properties of how these objects behaved.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/TV8s5tW8PoE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
The <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1270098211" target="_blank">second Aeon demo</a> was released on April 1st, 2010. While this demo featured the addition of a few extra objects, including treasure, spikes, platforms, and doors, it also contained an <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1270247752" target="_blank">April Fools Day prank</a>. It was the first demo to include an entirely XML-based interfaced for customizing levels. Unlike the nice GUI from the previous demo, this allowed players to attach their customization settings to their level codes.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFBfpyhMs_vx6Hdl79tqKT-Tjndmz2tctssVWMt3hZQVUUGjDO_7FoSKX9HY1jeN_kZhF7Hiig9gXhvEqzmPfXnI0OKWujHwBQnXl0Hv4GDDjy6ltvJYb6tOD5yqh2lTScREjxDj5lKPv/s1600/aeon_debug.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFBfpyhMs_vx6Hdl79tqKT-Tjndmz2tctssVWMt3hZQVUUGjDO_7FoSKX9HY1jeN_kZhF7Hiig9gXhvEqzmPfXnI0OKWujHwBQnXl0Hv4GDDjy6ltvJYb6tOD5yqh2lTScREjxDj5lKPv/s320/aeon_debug.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Debug Menu from Aeon Demo 1</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3h42dn99otsW9ahDMyzagENpbQoJ-EgfIk13StLthqT-3UKmavnzJtDSLlLi1acEhQJ66ICJFaVaxhp7qvmxTrDve1996FkNQI4mIaBupDCcHkWgbYCvL5QmUK99VZCcGyewrSSJ_xlhq/s1600/aeon_debug2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3h42dn99otsW9ahDMyzagENpbQoJ-EgfIk13StLthqT-3UKmavnzJtDSLlLi1acEhQJ66ICJFaVaxhp7qvmxTrDve1996FkNQI4mIaBupDCcHkWgbYCvL5QmUK99VZCcGyewrSSJ_xlhq/s320/aeon_debug2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Debug Menu from Aeon Demo 2</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1280548799" target="_blank">third Aeon demo</a> was released on July 30th, 2010, just in time for the final round of the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1280462399" target="_blank">Interguild Olympics</a>. This demo didn't add much, aside from a few more customization options and a throwaway level editor prototype. After this demo, the game's remarkably slow development pace seemed to have come to a full stop.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTs-TIFx68zrupApxVC9AbbYjzxJHWUcJ6f2eF2ewoXC7gH4P0pbbaGercJF-OBaUZL6C-gg4Qb9Dyee_0uq2mKrGojvFWAN-f8tk4loNdgc7mOBCgcQBsudlk-UGdJSJPU2PkwLYPndDD/s1600/aeon_demo3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTs-TIFx68zrupApxVC9AbbYjzxJHWUcJ6f2eF2ewoXC7gH4P0pbbaGercJF-OBaUZL6C-gg4Qb9Dyee_0uq2mKrGojvFWAN-f8tk4loNdgc7mOBCgcQBsudlk-UGdJSJPU2PkwLYPndDD/s320/aeon_demo3.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/?id=3144" target="_blank">DDAeon</a> by canadianstickdeath</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>But a few days ago, on January 11th, 2012, I released the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1326308183" target="_blank">fourth Aeon demo</a>. The game had been almost completely rewritten, featuring fast loading times, polished menus, accurate collision detection, and an ambitious and versatile customization system called <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=6816" target="_blank">the Styles system</a>. Even though it's been over a year since the previous demo, most of these changes had been implemented within the previous four weeks.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Getting Serious</span><br />
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This game had a lot of problems holding it back, but the biggest problem was that I simply wasn't taking this project seriously enough. This was a humbling realization to have, because the fact that I held on to this project during all these years, long past the point where most people would've lost interest, led me to believe that I was already taking this game very seriously. But the incredibly slow pace with which this game was being developed suggests that I was approaching this difficult project with the naive mentality that if I just kept working on the game long enough, it would eventually get finished.<br />
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The breaking point came during last summer. I had just finished my first year of college studying computer science, and I was very excited to apply my new programming skills to Aeon. But by the end of the summer, all I had gotten done was a new menu system. So what happened? I tend to procrastinate by finding other things to work on, so while I did get a lot of work done that summer, little of it was actually on Aeon.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWQOEeh8si3rSG6hSwhGaNRLXlzNh4N2aCPEwx3-2-vZIc6wHik-6i4Y5EDR8YYI5VdG-Djry3EcAZKVj0kNTWuYro_EW-wgt3vbDmkH7BRo0yTge2g-sURALnYUMpOuE7KupXSRrIs8-P/s1600/130194512580.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWQOEeh8si3rSG6hSwhGaNRLXlzNh4N2aCPEwx3-2-vZIc6wHik-6i4Y5EDR8YYI5VdG-Djry3EcAZKVj0kNTWuYro_EW-wgt3vbDmkH7BRo0yTge2g-sURALnYUMpOuE7KupXSRrIs8-P/s1600/130194512580.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>When the summer ended I felt ashamed and incompetent, and that's when I decided to stop messing around and finish this game already. Making a game is incredibly hard, especially if you're a student, and there are a million obstacles preventing you from finishing your game. But once I became serious about getting it done, I started seeing these obstacles as problems that needed to be solved.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Problem #1: Time Management</span><br />
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My main motivation with pursuing this skill was because I wanted to find time during the semester to work on Aeon, as opposed to having to wait until the breaks between semesters. I've been trying to learn this skill ever since I got into college, but I must admit that those early efforts were a little lazy.<br />
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The first step to managing your time is to start tracking how you spend your time. You can't change your habits in the right direction if you don't even have enough data to make a clear diagnosis. In October, I started maintaining a "time log", which at first, only tracked the start and end times of specific tasks. Even though I would often forget to jot down the end time of the current task, maintaining the log was a huge eye-opener. Small distractions such as what felt like a 20-minute break on the Interguild ended up lasting up to two hours.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2wtsnI1QjLS_xdVXL6Gi2ZN0Mn-5ZasU8upIGfytX0XzqukjKmB1r657Cedz_CGYR_-OukDOoDfbz6q5tLoBWFYyS50U9QwfXBg_kY_KwdQAmr9FJUVxuDvGikIgvQJFruFTAgnBe6dzk/s1600/timelog1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2wtsnI1QjLS_xdVXL6Gi2ZN0Mn-5ZasU8upIGfytX0XzqukjKmB1r657Cedz_CGYR_-OukDOoDfbz6q5tLoBWFYyS50U9QwfXBg_kY_KwdQAmr9FJUVxuDvGikIgvQJFruFTAgnBe6dzk/s400/timelog1.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>A sample of my time log from those days.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;">Problem #2: Productivity</span><br />
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In mid-November I changed the way I recorded my time in order to finally start taking planned breaks as I worked. Retrospectively, the idea of not taking breaks sounds just plain stupid. I feel as though I've become at least 100% more productive simply by adding breaks to my schedule, whereas before I would try to work continuously until I finished something. I started by taking 10-minute breaks every hour, and to remind myself to take these breaks, I downloaded a free timer program called <a href="http://www.timeleft.info/" target="_blank">TimeLeft</a>. Since then, I've gradually increased my work segments from 60 minutes to 90 minutes, with 15-minute breaks.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOgXqOV393kKfdhqhrdWGtpzTQ81BSzDNayMD9cCLoXXHzyRzkf7LEt_NrWwuycg5eK9YQZJ8NtMnsUIe7XYLxmgvMJfWPSONHx3Niv6IPPtNktJc7XBn8co05lcrCk-eikJ-YnuscJFB-/s1600/timeleft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOgXqOV393kKfdhqhrdWGtpzTQ81BSzDNayMD9cCLoXXHzyRzkf7LEt_NrWwuycg5eK9YQZJ8NtMnsUIe7XYLxmgvMJfWPSONHx3Niv6IPPtNktJc7XBn8co05lcrCk-eikJ-YnuscJFB-/s320/timeleft.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Simply having that timer silently ticking away at the corner of my screen was a huge productivity booster. This made me feel like I was in "work mode" and that I had X amount of time until "rest mode". Having a limited amount of time for work forced me to stay focused so that I could make the most of it. Furthermore, my time log became much more accurate as the timer reminded me to update the log at least every 30 minutes. This allowed me to evaluate and respond to productivity problems as they came up, rather than waiting for the end of the day when all I could do was kick myself for not getting enough done.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPwEoPxhVEn6uLsWTL7aRU7V4zSYKz1PqWK1egNqG1XiNEOWCnWaYD9xuJpNb4oMZVR-L18JKAtmmsaowjOkcqwaUYEuuGkokpgDVqzBMwLbT3DX5F1c39ZM0lQEsSvpIV7g9hgDk8PAX/s1600/tmelog2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPwEoPxhVEn6uLsWTL7aRU7V4zSYKz1PqWK1egNqG1XiNEOWCnWaYD9xuJpNb4oMZVR-L18JKAtmmsaowjOkcqwaUYEuuGkokpgDVqzBMwLbT3DX5F1c39ZM0lQEsSvpIV7g9hgDk8PAX/s400/tmelog2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>A more recent sample from my time log, including breaks.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>My time log also served as a very useful tool for evaluating how productive each day was as a whole, which allowed me to set a benchmark for how much work to get done per day. For instance, during the holiday break, I pushed myself to work on Aeon for at least four hours per day, not counting breaks or interruptions.<br />
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</div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Problem #3: Focus</span></div><div><br />
When I was working on Aeon, it should have been a real challenge to stay focused, especially considering that I was working at home and we had guests staying over for the holidays. But I managed to defend myself pretty well from distractions by working in our dining room (which is not too secluded from everyone else) and by having the courage to tell people, "Go away. I'm working."</div><div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYIONSx3mchdzoDONTU3HwC0xnlzG1IrxSSFglpVtkGT7ONawIyxEwIxkDnyI5XORIbFjTGfS-03mZat2rlFl98_Kp_NQM73hcam9I8YxhGSuRPWE8_x7M-Z0TmI_z0Y0-BIHsQcvdtFa/s1600/busy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYIONSx3mchdzoDONTU3HwC0xnlzG1IrxSSFglpVtkGT7ONawIyxEwIxkDnyI5XORIbFjTGfS-03mZat2rlFl98_Kp_NQM73hcam9I8YxhGSuRPWE8_x7M-Z0TmI_z0Y0-BIHsQcvdtFa/s1600/busy.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>This is NOT what game development looks like, by the way.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div>The fact that I took frequent breaks gave me the certain amount of credibility needed to not come off as a jerk when I told people to leave me alone, because everyone knew that I wasn't always working. It's amazing how working hard on a tough project does not have to intrude much into spending time with family and friends.</div><div><br />
</div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Problem #4: Motivation</span></div><div><br />
</div><div>One of the biggest challenges that I had always faced when working on Aeon was the fact that I was always working alone. It's hard to stay motivated when working alone because there's no one to hold you accountable for when you slack off, not to mention the fact that working alone is just plain boring. So last September, I teamed up with my <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/" target="_blank">club</a>'s treasurer, Rory, and it was refreshing to have someone else on the team. I was able to use our regular project meetings as a big source of motivation for getting tons of design work done during the semester. These designs were what allowed me to write so much code so quickly during the holiday break.</div><div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4blEMsn6GtBsBwa_lekWQNwefq1GkhCQ44FzMQfOsnbzXJNIKv5dofJg29pSNa2KyHTN4iF4R3KQ3tpqQLtpO-OeGtQtgjQwgB_FjqdYcBBt06J01ts7N1p_G1xYSXrTbyKSYXsavJGp/s1600/tile_mechanics.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY4blEMsn6GtBsBwa_lekWQNwefq1GkhCQ44FzMQfOsnbzXJNIKv5dofJg29pSNa2KyHTN4iF4R3KQ3tpqQLtpO-OeGtQtgjQwgB_FjqdYcBBt06J01ts7N1p_G1xYSXrTbyKSYXsavJGp/s400/tile_mechanics.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>When in doubt, make UML diagrams.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div>When the break started, I got in the habit of sending Rory daily progress reports via email, summarizing how many hours I've worked, which features I've implemented, and what I planned to get done the next day. After a long day of work, writing these reports gave me an incredible sense of progress by making me to look back at everything I had accomplished that day. This unique perspective made all of my hard work feel more fulfilling, and it really helped me get excited about all of the progress that I was going to make the next day. It's always easier to get back to work, when you can easily remember (or look up) what problems you were planning to solve next.</div><div><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeS7ypF6ze2XrHoibo9H9dQWcT0pe0AC95xV1vXODFhv5Acro2M6ZXcZaz9FL2orfhJWLPS8m419oRVjrJktasEIPZs9FD8OCt8WIT9_U8l1PuHOQ3rt5Qia96dWFsNyc9cH6FblD0wHVK/s1600/report.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeS7ypF6ze2XrHoibo9H9dQWcT0pe0AC95xV1vXODFhv5Acro2M6ZXcZaz9FL2orfhJWLPS8m419oRVjrJktasEIPZs9FD8OCt8WIT9_U8l1PuHOQ3rt5Qia96dWFsNyc9cH6FblD0wHVK/s400/report.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div>Unfortunately, finding reliable teammates is a challenge of its own. The biggest contributions that Rory made were putting the game up on <a href="https://github.com/" target="_blank">github</a> and writing a simple LinkedList class. He felt really bad about how unproductive he turned out to be, and he eventually pulled out of the project because he felt like he was holding me back. Even though I planned to continue working at the same usual pace, I was less motivated to write my progress reports, and I noticed my level of productivity drop to about half that of the previous week (but that's probably because both Christmas and New Years Eve landed in the same week). If I hadn't been keeping a time log, it's likely that I wouldn't have even noticed this drop in productivity, because that week felt just as hectic as all the others.</div><div><br />
</div><div>In an attempt to restore my motivation, I decided to post my daily progress reports on <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/jump.php?to=1325613629" target="_blank">the Interguild forums</a>, despite the fact that most users would have no idea what I was talking about. But thanks to the great positive feedback I was getting from some of the members, I was back working at full steam in no time.</div><div><br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgay2jgJPJSa7ftECjEKY7kyo5X7d26L04q0zUgTZQRVBQF0ElY7t33pDV-eKqlpI4uvUtDA-u9zWYBZoe9UNEhRE8LR2crlPdgIA86uiNyLnDgk3dHhZ_vdpfaTUXdRTbS3rRSqO4YdT4O/s1600/tmelog2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgay2jgJPJSa7ftECjEKY7kyo5X7d26L04q0zUgTZQRVBQF0ElY7t33pDV-eKqlpI4uvUtDA-u9zWYBZoe9UNEhRE8LR2crlPdgIA86uiNyLnDgk3dHhZ_vdpfaTUXdRTbS3rRSqO4YdT4O/s400/tmelog2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><b>Crunch Time: the day before the big demo release.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">Problem #5: The New Semester</span></div><div><br />
</div><div>Even though I just released <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1326308183" target="_blank">Aeon Demo 4</a>, the real work is just beginning. Remember that the whole reason why I was interested in time management was so that I could continue working on this game throughout the semester. If the holiday break was basic training, then the semester will be the real test of whether or not I can manage my time effectively.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Rather than finishing my assignments just in time for the due date, my goal this semester is to get in the habit of finishing everything very early. I probably won't be able to write daily progress reports, but perhaps I could make my time logs detailed enough to replace them. I also intend to keep track of how many hours of homework I do everyday, and eventually I'll develop a daily quota to meet, like I did with Aeon. This way, if I do a particularly small amount of homework one day, rather than taking that as an excuse to slack off, I should be motivated enough to get to work on future assignments or get some reading and studying done.</div><div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtjbJcRMLd2pTZccU-72qVq6UoYIv0qkFvUk-pjpsPGpH_lg-0cdO-bdsDDV8WkjrfbJM8-TGB06aJruSnsqoy6tZDaTo09AR4nVzc2Y8Nx5xLgULsQZ0Y8iyuX-yvLwZTbfw30QvSHMu/s1600/index.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtjbJcRMLd2pTZccU-72qVq6UoYIv0qkFvUk-pjpsPGpH_lg-0cdO-bdsDDV8WkjrfbJM8-TGB06aJruSnsqoy6tZDaTo09AR4nVzc2Y8Nx5xLgULsQZ0Y8iyuX-yvLwZTbfw30QvSHMu/s1600/index.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Many of these plans were inspired by <a href="http://calnewport.com/blog/" target="_blank">Cal Newport's blog</a>.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div><span style="font-size: large;">For Lack of a Better Ending</span></div><div><br />
</div><div>By the way, did you notice that I stopped bolding random phrases in my posts? Those were mainly there to assist skimmers in finding what might be interesting about the article, but I realized that my writing style really doesn't go well with that kind of technique. It tended to give off a low-quality vibe, almost as if I'm not expecting my readers to care much about what I'm saying. Of course, there will be at least some readers (*cough*shos) who might complain about this change.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-59494711911900867112011-12-14T01:26:00.000-08:002012-07-18T23:29:47.776-07:00Course Analysis: MIS496A<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">class</a> that this blog was originally created for has ended! This was one of the best classes that I've taken at this University so far. Thanks to my tendency to morph class assignments into interesting personal projects, here are some of the things that this class has allowed me to do:<br />
<ol>
<li>Start a gaming blog!</li>
<li>Make some cool QR-code <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.275445889153188.70813.100000633365086&type=1&l=b546e92d17" target="_blank">posters for my club</a>.</li>
<li>Get the idea for how to run our club's<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/152879561472082/" target="_blank"> awesome Facebook group</a>.</li>
<li>Get an internship with <a href="http://www.rivermanmedia.com/" target="_blank">Riverman Media</a> for next semester.</li>
<li>Make my first <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/12/level-postmortem-mis496a-hw5.html">seriously-designed level</a>.</li>
<li>Design an impressive <a href="http://interguild.org/livio/" target="_blank">infographic resume</a>.</li>
</ol>
Of course, none of these things are what made this class so great. After all, I wasn't the only student who loved this class. So in this post, I'm going to analyze this past semester and figure out why exactly we found this class so enjoyable.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Significance of Facebook</span><br />
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Given that the full name of this course is "Business Intelligence: Web and Social Media Analytics," it wasn't much of a surprise in the beginning of the semester when we were told to join the class's Facebook group and to start tweeting using the hashtag <i>#MIS496A</i>. I'll admit that I initially thought this was all some kind of gimmick to make the class seem more interesting, but the reasoning behind it is pretty strong: you cannot understand social media unless you use it.<br />
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Unlike many other technology-based courses at this University, this class did not have a listserv, or any other such means of contacting your fellow students for help on assignments. If a student wanted help, the most common thing to do was to post on the class' Facebook group, which was the preferred method of communication because Facebook automatically sends you emails whenever someone posts in the group. This was much more personal and engaging than a listserv because you weren't just talking to a bunch of faceless email addresses.<br />
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Furthermore, listservs often have very strict rules that demand that all conversations be explicitly about the course material, and conversations that overstay their welcome are frowned upon. But in our Facebook group, the atmosphere was much less rigid. We were actually encouraged to start tangentially-related conversations, such as sharing opinions of articles, giving feedback on a classmate's work, and posting things that others might find interesting or entertaining. It allowed us to find all kinds of interesting applications to the class material, and it showed how off-topic conversations can be a valuable tool, rather than an obstacle, to the educational process.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Creating a Community</span><br />
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By the end of the semester, this class felt like a surprisingly strong community. While the use of social media sites definitely helped create this feeling, most of it was the result of how Dr. Ram expertly managed the classroom.<br />
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During her lectures, she frequently sought audience participation, to the point that it made students feel comfortable interrupting the lecture at any time. She would attempt to memorize everyone's names and then use us in her examples during lecture. This made us much more aware of the other students in the class, and it even led to the creation of some running jokes, such as how Taylor is the proven center of the universe.<br />
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Equally important to the class' sense of community was the frequent project presentations and feedback sessions. It was during these presentations when we got to know our classmates better. The final set of projects helped the most in this regard, because they yielded the most personalized and creative work. By this point in time, much of the ice had been broken, and students felt comfortable enough to critique each other's work and have fun while doing it.<br />
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As a communication tool, social media only helped strengthen the bonds of this community. Many students have become Facebook friends, allowing them to stay connected even outside of class. Once you pass this threshold, when your interaction with a group of people starts to surpass the original context of that group, that's when a community starts to feel powerful.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Great Architecture!</span><br />
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It's also worth noting how perfect our physical classroom was for this class. The room was designed in such a way as to make everyone feel as if they were within reasonable speaking distance from each other while making the room feel fairly spacious. I had another class this semester which had about the same number of students, but the room we got was about three times the size, and everyone sat at least ten miles away from each other. This class simply wouldn't have been the same if we had a similarly terrible room assignment.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Course Material</span><br />
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The community and atmosphere were probably the biggest reasons why many of us loved this class. It was like no other class that we've taken before, and it went a long way towards keeping us engaged.<br />
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But when I look at the core of the class itself, at the lectures, the assignments, exams, etc., I have to say that I feel a little dissatisfied. It certainly wasn't bad (it was actually pretty good), but it wasn't great.<br />
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A big part of this class was skill-based, with the goal being to build our business and data analytical skills. The online marketing campaign served as great practice, because its individual deadlines each demanded more and more depth in our analysis. The information network analysis report, on the other hand, felt oddly limiting. We were told to simply "analyze the data", with little context, no goals to achieve, and no problems to identify or solve.<br />
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The bulk of my dissatisfaction, however, comes from some of the side material that was covered in class, such as monetizing social media, which we almost never saw or used again. Perhaps we could have instead found a way to apply these concepts directly to our business analysis projects, where in addition to analyzing data we could try analyzing some of the different strategies of the companies that use social media.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">An Okay Difficulty Curve</span><br />
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All of the best classes that I've taken were fairly challenging courses. I remember these classes because they were able to push me to a level that initially seemed impossible or impractical. At the end of the course, you're left with an incredible feeling of accomplishment, as if you had just overcome a major obstacle.<br />
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Of course, these courses also had some of the best teachers I've ever had, because creating the great difficulty curve for a course is a very challenging thing to do, and it's something that often takes years to perfect. When badly done, overcoming a difficult course can instead feel like you just averted a train wreck; you're left feeling more stunned than accomplished.<br />
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I find that the level of difficulty for most classes is determined mainly by four factors:<br />
<ol>
<li>how challenging it is to learn the material,</li>
<li>how deeply one is expected to understand the material,</li>
<li>how much work is required in order to fulfill all of the assignments and projects,</li>
<li>and the pacing of the class, or how quickly one must accomplish all of the above goals.</li>
</ol>
The first two factors determine the "meat" of the class. It's what people come for and it will ultimately determine whether or not the student walks away satisfied. Meanwhile, the other two factors must compliment and aid the first two, but they alone cannot fix a broken class.<br />
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From this perspective, the first half of this class was fairly well done. The material was fairly easy to grasp, and this ease was balanced out by the challenge of trying to master our advertising and analytical skills. However, the amount of work demanded by the reports was a little high (like that one assignment where we needed to write a report, make a powerpoint on the report, and then make a video on the powerpoint), but what hurt the overall project the most was the rapid pacing. The speed was disorienting at first, and it caused quite a bit of anxiety. Fortunately, the pacing slowed down a bit during the second half of the marketing project.<br />
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While the first half of the semester was bordering on too difficult, I found the second half to be too easy. We never went too deeply into much of the material, and the bulk of our time was spent working on projects that were interesting but ultimately not very educational (I'm still not sold on the importance of infographic resumes, even after <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/home/meeting12guestspeaker-markgrossnickle" target="_blank">a game developer</a> told me how it helped him get a job).<br />
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This class doesn't have the same kind of polished difficulty curve that one would expect from a class that has been repeated for several years, but it's not bad for the first run.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A Teacher that Cares</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwAKhOWBrYZLcPyGNxMYT2m9aGvzOC5H4iZEclAj_bBqSFPGDiK55jOM0_jw-_tVkhcPuNKRObERJgCvNX7sC_oBqHin7sDvduqae5ug5WLIUF9cCcIU1fQ1cdYjk37Ptdr7z4xRHwR686/s1600/ram.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwAKhOWBrYZLcPyGNxMYT2m9aGvzOC5H4iZEclAj_bBqSFPGDiK55jOM0_jw-_tVkhcPuNKRObERJgCvNX7sC_oBqHin7sDvduqae5ug5WLIUF9cCcIU1fQ1cdYjk37Ptdr7z4xRHwR686/s1600/ram.jpg" /></a></div>
This is an easy trait to overlook, mostly because we tend to not notice it until it has gone wrong. I've taken classes that have been put together so carelessly and sloppily that every problem left unsolved with the course is a constant reminder of how little the teacher cares about the class. There's nothing more demotivating to students than when they suspect that their teacher simply doesn't care. But when students can feel that their teacher truly cares about their education, it can often give them the extra amount of motivation necessary to pull through even the toughest of obstacles.<br />
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While I didn't see anything happen in this class that was as inspiring as <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094027/" target="_blank">Stand and Deliver</a></i>, Dr. Ram really deserves some recognition for taking her work seriously and for putting a lot of effort into this class. Good teachers are too hard to find, so if you're reading this, Dr. Ram, thanks for being an awesome teacher.<br />
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<hr style="width: 50%;" />
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<i>So now that this class is over, it's probably about time I finally changed the tagline. Rest in peace, old tagline:</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNIg9niW7tEbWAi90pJ7xAJl9_zCt4TaWWC1Bz0rvehvzXXohhgRlHO1kjnYLTmrG1gQI13yntqRgCJPeLA-k4oepXrg9rUESVMeoT9VH_HVslvX54JtneVuSeDGU8sXkXt9_sqSHjZEb/s1600/oldtagline.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNIg9niW7tEbWAi90pJ7xAJl9_zCt4TaWWC1Bz0rvehvzXXohhgRlHO1kjnYLTmrG1gQI13yntqRgCJPeLA-k4oepXrg9rUESVMeoT9VH_HVslvX54JtneVuSeDGU8sXkXt9_sqSHjZEb/s400/oldtagline.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-14806726490406644492011-12-06T20:38:00.000-08:002011-12-06T20:38:11.855-08:00Nine GameDev-Related Things to do During your Holiday Break<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcLywBgWpxWDRnP4K8GtaTf2CI5DkmdFFM8Ts9sJyfvBMlZV8G_md4xqSzfe81AJy-HRRWHOaHDuoyNAlo4dhRqklZ4u0F_0GqGEqqVFamTJ10eCprW4dPGwKn-h2nkrNrCgWNHRw9jzvG/s1600/super-mario-galaxy-snow%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcLywBgWpxWDRnP4K8GtaTf2CI5DkmdFFM8Ts9sJyfvBMlZV8G_md4xqSzfe81AJy-HRRWHOaHDuoyNAlo4dhRqklZ4u0F_0GqGEqqVFamTJ10eCprW4dPGwKn-h2nkrNrCgWNHRw9jzvG/s1600/super-mario-galaxy-snow%255B1%255D.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I just finished writing a <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/home/ninethingstododuringyourholidaybreak" target="_blank">lengthy blog post on my club's website</a> on how to productively spend one's holiday break. An article with that much effort put into it would normally be posted on this blog, because on the club website I usually only post short summaries of what we've been up to, which no one really reads. And so I'm tempted to describe this latest article as a guest post on my own side blog.<br />
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The reason why I decided to post this article there as opposed to here was because it's very specifically written to my members. When I asked some of them during our last meeting what they were planning to do during the break, I was shocked to find out how little they seemed to value the free time they'll have starting next week.<br />
<br />
Or maybe I'm just weird. <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-interguild-part-1-five-years.html">After years of struggling</a> to find the time to work on the Interguild, I seemed to have developed some strong mental barriers against wasteful time spending. But that's not to say that I have good time management skills. It just means that I procrastinate by finding something else to work on. For instance, today probably would've been better spent writing my 10-page final paper for <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">my MIS class</a>, rather than writing a 10-page blog post for <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/ua-game-developers-club-has-gone-global.html">my club</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-8772780581514403852011-12-03T13:53:00.000-08:002011-12-14T13:53:37.065-08:00Level Postmortem: MIS496A HW5<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu421xHmx6hmT9BIDWA0Ba5sMoyuMMu5SE2dBYstLhndG_6LlccKZGEt0jucxHVAxH-FER08BHfXxORFBkWopZgd9Q0CUYUPFT0MJ5hAHxNunC3C4JrAmpA69TBHN7Mvy0s_FvlbBh8BSP/s1600/3708_fc.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu421xHmx6hmT9BIDWA0Ba5sMoyuMMu5SE2dBYstLhndG_6LlccKZGEt0jucxHVAxH-FER08BHfXxORFBkWopZgd9Q0CUYUPFT0MJ5hAHxNunC3C4JrAmpA69TBHN7Mvy0s_FvlbBh8BSP/s1600/3708_fc.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" /></a></div><br />
Postmortems are traditionally reserved for critiquing the development processes of entire games, but it shouldn't be too far of a stretch to apply the same kind of analysis to a single level.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Introduction</span><br />
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This level was made for a homework assignment for <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">the class that this blog was originally created for</a>. The project was really open; all we had to do was create "something" that would highlight what we've been learning in class. Some people made videos, others made skits, and one group went as far as to make a advertisement campaign with the goal of getting more students to sign up for the class next semester.<br />
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Naturally, I decided to make a level, and the game I chose to make it in was <i><a href="http://canvasrider.com/draw">Canvas Rider</a></i>, an HTML5 remake of the popular Flash game <i>Free Rider 2</i>. The level is currently <a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/?id=3708">uploaded to the Interguild</a>. To play it, copy the code in the textbox, <a href="http://canvasrider.com/draw">visit the game page</a>, paste the code into the textbox under the game, and click load.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What Went Right</span><br />
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<b>1. Choosing to Make a Tutorial Level</b><br />
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For my presentation, I decided that I wasn't going to play through the level on my own. Instead, I would pick a volunteer from the class to play the level while I talked about it. Not only did this make for a more interesting presentation, but it also allowed me to challenge my game design skills when making this level. I assumed that no one in the class was familiar with the game, so the tutorial level had to be designed well enough to deliver an interesting experience while teaching the player how to play.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFOt7kdrs6pqN1xXjpmsUDuz2ABLifZJNNvCmbKFLHnha3PB5aIKVX2ZN2_qfb71FkhfcTn1hHC-9jIxp2pYiteTk4sLL6RCG0e9b9YkjkYzp9saRRsXWcWno9ujVTo2rMHFporBq5MD_/s1600/tut.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFOt7kdrs6pqN1xXjpmsUDuz2ABLifZJNNvCmbKFLHnha3PB5aIKVX2ZN2_qfb71FkhfcTn1hHC-9jIxp2pYiteTk4sLL6RCG0e9b9YkjkYzp9saRRsXWcWno9ujVTo2rMHFporBq5MD_/s400/tut.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<b>2. Using Real Level Design</b><br />
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I've been making <a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/?author=Livio&by=ASC">terrible levels for years</a>, but considering everything I've learned about game design since last summer, it's about time I finally applied those skills concretely. Because I saw this as a way to challenge myself, I put much more care into designing this level than I would have otherwise.<br />
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For instance, this was the first time that I was worried about the pacing of a level. It led me to add simple and easy sections in places where I simply would have neglected in the past. Once I started thinking about my level's potential interest curve, it really became clear how badly paced many of my previous levels were.<br />
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<b>3. Deciding to Cut the Second Half</b><br />
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If you've played the level, you'll know that the Z button isn't introduced until the very end. I originally wanted to create a series of scenarios following this point that would repeatedly use this concept to make sure the player got used to the idea of flipping the bike (a concept that took me a while to get used to).<br />
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But in order to keep the level's interest curve shaped properly, the rather simple scenarios I had already drawn up demanded that the level be extended considerably in order to build up to something more interesting. I simply didn't have the time to work on this level any longer, so I reluctantly decided to throw away this large chunk of work and end the level earlier. By placing the ending at this point of the level, rather than directly after my discarded section, the level as a whole felt much more solid.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj8IPunD_MYKo87Qt68WfFUy7UlldbhE_T2j5lUtlgiiLygN6tnnjRGo30v14duFGkgdgI0S2BQecUbbomHaUkCf7zAkx_vYbTocMuPrNKpHxPLYKA7o5vyy75vucxqMU9MNQgdJclPSOW/s1600/old.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj8IPunD_MYKo87Qt68WfFUy7UlldbhE_T2j5lUtlgiiLygN6tnnjRGo30v14duFGkgdgI0S2BQecUbbomHaUkCf7zAkx_vYbTocMuPrNKpHxPLYKA7o5vyy75vucxqMU9MNQgdJclPSOW/s400/old.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The discarded section. Hey, is that GLaDOS?</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The fact that I wasted so much time was really my failure to properly plan the level before making it, which I'll talk more about under the "What Went Wrong" section of this article.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, I was very satisfied with the new ending that replaced this section. As I've stated in the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/jump.php?to=1322378235">discussion</a> of my level on the Interguild, the open, half-pipe-like environment at the end was a much more engaging way to teach the player how to use the Z button. This section basically gave the player a little "play area", where they could experiment with the controls and try different techniques, and it even gave them an interesting goal to try to achieve while they were there. It's always nice when reaching the end of a level doesn't mean you have to stop playing.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGzAdBh0vkrU3pqw2EjN7C6A8Quz8oIVJlToCVN9ba9jEJP2zxzTnVylf8UiWWP4a5xCa4RdiRYYidqjwOpAUs2AXBm5XohrrRgQbZNqTmOlOwZgcb18Qk_szlXB4fmPoYbDLvCMEwSjOe/s1600/end.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGzAdBh0vkrU3pqw2EjN7C6A8Quz8oIVJlToCVN9ba9jEJP2zxzTnVylf8UiWWP4a5xCa4RdiRYYidqjwOpAUs2AXBm5XohrrRgQbZNqTmOlOwZgcb18Qk_szlXB4fmPoYbDLvCMEwSjOe/s400/end.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The new ending.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The textbox below includes the level code with the discarded section, if you're interested.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><textarea style="height: 120px; width: 90%;">-18 1i 18 1i cq 1i,cr 1i dc 1k dq 1m e6 1q h1 2r q2 67 qh 6a r4 6d rn 6f sn 6h,u0 6i 17c 6i,so 6h u4 6i,17d 6i 183 6g 18s 6b 1aa 5p 1bh 55 1cp 4c 21u 4c 2ms 4c 37e 4c 38i 4a 3a6 46 3e8 3p 3jb 30 3pp 1b 421 -1g 4do -6b 5op -pn 5pl -q1 5q9 -q6 5r2 -qa 5rv -qd 5ss -qg 5u0 -qi 5v8 -qi 66o -qi 6o0 -qg,58e -no 584 -om,58e -no 58o -om,592 -no 592 -oc,59b -nu 59i -no 59o -o1 59c -o6 59h -od 59p -o9,5a2 -oa 5a3 -nn,5ai -ot 5ai -no,5ab -oa 5aq -o9,5bb -o7 5b5 -oc 5au -o6 5ba -nv 5b4 -nq 5as -nu,5bh -oi 5bl -oi 5bl -od 5bh -oc 5bh -oh,5bg -nu 5bk -nu 5bl -nq 5bg -nq 5bg -nu,5ci -p4 5ci -np,5d6 -p2 5cv -ok 5cv -o4 5d8 -nn 5dg -o6 5di -oq 5d8 -p1,5dr -p3 5ee -p3 5e1 -no,60g -16e 62m -16e 63k -15g 63k -13a 630 -12m 63u -11o 63u -uu 63a -ua 630 -u0 60g -u0,60g -16e 60g -u0,630 -12m 60g -12m,64i -16e 64i -u0 66o -u0,67c -164 67c -uu 68k -ua,68a -16o 67c -164,6aq -15q 6aq -v8 69s -ua 68k -ua,68a -16o 69s -16o 6aq -15q,6c2 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bbn 1i3 bbs 1i0 bc1 1i2 bc5 1i8 bc3 1ie bbv 1ih bbm 1ii bbg 1ih bbd 1ie bbg 1i6,beg 1k8 bca 1mt,bc5 1mr bcd 1mu bcg 1n8 bce 1nh bc8 1ni bbv 1ng bbs 1n7 bbt 1n2 bc1 1mu bc4 1ms,bbe -do bbe -8o,bdk -42 bbo -6s,bb4 -6s bb4 -26 bag -18,bbo -1s bbo -3e bcc -42 bdk -42,bdk -18 bcc -18 bbo -1s,be8 c6 bdu cg bdu do be8 e2 bei e2,bei c6 be8 c6,bfm 18q bfr 183 bg2 17k bga 175 bgo 16o bhb 16a bhv 163 bir 15v bjm 163 bkh 16c bl1 16n blj 177 bm2 17r bmh 18n bms 19k bn0 1a8 bn3 1as bn2 1bd bmu 1bo bmo 1c6 bmg 1ci bm4 1cp bll 1d0 bla 1d3 bkf 1d5 bji 1d7 bik 1d4,bgh 1c2 bg5 1bg bfq 1aq bfm 1a7 bfl 19f bfm 18q,bgu 1ck bgm 1cc bgh 1c2,bhc 1d2 bgm 1i0,bf4 1i2 bfi 1hu bfv 1ht bgk 1hv bgu 1i3 bhe 1i9 bhp 1ic bi0 1ii bi6 1is bi9 1jc bi9 1jr bi7 1k4 bi1 1kd bhn 1km bh8 1kt bgs 1kv bg7 1kt bfm 1ko bf1 1ki bek 1kc bec 1k1 be9 1jo be7 1ja be9 1iv bed 1il bel 1id beu 1i7 bf5 1i1,bdk -do bdk -8o,bge -6s bge -26 bfq -18,be8 -6s be8 -26 bes -18 bfq -18,bdk -6s bdk -18,be8 -4c bge -4c,bg4 -do bdk -do,bdk -bi bfg -bi,bin 1d4 bi6 1d3 bho 1d1 bhb 1ct bgu 1ck,bhm 1ic bin 1gt,bj8 1g6 bl4 1f0,bj5 1g5 bja 1g8 bjc 1ge bjb 1gn bj3 1gt bis 1gu bim 1gs bik 1go bik 1gg bio 1ga bj0 1g7 bj6 1g6,bik 1ti bik 27s bt8 27s bt8 1ti,bik 1ti bt8 1ti,biu 28g biu 29o,bik 29o bj8 29o,bik 28g bj8 28g,bjs 28g bji 28q bk6 29e bjs 29o bji 29o,bia -8o bia -do,bj8 -18 bj8 -6s,bgo -do bjs -do,bh2 -26 bh2 -3o bhm -4m bj8 -4m,bj8 -18 bi0 -18 bh2 -26,bmr 1bv bog 1fa,bl6 1d2 bl9 1ed,bl9 1ee blh 1ea bln 1e7 bm2 1ea bm8 1ef bm9 1er bm3 1f3 blm 1f7 ble 1f7 bl5 1f0 bl3 1en bl8 1ed,blj 1f5 blj 1i0,bnr 1gt blt 1ia,bli 1i1 blo 1i3 bls 1i6 blu 1id bln 1il ble 1io bl6 1il bl3 1if bl3 1i6 bl5 1i2 blf 1i1 blk 1i1,bn2 1nd bmv 1mt bmv 1ma bn6 1lr bnf 1lj bnt 1lb boo 1l6,bk6 28g bjs 28g,ble 28g blo 29o bm2 294 bmc 29o bmm 28g,bmm 34a bmm 332 bn0 332 bn0 33m bmm 33m bn0 34a,bmc 32o bvo 32o bvo 37o bmc 37o bmc 32o,bmm 34k bmm 35s,bmm 34k bn0 34k bn0 358 bmm 358,bn0 366 bmm 366 bmm 37e bn0 37e,ble -6i bl4 -6i bkq -68 bkq -5k bl4 -5a ble -5a ble -5u bl4 -5u,blo -6i blo -5a,blo -6i bm2 -6i bmc -68 bm2 -5u blo -5u bmc -5a,bmm -68 bn0 -6i bna -68 bna -5a,bkg -84 bkg -34 brc -34 brc -76,bmm -68 bmm -5a,bna -5u bmm -5u,ble -4m bl4 -4m bkq -4c bkq -3o bl4 -3e ble -3e,blo -4m blo -3e,bmc -4m bmc -3e,bmc -42 blo -42,bmm -3e bmm -4c bn0 -4m bna -4c bna -3e,bna -42 bmm -42,bos n4 bos em bos ec,boi em boi n4,boi ec boi em,bos f0 c60 f0,bos f0 bp6 ec,bos fu c60 fu,brm 1a6 bn0 1a6,bn0 1be c1u 1e8,bp8 1h9 boq 1l9,boh 1fa bol 1f9 bp2 1f7 bpb 1f8 bpm 1f8 bps 1fc bq3 1fk bq8 1g1 bq9 1ga bq9 1gk bq5 1gt bpt 1h4 bpk 1h7 bp8 1h9 bou 1h9 boj 1h8 bo4 1h3 bnt 1gt bnq 1gj bnq 1g5 bo1 1fl bo9 1fd bom 1f9,bok 1l7 bp4 1l7 bpm 1la bq3 1lf bq9 1lr bqc 1mg bq8 1n1 bq2 1ne bpk 1nn bp1 1o0 boa 1o3 bnt 1o1 bn8 1no bn2 1nd,bqa 1tv bq2 1u3 bpu 1u9 bpr 1uj,bo8 22s bo8 21a bpq 21a bpq 1vo,bpq 1vg bpq 1vu,bpq 1ve bpq 1ut bpr 1uh,bpq 22s bpq 27i brc 27i,bpq 22s bo8 22s,bn0 29o bn0 28q bna 28g bnk 28q bnk 29o,bnk 294 bn0 294,bnu 28g boi 28g,bo8 28g bo8 29o,bpg 28g bp6 28g bos 28q bos 29e bp6 29o bpg 29o,bpq 28g bpq 29o,bqe 294 bpq 294,bna 34a bna 332 bnk 332 bnk 34a,bnk 33m bna 33m,bnu 332 boi 332,bo8 332 bo8 34a,bp6 332 bos 332 bos 33m bp6 33m bp6 34a bos 34a,bpg 332 bq4 332,bpq 332 bpq 34a,bna 34k bna 35s,bna 34k bnk 34k bnk 358 bna 358 bnk 35s,bnu 34k bnu 35s bo8 35s,bo8 358 bnu 358,bnu 34k bo8 34k,boi 34k boi 35s,boi 34k bos 34k bos 358 boi 358,bp6 35s bp6 34k bpg 34k bpg 35s,bp6 358 bpg 358,bpq 34k bpq 35s,bpq 34k bq4 34k bq4 358 bpq 358 bq4 35s,bnu 34a boi 34a,bpg 34a bq4 34a,bna 37e bna 366 bnk 366 bnk 37e,bnk 36q bna 36q,bnu 37e bnu 366 bo8 37e bo8 366,boi 37e boi 366 bos 37e bos 366,bp6 366 bp6 37e bpg 37e bpg 366 bp6 366,bpq 37e bpq 366 bq4 37e bq4 366,bnk -6i bnu -5a bo8 -6i,boi -6i bp6 -6i,bos -6i bos -5a,bpg -6i bq4 -6i,bpq -6i bpq -5a,boi -5a bp6 -5a,bnk -3e bnk -4m bo8 -3e bo8 -4m,boi -4c boi -3o bos -3e bp6 -3e bp6 -42 bos -42,boi -4c bos -4m bp6 -4m,bpg -4m bpg -3e bq4 -3e,bpg -4m bq4 -4m,bpg -42 bpq -42,brc ec brm f0,bsk i4 bti k0 bts k0 bts kk bsk kk bsk k0,bqe k0 brc i4 br2 i4 br2 hg bsu hg bsu i4 bsk i4,bs0 hq bsu k0,bs0 hq br2 k0,br2 kk bq4 kk bq4 k0 bqe k0,br2 kk brc kk brc k0,brb jb bsj jb,brn 1a7 bro 19v brs 19n bs3 19g bsh 19c bsv 19i bt6 19s bt7 1ac bt2 1ap bsp 1au bsd 1au brt 1an brn 1a6,bq6 1gv bvm 1l9,bsu 1ts bsu 1ve bsa 1ve,bsu 1ts brc 1ts bqr 1ts bqi 1ts bqa 1tv,bsu 22s bsu 21a brc 21a brc 20c brd 200 brf 1vm bri 1vh bro 1vf bs1 1ve bsd 1ve,bsu 22s brc 22s brc 27i,bqe 28g bqe 29o,bqo 28g brc 28g,br2 28g br2 29o,bqo 29o brc 29o,brm 28g brm 29o,brm 28g bsa 29o bsa 28g,bsu 28g bsk 28q bsk 29e bsu 29o bt8 29o bt8 294 bsu 294,bsu 28g bt8 28g,bqe 34a bqe 332 bqo 34a bqo 332,br2 33c br2 340 brc 34a brm 34a brm 33m brc 33m,brm 332 brc 332 br2 33c,bsu 332 bsu 34a bt8 34a,bt8 332 bsu 332,bqe 34k bqe 35s bqo 35s,bqo 34k bqe 34k,bqo 358 bqe 358,bs0 35s bs0 34k bsa 358 bsk 34k bsk 35s,bsu 34k bsu 35s bt8 35s bt8 34k bsu 34k,bqe 366 bqo 366,bqe 366 bqe 36q bqo 36q bqo 37e bqe 37e,br5 37g br5 37b br0 37b br0 37g br5 37g,bqe -6i bqo -5u br2 -6i,bqo -5u bqo -5a,bvs 1l5 c09 1ks c0o 1kp c14 1kt c1c 1la c1d 1lq c18 1m8 c0t 1mj c0g 1ml c01 1mm bvo 1mh bvk 1m6 bvm 1ln bvo 1le,bvo 1lf bvs 1l5,bvr 1mj btl 1p0,c06 2dq c1a 2dd c2c 2e6 c3m 2dr c5j 2ek c71 2e7 c8b 2eu c9t 2ef cbn 2fc cco 2ep ce6 2fe cfm 2et ch5 2fe cil 2es ck0 2f9 clk 2el cn2 2ev coj 2e1 cq0 2e8 cqf 2di,c08 2dr bva 2ic,c0o 2dv bvt 2ih,c0d 2ds bvd 2ie,c0m 2dv bvp 2ih,c0f 2en c03 2f7 c08 2g1 bvp 2gq bvt 2hp bvh 2ic,bti 332 bti 34a,bti 332 bts 332 bts 33m bti 33m,bug 332 bu6 332 bu6 34a bug 34a,bup 34a buu 34a buu 346 bup 346 bup 349,bti 35s bti 34k bts 35s bts 34k,bug 34k bu6 34k bu6 35s bug 35s,bug 358 bu6 358,buq 34k bv4 358 bve 34k,bv4 358 bv4 35s,c0m ls c0m kk c10 kk c1a ku c1a li c10 ls c0m ls,c0m l8 c1a l8,c1k ku c1u kk c28 ku c28 li c1u ls c1k li c1k ku,c2s kk c2i ku c2i li c2s ls c36 li c36 ku c2s kk,c0c n4 c0c ka c5c ka c5c n4,c26 1f7 c25 1ej c28 1e5 c2g 1ds c2q 1dl c3c 1dh c44 1df c4o 1di,c3m 1hf c39 1hd c2t 1h5 c2l 1gs c2f 1gi c2a 1g6 c27 1fo c26 1f7,c36 23q c36 2cs cp2 2cs cp2 23g c36 23g c36 23q,c44 2ac c36 2ac,c0c 2d9 c0u 2dt c2b 2dj c3j 2ec c5h 2e4 c71 2eq c8c 2ec c9r 2f3 cbn 2eo ccn 2fe ce7 2et cfo 2fi ch6 2es cim 2ff ck0 2ep clm 2f5 cmq 2ee cor 2ej cpt 2dn cqh 2e3,c31 2dl c2u 2e8,c0c 2e2 c0f 2en,c6a n4 c6a ec,c60 ec c60 n4,c3g ku c44 li c3q ls c3g ls,c3g ku c3q kk c44 kk,c4e kk c52 kk,c4o kk c4o ls,c4e 1a6 c4o 1dk,c4f 1a7 c48 1a7 c3v 1a3 c3m 19l c3n 19b c43 195 c4d 196 c4m 19c c4q 19m c4o 1a2 c4f 1a9,c4k 1dh c50 1dp c5e 1e5 c5r 1en c64 1f8 c64 1fk c63 1g3 c5u 1gg c5p 1go c5h 1h0 c56 1hb c4k 1hg c46 1hg c3m 1hf,c67 1f9 caa 1ev,c7f 1ko c5a 1h7,c6k 2ac c5c 2a2 c44 2ac,cd5 2lk c6j 2q6,cd9 2lk c6i 2qb,cen 2l6 c6b 2r9,ceb 2l9 c6e 2r1,c6i 2qr c72 2pu c7v 2pr c8g 2ov c9i 2oo c9u 2nt cb4 2nj cbh 2mq cch 2mg ccq 2lu cdf 2lq cdh 2lh,c84 1kn cd9 1k6,c7j 1km c7r 1kk c88 1l0 c87 1lc c7v 1lk c7l 1lk c7e 1lf c7a 1l5 c7d 1kk c7l 1ki,c9o 2am c8q 2am c7i 2ac c6k 2ac,c7q 2ea c7o 2es,c8n 2l1 c9l 2m1 cac 2lb cb8 2lt cc0 2l9 cd0 2lk cdf 2l1 cec 2l9 cel 2kl,cae 2lv c9l 2l7 c8n 2lv c8n 2l2,cao m0 cbq lj ccd l8 ccv kp cdk k4 ce8 ja cen if cf0 hl cf4 h0 cf5 fv,cae 1f1 cab 1er cae 1el can 1ej cau 1el cb1 1ev cas 1f5 cal 1f4 cae 1f0,cdg 2a2 cc8 29o cba 2a2 cam 2ac c9o 2am,cc6 2ep cc6 2fa,cdo 2le ccr 2l6 cc4 2ln cb4 2lb cae 2lv,cam 2lb cao 2lu,ccd 2l8 ccg 2lm,cdc 1k6 cde 1jv cdl 1ju cdt 1ju cdt 1k7 cdn 1kf cdd 1ke cdc 1k5,cee 28g ceo 278 cfc 27s,cg0 29o cfc 27s,cee 28g ce4 29o cdg 2a2,cet 2l3 ce4 2ks cdo 2le,cdq 2ku cdu 2ld,cj4 2ac chs 2a2 cgk 2ac cg0 29o,cgg 2et cgg 2fd,chi 2iq chi 2k2,chi 2iq ci6 2k2 ci6 2iq,ciq 2iq cig 2j4 cig 2jo ciq 2k2 cj4 2jo cj4 2j4 ciq 2iq,ch8 2ig ch8 2pm co4 2pm co4 2ig ch8 2ig,chs 2kc cmi 2kc,chi 2l0 chi 2m8,chi 2l0 chs 2l0 chs 2m8,chs 2lk chi 2lk,ci6 2l0 ci6 2m8,ci6 2l0 cig 2la cig 2lu ci6 2m8,cj4 2l0 ciq 2l0 ciq 2lk cj4 2lk cj4 2m8 ciq 2m8,chs 2mi chi 2mi chi 2nq chs 2nq,chi 2n6 chs 2n6,ci6 2mi ci6 2nq,ci6 2mi cig 2mi,cig 2n6 ci6 2n6,ciq 2mi ciq 2nq,cj4 2n6 ciq 2n6,ciq 2mi cj4 2mi,chi 2o4 chi 2pc,chi 2o4 chs 2o4 chs 2oo chi 2oo chs 2pc,ci6 2pc ci6 2o4 cig 2o4 cig 2pc,cig 2oo ci6 2oo,ciq 2o4 cje 2o4,ciq 2pc cje 2pc,cm8 2am clk 2a2 cl0 29o ckc 29o cjo 2a2 cj4 2ac,cjb 2es cjc 2ff,cje 2iq ck2 2iq,cjo 2iq cjo 2k2,ckc 2iq cl0 2iq,ckm 2iq ckm 2k2,ckc 2k2 cl0 2k2,cla 2j4 cla 2jo clk 2k2 clu 2k2,cla 2j4 clk 2iq clu 2iq,ckc 2l0 ckc 2m8,ckc 2l0 ckm 2m8 ckm 2l0,cl0 2l0 cl0 2m8 cla 2m8 cla 2l0 cl0 2l0,clk 2l0 cm8 2l0,clu 2l0 clu 2m8,cje 2mi cje 2nq cjo 2nq,cjo 2n6 cje 2n6,cje 2mi cjo 2mi,ckc 2mi ck2 2mi ck2 2nq ckc 2nq,ckm 2mi cla 2mi,cl0 2mi cl0 2nq,clk 2mi cm8 2mi,clu 2mi clu 2nq,clk 2nq cm8 2nq,cj4 2o4 cj4 2pc,ck2 2o4 cjo 2o4 cjo 2oo ck2 2oo ck2 2pc cjo 2pc,ckm 2o4 ckc 2o4 ckc 2pc ckm 2pc,ckc 2oo ckm 2oo,clu 2o4 clu 2pc cm8 2pc,clu 2o4 cm8 2o4,cp2 2am co4 2ac cn6 2am cm8 2am,cnl 2e8 cnr 2eo,cm8 2iq cm8 2k2 cms 2k2,cm8 2iq cms 2iq,cmi 2je cm8 2je,cn6 2iq cn6 2j4 cng 2j4 cng 2iq cn6 2iq,cn6 2jo cn6 2k2 cng 2k2 cng 2jo cn6 2jo,cmi 2mi cms 2nq cn6 2mi,cng 2mi cnq 2mi,cng 2mi cng 2nq cnq 2nq,cng 2n6 cnq 2n6,cmi 2o4 cmi 2pc,cmi 2o4 cms 2o4 cms 2oo cmi 2oo,cn6 2o4 cn6 2pc cng 2pc,cn6 2o4 cng 2o4,cqf 2de cqj 2e5,ct0 2fi csd 2eu crk 2eu crk 2f8 cs8 2f9,csa 2f9 csr 2fq ctk 2fs,cru 2f7 cru 2fj cs5 2fj cs5 2fa,cs3 2fi csc 2fq csc 2ge csh 2gd csg 2fo cs3 2f7,csb 2fv cs3 2g1 crt 2g5,crt 2g6 crp 2gd crp 2gj cru 2gq cs6 2gt csc 2gt csn 2go csv 2gg ct1 2g9 ct1 2g4 csq 2g0 csi 2g0,crv 2ge cs2 2gc cs6 2gd cs8 2gg cs8 2gl cs5 2go cs2 2go cru 2gk crt 2gi cru 2ge,cs1 2g7 cs4 2g8 cs6 2g4 cs2 2g6,cue 26m d0a 2aj,cut 26m d0l 2ac,ctm 2fi ct0 2fi,d0s 26c d3j 26o,d2t 24u d1m 281,d0p 26f d10 266 d1e 25k d1n 25c d26 254 d2m 250 d33 250 d3j 256 d3s 25h d40 260 d3p 26n d37 27d d2i 27t d23 283 d1l 282 d19 27p,d0p 26f d0n 26s d0o 276 d0t 27f d18 27p,d4i 22k d6n 268,d4c 22u d6f 26e,dco 1ei dco 1i0,dco 1ei de0 1ei de0 1ge dco 1ge,dek 1ei dek 1i0,dek 1ei dfs 1ei dfs 1ge dek 1ge dfs 1i0,dgq 1ei dgq 1i0 di2 1i0,di2 1ei dgq 1ei,dgq 1ge di2 1ge,dl6 1ei dki 1f6 dki 1ge dlq 1go dlq 1hm dlg 1i0 dki 1i0,dl6 1ei dlq 1ei,dk8 1ei dja 1ei dim 1f6 dim 1g4 dju 1ge dju 1hc djk 1i0 dim 1i0,dnc 1e8 dnc 1i0 dr4 1i0 dr4 1e8 dnc 1e8,do0 1es dq6 1es doa 1hc dqg 1hc,dou 1g4 dpi 1g4,-a -34 -k -34 -k -2g -a -2g -a -1s -k -1s,-u -34 -18 -34 -18 -1s -u -1s,-18 -2g -u -2g,-1i -34 -1i -2g -1s -2g -1i -1s,-1i -34 -1s -34 -1s -1s,-26 -34 -26 -2g -2g -2g,-26 -34 -2g -34 -2g -1s,-5u 1i -f0 1i,-9c -u -9c -26 -92 -u -92 -26,-gi -k -8o -k,-cg -26 -cg -1i -c6 -1i -c6 -u -cg -u,-cg -26 -c6 -26,-bs -26 -bs -u -bi -u,-bi -26 -bs -26,-b8 -26 -b8 -u,-b8 -26 -au -26 -au -1i -b8 -1i -au -u,-ak -26 -ak -u -aa -u,-aa -1i -ak -1i,-ak -26 -aa -26,-a0 -26 -a0 -u -9m -u,-9m -1i -a0 -1i,-a0 -26 -9m -26,-b8 -3o -b8 -2g,-bi -2g -au -2g,-ak -2g -ak -3o -aa -2g -aa -3o,-cq -34 -cg -3o,-bi -3o -au -3o,-fk 1i -h6 1i,-gi -k -fk 0,-f0 -u -f0 -26 -em -26,-f0 -1i -em -1i,-ec -26 -ec -u -e2 -u -e2 -26,-do -26 -do -u -de -u,-d4 -26 -d4 -u -cq -u,-gi -k -fk -18,-f0 -2g -f0 -3o -em -3o -em -34 -f0 -34,-ec -3o -ec -2g -e2 -2g,-do -2g -do -3o -de -3o -de -2g,-de -34 -do -34,-d4 -3o -cq -34 -cq -2g,-hq 1i -j2 1i,-jm 1i -kk 1i,-l8 1i -ls 1i,-mg 1i -mq 1i#G 97s -8r -5k,C aq8 f0,G bnu -7g -b8,C bti 1p6,B c2t md -8c,B can 3 -18,B cfm ft -8#BMX</textarea></div><br />
<b>4. Perfect Timing on the Interguild</b><br />
<br />
At the Interguild, we're currently experiencing a drought of some sorts. Not many notable levels get uploaded very often, and with more and more of our members starting to attend college, it's hard for many of us to find the time to be online. Although, I think another reason for the lack of levels is that we've pretty much run out of ideas, which is evident when one looks at our recent competitions.<br />
<br />
So lately, I've been proposing that we as a community start making levels that explore the fascinating field of level design. This homework assignment has given me the perfect excuse to take the time out of my busy schedule and make such a level. The timing was great, and I'm hoping that my level and my discussions about it will inspire other Interguild members to start thinking more deeply about how to make a good level.<br />
<br />
<b>5. Some Playtesting</b><br />
<br />
Game developers know that playtesting is absolutely necessary to create an amazing game. When making levels in the past, I had never gone out of my way to get people to play my level before it was done. With this level, I made sure to finish early so that I could get people playing it and giving me feedback on what could be changed.<br />
<br />
This primarily helped me realize just how annoying certain sections of the level were, such as the "Blogosphere", which killed most players simply for going a little too fast.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZegdDKCbmWCGNvgIwy2p3BHIO45zQFndBtELaq5q1EKwJGiZwycTkxV8vfgCzeRm6Ov6L0xcOV-TL-A4MOBPkOi1BLTEaMALmeI7HmujrZtCVrt0UPlAIwZKZkLx8sx_CYs_HyR714eml/s1600/evil.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZegdDKCbmWCGNvgIwy2p3BHIO45zQFndBtELaq5q1EKwJGiZwycTkxV8vfgCzeRm6Ov6L0xcOV-TL-A4MOBPkOi1BLTEaMALmeI7HmujrZtCVrt0UPlAIwZKZkLx8sx_CYs_HyR714eml/s400/evil.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Before.</b></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_-wDYHC8yWLKBHVzYaYmSinnnPssUyo_N3pM7iYT8wsIBCW0UbCOjHPSu2gz-gIw2-lwQIMwdI39WAbFia3JW7BhD7pbrE6axSysidJ_wiB-rCXbHr85dXx-i1Jgyoww-j3elFzTsb8k/s1600/good.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9_-wDYHC8yWLKBHVzYaYmSinnnPssUyo_N3pM7iYT8wsIBCW0UbCOjHPSu2gz-gIw2-lwQIMwdI39WAbFia3JW7BhD7pbrE6axSysidJ_wiB-rCXbHr85dXx-i1Jgyoww-j3elFzTsb8k/s400/good.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>After.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What Went Wrong</span><br />
<br />
<b>1. Not enough Playtesting</b><br />
<br />
Unfortunately, none of the playtesting was done in person, so I never got to see how people were actually playing my level. My perception was limited strictly to what these players would tell me, which wasn't much help. This was a sharp contrast to the class presentation, when simply watching my level getting played was an eye-opening experience to my level's major flaws.<br />
<br />
For instance, the gravity shift mechanic was introduced terribly. Players were more likely to zoom past the green arrow and the text that explained what it does. Perhaps players were too focused on trying to keep their speed up because they mistakenly thought that they were in a middle of a giant loop-de-loop:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIVef61vO9n_kQHoiQv_6EQ0qkYboEFDoWjDWdkkaio49R6tgrDFLIMkl6ba6cQZhfGWaZkiWOf9y1po5X7MIfbY1vpaXZCvNJJjJ9ow73NhJiOyr-dAt1OMGRo2EKWRhlLd3J3Q0YAuh/s1600/loop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieIVef61vO9n_kQHoiQv_6EQ0qkYboEFDoWjDWdkkaio49R6tgrDFLIMkl6ba6cQZhfGWaZkiWOf9y1po5X7MIfbY1vpaXZCvNJJjJ9ow73NhJiOyr-dAt1OMGRo2EKWRhlLd3J3Q0YAuh/s400/loop.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This meant that they would be confused when they stuck onto the bottom of the track and then completely baffled at the next segment, when they jumped off the track and fell up instead of down:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsTacd-zrfhVcKp9yZ5Zu6R4sIhkOX_zf-hbK8CgHEGlaRfNAc6bySapi2mSZ2FozP__r3NR8kRiRMIppZrjOQqVksFatwfgTthKFbupqS_qnzQmUN11NA41ZEuVkkFb7sUCcBwX9TqXnq/s1600/fall.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsTacd-zrfhVcKp9yZ5Zu6R4sIhkOX_zf-hbK8CgHEGlaRfNAc6bySapi2mSZ2FozP__r3NR8kRiRMIppZrjOQqVksFatwfgTthKFbupqS_qnzQmUN11NA41ZEuVkkFb7sUCcBwX9TqXnq/s400/fall.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
I also realized how easy it was to accidentally skip about half of the level. I knew this flaw existed, but I didn't do much about it because I figured that the player would most likely not survive the fall between the Twitter bird and Google search box.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRuxMaann04D-5KCUqk6eqdp0ZesO5rTJq70cpkZZjRKEynB0IeCHKATTKgUIBe8wVhTWs7ry2yiJ_5b39j5uH8D7IlnVq5HocaLcfMWfoHMejpncjfryDCdhRzXiV9vxnQVU4ur2m8z6E/s1600/fork.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRuxMaann04D-5KCUqk6eqdp0ZesO5rTJq70cpkZZjRKEynB0IeCHKATTKgUIBe8wVhTWs7ry2yiJ_5b39j5uH8D7IlnVq5HocaLcfMWfoHMejpncjfryDCdhRzXiV9vxnQVU4ur2m8z6E/s400/fork.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Follow the red path, and you're dead. Right?</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>But of course, during the presentation, not only did the player fall to the bottom where the ending was, but he survived long enough to reach the last checkpoint. I actually had to tell him to spawn at the beginning again so that we could see the rest of the level.<br />
<br />
<b>2. Tiny Tutorial Text</b><br />
<br />
This is by far the most embarrassing mistake that I had overlooked while making this level. Perhaps I find it embarrassing because my graphic design experience gives me no excuse to overlook the fact that my text is illegible. But how did this happen? Let's look at the beginning of the level again:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFOt7kdrs6pqN1xXjpmsUDuz2ABLifZJNNvCmbKFLHnha3PB5aIKVX2ZN2_qfb71FkhfcTn1hHC-9jIxp2pYiteTk4sLL6RCG0e9b9YkjkYzp9saRRsXWcWno9ujVTo2rMHFporBq5MD_/s1600/tut.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFOt7kdrs6pqN1xXjpmsUDuz2ABLifZJNNvCmbKFLHnha3PB5aIKVX2ZN2_qfb71FkhfcTn1hHC-9jIxp2pYiteTk4sLL6RCG0e9b9YkjkYzp9saRRsXWcWno9ujVTo2rMHFporBq5MD_/s400/tut.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />
It was while drawing this screen when I established the style in which I would write the tutorial messages. For the sake of consistency, I continued the same style for the following few messages:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihFsWqax0v-XP2L49F33ucIh4ppgvI6FJWR0QyLuN3g_HyJ8xnDA1gP8EfEwbK7nTGjoAHprJ_3fmV4JoYPoVFKgAiLS-iptoypgH5jFll30eZD_GwouLFkFVURYzlbKcxx8yu_j-w8k9r/s1600/tut2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihFsWqax0v-XP2L49F33ucIh4ppgvI6FJWR0QyLuN3g_HyJ8xnDA1gP8EfEwbK7nTGjoAHprJ_3fmV4JoYPoVFKgAiLS-iptoypgH5jFll30eZD_GwouLFkFVURYzlbKcxx8yu_j-w8k9r/s400/tut2.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Already, you start to see a problem. With the downward slope, the player inevitably starts to pick up speed, making it all the more likely that they'll overlook these messages. In fact, during the presentation, I had to tell the player that he needed to press Enter to restart the level. Perhaps it would've been a better idea to put that message near common areas of death instead.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQTJhoHIOWRvW0BglsITRwS1ejpfcDlaL4kbxtrKz4FmXGE4UoSro4Nz3cRhbbtDyUM0-TJDkmvoLGM1vvNUIfuFVloxZzhDVYEvvJFwPd5rHcTz5nwmU0mRgZ4Q85nzsc2nSRi5oVgkv4/s1600/tut3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQTJhoHIOWRvW0BglsITRwS1ejpfcDlaL4kbxtrKz4FmXGE4UoSro4Nz3cRhbbtDyUM0-TJDkmvoLGM1vvNUIfuFVloxZzhDVYEvvJFwPd5rHcTz5nwmU0mRgZ4Q85nzsc2nSRi5oVgkv4/s400/tut3.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
The above tutorial message should've been a red flag for me. Even when I played the level, I <i>always</i> went way too fast to even comprehend what this object was as I passed by it. Clearly, the text had to be bigger. Compare its legibility with the big "MIS 496A".<br />
<br />
I think my desire to be consistent led me to get lazy. Rather than asking myself, "what is the best way to explain this to the player?", I instead fell back on my already established method for writing tutorial messages.<br />
<br />
<b>2. <i>Canvas Rider</i> is a Badly Designed Game</b><br />
<br />
I initially wanted to make my level using the original <i>Free Rider 2</i>, or more specifically, <a href="http://fr2db.fr/">FR2DB</a>'s modified version of <i>FR2</i>, which has <a href="http://fr2db.fr/revc.html">checkpoints</a>. But when I loaded the site, I got an alert notifying me that they had moved on to a new <i>FR2 </i>remake called <i>Canvas Rider</i>, so I decided to give this new game a try. Unfortunately, this game turned out to be worse than the original.<br />
<br />
Making a level for <i>Free Rider 2 </i>was already very tedious as there is no way to undo/redo edits and you can't cut/paste lines to another part of the screen. You'd think that any remake big enough to justify moving to another site would include such a feature. To be fair, <i>Canvas Rider</i> does let you undo the most previous line drawn, but by mapping it to the Z key, I've accidentally triggered this function countless times while trying to get my bike to turn around (the game thinks you want to undo until you press the Up key, and whatever you do, don't move the mouse!). Because the game features no Redo counterpart to this function, it feels more like the game is tricking me so that it can vandalize my level.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoiT3u7bmd-_CMsD00XrcbvDbQziG9rPK4IiaTJns4co4vJXKDcqXkrAjZJNohgxW9Voy2e6iGzTG-YlJOhLomZtRPF3h54O9YX689uSWiM6O8osDSnXkQ8U6Q2_RyacFoVH33ByIqquD8/s1600/undo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoiT3u7bmd-_CMsD00XrcbvDbQziG9rPK4IiaTJns4co4vJXKDcqXkrAjZJNohgxW9Voy2e6iGzTG-YlJOhLomZtRPF3h54O9YX689uSWiM6O8osDSnXkQ8U6Q2_RyacFoVH33ByIqquD8/s1600/undo.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>What does that even mean??</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>In fact, <i>Canvas Rider</i> has managed to make the process even more tedious with its terrible user-interface. In <i>FR2</i>, there was an anchor/cursor on the screen that kept track of where your previous click was, and if you held the shift key, you could click anywhere else on the screen and a line would automatically be drawn between the anchor and your cursor. In <i>Canvas Rider</i>, to perform the same effect you must hold the Q key (if you want to draw a solid line), or the W key (if you want to draw a background line). Furthermore, each of these line types had their own invisible anchors, which would only get updated whenever you actually drew a line, rather than harmlessly clicking anywhere. This complication of a simple mechanic is completely unintuitive and uncalled for.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjywYEKP6ATagkF2pTd9_as1e5CYLZYsUFkj51VoaKAxOQemoMNjsOK_vRX5iiE9A5O1jNhIztbALWkk4LFmXAkuJXShP7yx_TJwH6djlo5QezF8pqmf7Kl6LmbTQTBMkt70CvHp7MDGIH/s1600/why.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjywYEKP6ATagkF2pTd9_as1e5CYLZYsUFkj51VoaKAxOQemoMNjsOK_vRX5iiE9A5O1jNhIztbALWkk4LFmXAkuJXShP7yx_TJwH6djlo5QezF8pqmf7Kl6LmbTQTBMkt70CvHp7MDGIH/s1600/why.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Why do you hate me, <i>Canvas Rider</i>?</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>I found it a little annoying that they removed the curve tool, in favor of the brush tool, which offers a one-to-one tracking of your mouse movements and is therefore much less accurate to use than the original Curve tool. They also removed the slow-motion clock power-up, which was presumably added to slow players down in order to let them see certain drawings, read text, or simply to provide <i>Matrix</i>-style close encounters.<br />
<br />
Speaking of power-ups, the design for the new power-ups look extremely lazy. The intuitive drawings from the old game have had all of their character stripped from them and replaced with generic geometric shapes. Look at the two sets of power-ups below and tell me which game looks like more fun:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_HiNxRtTH0ag5pfLoUqBx_21m8N0lo468RZIBay2T35I5V9P4-myEXt3lUPVbMR7Pp2CHsw0M72fpJ2o0cotoENUjRuSedRvIf1LYJ2g_fd483FLnjh2avnXyvSIrYYNLj5Z0VRHdJJf/s1600/power1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="48" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_HiNxRtTH0ag5pfLoUqBx_21m8N0lo468RZIBay2T35I5V9P4-myEXt3lUPVbMR7Pp2CHsw0M72fpJ2o0cotoENUjRuSedRvIf1LYJ2g_fd483FLnjh2avnXyvSIrYYNLj5Z0VRHdJJf/s320/power1.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Free Rider 2</i>'s power-ups (with checkpoint hack)</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxlBtH0GDrN8exSmVXzdSRhEh3-mk5SETz2W7CAFV8a_pGqr_O6PrMDgag-NLWrfQpZbfROCp9wdtSaRQK5LvXgNyPM1DdKMpezCa-0ZwOhOwg99InyAKsCRzjjBXHPOrxAK6uMI-1v3K/s1600/power2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="48" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvxlBtH0GDrN8exSmVXzdSRhEh3-mk5SETz2W7CAFV8a_pGqr_O6PrMDgag-NLWrfQpZbfROCp9wdtSaRQK5LvXgNyPM1DdKMpezCa-0ZwOhOwg99InyAKsCRzjjBXHPOrxAK6uMI-1v3K/s320/power2.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Canvas Rider</i>'s power-ups</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The game also does a terrible job of teaching new players how to play, which made my task of making a decent tutorial level much harder. For instance, here's the death screen for each game. Which one do you think is more effective in telling the player how to restart?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdCMA4iXKreeY38dnxyqIMy0EPzFcL2rhSmq24lNZ0LcBTH9TVMHzAFxgBAV3VTbR5zuzgUZ4eMZAFhNc5PCkU5TO73kdtfHYVclfFyuIi5VGZ7QlWnXoNsCdF91nY2U_gbTocrMaMcon/s1600/enter.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdCMA4iXKreeY38dnxyqIMy0EPzFcL2rhSmq24lNZ0LcBTH9TVMHzAFxgBAV3VTbR5zuzgUZ4eMZAFhNc5PCkU5TO73kdtfHYVclfFyuIi5VGZ7QlWnXoNsCdF91nY2U_gbTocrMaMcon/s400/enter.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Free Rider 2</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfBsCwbBF8Jyuj1rUv5DnhRSsU-guXyZwQFquziDtDZNYMV9UOfpzMTQrKIWe1HLO58N9aMqK-JDq6xvNZny2-CGhf_zND4II8rg-KkJseKlnVJY_YSK5I6h-7rpOYm6LNKsaxdZY2UWEm/s1600/enter2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfBsCwbBF8Jyuj1rUv5DnhRSsU-guXyZwQFquziDtDZNYMV9UOfpzMTQrKIWe1HLO58N9aMqK-JDq6xvNZny2-CGhf_zND4II8rg-KkJseKlnVJY_YSK5I6h-7rpOYm6LNKsaxdZY2UWEm/s400/enter2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Canvas Rider</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>The way blogspot resizes images doesn't do <i>Canvas Rider</i> much justice, but even in the full-sized image, the tiny text at the top-left of the screen is practically trying to be hidden, as if it was the fine print of a contract. In <i>Free Rider 2</i>, at least the text is colored red, and it's a pop-up (no text was there before) so the user is more likely to notice it.<br />
<br />
I'm sure many of the issues that I pointed out were caused by the technical challenges and limitations of HTML5, but what's so great about HTML5 anyway? What possible benefits could that platform bring to the game that Flash couldn't? By investing the time and resources to make this game fully browser based and Flash free, they've only increased the risk that the game won't run the same in every browser. They've also effectively shrunk the size of their potential audience because a significant percentage of users still do not use an up-to-date browser capable of displaying HTML5.<br />
<br />
Perhaps this game is a clear example of someone letting the hype of new technology get to their head.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6YO8VsuGi11cyBr8D-PRChI0SFZmPJl6aBvxEMtqOABaG_FPX0VJpObRVuViQbhNXkzDM8aESxO0CMWxhz_kPESe12VkY14kmSc4e4I03N1p6wE3SeK7GM-fA_lGidExxZrExlD0xVOF/s1600/hypecycle.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU6YO8VsuGi11cyBr8D-PRChI0SFZmPJl6aBvxEMtqOABaG_FPX0VJpObRVuViQbhNXkzDM8aESxO0CMWxhz_kPESe12VkY14kmSc4e4I03N1p6wE3SeK7GM-fA_lGidExxZrExlD0xVOF/s400/hypecycle.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<b>3. Bad Planning</b><br />
<br />
Now that my rant against <i>Canvas Rider</i> is done, I can now get back to criticizing myself.<br />
<br />
Because making levels in this game can be so tedious, I knew that I had to plan the design of this level beforehand so that I wouldn't waste so much time building it. So I took a blank sheet of paper and started drawing sketches and writing notes about what to include in the level, the biggest risks and challenges, and the skills that I wanted the player to learn.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, this takes a lot more discipline than expected. My sketches only include the beginning of the level (up until the Blogosphere). There are certain points during this pre-planning phase when I felt the need to test whether or not my sketches would play well, but rather than building a simple prototype in the game, I ended up building the final product instead. It didn't take long for me to abandon the task of pre-planning and instead start building things without thinking.<br />
<br />
This inevitably led to me to draw things that I was then forced to erase, such as the discarded section mentioned earlier. For instance, look at the hill drawn below. I originally drew the full hill, but then I decided that I wanted the player to ride on the drawings rather than riding past them. Because I had already taken the time to perfect the slope of the hill, I decided to salvage it and have another section of the track connect with it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5stasX7sDR3YRiH-t399UCf2Pt4J4RGYD-7iNrSsxuZyNMvcZCnK65xWNEVG9jClUrrm4CmT04aQ0KitfPjElyv26IvfvQ7GGQiya1cwszzEtXPr_WxOyuIiGJbWlXGIETeox2NLjxj0/s1600/hill.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5stasX7sDR3YRiH-t399UCf2Pt4J4RGYD-7iNrSsxuZyNMvcZCnK65xWNEVG9jClUrrm4CmT04aQ0KitfPjElyv26IvfvQ7GGQiya1cwszzEtXPr_WxOyuIiGJbWlXGIETeox2NLjxj0/s400/hill.png" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Because I was designing on the fly, my designs were biased towards preserving what I had already taken the time to draw. If I had only been more disciplined, perhaps I wouldn't have had to move and redraw the Facebook logo three separate times.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLs-15touQbXpLzTQ2hKkRvDoRfcg9G89UhiEKLAk4XEQm83_HltUhDNJP0LbQvLx7evGVzbS6jv68zSJtaMEE6l77tHeWQI_ZaOfRdN8lYvtozbgUeOm-d08CRisYsuQkJL8T9fCJ7hjd/s1600/face.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLs-15touQbXpLzTQ2hKkRvDoRfcg9G89UhiEKLAk4XEQm83_HltUhDNJP0LbQvLx7evGVzbS6jv68zSJtaMEE6l77tHeWQI_ZaOfRdN8lYvtozbgUeOm-d08CRisYsuQkJL8T9fCJ7hjd/s1600/face.png" /></a></div><br />
<b>4. Very Busy Weekend</b><br />
<br />
I believe I started this level on Friday, November 25th and finished it the next day. Those of you from the United States will recognize this as Thanksgiving weekend, when classes are cancelled for Thursday and Friday of that week. Despite having presumably more time to get things done (minus all the travel and the holiday itself), this was a very busy weekend for me in terms of school work.<br />
<br />
The stress of that work strictly limited the time that I could put into this level, and it led me to overlook many problems for the sake of finishing the level sooner. Perhaps I wouldn't have drawn those tutorial messages so small if my working conditions weren't so stressful.<br />
<br />
<b>5. Forgot to Submit Homework Files on Time</b><br />
<br />
I'm running out of "things that went wrong" probably because I covered everything by using really broad categories. One of the good things about writing a postmortem is that by being forced to have exactly five things in each section, you're encouraged to include issues that you may have overlooked otherwise. For instance, writing this postmortem has helped me realize how big of an impact outside coursework was leaving on my workflow.<br />
<br />
The homework submission process was particularly confusing for this assignment. We had to submit our project files electronically by Wednesday, November 28 at 5pm. Unfortunately, November 28 is actually a Monday, so to be safe, I assumed Monday was the intended due date. I planned to submit my assignment a few hours before 5pm, just in case someone posted some important feedback on the Interguild overnight.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-roJ6vS0c7nvreyWQUhIvKs-mchresHEjXoxm00PpCEM-vy5epapfz1eouwBucZWSNBkUVY-cmyOMarGdcwdHBes-yMt9WsgqgKylhXlB-OpaJzHKmjkkXDJ9QeGeFZlqtKbKN7jinf7/s1600/syl.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR-roJ6vS0c7nvreyWQUhIvKs-mchresHEjXoxm00PpCEM-vy5epapfz1eouwBucZWSNBkUVY-cmyOMarGdcwdHBes-yMt9WsgqgKylhXlB-OpaJzHKmjkkXDJ9QeGeFZlqtKbKN7jinf7/s400/syl.png" style="border: 1px solid black;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The full assignment syllabus.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>On the day this was due, I created a file called README.txt, which included all of the instructions on how to play the level along with the full level code. But for some reason, I did not actually submit this file, which led me to miss the deadline because I thought I already did submit it. In my late submission (a few hours after 5pm), I included a link to my level on the Interguild as proof that I finished the assignment on time.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span><br />
<br />
Overall, I learned a lot from making this level and even more from writing this analysis. As an aspiring game designer, it's great to get all of the practice one can get. While it's necessary to make a lot of games, many people tend to overlook the educational value behind designing levels.<br />
<br />
With just a week left in the semester, this article serves as a great transition for this blog's upcoming change from being a <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">class blog</a> to a full gaming blog. I hope to post more analytical articles like this in the future.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-33092154251034234812011-11-05T03:33:00.000-07:002012-07-18T22:09:47.100-07:00How to Think Like a Designer: Applying Graphic Design to Game Design<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.275445889153188.70813.100000633365086&type=1&l=b546e92d17" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2oT7MaqeWERtsYYM4q25Wgd97mYUEuoKqvHs4XfzgsUpog3rfJMhAzXF_ccoiSJg5VEkcOcgIJYxcymcHWrGKZ0ooPY1cUa6grscwreOjMfCXKZwyw_GPbu1_JIRRVN2YegsFGcl-nizw/s1600/collection.png" /></a></div>
<br />
I made the above posters a few weeks ago as part of a <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">class project</a> where we had to initiate a <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/understanding-qr-codes-through-game.html">QR code</a> advertisement campaign, which I naturally dedicated to my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/ua-game-developers-club-has-gone-global.html">Game Developers Club</a>.<br />
<br />
Making these posters was surprisingly nostalgic. It reminded me of the three years that I spent learning graphic design in high school. My school offered four years worth of graphic design electives, all of which were taught by the same teacher. Because I transferred into the school during my sophomore year, I only had time to take the course for three years.<br />
<br />
That class taught me one of the most important and universal skills that I've ever learned:<b> </b>how to think like a designer. Not only has this applied directly to <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-3-finding.html">making websites</a>, but it has also helped me improve at <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/meeting-presentations">public speaking</a>, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=808">cinematography</a>, <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/">writing</a>, and of course, <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/projects/orange-u-blue" target="_blank">game design</a>.<br />
<br />
In this post, I'll be analyzing how this class was able to teach me this valuable skill so that you too can start thinking like a designer.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Teaching Style</span><br />
<br />
I've noticed that some of my favorite and most effective teachers were the ones who were kind, understanding, and encouraging. But our graphic design teacher was often the complete opposite.<br />
<br />
When giving project feedback, she could be ruthless and unforgiving, especially if you had a really big design flaw in your work. This teaching style was actually very effective in driving home many of the key lessons that I took away from this class.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Listening to Your Design</span><br />
<br />
Because the feedback could sometimes be so harsh, you were really motivated to hunt for design problems on your own rather than waiting for her to butcher our work. And as our understanding of graphic design grew, we eventually learned how to think about our designs on a much deeper level.<br />
<br />
This skill is often referred to as "listening to your design". It's when you look at your design from all perspectives trying to find all possible flaws and strengths. As you gain experience and understanding in your specific field of design, you'll gain a better idea of what you should be listening for. But much of it also involves listening to the subtle ways that the design can make you feel and then figuring out why.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Designers Solve Problems</span><br />
<br />
When designers discuss design problems with non-designers (usually their clients), the non-designers are often appalled by the kinds of silly things that designers consider to be problems. For instance, a web designer may spend half an hour trying to find the perfect amount of spacing between a page's navigation elements, but a non-designer might argue that users absolutely do not care about how much spacing there is.<br />
<br />
The truth is that people do care, but they just don't realize how important such small details are in defining their experience with the page. The amount of spacing helps determine how cluttered the page feels, which in turn determines how open and user-friendly the website is.<br />
<br />
Changing this small value may cause other problems, such as the navigation taking too much screen space for certain monitor resolutions. The complexity of this problem justifies the amount of time needed to solve it, while also illustrating the true nature of a designer's work. A designer's job isn't to come up with creative ideas all day; it's mainly to identify and solve design problems in order to optimize a product's relationship with its end users.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Managing Problems</span><br />
<br />
It is impossible to solve all of a design's problems. Furthermore, designers often run into design dilemmas, where all possible solutions to one problem will simply bring up even more problems.<br />
<br />
Most of a designer's time is spent fixing these issues and trying to crack design dilemmas. And because each project has a limited amount of time and resources, designers must properly manage and prioritize which flaws get fixed and which don't. This is actually trickier than it sounds, as a designer could easily spend too much of their valuable time solving a problem that isn't as significant as some other problems.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">All Criticism is Valid</span><br />
<br />
For many students, one of the most frustrating parts of the graphic design class was when they got feedback that they didn't agree with. You really weren't allowed to argue with the teacher, and doing so would just make you look like an idiot. Many students felt that the teacher was just being arrogant, but in reality her goal was always to make sure that you never discredited her feedback.<br />
<br />
In the graphic design world, disagreeing with and ignoring criticism is one of the most shameful things that a designer can do. If you can't accept and analyze criticism like a humble, mature adult, then working in design just isn't for you.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Designers Bravely Seek Criticism</span><br />
<br />
Given how important it is to listen to your design, it's greatly beneficial to seek new perspectives by asking others for feedback. But seeking feedback is a lot harder than it seems. After working hard to solve a complicated design problem, the last thing a designer wants to hear is that they've missed something. Not only might they choose (perhaps unconsciously) to avoid feedback, but their own "listening" skills may also become biased in such a way as to overlook new issues.<br />
<br />
And so, being a designer requires a certain amount of courage. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965" target="_blank">Jesse Schell</a> explains this better than I can:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When we listen deeply we put ourselves in a position of risk. We accept that possibility that what we hear may upset us, may cause everything we know to be contradicted. It is the ultimate in open-mindedness. It is the only way to learn the truth. You must approach everything as a child does, assuming nothing, observing everything…</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Designers Don't Design for Themselves</span><br />
<br />
Another reason why some students disliked receiving feedback from our graphic design teacher was because they felt that she was tyrannically forcing her opinions into their design. And many professional designers are in fact tempted to avoid seeking criticism because they feel that it gives them more personal control over how the final work comes out.<br />
<br />
But this is based on a really flawed and selfish understanding of design. Design isn't about the designer expressing themselves or fulfilling their own desires. It's about being dedicated to the end users' needs, and optimizing their experience in the best way possible.<br />
<br />
Of course, there's plenty of room in the design process for the designer to make individual decisions and to determine the overall direction of the work, but these factors must never be prioritized above the users' needs.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Designers Don't Make Excuses</span><br />
<br />
When you're forced to leave flaws in your design, it becomes very tempting to respond to criticism by explaining to the critic how "unfixable" these flaws were. But all you're really doing is giving excuses and trying to delegitimize the criticism.<br />
<br />
A real designer would instead agree with the critic and accept the fact that they failed to solve that specific problem.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Achieving Full Awareness</span><br />
<br />
I personally prefer to think of the skill of "listening" as a state of awareness where one strives to become fully aware of all aspects of a design, both good and bad. As a game designer, I strive to expand my state of awareness past my individual projects and into my daily life.<br />
<br />
The reasoning is that a game designer's job is to design experiences. People have experiences all the time, whether it's as simple as enjoying a meal with one's family, or as complicated as training for a marathon. So naturally, game designers should get in the habit of analyzing and critiquing the vast amount of experiences that they have everyday. Doing so will enhance their understanding of what defines certain experiences and how they can be either improved or ruined by various factors.<br />
<br />
For example, here at the University of Arizona we have this Mexican restaurant that underwent a complete redesign during this past the summer. They threw almost everything away, while adding modern new furniture and bright new colors. It wasn't until this radical redesign that most of us realized just how atrocious the old design was. The old restaurant was dark, cramped, confusing, and just plain ugly, and yet none of us had realize these problems before the renovations.<br />
<br />
If as game designers, we can't even notice when something in our everyday lives obviously isn't working, how can we possibly locate these kinds of problems in our games? Clearly, we're going to need all the practice we can get.<br />
<br />
<hr style="width: 50%;" />
<br />
<i>Did you notice how I used only one image in this post? That's pretty uncharacteristic of me, but I simply couldn't find any images that could have contributed to this article.</i><br />
<br />
<i>I can already hear my graphic design teacher telling me that my Mario QR code should be shrunken a bit. I agree.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-60679533622540540152011-10-21T02:51:00.001-07:002012-07-18T23:26:08.619-07:00History of the Interguild, Part 3: Finding the Right Home<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dwPky_u4oMRKDp9DgfSMsP1RUP0GTZGqNBZQIMeZAy2-_xErVQSr2z8XbmidFmcEIv7A42OZ2NcRKLa3UdWoMhruCx0dGmjYKqOt3vnwA6RaoZWjzyaBkae9X_WmrutuGAV0S5etlaSP/s1600/geronomo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dwPky_u4oMRKDp9DgfSMsP1RUP0GTZGqNBZQIMeZAy2-_xErVQSr2z8XbmidFmcEIv7A42OZ2NcRKLa3UdWoMhruCx0dGmjYKqOt3vnwA6RaoZWjzyaBkae9X_WmrutuGAV0S5etlaSP/s1600/geronomo.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
At last, we've reached the final installment of this series. In <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-interguild-part-1-five-years.html">Part One</a>, we saw how the Interguild community was formed by players who fell in love with the game <i>Hannah and the Pirate Caves</i> (HATPC), and in <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-2-tnt-ruins.html">Part Two</a> we saw how TNT, the creators/owners of the game, nearly destroyed this community through their repeated neglect and mismanagement of HATPC.<br />
<br />
In this post we'll look at the story behind the various websites that have housed our community throughout the years, how they've affected the course and identity of the Interguild, and how we found our ultimate home in <a href="http://interguild.org/">interguild.org</a>.<br />
<br />
This was a very difficult post to write. The major challenge was in figuring out how to properly organize these ideas together into a coherent article without confusing you with various jumps in chronology. It was because of this design dilemma that I finished this post so late, along with the fact that school is getting very busy lately. At one point, I tried staying up until 5am one Saturday night to see if I could finish this, and I <i>still </i>didn't finish. But now the wait is over...<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Guilds' Competitions</span><br />
<br />
As I explained in <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-interguild-part-1-five-years.html">Part One</a>, the Interguild was originally formed as an alliance among multiple HATPC-related guilds on Neopets. While the Interguild would soon find a home on the HATPC Interguild Forums, the guilds themselves already had their own individual homes on neopets.com<br />
<br />
It was during our time in the guilds when we started the tradition of holding periodic competitions. We were originally going to call them "contests", but we decided "competitions" would be safer as TNT strictly prohibited holding contests where you could win prizes, which had become a popular form of scamming people.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiyUcThM2IXIu4DfeZYbHq2ZYEZ3CbWMzxC1rjjHrowmkslA1sq4bzXNi2ArTXtAMHLdiCbqT84rs06qYa9VRBJ82zGgoMEcruTAaTc-uULmqyCstyF468Iv1gap74k7grw0TiVY_tibts/s1600/pcca.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiyUcThM2IXIu4DfeZYbHq2ZYEZ3CbWMzxC1rjjHrowmkslA1sq4bzXNi2ArTXtAMHLdiCbqT84rs06qYa9VRBJ82zGgoMEcruTAaTc-uULmqyCstyF468Iv1gap74k7grw0TiVY_tibts/s200/pcca.png" width="128" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fragments of the PCCA front<br />
page taken from <a href="http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=228">shos' video</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The PCCA guild in particular held competitions according to a schedule: one week for players to submit entries, another week for the entries to be judged by three non-participants, and then a new competition would start on the following week. Eventually we changed the schedule to give players two weeks to make their entries. While we haven't always followed this pattern as strictly as we would've liked, it definitely helped us maintain a steady pace of user activity. It was mainly thanks to this competition system that the PCCA was able to outlive the other guilds. The system proved so important to the Interguild that the series slowly became the Interguild's official competitions.<br />
<br />
These competitions encouraged players to keep making levels even when there wasn't much inspiration. They also gave us an easy way to measure activity depending on how many people would join. And so entering in a competition was one of the best ways that members felt they could contribute towards keeping the Interguild alive.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Not a Neopets Community</span><br />
<br />
Even after we moved to the <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/">HATPC Interguild Forums</a>, we still viewed the Interguild as a neopets community. This was problematic because some of us were ashamed of this fact. No matter how much we loved the community, we hesitated to bring our friends onto the site because it was potentially embarrassing to be playing a kids game like neopets—or worse, to be taking one of its games so seriously.<br />
<br />
It's surprising to see how dependent we were to neopets at the time. Our very survival hinged on how TNT managed HATPC. And because we were getting most of our new members from the guilds on neopets.com, we had to keep the guilds updated, despite the fact that most of us went straight to the forums instead.<br />
<br />
The uploader glitches of 2007 and 2008 (explained in <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-2-tnt-ruins.html">Part 2</a>) were some of the most significant forces that pushed us to stand alone as our own community. As we built up resentment against TNT, the us-versus-them mentality created a clear distinction between the Interguild and neopets.com. Many of us no longer wanted to associate ourselves with that website, and we started to realize that we didn't need to rely on them in order to keep the Interguild alive. So in May of 2008, we formally abandoned the guilds, leaving them as a sort of shrine that will point future generations of cavers towards the Interguild forums.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Personalizing the Forums</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijamAkPUm55vlLMVUiNXdcthvLpONaWFkmTDfRok71ZL7r_QYCN6YTtcG3q3WhR_T_RkwY3YySuqrbX7V8fYWPkCHudPPrjJX8tK6EBN9xv-B_XkLeo7o3HH9RH4_7dUud1RtMiV_tp7jc/s1600/forum.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijamAkPUm55vlLMVUiNXdcthvLpONaWFkmTDfRok71ZL7r_QYCN6YTtcG3q3WhR_T_RkwY3YySuqrbX7V8fYWPkCHudPPrjJX8tK6EBN9xv-B_XkLeo7o3HH9RH4_7dUud1RtMiV_tp7jc/s200/forum.png" width="186" /></a>In November 2006, two months after the Interguild was created, the <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/">HATPC Interguild Forums</a> opened at <i>interguild.domingo.org</i>. At the time, the Interguild didn't seem like it was worth the trouble of getting a new domain name, and so I decided to upload the forums as a subdirectory of another domain that my father had been using. I also solicited the help of my twin brother <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Haily">Haily</a> to help me install and configure phpBB 2.0, a popular forum management system. While Haily wasn't a very active Interguild member, he would frequently help us with building our website.<br />
<br />
The great thing about phpBB was how customizable it was. Haily made it even more flexible by installing an add-on called EasyMod, which allowed us to efficiently install more add-ons. Because we were able to personalize the forums to such a degree, we were able to turn it into a great home for the Interguild.<br />
<br />
Here are some examples of how we customized our forums:<br />
<br />
<b>The Cave Galleries</b> - We had a forum board in which players could start their own topic dedicated to holding all of the levels that they've made. While most new caves would have their own discussion topic in another board, the cave galleries served as another method for browsing and searching for caves.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rDfCiT4AI8eP8HxvMnCkbSQjBkh2ZOHxCFEUSHs-KjvD__3lOJ-yHb7TqHEMCV7RjICTWkGO6GiKM1fkgRo0-m5tAk0ldvLPK8Iqe-ILPKroTBdMu-AWoheeVMBOBqiAz8TBN4Ea6zjd/s1600/dando.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 0.3em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_rDfCiT4AI8eP8HxvMnCkbSQjBkh2ZOHxCFEUSHs-KjvD__3lOJ-yHb7TqHEMCV7RjICTWkGO6GiKM1fkgRo0-m5tAk0ldvLPK8Iqe-ILPKroTBdMu-AWoheeVMBOBqiAz8TBN4Ea6zjd/s200/dando.png" width="156" /></a><br />
<b>Ranks</b> - The forums had a built-in rank feature that gave members titles based on their post count, and we gave these ranks HATPC-related names such as Caving Enthusiast (75 posts), Hidden Gem (2000). Towards the end of our time on the forums, we started giving out custom rank titles. These were mostly named after usernames, but there were also some unique ones, such as "<a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/forums/jump.php?to=1318795091">The Zero</a>", "Pineapple!", "A Staff Member", and "Dando Love".<br />
<br />
<b>Dubloons</b> - One of the mods that we installed was a currency system. Every time a member posted, they would be awarded points, called dubloons, based on how long their post was. Coincidentally, posting a level code would give you quite a lot of dubloons because of how big the average cave code was. We also had a ranking on the forum index that displayed the three richest users.<br />
<br />
<b>Gems</b> - We added two more currencies on top of the dubloons, but rather than giving these out automatically, the only way to earn one would be to have a staff member award you with one. Gems in particular were awarded for extraordinary work in contribution to the Interguild. For example, you could earn one by finding a new HATPC glitch, writing a tutorial, or by getting new members to join.<br />
<br />
<b>GAWAs</b> - The second additional currency was the Gingerandwhiskers Award (GAWA), an award named after the founder of the HATPC Guild for being the very first person to make a HATPC video before the Interguild was created. Members would receive GAWAs for making particularly impressive caving videos. Our YouTube videos became an important recruitment tool for finding new members, and so we wanted to incentivize the creation of great videos.<br />
<br />
<b>Effects Shop</b> - Almost all of the items in this list were implemented by January of 2007, but in August 2007, Haily came back to add the user effects shop, where we could finally put our dubloons to use and buy the ability to customize the colors of our individual posts. It was the end of decent web design as we knew it. Some members protested the feature by doing evil things with it, like <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=shos">shos</a> who set both his background and text color to white. Fortunately, you could choose to not see any of these effects, and they were not visible to logged-out users.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhat5aVN6arTx9A9w0vaZEH_0R9t_Qmad0rxdfrohEjhwOOusuIvU_1XxQwBRK2NxPPHA35CuiTV7ZSmvqSjNju3jGg7gK8k6qa6pkiCF4JByLv6QpWHveTKpLJaEOJPkNb7H-GYGupDwQr/s1600/forums.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhat5aVN6arTx9A9w0vaZEH_0R9t_Qmad0rxdfrohEjhwOOusuIvU_1XxQwBRK2NxPPHA35CuiTV7ZSmvqSjNju3jGg7gK8k6qa6pkiCF4JByLv6QpWHveTKpLJaEOJPkNb7H-GYGupDwQr/s320/forums.png" width="284" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The crazy things we did on those forums.</b><br />
(This is a screenshot of <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=235">Count to 5000</a>, by the way)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Old Interguild Website</span><br />
<br />
If the forums were located on <i>interguild.domingo.org/forums</i>, then what was in <i>interguild.domingo.org</i>? The Interguild website, of course! Just like the PCCA front page, the old Interguild website didn't have very good web design, but it was definitely flashy.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaWVXtdsb6Qjtz3j8j6SgfAt_ks_lWlI8b18fP1UCWbPnk9FJmjJ_5nGJOUPPdrZiDN5HcBQP0j-Z9FjRjsnyKkogumWODfyapirwzrGl1bG0Nrrj7jthEXw9libLtRJMtTNnWb44piI66/s1600/oldsite.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaWVXtdsb6Qjtz3j8j6SgfAt_ks_lWlI8b18fP1UCWbPnk9FJmjJ_5nGJOUPPdrZiDN5HcBQP0j-Z9FjRjsnyKkogumWODfyapirwzrGl1bG0Nrrj7jthEXw9libLtRJMtTNnWb44piI66/s320/oldsite.png" width="272" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fragments of our old hompage taken from <a href="http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=228">shos' video</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Theoretically, the Interguild could have survived without a website and relied solely on its forums, but we believed that having a website gave us more credibility while at the same time making us look like we were a larger community than we really were. The website was awkward mainly because we were a community with a website, rather than a website with a community. While we tried to display the community's major accomplishments, ultimately no one really visited the website, because all of the content was on the forums.<br />
<br />
The purpose of the site was mainly to serve as our community's public image. This was the place where we led new members to in order to have them find out what the Interguild was all about. Literally everything on the site served that purpose, including the news updates, which no one even followed because most members would just read the relevant forum topics instead.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the most important aspect of the website, however, was the Video Archive. After Jebby made the Interguild's first HATPC video, he unwittingly sparked a video-making craze during June 2007. We started to keep track of these videos on the forums, but during that summer, Haily decided to make us a video database where we could search through the videos, organize them by categories, and have them all embedded onto the website. This was the first time Haily had used PHP and MySQL, and he would later use these skills to build the framework for our current website.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://0.gvt0.com/vi/_R2pLU6C74w/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_R2pLU6C74w&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_R2pLU6C74w&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Interguild's first caving video.</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The New Game and the New Interguild</span><br />
<br />
By Spring of 2008, we had abandoned the guilds and were focused on the New Game, now known as <a href="http://www.interguild.org/aeon/">the Aeon Project</a>. We were now faced with the question of what the Interguild would become if the New Game was completed.<br />
<br />
Would we abandon HATPC? If not, what kind of website would we be if we were dedicated to two games? Our history had taught us that keeping our community as accessible and attractive to new members as possible would be a key part in whether or not we would survive. So the solution that we came up with was to dedicate the new Interguild to all games that featured user-created content, mainly custom levels. This is where the idea of making a multi-game level database first appeared.<br />
<br />
The most interesting thing about this decision was the fact that we held this discussion openly as a community. Everyone was involved in what the new Interguild would be about, and we were all concerned about making sure that it would be successful while still staying true to the community.<br />
<br />
Now that we had a new purpose, we needed a new website. Construction of the new site began in Summer of 2008 and this time, we purchased the <i>interguild.org</i> domain name. I again asked Haily to help me build the site.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Making of interguild.org</span><br />
<br />
Ever since his work on the Video Archive during the previous summer, Haily had been hard at work building his website <a href="http://icecaves.net/">IceCaves.net</a>. At the time of this writing, IceCaves.net is running on a content management system, but back in 2008, almost everything about the site was hand-coded by Haily, including its forums. The plan was to take the code that Haily had already written and use it to make the Interguild's new site. Meanwhile, I focused on the design and basic coding.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0lohKwY_JeX5xFzWcORz0fiC-0BVSMiDgqVCnJrboCFkdld4PGaDXOtBEPMPm9BdMuz7gMBcXwRL3QKe3HL-Gjkdl2SdvJQMonqUqdhBF6I4kyM7hfR4-eA0frwpHmd_6_iMSMfommjpj/s1600/clients-from-hell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0lohKwY_JeX5xFzWcORz0fiC-0BVSMiDgqVCnJrboCFkdld4PGaDXOtBEPMPm9BdMuz7gMBcXwRL3QKe3HL-Gjkdl2SdvJQMonqUqdhBF6I4kyM7hfR4-eA0frwpHmd_6_iMSMfommjpj/s200/clients-from-hell.jpg" width="162" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Haily thinks I'm<br />
a <a href="http://clientsfromhell.net/">client from Hell</a>.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
While it sounds like we should've been able to finish the site fairly quickly the New Interguild wouldn't be finished until December. Perhaps the most significant factor that delayed the project was the fact that Haily and I formed a pretty bad team together. After seeing how much Haily could procrastinate on the project, I eventually formed a habit of perpetually nagging Haily to work on the new site. As a result, his productivity sank to new lows.<br />
<br />
One day I got fed up with the stagnant progress, and I finally decided to start learning PHP and MySQL myself. To my astonishment, I was able to learn it in less than a day.<br />
<br />
I only took the time to learn the basics, however, and that's pretty much why my understanding of PHP isn't all that great. As a result, the site isn't as efficient as possible and there are quite a lot of glitches. But as <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Quirvy">Quirvy </a>once pointed out to me, glitches are okay because if it weren't for them, HATPC wouldn't have been so great.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Evolution of Interguild.org</span><br />
<br />
The new site finally opened its doors on Saturday, December 13th, 2008. If I remember correctly, Haily hasn't worked on anything significant for the Interguild since then. From this point on, I had to maintain every part of the site's programming myself.<br />
<br />
The original website had a blue and white color scheme mostly because I had decided that a dark color scheme was the most difficult to design for. By this point in time I had taken a few courses on graphic design, and so I was starting to realize just how bad my earlier designs had been.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNTjzoD4BhB2jgPoAnX83xYzl3447BBrOJhBBjsK5gjJQ0hTVHarzQ1HQSTxDB7aOP0Xw83UmyJsrR-rlBzBFfeEnRIm3dye6vNLuvxXjL9TIJyQHVEJ7_U6s5Md_-KVsLTF9KOsVm15B/s1600/JellforPrez.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNTjzoD4BhB2jgPoAnX83xYzl3447BBrOJhBBjsK5gjJQ0hTVHarzQ1HQSTxDB7aOP0Xw83UmyJsrR-rlBzBFfeEnRIm3dye6vNLuvxXjL9TIJyQHVEJ7_U6s5Md_-KVsLTF9KOsVm15B/s400/JellforPrez.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>From the glory days of staff power abuse</b> (more on this later).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The level database was originally called "the level galleries" after the board on the old forums, and it took us quite a while to change that name. The video archive was simply ported in from the old site, and I have yet to revamp it. To this day, the video archive is one of the most horribly coded and least user-friendly features on the Interguild.<br />
<br />
We were still strictly a HATPC community until April 2009, when I finally implemented features throughout the site to support the addition of multiple games. This too is another feature that I have never gone back to polish, especially given how restrictive and clunky the process is for adding new games into the system.<br />
<br />
Then in the following July, I finally made a darker color scheme.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuBgOphnopF9IATQ0bMRmmvc3ZsSW24TWwMxKJJNfCkq6IV_Z3qpvZgoEYPJUbdLa8oIZxW_zHHjXmReNnZs1fTjlOgzHwrb-v2-KHtvcec_fMQb8KbwqTDVxYevv-R7OMn8kEylP1EQm/s1600/interguild_layout.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuBgOphnopF9IATQ0bMRmmvc3ZsSW24TWwMxKJJNfCkq6IV_Z3qpvZgoEYPJUbdLa8oIZxW_zHHjXmReNnZs1fTjlOgzHwrb-v2-KHtvcec_fMQb8KbwqTDVxYevv-R7OMn8kEylP1EQm/s400/interguild_layout.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It was also at this time when we held the first <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1246680000">Interguild Olympics</a>, a strange tournament with about a dozen rounds. The IO would grow to be one of the most iconic and looked-forward-to events at the Interguild, especially with the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1277956800">addition of teams</a> during the following year.<br />
<br />
In September of 2009, I made another small design change to the layout.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiv6t1B1bDuqChVuEhnPFEfj4nzQ1Y1WY0ZxR21EaD3zJBGWw8OqZUfMOQDwXdK0QHp9Pd60U17ehIgxhYWf4XTozDyNHGQqCsOUukAhhfWUV7wwP1oG7bZAfH7etQky-AICNTGu-kgvMa/s1600/interguild_layout2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiv6t1B1bDuqChVuEhnPFEfj4nzQ1Y1WY0ZxR21EaD3zJBGWw8OqZUfMOQDwXdK0QHp9Pd60U17ehIgxhYWf4XTozDyNHGQqCsOUukAhhfWUV7wwP1oG7bZAfH7etQky-AICNTGu-kgvMa/s400/interguild_layout2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Looking back, this was a pretty ugly idea, but its purpose was to put an ad at the top of the page, which my dad and brother had been trying to get me to do for quite a while. This design change also made the site easier to navigate.<br />
<br />
But the biggest upgrade came in April of 2010, which gave us our current, more professional design:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0v4vb7W0_UXvw2D8jUQkYzLubgYa2A5z166ZPUB4JO5hxZA0zgu9WLqT-nTS8j43bA4e4xS1CD9i0WUVFBbh4Kd0FOoa73KbAkE_2nGrPsvm9ohqfnX51fR_BFl2VcUSnIa9zezqJH7B/s1600/layout.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0v4vb7W0_UXvw2D8jUQkYzLubgYa2A5z166ZPUB4JO5hxZA0zgu9WLqT-nTS8j43bA4e4xS1CD9i0WUVFBbh4Kd0FOoa73KbAkE_2nGrPsvm9ohqfnX51fR_BFl2VcUSnIa9zezqJH7B/s400/layout.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
After a little over a year of designing, implementing, and living in these different website layouts, I had finally become satisfied with the way the Interguild looked, which is why there hasn't been any design upgrades since.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Why interguild.org is Our Dream Home</span><br />
<br />
I can't stress enough how important it was that <i>interguild.org</i> was hand-coded. It allowed us to customize this site to an extent that simply wouldn't have been possible on the old site. Here are some of the most significant personalizations we made:<br />
<br />
<b>Embedding the Community Everywhere</b> - Haily's forum system allowed us to create the perfect marriage between the "website" and the "forums". Today, almost all of the content on the site automatically has its own forum topic, regardless of whether it's a news post, level, video, tutorial, etc. You can't even load a single page without knowing who's online at any given time. It's beautiful to see how intertwined the community is in all aspects of the Interguild.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.interguild.org/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSZY9rco7pCelpsU04aBUfOMk2i7l-3tDdCJ6fhfO3RhyZdlMXijEJ7q5lscXoPesbkNBaqABdFLzs_9iAKiZlx49cuiixOMf1MU35Fjvzc_UawlI95IR4NHzlLDyE29VdI6_cHS6oYEju/s1600/members.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>The Karma System</b> - Ever since the old forums, we've had this idea of making a karma system, which is similar to a reputation score that many other forums have. We basically wanted a way to give members feedback on the quality of their posts in hopes that certain members would learn to behave and stop writing awful posts. Under the karma system, members can choose to anonymously give a post positive or negative karma, which would either add or subtract a point from that user's overall karma ranking. While it did improve post quality to an extent, it was also fun to be able to gauge people's reactions to posts so easily.<br />
<br />
<b>Staff Powers</b> - The respected members who are in the staff have access to some dangerously powerful pages and features. While this has allowed the staff to properly maintain the site even when I'm not there, it has also allowed them to stage some hilarious pranks throughout the years. For example, consider the Censor List below.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdVMxrK-TBnPrcpQgcgmdGAGL8Dio-XQ7nWdy69mF8BoSuVsSUUlWToz8NGKT4a8bqWel9-kwg27Fx_90NmmdgS382j01rQk5kNzdra1E_dXZoeE-UVjMd2uZ6gIObUA8RzB2sWPyfFQKn/s1600/force.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdVMxrK-TBnPrcpQgcgmdGAGL8Dio-XQ7nWdy69mF8BoSuVsSUUlWToz8NGKT4a8bqWel9-kwg27Fx_90NmmdgS382j01rQk5kNzdra1E_dXZoeE-UVjMd2uZ6gIObUA8RzB2sWPyfFQKn/s200/force.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The DIE smiley originated as a censor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>The Censor List</b> - This staff power was designed to dynamically replace bad words with good words on every page load. There was no need to do it this way, but the old forums had a similar feature and we knew it'd be more fun. For example, that <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNTjzoD4BhB2jgPoAnX83xYzl3447BBrOJhBBjsK5gjJQ0hTVHarzQ1HQSTxDB7aOP0Xw83UmyJsrR-rlBzBFfeEnRIm3dye6vNLuvxXjL9TIJyQHVEJ7_U6s5Md_-KVsLTF9KOsVm15B/s1600/JellforPrez.png">Sprout for Prez</a> stunt was pulled off by setting a wildcard (.) as the bad word, effectively replacing every character on the site. But the censors have also been used for the good of the Interguild. This power has allowed the staff to add a lot of <a href="http://interguild.org/members/forums/topic.php?id=3562">useful features</a> to the forums, such as new smileys and new BBcode.<br />
<br />
<b>The Fake Members</b> - Over the years, the Interguild has generated quite an interesting cast of characters and mascots. All of which are fake member accounts started either by the staff (usually <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Quirvy">Quirvy</a>), or by other members which are then commandeered by the staff. Here's a brief list of them:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5254">Dando52</a>, a vicious tyrant whose gender is Classified and who took over the Interguild one summer while I was on vacation.</li>
<li><b>Interbot</b>, the official test dummy account of the Interguild, who has currently been renamed to <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=AdBot">AdBot</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Captain%20Obvious">Captain Obvious</a>, who occasionally appears to save the day and reclaim his lines from people who have stolen them.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Captain%20Oblivious">Captain Oblivious</a>, a hopelessly confused individual.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=KarmaBot">KarmaBot</a>, the official Livio harrassment account of the Interguild, and the ruthless leader behind the <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5298">Karma War of 6/6</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=a_neezles_a">a_neezles_a</a> - Neezles is actually a real member. She was a notorious troll that plagued our community by signing up as fake members for months. However, there was a time when we <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/index.php?id=5253">took over the account </a>and then we staged our own troll run.</li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdtpmsussuYyXbZGfrRVv1Pg18MD80-QiA1_NYIOTaoRDTwQuUy7Dr3StLP_fFfDOdmkiy3v8Gp-3ebEGDXrl0JePcrIzUeacoV3awubf7dkTKYWV6uz1bL1fuPQC1TP2cufVe58Bi2F1e/s1600/fake.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="99" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdtpmsussuYyXbZGfrRVv1Pg18MD80-QiA1_NYIOTaoRDTwQuUy7Dr3StLP_fFfDOdmkiy3v8Gp-3ebEGDXrl0JePcrIzUeacoV3awubf7dkTKYWV6uz1bL1fuPQC1TP2cufVe58Bi2F1e/s400/fake.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>April Fools</b> - April Fools Day is one of the most important days of the year for the Interguild, and it's one of the best examples of how we've been taking advantage of our ability to fully alter the website. In 2009, we abused the censors in order to put <a href="http://interguild.org/news.php?id=1238604737">invisible Rick Rolls</a> on every page. In the next year, <a href="http://interguild.org/news.php?id=1270247752">every member became Anonymous</a> and completely indistinguishable when posting on the forums. And this year, we <a href="http://www.interguild.org/news.php?id=1306795972">completely changed the colors</a> to be as annoying as possible where every page load had a random background color.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDfGGOiP0Bk0eTqBqvGMMl5vvQvIII15IXbeEjPAbi7trLQ7lm-d31p8LP8eXrs5M276GlVBwk2lu26N7IY9S2RNbCxWmZohOTkcwE0li-VIFhyphenhyphenaCMArkxOQPT_v-uLLKWIrks9K2BkRc/s1600/AF2011Screenshot.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDfGGOiP0Bk0eTqBqvGMMl5vvQvIII15IXbeEjPAbi7trLQ7lm-d31p8LP8eXrs5M276GlVBwk2lu26N7IY9S2RNbCxWmZohOTkcwE0li-VIFhyphenhyphenaCMArkxOQPT_v-uLLKWIrks9K2BkRc/s400/AF2011Screenshot.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>With great power comes some great pranks.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We've really been exploiting this site in some really creative ways. And this is why I believe that <i>interguild.org</i> has truly been the Interguild's dream home, because isn't it appropriate how our website would let us mess around with its features and glitches just as much as HATPC?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span><br />
<br />
It's always difficult to describe to others just how much this community means to me. Our story is not one that can be properly told within a few sentences, and you certainly can't compare us to anything else either.<br />
<br />
In the past five years, we've all played the same game, shared the same struggles, and laughed at the same shenanigans. We've really grown up together. It's amazing that we've been able to make it this far, and I'm sure you are just as excited as I am to see just how far this community can go.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5643" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Image from GF4's Interguild comic"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl0jAn6pt17kSTEBwB3GwTKykGmRpIJfIEocgzkUPMwMXBOfotkpdzqYHPMqiTN346n7EtoUG53_ErrZPSTBQfN9HSXonwpOf00BzHFZfp3is7iuOwMfOwighIuvtRVbAsA59pJjwKzz4m/s1600/m8og94.jpg.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Long live the Interguild!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-71180760825500116092011-10-12T16:34:00.000-07:002013-04-10T02:28:07.366-07:00The UA Game Developers Club has Gone Global: Join Now!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrCder9F62WiC-DLGlTycUrgu57n6JIUZKtWgNrhQYa5sj5-aKrORkiddfy6T2b9JPXx383HtSfpAys6niA8pYX1cc5j78RpBa2sqBX-CvYKS3pKFc4_u4N5Jtj2jLMVFp4dP6uWFF7hhr/s1600/team.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrCder9F62WiC-DLGlTycUrgu57n6JIUZKtWgNrhQYa5sj5-aKrORkiddfy6T2b9JPXx383HtSfpAys6niA8pYX1cc5j78RpBa2sqBX-CvYKS3pKFc4_u4N5Jtj2jLMVFp4dP6uWFF7hhr/s1600/team.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Remember how <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/update-on-email-subscriptions.html">in my last post</a>, I mentioned how I made a <a href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By4BC80t6oOoMGU2ZjNhODctMWNmNi00ZmIzLWE4MmEtY2QyNGNjYzM3MThj&hl=en_US">tribute image</a> for the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ExtraCredits">Extra Credits Facebook wall</a>? Well, the first guy to respond to that was a student from the Netherlands (no, Interguilders, it wasn't <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=jellsprout">jellsprout</a>). He was asking me to respond to what he recently posted on EC's wall. It turns out that he's currently making a game with other students for a course requirement, but he needed help with some serious problems that was hurting his development team.<br />
<br />
After I gave him some great advice from Jesse Schell's <i><a href="http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/game-programming/9780123694966">The Art of Game Design</a></i>, he wanted to add me as a friend on Facebook seeing as we were both students interested in making games, it would be great to share thoughts and resources in order to learn more.<br />
<br />
Most of you already know about how I started a club at my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">university</a> last semester called the <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/about">Video Game Developers Club</a>. We recently started our own <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/152879561472082/">Facebook group</a>, so I invited my new Dutch friend to join the group. And just like that, we became an international club!<br />
<br />
At first I didn't take the "international" aspect of the club too seriously, but today I started thinking, why not? Game development is already one of the most diverse and interdisciplinary industries out there, so why not join an equally diverse group?<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Join Us</span><br />
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So if you're one of this blog's handful of followers who don't attend the University of Arizona, and if you're even slightly interested in becoming a game developer, then I invite you to join the club as well. While <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/about">our About page</a> is mainly targeted towards UA students, the first section will explain why this club is right for you. Even if we could get just a few non-local members, it would be pretty awesome.</div>
<div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPzxx5lVL8fUwpiAHkhhoHpv1Evo0jknMbgKyB_JJztpXRdJ6I4yprYF4NCdrGJ5jnW1lQBHynqTkKaeOov20xCC_5s82C-OWBS3XnLAJ2Fe6pbxEtFuJb40SuUOXJIGLi2CBjeU0C0Dbn/s1600/darth-vader+join+me+and+we+will+rule.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPzxx5lVL8fUwpiAHkhhoHpv1Evo0jknMbgKyB_JJztpXRdJ6I4yprYF4NCdrGJ5jnW1lQBHynqTkKaeOov20xCC_5s82C-OWBS3XnLAJ2Fe6pbxEtFuJb40SuUOXJIGLi2CBjeU0C0Dbn/s1600/darth-vader+join+me+and+we+will+rule.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>"Join us, and together we shall become the<br />
greatest game developers in the Universe."</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Facebook group is for more than just sharing resources. If you join this club, you can take part in some enlightening conversations, get feedback from the group on your projects, learn from other people's mistakes, and even challenge each other to some online multiplayer.<br />
<br />
To join, go to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/152879561472082/">UA Video Game Developers Club's Facebook group</a> and request to be added to the group. We already had at least one blatantly fake Facebook account join, so feel free to do the same if you'd like to protect your privacy.<br />
<br />
Also make sure you set your notification settings. By default, Facebook sends you emails whenever someone posts, but I personally prefer the emails because it ensures that I don't miss anything (unlike some people, I read every single email I get).<br />
<br />
Please don't try to subscribe to our club listserv if you're not a UofA student. I know the club website says it's mandatory for membership, but the emails that we send out are usually only relevant to local members.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-12534296816128582272011-10-05T17:34:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:24:08.457-07:00Update on Email Subscriptions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://gokammy.deviantart.com/art/Mailman-Zelda-OoT-105163848" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjFzFdnHxl6pxabbzuAfwLSE2CS9UodowHhaQWqUBv3IwXXmnVKI3EbJ84QEsnY97NDa-e1iT5G-13GGMZaM3OauqBXo1_RYlNnS0fE6dZrogmLNm6eRU7m67dpfYbs9HPsyNL9k2u-lRt/s400/Mailman___Zelda__OoT_by_GoKammy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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This isn't that big of a deal, but I figured that I might as well let you guys know. As I explained <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">a few weeks ago</a>, those of you who subscribe to this blog via email get the email notifications some time between at 11pm-1am GMT -6:00, which is about 10pm in my timezone. I realized that I've been publishing of the blog posts after midnight, which means that you probably have to wait an entire day to get the email notification. So I moved the email sending time to about 3am-5am GMT -7:00.</div>
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That means that you will now get your emails about five hours later than usual, but the whole point of this is so that they don't come a day late.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">In Other News...</span></div>
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Check out this huge pic I made for <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits">Extra Credits</a> to celebrate the end of the Guest Artists Marathon. I posted it on their Facebook wall about an hour ago.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDR3RAIq-NRx1v4N9p2TJH_S3rLQvLJOTRefCIK3QGouCAE5H6saKMcHLkScZ8F54Z4dMQXTNenpjViigQDLPAg3U9Wx_3xFONbnOQl0QXraKNtWRqXWQS_MJr5hWibHb_pOZ_DqvGK_uR/s1600/ec.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="51" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDR3RAIq-NRx1v4N9p2TJH_S3rLQvLJOTRefCIK3QGouCAE5H6saKMcHLkScZ8F54Z4dMQXTNenpjViigQDLPAg3U9Wx_3xFONbnOQl0QXraKNtWRqXWQS_MJr5hWibHb_pOZ_DqvGK_uR/s400/ec.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By4BC80t6oOoMGU2ZjNhODctMWNmNi00ZmIzLWE4MmEtY2QyNGNjYzM3MThj&hl=en_US">Click here for full resolution</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<i>If you don't know what Extra Credits is or why they've been having a guest art marathon, <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/viral-spreading-of-online-lecture.html">check out these articles I've written on them</a>.</i></div>
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<i><br />
</i></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-52958556962169687382011-10-05T01:34:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:23:43.481-07:00Understanding QR Codes through Game Design<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://qrarts.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidLH2Fv73Lam160Pxkw0Ww_x14wW-J1W7ggRvvoQVLjDjYAbVXAmT9hwm5mfludX9exJQyfxL2MCGchukz9zl5sUDQWH_ktSaAdml-Hgouea4by6xDBraoty8jcr7Ht12HqV-aHr81UF8u/s1600/new_header_blogmay.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Wow, four new blog posts within the past week? That can only mean one thing: this post is for another <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">homework assignment</a>.<br />
<br />
But don't let that turn you off, because I am very excited about this post. This will be my first entry into a series of posts called Understanding through Game Design, where I analyze non-game-related topics as if they were games (I also plan to analyze actual games eventually). The idea isn't all that crazy, because any game designer will likely tell you that it's quite a challenge to find any form of human activity that cannot be explained in terms of game design.<br />
<br />
So today, I'll be talking about Quick Response codes, also known as QR codes. When I first heard about these a few years ago, someone had told me that they were supposed to be a replacement for bar codes that could store data in two dimensions rather than one.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB9WdLe8MTqoCt8CR3ERMegS6IZseMUMJn27gOhX7_-BSuIxkq1tBb_jUgsDCITSGgVUq_Fxol9FloglMa-Ez7dCBCcCU3lvH-Icgi7_tT5ERk2Y0iK7JFYcFIGRtEzrLjsO-r0fEIAXaJ/s1600/Traditional-Barcode-vs-QR-Code.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB9WdLe8MTqoCt8CR3ERMegS6IZseMUMJn27gOhX7_-BSuIxkq1tBb_jUgsDCITSGgVUq_Fxol9FloglMa-Ez7dCBCcCU3lvH-Icgi7_tT5ERk2Y0iK7JFYcFIGRtEzrLjsO-r0fEIAXaJ/s320/Traditional-Barcode-vs-QR-Code.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: black; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: black; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: black; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: black; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" width="320" /></a></div>
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I never imagined that they would become the widespread phenomenon that they are today. In this post, I'll be trying to figure out why exactly people are having so much fun with these things.</div>
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<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How to Play with QR Codes</span><br />
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First, you're going to need a smartphone or any similar device such as an iPod Touch, but it must have a camera. Next, you should install one of the many free apps that can scan and read QR codes. Now when you see a QR code in your everyday life, all you need to do is take a picture of it using your phone and the app will tell you what it means: </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-c2QPp3dwYsaEYDwNM7xXYCm3AwjA4aYDRS5xkiE6rDGjtbIeAgx6hi8uX86FyfHNXdyI9d1BxJ0C3oJ66cJJSW-1rPV-XZsPifqsd61hDoAmPtaceo9zQA7xTdQHKlR4vfWYPptHW_e/s1600/qr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv-c2QPp3dwYsaEYDwNM7xXYCm3AwjA4aYDRS5xkiE6rDGjtbIeAgx6hi8uX86FyfHNXdyI9d1BxJ0C3oJ66cJJSW-1rPV-XZsPifqsd61hDoAmPtaceo9zQA7xTdQHKlR4vfWYPptHW_e/s1600/qr.png" /></a></div>
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If you don't have a smartphone and would like to scan the above image, you can use an online QR code reader, such as <a href="http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx">ZXing Decoder</a>. Most QR codes hold URLs inside them, which will bring you to a webpage with more info on whatever you're scanning (assuming your phone has Internet access).<br />
<br />
If you haven't noticed these before, you'll soon start seeing these codes all over the place. For instance, you might be passing by a poster on the street that catches your interest when you notice that it has a QR code on it. In just a few seconds, you can take a picture of it on your phone and instantly be brought to a relevant website with more info, which you may choose to bookmark for later.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9D0IOMvEqDhOqXUjlVcXuyDV6tdgsZE9fVat9cA5rtWAfYCO7sk6Jb5chG88cA6vcYpVumxZuIEddDpKVo99FtwVSCavaFrI9tEXm8gDcptNa4R1Bu1wA8_LdDKO7IatujW1iVhKLuSql/s1600/qr-code-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9D0IOMvEqDhOqXUjlVcXuyDV6tdgsZE9fVat9cA5rtWAfYCO7sk6Jb5chG88cA6vcYpVumxZuIEddDpKVo99FtwVSCavaFrI9tEXm8gDcptNa4R1Bu1wA8_LdDKO7IatujW1iVhKLuSql/s400/qr-code-01.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Or perhaps you found a cool ad in today's paper and would like to learn more. Rather than switching to your laptop and doing a search, you just take out your phone:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNyFtMe3CQsSqtykhgEF1UkDrLHlP0FESVpgoJuCtm4hvqU7N6LoOaLJUVRsULa2IBTA0DCrwnwBcNed7aP0G1bZfUkn6yllgPp2qqDg-auaDcO3Kvj_GB_OjQp211ulzPa709-kDvopi/s1600/511_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNyFtMe3CQsSqtykhgEF1UkDrLHlP0FESVpgoJuCtm4hvqU7N6LoOaLJUVRsULa2IBTA0DCrwnwBcNed7aP0G1bZfUkn6yllgPp2qqDg-auaDcO3Kvj_GB_OjQp211ulzPa709-kDvopi/s400/511_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Or maybe you see this landscaping business working on your neighbor's yard, and they do such a great job that you might want to do business with them. In just a few seconds, you're already looking at all of the services they offer:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-7AEfajU8HmsQSerI9IFKZIITkkZKtVEsE-qb0-_tqiLnvzK7jPitc8zBqyOiPN5Jc7mHe6Mrj-HnzWURAXDmpxdNiKlk2HpEkazu57BZBrR6r0QguzFZEob6cqlJ1YimwTHA3r0v_Ub/s1600/img_3850-resized-600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-7AEfajU8HmsQSerI9IFKZIITkkZKtVEsE-qb0-_tqiLnvzK7jPitc8zBqyOiPN5Jc7mHe6Mrj-HnzWURAXDmpxdNiKlk2HpEkazu57BZBrR6r0QguzFZEob6cqlJ1YimwTHA3r0v_Ub/s400/img_3850-resized-600.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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You're wondering why this restaurant has a big QR code on its sign, so you scan it, only to find a free coupon hidden inside!</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWGrzHtSBpPyVCPzUXSqtOFoadFLTat_FMBrAt0JgYWe8lts-bPNpQjkGaOEYVtABR2AnAYZP3Pa3HY-WDnspL0Mjt5Qh_vF8YckQHi9iyugc5Q00cu2UsTKpujeZod9jTNxSohoQnZMta/s1600/qr-code-japan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWGrzHtSBpPyVCPzUXSqtOFoadFLTat_FMBrAt0JgYWe8lts-bPNpQjkGaOEYVtABR2AnAYZP3Pa3HY-WDnspL0Mjt5Qh_vF8YckQHi9iyugc5Q00cu2UsTKpujeZod9jTNxSohoQnZMta/s1600/qr-code-japan.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I have no idea if this is actually a restaurant.</td></tr>
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This QR code is so subtle yet noticeable that you just have to scan it because you feel like it might be important:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxptWLrGwMQD32NHQD2IT3yKB59jES_53GF1RJrT_fPzjJfLLhGd7v5jNxD4nl0uGpjRTKGn_WOemNt0B85C6Wby8He8KsuwWIUJtd8CeZs8siyFol4-jX-bXew2ySSLnXEVF9chadfMy/s1600/coke-qr-code.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkxptWLrGwMQD32NHQD2IT3yKB59jES_53GF1RJrT_fPzjJfLLhGd7v5jNxD4nl0uGpjRTKGn_WOemNt0B85C6Wby8He8KsuwWIUJtd8CeZs8siyFol4-jX-bXew2ySSLnXEVF9chadfMy/s400/coke-qr-code.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Companies can even get take advantage of the auto-correction algorithm and insert images into the code without ruining the message:</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPqWL2GvYcnGGfY0RDC7ShRKDzBk9hinJkAfrMmWdDVj3vmoBg4eo6JfRRgBgRetsUJcsnsFpcVxhz0-90sXr8PfyS-YN8b6odppf6uyiuwWlTXRlUlEJEQTZ9gJNgXKYqEuIodzBXeqy/s1600/disneycodes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYPqWL2GvYcnGGfY0RDC7ShRKDzBk9hinJkAfrMmWdDVj3vmoBg4eo6JfRRgBgRetsUJcsnsFpcVxhz0-90sXr8PfyS-YN8b6odppf6uyiuwWlTXRlUlEJEQTZ9gJNgXKYqEuIodzBXeqy/s400/disneycodes.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Some have made decorating QR codes into an <a href="http://qrarts.com/gallery/">art form</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYbIFpaYWyNkfGOomh0BYZgXphVRSipzOZ8mLZ5-QEV4RRkl0ZFxBea6xEZ4-Go8x2qsPFQ8-dC_c7oySXIO7swQcTB_b6qFGLVHtcvKiPLpj4fhyBFaSNJNy7WyPKrzW68eTVQ7slmXK/s1600/time-qrcodes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYbIFpaYWyNkfGOomh0BYZgXphVRSipzOZ8mLZ5-QEV4RRkl0ZFxBea6xEZ4-Go8x2qsPFQ8-dC_c7oySXIO7swQcTB_b6qFGLVHtcvKiPLpj4fhyBFaSNJNy7WyPKrzW68eTVQ7slmXK/s400/time-qrcodes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Some companies have tried turning television commercials into interactive experiences using QR codes:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/8vWVtpCfLX8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I personally thought this was pretty dumb.</span></div>
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Companies are even using QR codes to go beyond marketing and towards integrating them with how users use their services:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Mqcb7RoN4Y?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What Makes This Fun?</span></div>
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So now that you have a better idea of everything that makes up the QR code experience, we can start analyzing this using the terms of game design.<br />
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<b>Simple Mechanics</b><br />
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Look at how unbelievably easy it is to play this "game". All you have to do is take out your phone, fire up the app, and take a picture. Sure it takes a little bit of time, but what's important is that it can be easily and quickly comprehended.</div>
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<b>Curiosity Invites Interaction</b><br />
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The best games are the ones that stimulate the player's curiosity. They put questions into the player's mind, which encourages them to explore the game further. Likewise, some of the best QR ads effectively get the user interested in answering a question, such as "What is this code hiding?" or "What is the answer to this riddle?"<br />
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The following QR ad campaign is a beautiful example of this concept of playing with the user's curiosity:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/u5aASznITyo?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The ad plays with perspectives by hiding an image (both visually and digitally) within the QR code that is build out of Lego. And so the first question that the ad presents to the view is: what is the image, which can be built using these Lego bricks? After the user scans the image, the answer is yet another but more implicit question: how would you build such a thing using Lego? The human mind works very quickly, and by the time they land on the product page, the user has already thought up of a few ideas on how to go about building it. This is especially powerful if the user has played with Lego sometime in the past, thus triggering their nostalgia for the product and making it all the more likely that they will purchase it.<br />
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<b>Surprises are Fun, and Innovation yields Surprises</b><br />
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As mentioned earlier, QR codes don't always have to lead to a product page. Remember that "restaurant" with the free coupon? If it weren't for those occasional surprises, QR codes would cease to be interesting and would simply be just another tool in our everyday lives.<br />
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Fortunately, companies are always looking for new ways to surprise their audience, because it provides a memorable experience that helps build brand recognition. Just watching the companies innovate can be entertaining on its own. This innovation not only includes how the QR codes look like, but also how the user interacts with them. This could be as simple an idea as creating a QR code scavenger hunt, or it could be as impressive as building a virtual grocery store in Korea.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutQQVfvtEVvpnIBY4CTDIsEY8S0VrANhlEtwxDQ-UzEIEyhcxCrBX02OJTce2V9kLBhYIY7XROHQyLlWSPiMiDVydjLGhg8m3IoSUJF2liG3gArfjZcmePxDT0W7dvbIj2hk8XK4vOcVt/s1600/Qr-code-hotel.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutQQVfvtEVvpnIBY4CTDIsEY8S0VrANhlEtwxDQ-UzEIEyhcxCrBX02OJTce2V9kLBhYIY7XROHQyLlWSPiMiDVydjLGhg8m3IoSUJF2liG3gArfjZcmePxDT0W7dvbIj2hk8XK4vOcVt/s400/Qr-code-hotel.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.qrme.co.uk/qr-code-news/3-newsflash/190-dubai-qr-code-hotel.html">Dubai is just plain crazy.</a></td></tr>
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<b>The Novelty of New Technology</b></div>
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One of the biggest reasons for why scanning QR codes is so appealing is because it is essentially a form of augmented reality (AR). It successfully connects the real world with the virtual world in meaningful ways. There are very few products or services that can deliver this kind of experience. Unlike many of the AR apps on smartphones these days, which feel more like an overlay across a video screen, the QR code system has a stronger dependency to the physical world.<br />
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Game designers know how big of an impact the novelty of new technology can have on defining a player's experience. One of the highest selling games of recent years was <i>Wii Sports</i>. The only innovation that <i>Wii Sports</i> had going for it was how it used new technology, but that's all it needed.</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-45075000806434714662011-10-03T11:18:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:22:41.892-07:00Indie Games and the Crowdfunding Revolution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlerVqPUrAFfBhGe2OMkHrcJjGrXvHSpZSaG8rDu8akDmaaSqSem0tqDgse7kGY6e6QzVGM0kDjtgZuePxYTX3HIwqiBnpFrkbJH_v5bexwRV-CVWsPXWc80Ssfv9yXLF900yCfE12Kr9A/s1600/kickstarter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlerVqPUrAFfBhGe2OMkHrcJjGrXvHSpZSaG8rDu8akDmaaSqSem0tqDgse7kGY6e6QzVGM0kDjtgZuePxYTX3HIwqiBnpFrkbJH_v5bexwRV-CVWsPXWc80Ssfv9yXLF900yCfE12Kr9A/s1600/kickstarter.jpg" /></a></div>
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It's about time I started balancing out some of these super long articles with smaller ones that are more straight-to-the-point. So the point of this post will be to fulfill my latest <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">class assignment</a>, which demands that everyone in the class make their next blog post as a response to an article about monetizing social media (actually, I think I've already <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/08/selling-games-using-social-media.html">written about this topic</a>...).<br />
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This might be a bit of a stretch (like almost all of my posts so far), but I'm going to be responding to a very interesting article from a few months ago called "<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6353/the_crowdfunding_revolution_.php">The Crowdfunding Revolution: Perspectives</a>." That article was actually the first part of a two-part series, with the second part named "<a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6369/the_crowdfunding_revolution_.php">The Crowdfunding Revolution: Making Your Choice</a>."<br />
<blockquote>
Crowdfunding services – websites that act as both a social network to connect projects with backers and as a marketplace or escrow house for project funding – have become a popular business model in the last two years, and several more have sprung up alongside Kickstarter, each with their own perks, quirks, and twists on the basic model.</blockquote>
These articles take a look at the growing popularity of crowdfunding as a tool for independent game developers. Those of you who follow this blog might have realized by now that <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/search/label/History">I like history</a>, and so what caught my attention was<b> </b>the idea that this business model could potentially lead to significant changes in the game industry.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">What Revolution?</span><br />
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I was personally skeptical as to how big of an impact this funding model could have in this industry, so I did a very quick search for articles on how crowdfunding was affecting other industries, such as film. It seemed as though these articles (all from 2011) all had the same message: crowdfunding is still on the rise but it has yielded incredible results in a few projects. So calling it a revolution is definitely premature.<br />
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And yet, crowdfunding is indeed proving to be a very useful tool for helping independent developers gather just enough funds to finish a nearly-completed project. Indie developers are already taking a big risk by funding the game on their own until the game is released, so having this kind of fallback is definitely a great help. If crowdfunding is going to change the industry in any way, it's going to be because it helped many innovative developers bring their games to market.<br />
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Crowdfunding is not going to become one of the major methods through which projects get funded. As the article points out, it's very hard for new and obscure games to get much funding, because there has to already be a fan base that can be tapped into. Furthermore, these fan bases are usually formed thanks to previous games that the developer has made, so crowdfunding isn't a very good option for recent startups who are making their first games. There's also way too much uncertainty involved in the crowdfunding process, and so many developers don't consider it as the method of choice for funding.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0n79tRkgpgLlYzEeqmce3O2mlFIASqiw1knrY99gEuIqRzFmBsEBLztGaKdDddKAPxiHuprUfHfi_xwKJeC-pXoef70X9_-hrILYYNJkoL5wT1s7ux3Cn2hPjIqNg48IQrAg5VX24TF2/s1600/Cthulhu-Saves-The-World-627x246.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0n79tRkgpgLlYzEeqmce3O2mlFIASqiw1knrY99gEuIqRzFmBsEBLztGaKdDddKAPxiHuprUfHfi_xwKJeC-pXoef70X9_-hrILYYNJkoL5wT1s7ux3Cn2hPjIqNg48IQrAg5VX24TF2/s400/Cthulhu-Saves-The-World-627x246.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/107310/">Cthulu Saves the World</a>, a crowdfunding success.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I can't talk about crowdfunding new games without at least mentioning the <a href="http://www.rockethub.com/projects/3074-extra-credits-indie-fund">Extra Credits Indie Fund</a>, which <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/inspired-by-humanity.html">I had first written about almost a month ago</a>. Like other indie funds, its goal is to fund creative games that would have otherwise never gotten the chance to get published. What makes the EC Indie Fund so special is that it relies mainly on crowdfunding. At the time of this writing, the fund had gathered almost $20,000 USD without even having a game to fund yet.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">How about Alpha Funding?</span><br />
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Alpha funding is very similar to crowdfunding. In fact, you might say that most of the successful projects that relied on crowdfunding so far were also practicing a form of alpha funding.<br />
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If you're unfamiliar with alpha funding, the best example would be <i>Minecraft</i>. Players can play a very early build of the game (known as the alpha build) for free. Players can then purchase the game in order to show their support for the project. What used to be a side project now had the funds to become a full-time job for the game's creator. The game proved so popular that he even used the funds to hire people to help him develop the rest of the game.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDafgU_M6zRIcRoeatqKwd1NevQDx_w8CWNvrcwudJd6uVZAmHK7XJwpeQvUpKKgXuryU0s8a73YiCmyboVPrDT8Ov_XunbqlAQuLIj4B_faLYeiAZySzTkYCuBYKPt32EdNTqYAXOyod/s1600/minecraft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcDafgU_M6zRIcRoeatqKwd1NevQDx_w8CWNvrcwudJd6uVZAmHK7XJwpeQvUpKKgXuryU0s8a73YiCmyboVPrDT8Ov_XunbqlAQuLIj4B_faLYeiAZySzTkYCuBYKPt32EdNTqYAXOyod/s1600/minecraft.jpg" /></a></div>
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Usually when a game reaches Alpha, it's publisher will decide whether or not to kill the project depending on how successful it might be commercially. Alpha funding, on the other hand, is a much more democratic system where the game's development may only continue if enough players online enjoy the game enough to help fund it.<br />
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This is also a dynamic form of funding, which means that if a lot of people are looking forward to a game's completion, then its developers will receive more money to make the game even greater. Unlike with many crowdfunding websites, the developers don't have to limit their fundraising to a fixed time period either. Such as in the case of <i>Minecraft</i>, Mojang has been relying on alpha funding for the past few years. Most crowdfunding campaigns are limited to a few months.<br />
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A variant of the alpha funding model is one of the most prominent forms of funding on the iOS and Android app stores. Many app developers (including game developers) release a primitive version of their app for free. If the user enjoys it, he or she may choose to buy the premium version, which usually only has maybe one or two extra features that are hardly worth the money. But the main reason why people still purchase these premium apps is to show their support for the developer. It's almost like giving a restaurant waiter a good tip. The developers can then use that money to support, expand, and polish the app.<br />
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Clearly, the potential for alpha funding is much broader than crowdfunding, and I can see why <a href="http://gamasutra.com/view/news/37402/Interview_Soldats_Marcinkowski_On_Why_Alpha_Funding_Will_Save_The_Games_Industry.php">some people are very excited</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-54586944525875777262011-10-02T02:11:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:27:47.004-07:00History of the Interguild, Part 2: TNT Ruins Everything<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQK0nSQPFeaHAfL4AnoHjN9awxm72SCzvGb41HxGpAYorMdj3WFg8_xk0Jxqys5jMcz2jB1HJ4DR_QQQgOvmPqvB-r1SHzBz57LnMLZkm4eXzLrYTbFptEMtqVGPU70M1YP0mDfG-e07X/s1600/triple-facepalm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFQK0nSQPFeaHAfL4AnoHjN9awxm72SCzvGb41HxGpAYorMdj3WFg8_xk0Jxqys5jMcz2jB1HJ4DR_QQQgOvmPqvB-r1SHzBz57LnMLZkm4eXzLrYTbFptEMtqVGPU70M1YP0mDfG-e07X/s1600/triple-facepalm.jpg" /></a></div>
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During <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-interguild-part-1-five-years.html">part one of this series</a>, I pointed out many of the good things that the creators of the game <i>Hannah and the Pirate Caves</i> (HATPC) did to help its fan community grow. In this post, I will go through all of the major mistakes that TNT made with the game during the past eight years and how the community has reacted to each of these issues.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Strike One: Broken CaveMaker</span><br />
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The original version of CaveMaker that TNT released included <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5575">Water Crates and Water Tap Crates</a>. I mentioned briefly in the previous post how these two crates added a new dimension to water levels. But because these crates were not included in the game's built-in levels, many players were confused. TNT responded by releasing a new version of CaveMaker that did not include any of these tiles.<br />
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The fact that they removed two crates isn't nearly as important as the fact that the new version of CaveMaker was just plain broken. You absolutely could not load levels into the program because it couldn't read the level codes correctly. It would instead scramble your levels into a complete mess.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKklAZs7zYQzEBxyy5ygPWL1AD9_EvA1Y4tFwCSxaadAyMRpZbkA3Q7KHxuTnQnpJP7Cb7NVYgs2DaYEJehZrJvxfo5qio4Eu2dmFnQThjZlbiqfXpVTudvP9t7kElptoHWgPLxecLUPbo/s1600/cmv1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKklAZs7zYQzEBxyy5ygPWL1AD9_EvA1Y4tFwCSxaadAyMRpZbkA3Q7KHxuTnQnpJP7Cb7NVYgs2DaYEJehZrJvxfo5qio4Eu2dmFnQThjZlbiqfXpVTudvP9t7kElptoHWgPLxecLUPbo/s400/cmv1.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>CaveMaker V1</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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To get around this, many players would refuse to close the program until they completely finished their level, which could sometimes take a few days if they were making a particularly epic level. Some would also learn how to read and edit their level codes directly, in case a problem came up later that needed to be fixed.<br />
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When the Interguild forums were set up in 2006, we started passing around copies of the original version of CaveMaker, thanks to the members who managed to download it when the game was first released in 2003. And later in 2009, user <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=canadianstickdeath">canadianstickdeath</a> made <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=1072">his own version of Cavemaker</a>, which included several much-wanted features, such as the ability to place multiple gems and heart crates, open multiple levels at once, and an Undo/Redo feature.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLfN1sLDoqIabwDoC1I7BW1WrCzYFaZolZ9ZaGRjvN-rSMRPxhAhmDEOQPEru7ZX8iPBmh5Y_FweYaY3cuLnUiZBEdqCJCdvBQb_d2NISPS99bD640_31nzaJYAXCJkm6dUwgjhjuO-0nX/s1600/cm.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLfN1sLDoqIabwDoC1I7BW1WrCzYFaZolZ9ZaGRjvN-rSMRPxhAhmDEOQPEru7ZX8iPBmh5Y_FweYaY3cuLnUiZBEdqCJCdvBQb_d2NISPS99bD640_31nzaJYAXCJkm6dUwgjhjuO-0nX/s400/cm.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>CSD's awesome CaveMaker V2</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Strike Two: Caves of the Week</span><br />
<br />
Over the years, we watched as the weekly Cave of the Week (COTW) contest was reduced to nothing more than a showcase of some of the most bland levels ever created. Sometimes we tried to submit some of our best levels to the contest, but they never won. We always thought that they most likely declared the winner at random, but not before playing the beginning of the level to make sure it was easy enough. Sure enough, there were times when the winning level was impossible to beat.<br />
<br />
We honestly didn't care all that much about the COTW contest, since we could always find better levels on the forums. It's just that this didn't help us feel as if TNT cared much about the game, which is understandable considering that they have a much larger website to run.<br />
<br />
As an interesting side note, during the summer of last year (2010), we experimented with our theory of how TNT selects the Cave of the Week. We set out to win the COTW by making really easy, generic levels with a similar style to the other COTW winners. Sure enough, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/index.php?id=3023">it worked</a>! We then went on to win the COTW for four consecutive weeks. By the time we stopped submitting levels, we had won the COTW <a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/index.php?series=3064">seven times</a>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp4FmcEiyRoQtA0mjwccn5uTDhPV5rifWSgXlm_7Fyuh6a4_Ia_BZ7FYZnUihTO6Nfut1wMH46hp6zHi3g3svwF0bVz_XjKNBJCdRTDCZSPABJbrVD1n9XN-vRhu6ZEalNRpJSMtn5N0hh/s1600/goldfun4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp4FmcEiyRoQtA0mjwccn5uTDhPV5rifWSgXlm_7Fyuh6a4_Ia_BZ7FYZnUihTO6Nfut1wMH46hp6zHi3g3svwF0bVz_XjKNBJCdRTDCZSPABJbrVD1n9XN-vRhu6ZEalNRpJSMtn5N0hh/s200/goldfun4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>COTW #338: <a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/index.php?id=3033">CrazyMadness</a> by GF4</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Just a few weeks after that, ironically, TNT announced that they were going to end the Cave of the Week, which had run for nearly 350 weeks. While we didn't care much about this event, it was still troubling because it suggested that TNT no longer wanted to support HATPC. As we'll see later in this post, by this point in time we already knew that all too well.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Strike Three: Broken Uploader</span><br />
<br />
On March 30th, 2007, the Cave Upload page suddenly stopped working properly. To upload a level, users had to copy their level code from the CaveMaker program and paste it into a page on neopets.com. But during the April Fools day weekend, the page suddenly started rejecting perfectly valid levels and giving out inconsistent error reports.<br />
<br />
It took us a while to figure out what was going on, but eventually we found that the uploader was altering our level codes by replacing all instances of "<" and ">" in the code, with "-no tags here-". We recognized this as being the exact same HTML filters that TNT uses for its forums. At the time, we had no idea why TNT would add HTML filters to the uploader. (We also mistakenly thought that part of the problem was the fact that the uploader added backslashes to quotes (\"), which represented ladders, but it turns out that the uploader had always done that).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSnWFaUXh3Pbd2RAjgpzVDnDcuXVy-08bkN0rW-uWTbjt2LayyGbDQ1YTVy3QkruhkMar3xilm2Q7j_3PeK20_tLdP8_wa5diUMcrkZnkpV9jpAAwvcgVWPs5qmFWfeRMammQBy-YTgfkH/s1600/crates.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSnWFaUXh3Pbd2RAjgpzVDnDcuXVy-08bkN0rW-uWTbjt2LayyGbDQ1YTVy3QkruhkMar3xilm2Q7j_3PeK20_tLdP8_wa5diUMcrkZnkpV9jpAAwvcgVWPs5qmFWfeRMammQBy-YTgfkH/s1600/crates.gif" /></a></div>
But this was a very serious problem. The characters that they were trying to censor out of our level codes represented left and right arrow crates, respectively. Arrow crates, along with dynamite crates, are some of the most widely used tiles in the whole game. To see a level that doesn't include a single arrow would be a novelty in its own.<br />
<br />
Pretty quickly we realized that this glitch wasn't going to go away soon. The most alarming part about all this was the idea that almost all of our greatest levels were now unplayable as the uploader would no longer accept them. This was perhaps the most direct threat that our community had ever faced—and we weren't going to go down without a fight.<br />
<br />
This is how we planned to retaliate:<br />
<ol>
<li>We'd get as many of our members as possible to go to neopets.com's "Report an Error" page.</li>
<li>Once on that page, they would go to our forums to copy and paste in an extensive report that we had written explaining what was wrong with the uploader and how to fix it.</li>
<li>After pressing submit, they would hit the Back button in their browser, and then they'd hit submit again, and again, and again—until they had sent as many messages as they wanted.</li>
</ol>
<div>
Fortunately for us, the webpage had no blocks against that kind of spamming, and we ended up sending them hundreds, if not thousands, of bug reports.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We're not sure if TNT noticed any of our bug reports until <i>after </i>they realized something was wrong. On May 10, 2007, over a month after the glitch had initially appeared, TNT noticed that something wasn't quite right because almost no one was entering in the Cave of the Week! Shortly after posting about that anomaly on their news page, they took down the uploader page for maintenance.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=445">Once the glitch was fixed</a>, all of our members who had submitted bug reports received a message from TNT, thanking them for bringing the issue to their attention. However, it was an automated message that was sent as a reply to every single report submitted, and so our inboxes were absolutely flooded.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpnqsjqJl9j90cgW7OcWPJOZicCgXREAGqiDqzCooXAyI6zn34WZZnuiin4JqbOw8SUdHHklIbLx14VZxspz-d3nkY1UtPVk8zLMWNA98S9vOUh3g3Yl694Pzp_H1fpjhMhkbi3Q97iYOA/s1600/noarrows.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpnqsjqJl9j90cgW7OcWPJOZicCgXREAGqiDqzCooXAyI6zn34WZZnuiin4JqbOw8SUdHHklIbLx14VZxspz-d3nkY1UtPVk8zLMWNA98S9vOUh3g3Yl694Pzp_H1fpjhMhkbi3Q97iYOA/s320/noarrows.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.interguild.org/levels/index.php?id=462">Look Mom! No Arrows!</a> by canadianstickdeath</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We would later refer to this event as the Great Uploader Glitch of 2007. This was such an important event in the Interguild's history that we just had to give it a dramatic name. There is no doubt that this brought us closer together as a community. It made even the ordinary members feel as though it was up to them to help keep the Interguild alive.<br />
<br />
This event also solidified our resentment against neopets.com. Before, we had been moving away from neopets simply because we were starting to grow too old for the site, but now we were growing to dislike what neopets had become and we tried to separate ourselves completely from it. For many of us, the only reason we visited the website was to log in and upload a level—we didn't even visit the guilds anymore.</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Last Straw</span><br />
<br />
During December of that year, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=jellsprout">jellsprout</a>, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=canadianstickdeath">canadianstickdeath</a>, and <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=127">TehMarz</a> found that we could include HTML in our level codes and then view that HTML by going to <a href="http://www.neopets.com/games/cavemaker/pirate_level_load.php?username=jebby777">this page</a>. This was a serious risk because neopets.com strictly prohibits links to external websites. Anyone could use this glitch to create a redirect to a malicious site, which is especially alarming considering the low age group of neopets users. But it soon became clear that the previous uploader glitch was an attempt to fix this hole.<br />
<br />
They considered reporting the issue to TNT, but fearing another uploader glitch, they decided to keep silent on the issue and act as if the glitch just didn't exist. But TehMarz later changed his mind, realizing that security was much more important than a single Shockwave game, and so he submitted a bug report, hoping that TNT would handle the situation competently.<br />
<br />
A few weeks later, on January 8th, 2008, TNT broke the uploader again. If on any line of your level code you had both a left and a right arrow facing away from each other (like this: "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">xx<b><</b>xxx<b>></b>xx</span>", but not like this: "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">xx<b>></b>xxx<b><</b>xx</span>"), the line would be removed from your level. The worst part about this was that it didn't even fix the security hole! Anyone could just bypass it by putting their tags on different lines.<br />
<br />
And to make it worse, the uploader was now enforcing a new rule where level titles were only allowed to have letters, numbers, and underscores. This meant that you could no longer put spaces or other special characters into the name of your level. This had <i>nothing</i> to do with the security hole that they were supposed to be fixing, and there were absolutely no problems or glitches coming out of level titles to begin with. Seriously, TNT?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNkWRNS67u9fs7MUd1jlJ0RPczMg9LRkMvDm_yu6QcTFB1gPCa5VHHbXq0rgr9UKWRFVzUXBIGmQ1AF3EYMTgEt26A_WSNCVNKEtSIVB2V5iUi-h4v8rQIZwjOQ1iQZ6oDIAnIBXVV1Kq/s1600/marz.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNkWRNS67u9fs7MUd1jlJ0RPczMg9LRkMvDm_yu6QcTFB1gPCa5VHHbXq0rgr9UKWRFVzUXBIGmQ1AF3EYMTgEt26A_WSNCVNKEtSIVB2V5iUi-h4v8rQIZwjOQ1iQZ6oDIAnIBXVV1Kq/s1600/marz.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=36503">TehMarz analyzes the situation.</a></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We immediately set up another spam campaign, but our morale was considerably lower this time. We even tried sending them a <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2697">reasoned letter</a>, as opposed to frantic spam, to see if they would listen, but it didn't work.<br />
<br />
The Great Uploader Glitch of 2008 never got fixed, and we're still <a href="http://www.interguild.org/hatpc/glitchscan.php">dealing with it</a> today. If there's anything worth being noted about this story, it's the unusually thick wall of communication that separated HATPC's players from its creators. Not even the largest HATPC community on the Internet could've figured out how to break through that wall.<br />
<br />
I know that TNT is very busy with running an entire website, and I know that we were a very small percentage of the overall neopets.com audience. But when a group of players has a true and deep love for a game, it is a rare an valuable moment. Rather than supporting us, TNT showed us again and again that it just didn't care about the game very much. It was heart breaking—enough to make you want to completely give up on the game.<br />
<br />
And so that's what we did.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A New Dream</span><br />
<br />
The discussions about the new uploader glitch <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1330&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10">almost immediately</a> turned towards a more interesting subject. We were joking about how much better HATPC would be if we were the ones who made it. Then one idea was presented that would spark a project so ambitious that its promise alone would keep the Interguild alive for months and years to come. The idea was that making our own game was possible.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxYxCTF1aQYtXKfZGSMLUGQ2GOmEgliB0iR_BaGA_VXDsa4k3yaAkPj_2uuZhA8WKrWCDpMAWd3n2ZQIwdxLK6TgUw_PUQ5Io6e6mBnkfHHe_iAyhCRYKG0-hiw9kT_FhdhDwNJtRjhj2/s1600/Light-Bulb-Idea-Hand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxYxCTF1aQYtXKfZGSMLUGQ2GOmEgliB0iR_BaGA_VXDsa4k3yaAkPj_2uuZhA8WKrWCDpMAWd3n2ZQIwdxLK6TgUw_PUQ5Io6e6mBnkfHHe_iAyhCRYKG0-hiw9kT_FhdhDwNJtRjhj2/s1600/Light-Bulb-Idea-Hand.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
It was one of the most exciting times in the Interguild's history. We codenamed our project the New Game, and we had to create new boards in the forums in order to house the dozens of idea topics that were popping up.<br />
<br />
Every game developer can relate to those early feelings of excitement and extreme ambition when you decide to make your first game. Those of us who were grounded more in reality tried to talk some sense into the rest of us about how hard it would be to make a game and how many years it'd take. But we didn't care, because we knew that it was possible!<br />
<br />
Three and a half years later, and the New Game, now known as <a href="http://www.interguild.org/aeon/">the Aeon Project</a>, is still under development. There's a lot of interesting things to learn from Aeon and why its development has been so slow, but that's a topic for <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2012/01/project-aeon-and-how-i-spent-my-holiday.html" target="_blank">another blog entry</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>To be continued...</i></span><br />
<br />
<i>I didn't even start talking about our move to interguild.org yet! That's actually a much more interesting topic than it sounds.</i><br />
<br />
<i>By the way, it's unlikely that my very next blog post will be Part Three, because my teacher wants everyone to relate their next post to something about business models. I'm presuming it's to help some people who haven't been posting much on their blogs by giving them something to write about.</i><br />
<br />
<i>EDIT: </i><a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-3-finding.html">Click here to read Part Three!</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Some Interesting Trivia</i></span><br />
<br />
<i>In <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/history-of-interguild-part-1-five-years.html">the last post</a>, I talked a bit about the PCCA's over-the-top front page and how I didn't have any pictures of it. Well, I just found a glimpse of it in the beginning of the following video by <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=shos">shos</a>. You can also see the old Interguild website, which I'll talk more about in the next post.</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Lyx2cpxM-Nc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-44949954838077148412011-09-27T20:49:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:17:56.059-07:00History of the Interguild, Part 1: Five Years of Caving<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQMFmaDKZhOESdCRfaZeNWKlvESPg3_9Q2YdZ0bregc05QGbar6ey6fh04lC2Pl7Ln_Um99oCDbhNREkjSq5GZNh5v6yVDmReB-SWjXpo7m1hDxsrR3eXvDlwYVOa2BWz1GUHPIWy9M9cI/s1600/2010-07-26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQMFmaDKZhOESdCRfaZeNWKlvESPg3_9Q2YdZ0bregc05QGbar6ey6fh04lC2Pl7Ln_Um99oCDbhNREkjSq5GZNh5v6yVDmReB-SWjXpo7m1hDxsrR3eXvDlwYVOa2BWz1GUHPIWy9M9cI/s1600/2010-07-26.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
For those of you who don't know, I run a gaming community called <a href="http://interguild.org/">interguild.org</a>, and today is the Interguild's 5th birthday! This community is a big part of my life, so I wanted to dedicate a blog post to them.<br />
<br />
The Interguild is a very interesting example for how a strong community can form around a single game. In this post, I will be trying to figure out what the major factors were that contributed to the growth of this community, and I'll also be critiquing how the creators of the game both helped and hurt that community throughout the years.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It started with <i>Hannah and the Pirate Caves</i> (HATPC)</span><br />
<br />
On November 25th, 2003, neopets.com released a new Shockwave game called <i>Hannah and the Pirate Caves</i> (HATPC, you can find a link to it at the end of this post). It was a puzzle-platformer, in which the player interacted with various crates to solve puzzles and avoid death. It was simple and fun to play, and its mechanics supported a nice mix of puzzle and action. The defining feature of the game was the downloadable CaveMaker program, which allowed players to make their own levels.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyda4KguTDM9RyDAlSGjEGSSnnr9evvkQr3xO29ddkh4HhIkNa1H2Ct-NFsfS613KZ21USXRr3IWuWpxhu8htVqqRi-kY59SdP7Ougoi0bRXzrKbmKzY9ziXx85Yg1EVue7lMD760MsZZQ/s1600/hatpc.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyda4KguTDM9RyDAlSGjEGSSnnr9evvkQr3xO29ddkh4HhIkNa1H2Ct-NFsfS613KZ21USXRr3IWuWpxhu8htVqqRi-kY59SdP7Ougoi0bRXzrKbmKzY9ziXx85Yg1EVue7lMD760MsZZQ/s1600/hatpc.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Hat + PC = HATPC</b><br />
(my non-standard pronunciation)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
HATPC fans quickly formed their own terminology around the game. Individual levels were called "caves". Caves were divided up into "traps", sometimes "rooms". People who made caves were called "cavers". Anything dedicated to HATPC was said to be dedicated to "caving." The creators of the game were often referred to as TNT, which was the abbreviation of the official neopets.com staff account: theneopetsteam. It is unknown who actually developed the game, whether it was made by an internal development team within neopets or if they hired an outside company to do it.<br />
<br />
TNT did not offer any easy way for players to share their user levels. Players could only have one level uploaded to their account at a time, and so to play a specific level, all one needed to know was which username that level was uploaded to. Interestingly, these constraints had turned HATPC into a social game. If you wanted to play more user levels, you had to meet more people who played the game.<br />
<br />
Much of the early HATPC community formed over neopets' forum boards. During the weeks after the release of HATPC, there were tons of caving topics, where players shared levels with each other and gave feedback. There would even be "caverating" topics where the author would give a rating to any level that was posted on the thread. These topics became very popular as they were a great way to find new levels to play.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOh8KZB1p-cTGXWuEMVZT8zqq4ZgBW7UoqjWJMMQP2-IVStLAStU2ZDLGQpa-BTaahj7WBZT7RuiapGfEyuCWs1Ip61hafWf5Ln-8B3hVGPQGZMuBJvRp28YoYKaBLSwy8FAoT2dqYIio/s1600/cyberfrettchen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLOh8KZB1p-cTGXWuEMVZT8zqq4ZgBW7UoqjWJMMQP2-IVStLAStU2ZDLGQpa-BTaahj7WBZT7RuiapGfEyuCWs1Ip61hafWf5Ln-8B3hVGPQGZMuBJvRp28YoYKaBLSwy8FAoT2dqYIio/s200/cyberfrettchen.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Cave of the Week winner #94</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Perhaps the best thing that TNT did to foster the growth of the HATPC community was to launch a Cave of the Week contest.<b> </b>This weekly competition created an incentive for players to make better levels, thus providing yet another reason for players to share their levels with each other and get feedback on how to improve. The contest also promoted some of the best levels made by the community, which could encourage new players to start looking for more user levels to play. The contest ensured that the game would get featured on neopets' news page every single week, thus advertising the game to countless new players throughout the years.<br />
<br />
It wasn't long before the caving discussions spilled away from the forums and into the guilds. Neopets had this feature where you could create a club about anything, and aside from a nice homepage, guilds also got their own private forum thread. While the game now received less publicity from the public forum boards, the guilds did manage to bring players together in order to form a tighter community. Because players had to actively join a guild before they could join its private discussions, this created a clearer sense of whether or not you were a part of the community.<br />
<br />
It's important to remember that most of these players were kids between the ages of 9 and 14. It didn't take long for the HATPC craze to die down, either because they lost interest or because of school. And yet, many players managed to stick with the game for years, having it be their main reason for visiting neopets.com. One could argue that it was instead the community, not the game, that kept bringing people back.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Inter-Guild Alliance</span><br />
<br />
Out of all the caving guilds that were formed, the <b>HATPC Guild</b> was by far the largest and oldest. By the time I discovered the game in 2006, however, I mistakenly thought the guild was dead. I noticed that the guild leader, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=GAWMan">gingerandwhiskers</a>, hadn't logged on to the site in several months and the homepage had outdated announcements, but as I later found out, the guild's discussion thread was still pretty active.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBRReNotneJIwvfguO9079Y4jmeNEMl8-AtXvwHsm99QozcN8Y_tUuFdonjnS8F4eWdTffSuNgoEzbcr_1gi_rtZGCtpgRspftxfNzyCohmSgtsCgoIU017uR0wSdgUYHZMtF6R1-PD8N/s1600/1979820_logo.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBRReNotneJIwvfguO9079Y4jmeNEMl8-AtXvwHsm99QozcN8Y_tUuFdonjnS8F4eWdTffSuNgoEzbcr_1gi_rtZGCtpgRspftxfNzyCohmSgtsCgoIU017uR0wSdgUYHZMtF6R1-PD8N/s1600/1979820_logo.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The guild logo</b><br />
(Sorry, I don't have<br />
an image of the old<br />
PCCA homepage)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Rather than joining the HATPC Guild, I created a new one called the <b>Pirate Caves Cavemakers Association (PCCA)</b>. The most memorable aspect of the PCCA was its ridiculously huge and intricate homepage. It was basically just an enormous image superimposed on to where the homepage should've been. It would've made a web designer cringe, but most of us kids thought it was amazing and new. It really helped us stand out in a landscape of seemingly dead caving guilds. And so by the end of the summer we had a pretty decent number of members.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, members from the HATPC Guild were discussing how to revive the caving community. One member, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=jebby">Jebby</a>, decided that all the HATPC players should be brought together into one group, rather than dividing themselves among the guilds. When forming this HATPC super-community, there was the risk that some guilds would refuse to join for fear that they would be taken over or merged. And so one of the mottos of this new inter-guild alliance was that, "The Interguild is not a merge!"<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIgnIZ3qPdiO1qPRzLbtenmvJrbLpSfdotlvxcpaCVlSjdAmpD6Fs9a1t2baQVo-mGX6wjMiS-iBlKKvjdDNHjnuKUuw0Xn5lMO_N8_zorbAEsOUWeASb4TE6EE5HCSwdGP7cnUz6Qkiu/s1600/2010-08-05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggIgnIZ3qPdiO1qPRzLbtenmvJrbLpSfdotlvxcpaCVlSjdAmpD6Fs9a1t2baQVo-mGX6wjMiS-iBlKKvjdDNHjnuKUuw0Xn5lMO_N8_zorbAEsOUWeASb4TE6EE5HCSwdGP7cnUz6Qkiu/s1600/2010-08-05.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
On September 27th, 2006, Jebby contacted me about the alliance idea, and the Interguild was born! After a couple of months, two more guilds had joined: the Cavers Guild, and the HatPC Raters and Idea Givers. <b>The Cavers Guild</b> was started by <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=Flame">Flame</a> and was pretty average overall, while the <b>HATPC Raters</b> guild, headed by <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=jellsprout">jellsprout</a>, was pretty much just a dead guild. There was also a fifth group that joined about six months later, which called itself the <b>AAH (All About Hannah) Chatgroup</b>. Founded by <a href="http://www.interguild.org/members/viewprofile.php?user=imtimi">egruntz</a>, this wasn't really a guild, but instead a campaign to recreate the HATPC craze on the neopets.com forum boards. It was not very successful, but it was a lot of fun at first and it helped us advertise for more members.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Caving Renaissance</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
The first two months of the Interguild were cumbersome as we had to go back and forth across the guilds in order to keep track of all of the discussions that were going on. And so on November 21, 2006, I set up the <a href="http://interguild.domingo.org/forum/">HATPC Interguild Forums</a>, which allowed us to have all of our conversations in one place, away from Neopets. Rather than getting a new domain name, I used an old domain that my dad once used, which is why our URL was <b>interguild.domingo.org</b>. We would keep these forums for another two years before moving on to <b>interguild.org</b>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipEMfW0ITLQUwutrmNEcsaYsImmkUGPKNxB33ugLgV7QHaWwYXlIKfv-Ddaoc0xL2l4hnm3eQvek9CHwOo6EEKwlrYBAq5PRfeKxFIOHrpfKRYzp-0uDaFdlbQTFOMHjkcXmRLICapulHi/s1600/interguild_forums.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipEMfW0ITLQUwutrmNEcsaYsImmkUGPKNxB33ugLgV7QHaWwYXlIKfv-Ddaoc0xL2l4hnm3eQvek9CHwOo6EEKwlrYBAq5PRfeKxFIOHrpfKRYzp-0uDaFdlbQTFOMHjkcXmRLICapulHi/s1600/interguild_forums.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Oh, the nostalgia.</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What happened on these forums was truly remarkable. We discovered several new ways to play the game that we never thought was possible. It turned out that HATPC was riddled with interesting glitches which we began to exploit in our levels. Some of these glitches include: <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5362">duck-jumping</a>, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5227">fake crates</a>, bottomless pits, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5237">the zero-gravity glitch</a>, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=133">the water drain glitch</a>, <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5243">"Error; you are stupid"</a>, and <a href="http://www.interguild.org/videos/viewvid.php?vid=127">the second door</a>. We even discovered <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5575">two new tiles</a> that were originally programmed into the game but were not included in any of the campaign levels or the CaveMaker program.<br />
<br />
Many of these discoveries added new dimensions to the kinds of levels that we could make. It was just a ton of fun to stretch the game past its limits and then get rewarded for it with new glitches and mechanics.<br />
<br />
After managing to redefine the game in so many ways, we felt as if we truly owned HATPC. It was our game, and unfortunately, we were the only people in the world who played HATPC this way. The death of the community would've meant the death of the game as we knew it, and so we really valued every one of our few members. We were always excited when a new member joined, we missed people when we realized they hadn't logged in for quite while, and we rejoiced when they came back after months of inactivity.<br />
<br />
I have never seen any other online community that was as close-knit as the Interguild. While some members do have special privileges in order to moderate posts, the Interguild had always been run by the community. We often hold open discussions about the problems that we face, such as how to find new members and what direction our website should take. There was never any one person who was the "owner" of the Interguild, except for maybe Jebby, but he never claimed to have authority over anyone. And I was just the guy who kept the forums running.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/RzCYBL2jzc0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>To be continued...</i></span><br />
<br />
<i>Wow, this post is turning out to be a lot longer than I thought. So I'm gonna split this into another two-part series, just like what I did with the <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/viral-spreading-of-online-lecture.html">History of Extra Credits</a>. I'll try to get Part 2 done as soon as possible.</i><br />
<br />
<i>EDIT: <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/history-of-interguild-part-2-tnt-ruins.html">Click here for Part Two!</a></i><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><i>Where to play HATPC</i></span><br />
<br />
<i>If you want to play HATPC, I recommend loading the game <a href="http://www.interguild.org/games/?game=4">from our site</a> (there's a link there labeled, "Click to Open the HATPC Window"). The <a href="http://www.neopets.com/games/play.phtml?game_id=349">neopet's game window</a> includes annoying ads. You'll also want to <a href="http://www.interguild.org/blogs/?id=5464">read this guide</a> on how to get the game to work properly on your computer.</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-3778170947719345292011-09-15T22:30:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:16:51.519-07:00Nom: the One-Button, Phone-Rotating, Running Game<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrJhBGMGDHD88WG3FvA0-g3MJuPvUjhAbHLSnoteAOHe2hJr7XiXuFGJAhUj2RmlE_VRHRMnjVa5yFvQ4l8fiitDMk8IHlpa7VppVox9B3qXRdS3DoeDPlFxNOVQSBDZluikQ6gxuOP5Un/s1600/nom.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrJhBGMGDHD88WG3FvA0-g3MJuPvUjhAbHLSnoteAOHe2hJr7XiXuFGJAhUj2RmlE_VRHRMnjVa5yFvQ4l8fiitDMk8IHlpa7VppVox9B3qXRdS3DoeDPlFxNOVQSBDZluikQ6gxuOP5Un/s1600/nom.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
The rise of the mobile games industry is one of the best things to happen to video games within the last decade. This market has vastly expanded the number of people who play video games, while fostering a very fertile environment for innovation and creativity that cannot be matched by other game markets.<br />
<br />
Having said that, however, I personally don't pay much attention to the mobile games industry. I don't even have a good excuse. I have an iPod Touch but I mainly use it as a pocket-sized web browser. What finally got me thinking about mobile games was the fact that my client for the <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-evolving_14.html">class</a> project is <a href="http://www.rivermanmedia.com/">Riverman Media</a>, a two-person mobile-game studio. I figured that if I'm going to be of any use to them, then it's about time I started learning all I can about this market.<br />
<br />
And that's how I came across a popular cell-phone game called <i>Nom</i>. This game was made way back in 2003 by a Korean game studio called <a href="http://www.gamevil.com/">Gamevil</a>. Before talking about the game, I think it'd be best to give some historical context first.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The State of Mobile Games in 2003</span><br />
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During the few years prior to 2003, there was quite a lot of hype about video games on phones. Phone companies loved the idea of using games to make their customers use more data. New mobile-game studios were receiving billions of dollars from venture capitalists in anticipation of a bright new market.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6gJAVpP4QcFJgD22KCv9eaC_YNfHuE5EVjJ5kwL0CCkGanchs2IJCCC5rdJ0VZkDe7YJ-VHaJsWpV-8KbVlfX0Ae-K8WnQyToDoFkeUAxu4gpUHMAYtPSLFnUkbhR1DHPCyyx5kZSmOi7/s1600/d_nokia_6650-DCT4-NHM-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6gJAVpP4QcFJgD22KCv9eaC_YNfHuE5EVjJ5kwL0CCkGanchs2IJCCC5rdJ0VZkDe7YJ-VHaJsWpV-8KbVlfX0Ae-K8WnQyToDoFkeUAxu4gpUHMAYtPSLFnUkbhR1DHPCyyx5kZSmOi7/s1600/d_nokia_6650-DCT4-NHM-1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>A typical phone from 2003</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Cell phones came very close to surpassing handheld video game consoles. In 2003, Nokia released the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gage">N-Gage gaming phone</a>, which was even more powerful than Nintendo's Game Boy Advanced SP. However, not only was it expensive, but it was overshadowed by Sony's unveiling of the PlayStation Portable during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) just a few months prior to its release. Cell phones had to wait another five years for the iPhone's revolution before they threatened the balance of handheld consoles again.<br />
<br />
Mobile games from this era had to put up with some severe technical limitations. Phone displays were incredibly small and had only recently adopted color. Even with Java, a supposedly platform-free programming language, porting games from phone to phone involved quite a bit of work, as each phone had varying processing capabilities. It was a very frustrating area to be working in, and the awkward button interfaces only made things worse. Phones just didn't seem like very interesting gadgets to be making games for.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEire_9FHnf8uh34kbpBvSqB4Xb9rCVwP0zUCdvh4R9yEUv5oEQ2VIKs9k4Hkuke_l3p2hNI0kmPWLO22QYyocJto-DxKfaoTZ0gIlJQpTp0UMLMWI6TT0FIG-G-mtwaUBffEVdNfGvV6Qzn/s1600/gamevil_logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEire_9FHnf8uh34kbpBvSqB4Xb9rCVwP0zUCdvh4R9yEUv5oEQ2VIKs9k4Hkuke_l3p2hNI0kmPWLO22QYyocJto-DxKfaoTZ0gIlJQpTp0UMLMWI6TT0FIG-G-mtwaUBffEVdNfGvV6Qzn/s1600/gamevil_logo.jpg" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Gamevil's <i>Nom</i></span><br />
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A wise game designer believes that a game should be defined just as much by the technology that's running it as by its gameplay mechanics or visual style. Rather than ignoring the fact that the game is being played on a phone, successful games such as <i>Nom</i> used the cell-phone's qualities (both the good and the bad) to create an experience that the player couldn't have enjoyed anywhere else.<br />
<br />
<i>Nom</i> is game about running. As Nom runs across the screen, its your job to help him avoid obstacles, which become more surprising as you progress. This game did something that was very innovative at the time by using only one button. While the action button is mainly used for jumping, it can also trigger other actions such as kicking monsters, dancing with a girl, and giving grandma a ride on your back. Perhaps the most interesting mechanic was the fact that<b> </b>the player would have to rotate the phone in order to keep Nom at the bottom of the screen.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_364787671"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUrm2fyvKDf2xmTg3wI1S9wg5VIrfuxBS326X1dQXzuK_b3QYRGjWU86HvxZrL9jiD5Tt2BsTgjtLMLNEqKS4MBSeTVvndkf8lO1s1-YyCrZL3CU0s72NcSdu4qJ-xqruzSNNwBkLV52Tm/s1600/nom_lrg.jpg" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmozUzkl3OU">Click here to watch <i>Nom</i> in action!</a> </b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Through its simplistic graphics, colors, and mechanics, the game had more personality than most other phone games at the time, which seemed to be more concerned with making mobile versions of existing games rather than making new ones.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Sequel Will Blow Your Mind</span><br />
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<i>Nom 2</i> expanded on this concept even further. This time Nom is on a journey through the human mind. Aside from an upgraded visual and musical style, the game also featured an "Out of Body" mechanic, where Nom is split into two people (physical and mental). Both characters move separately and are controlled by two separate buttons. By forcing the player to use his/her brain in such a way as to be two different people at once, the game's designer Bong Koo Shin was trying to make the player feel the Out-of-Body weirdness that was the theme of the game.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4VqPVTAswWCBz1-yC-aM8SbyEZDSOm2e9KMg9KcIAJEIA5WAa-0tg-GGi58MVq6SbYHFqQkc3OdDDLkA9tPSNH5laSt1U6ls9BZWmptAHjYMc_SRoAcax1pDGeIJQdL7mCQiSeZJsE-p/s1600/nom2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF4VqPVTAswWCBz1-yC-aM8SbyEZDSOm2e9KMg9KcIAJEIA5WAa-0tg-GGi58MVq6SbYHFqQkc3OdDDLkA9tPSNH5laSt1U6ls9BZWmptAHjYMc_SRoAcax1pDGeIJQdL7mCQiSeZJsE-p/s1600/nom2.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
And if that wasn't enough,<b> </b>beating the game awarded the player with the opportunity to enter a message and then beam it into outer space! The message was a 16x16-pixel box, that allowed the player to write or draw anything they wanted. The phone would then send the message to a Ukraine Space Agency satellite, free of charge, where it would then be projected towards a galaxy 45 light years away. After just three months, the game had sent over 160,000 messages to this unknown world.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Broken Biases</span><br />
<br />
I'm so used to the high-tech smartphones of today that when I was learning about how limited the old cell-phones were, I had a hard time seeing why anyone would waste their time trying to make games on them. But the <i>Nom</i> games shattered my biases through how it used the limited technology as a strength, rather than a weakness, in order to create a truly incredible experience.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>By the way, Gamevil has already published </i>Nom 5<i>. While it would be fun to talk about three more </i>Nom<i> games, I can't seem to find any information about </i>Nom 4<i>, unfortunately.</i><br />
<br />
<i>And it seems that most iOS games, including </i>Nom 5<i>, are incompatible with my iPod Touch. Will I ever get into mobile games? :(</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-11927493531332182902011-09-14T19:36:00.001-07:002011-12-14T11:42:14.490-08:00It's Evolving!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiskZOymuWWEnvMYJN3D1Q_0SQ_dgopWTrYhAPIBAvxdvxQtb8Cr_tJXN23uX7PMe9dZKgzmGiD3thD8SN3SAJ6OPlBbqioI0aP_BNjb9u-5p9lMswAVbe5SX4_RmTMgC1eVpRZ1_TBkvqO/s1600/Pokemon-Evolving.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiskZOymuWWEnvMYJN3D1Q_0SQ_dgopWTrYhAPIBAvxdvxQtb8Cr_tJXN23uX7PMe9dZKgzmGiD3thD8SN3SAJ6OPlBbqioI0aP_BNjb9u-5p9lMswAVbe5SX4_RmTMgC1eVpRZ1_TBkvqO/s320/Pokemon-Evolving.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Wow this blog grew faster than I expected. Actually, it's still super small, but I just didn't expect it to grow at all. So to accompany this "growth", the name has been changed to something less goofy and the <b>domain name has been changed</b> accordingly. The old URL will now redirect you to this one.<br />
<br />
And due to popular demand, <b>you can now subscribe to this blog through your email!</b> Just look at the top of the right sidebar for the subscription field. Everyday, FeedBurner checks to see if there are any new posts on the blog, and if there are any then it'll send you an email. The emails get sent out between at 11pm-1am GMT -6:00, which is Central Time in the United States and Canada.<br />
<br />
<b>I started this blog less than a month ago for a university course</b> called Business Intelligence: Web and Social Media Analytics. We are tasked with maintaining this blog throughout the semester, posting at least once a week about anything that's related to the class in some way. After my first two entries just happened to be about games, I decided to keep the pattern going.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEeiy2wnz2-4g_2oSkYuV_CWafSX7sbLzbAm-hQOzwFFH47aWcDRFLi2GLIpU7BendGxYDa9rdX66WXdEfzbatDtICmZCZ5O20f_7WAxJOOeuAg1b0x-8EebbYzaUTxfTulXlFlcDy44YK/s1600/arizona.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEeiy2wnz2-4g_2oSkYuV_CWafSX7sbLzbAm-hQOzwFFH47aWcDRFLi2GLIpU7BendGxYDa9rdX66WXdEfzbatDtICmZCZ5O20f_7WAxJOOeuAg1b0x-8EebbYzaUTxfTulXlFlcDy44YK/s1600/arizona.jpg" /></a>Pretty quickly, I realized that I wanted to keep this blog once the course ended. I had tons of great ideas for posts about games, but they didn't really link with any of the course material. I intend to work in the video game industry some day, and I hear that having a blog is a great way to tell employers that you really do think about games all the time. But probably the biggest motivator for keeping this blog has been the praise I've gotten after showing it to my friends and other people I know from the Internet.<br />
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For the sake of the class, I originally decided not to change anything about the blog until the semester was over. But then I realized what a tangled mess it would be to change my blog's name and URL after it had ranked up some followers. Aside from that, nothing else is really going to change. <b>This is still a blog for school</b>, but the tricky part will be balancing my target audiences, the gamers and the classmates.<br />
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And because this doesn't count as a "real" blog post, you can expect that I'll post something more interesting before the weekend.<br />
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EDIT: <b>The class has ended!</b> <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/12/understanding-mis496a-through-game.html">Click here to read my analysis of the whole semester.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1936804295276925901.post-18459835790502542782011-09-08T21:07:00.000-07:002012-07-18T23:15:26.564-07:00History of Extra Credits, Part 2: "Inspired by Humanity"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigtnXkAnPIPuI3Jd9FvPCZFR2SFUOViiWOfqN7qHYe1bFqJtidV7HXlY5iz5s3hGFACiNNcesmJ9zdQlz4JeznKFP_B2aSgg7VUOMaL3ybzRxgLOdZhj3EF48p7K_VRyXg9o1i8ptxfi5B/s1600/ec.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigtnXkAnPIPuI3Jd9FvPCZFR2SFUOViiWOfqN7qHYe1bFqJtidV7HXlY5iz5s3hGFACiNNcesmJ9zdQlz4JeznKFP_B2aSgg7VUOMaL3ybzRxgLOdZhj3EF48p7K_VRyXg9o1i8ptxfi5B/s1600/ec.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i>Be sure read my <a href="http://livio-game-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/viral-spreading-of-online-lecture.html">previous blog post</a> before reading this one, because it provides much of the backstory.</i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Can't Pay the Bills</span><br />
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While the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ExtraCredits">Extra Credits</a> video lecture series was having an incredible rise in followers, the show was in fact suffering from some serious monetary issues.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUP42ILyRzaXq4fTbJziQ-zO9osAONM3xHN3zUSdFWqMk5EJCnndb9RXBRJ1_OtoQWwWGXXYlHZ3gFjoXVIqjVl0MLEeDkB1d_T1B0WxyspDAbYVlQvg0YGrDqRa1vH2uyly8DXy-WWmT/s1600/extra_credits_the_skinner_box.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBUP42ILyRzaXq4fTbJziQ-zO9osAONM3xHN3zUSdFWqMk5EJCnndb9RXBRJ1_OtoQWwWGXXYlHZ3gFjoXVIqjVl0MLEeDkB1d_T1B0WxyspDAbYVlQvg0YGrDqRa1vH2uyly8DXy-WWmT/s1600/extra_credits_the_skinner_box.gif" /></a><a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/">The Escapist</a>, the publication that originally hired the show and therefore made weekly new episodes possible, was having a hard time paying their bills. To help them out, the Extra Credits team told their publisher to prioritize getting everyone else paid first, because they didn't want to be the ones to crowd out other people's paychecks.<br />
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Over the course of one year, the Escapist had only been able to pay the Extra Credits team for four episodes, which meant that they owed them about $20,000. Daniel and James have basically been working on it for free, while James has been paying Allison's wages using his own money.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Really Bad News</span><br />
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This past June was the breaking point. First, James made a request to his publisher that he get paid quickly so that he could support his brother, who was suffering through a divorce. While the Escapist promised to pay them, the money never came.<br />
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Then, the team got some very alarming news about Allison. She had an old arm injury from years ago that was never correctly healed, and if she didn't receive urgent surgery, she could permanently lose her ability to draw. Furthermore, her health insurance wouldn't cover it because they classified her injury as a pre-existing condition.<br />
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James personally felt terrible about the situation, "That made twice in a month where I failed someone I cared about very much because I had spent all my money on the show."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdcs3MQ_SDp5RHjNNC523iXhGNo-ycdo0gw3QoFOQb0jih8oppvfZwy-NJkEaqqfpx0OtVG0Gg6ceWYROJi5EeaIo49jTXnesGbZ7TrgW0PuSy6996AnP5X_PZ2EqUP1kEy7YbZHsuDPZY/s1600/me-300x168.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdcs3MQ_SDp5RHjNNC523iXhGNo-ycdo0gw3QoFOQb0jih8oppvfZwy-NJkEaqqfpx0OtVG0Gg6ceWYROJi5EeaIo49jTXnesGbZ7TrgW0PuSy6996AnP5X_PZ2EqUP1kEy7YbZHsuDPZY/s1600/me-300x168.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Allison Theus</b></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Calling All Gamers!</span><br />
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To save Allison's arm, the Extra Credits team set up a fundraiser on <a href="http://www.rockethub.com/">RocketHub.com</a>, a crowdfunding website for creative projects. They were actually quite ashamed to have to resort to asking for a handout, so they set up a number of rewards that people could earn by donating certain amounts.<br />
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They hoped to raise $15,000 in 60 days, but instead they raised $25,000 in less than <i>six hours</i>. And this was all from their Facebook followers alone. It wasn't until the next morning that they actually posted about it on the Escapist.<br />
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But the money just wouldn't stop coming in. You could literally refresh the page every few minutes and watch the money rise and rise. After just 24 hours, people had donated almost $56,000. And that's not even counting the donations that many users sent straight to Allison's PayPal account.<br />
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Over the next few days, the RocketHub link blazed through the Internet. Both large and small publications were posting articles about this truly amazing story, inspiring gamers worldwide to take part in the cause. I've even seen some users upload translated, sub-titled versions of Exta Credits episodes.<br />
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James would later recall what those days were like: "And that was truly one of the greatest weeks of my life. Better than releasing games, better than lecturing in the halls of GDC. I really can never say thank you enough."<br />
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The fundraiser's 60 days ended just a few days ago. The <a href="http://www.rockethub.com/projects/2165-extra-credits">final tally</a> was <b>$103,814</b>, almost 700% of what they were originally hoping for.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ugly Business</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
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Unfortunately, the story doesn't end here. The Extra Credits team felt that if the Escapist wasn't able to pay them, then its about time they left the site. Furthermore, they wanted to be able to do things such as selling t-shirts or perhaps writing a book, and they felt that the Escapist's unreliability would only hold them back.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_miR5FDW38wUNZk0RBfS_Xwj2Pr7Qf9XHNwHw-qC1YLx_08FqmG3UKNy2SKK0zemEHk-vjsfrv0QeE8W8nnkSap22RbWs-4dPTN3MH3awrQ3mviWUoGy5w7UV7azpvDKNYfh5LOWN69j/s1600/Untitled-1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_miR5FDW38wUNZk0RBfS_Xwj2Pr7Qf9XHNwHw-qC1YLx_08FqmG3UKNy2SKK0zemEHk-vjsfrv0QeE8W8nnkSap22RbWs-4dPTN3MH3awrQ3mviWUoGy5w7UV7azpvDKNYfh5LOWN69j/s1600/Untitled-1.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(parody image made by fans)</td></tr>
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So they offered to let the Escapist keep the debt that was owed to them in exchange for the rights to the Extra Credits intellectual property. However, the Escapist responded by claiming that the RocketHub fundraiser was a joint venture and so 75% of the money raised was the property of the Escapist. This not only meant that the Escapist's debt to Extra Credits had technically been paid by letting them keep their money, but it also meant that Extra Credits owed the Escapist $9500.<br />
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"What followed was weeks of legal wrangling, lies and muck," James would later explain.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Transition</span><br />
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In the end, Extra Credits kept all of the money that they raised, and reclaimed the rights to their show. They continued to release new episodes on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz">YouTube</a>. While Allison was out of commission, they enlisted the support of other artists who wanted to help keep the show running.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsv4_j_IaK0CYq5Dy3WVqu3X9SUX6sBBfzVJV7tlVHaOLoc5mPZnO3Ep8N-_h8WIAT6W8TdOTIIv-n-4G-vqbwoXuA1hs2237Ck-ek0kc2IboL5BCVO_zU3vH5fC7t4nEw6shtFSezpQG/s1600/lcrowd_0915.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJsv4_j_IaK0CYq5Dy3WVqu3X9SUX6sBBfzVJV7tlVHaOLoc5mPZnO3Ep8N-_h8WIAT6W8TdOTIIv-n-4G-vqbwoXuA1hs2237Ck-ek0kc2IboL5BCVO_zU3vH5fC7t4nEw6shtFSezpQG/s320/lcrowd_0915.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Crowdfunding Creative Games</b><br />
(illustration by TIME.com)</td></tr>
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And even though they vastly underestimated how much money they needed for Allison's surgery and rehabilitation, they still had a ton of money left over. They wanted to do something special with the money, something that would go back into the community in order to thank everyone for their kindness.<br />
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So they created the <a href="http://rockethub.com/projects/3074-extra-credits-indie-fund">Extra Credits Indie Fund</a>. The project's mission is to fund the kind of creative and artistic endeavors that real game publishers would consider to be too risky or unprofitable to invest in. They hope to create a system where games that push the medium forward get a chance to be made.<br />
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While the EC Indie Fund is initially funded by the huge amounts of leftover money, it also has a <a href="http://rockethub.com/projects/3074-extra-credits-indie-fund">new RocketHub page</a>. Last night, after just four days, they've already reached their goal of $10,000.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A New Beginning</span><br />
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The show has recently found a new publisher, <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits">Penny Arcade</a>, which is the same group that hosts the popular game festival known as the <a href="http://prime.paxsite.com/">Penny Arcade Expo (PAX)</a>. It's fitting since the Extra Credits team (James in particular) has always been a huge fan of PAX.<br />
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Despite all the nasty money and legal issues that surrounded this story, everything really did turn out for the better. All of this conflict has brought the Extra Credits fan community much closer together, while at the same time greatly expanding the show's audience. This event had managed to amplify the core message of the show that gamers can and should make a difference in the growth of their medium.<br />
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But perhaps the true reason why this event touched the hearts of so many people is best summed up by James' reaction to all the money they had raised: "I don't think I've ever been more inspired by humanity."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSjCZccJQrTi8WGpjA6sGltAFMPBlmm3059wfUPVwpazhNZyYMeeQMPKwOQqweXkbI_RH8OGEVh281hYzkd2HNV0d3OGvaMIyhPsU0OTkfi3zbdZeauFHUUX76bd8c_NuoNtfw5z2g5bZ4/s1600/Extra-Credits+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSjCZccJQrTi8WGpjA6sGltAFMPBlmm3059wfUPVwpazhNZyYMeeQMPKwOQqweXkbI_RH8OGEVh281hYzkd2HNV0d3OGvaMIyhPsU0OTkfi3zbdZeauFHUUX76bd8c_NuoNtfw5z2g5bZ4/s1600/Extra-Credits+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Extra Credits gives their thanks</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03032224313606398377noreply@blogger.com5