Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

GDC - Game Design Challenge

Posted by Zonk on Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:21 AM
from the throwing-down dept.
Entertainment Games
For the past three years, Eric Zimmerman (of the gameLab group) has brought together a trio of designers to tackled a difficult game concept. Last year's Emily Dickinson challenge was a surreal poetry experience. This year Mr. Zimmerman took a more serious tack, by putting forward the concept of 'The Nobel Peace Prize' for the participants to ponder. Read on for notes on the presentations from Harvey Smith, CliffyB, and Keita Takahashi.


PeaceBomb (Harvey Smith's Presentation) -

A Web-based game played through the Nintendo DS, which organizes flashmobs of players to do constructive projects. A gameworld in which Earth is crushed under the jackboot of a soulless government/corporation. Players come up with ideas in a community-driven format, where the participants can create good ideas. If the idea gets enough good karma from other players, the game 'creates' the flashmob by asking players to show up and do something specific. Examples include donating money or clothes to a shelter, cleaning up an economically depressed area, or donating time to a Habitat for Humanity project. The game would feature the ability for others to vote project idea. It would also allow users to sign petitions with the DS stylus, and similar.

Empathy (CliffyB's Presentation) -

A game targeted at the leaders of the industrialized nations. The game would be an attempt to humanize the effects of war by forcing leaders to face those most affected by war: Civilians. As a leader of a household, within the game, you attempt to keep your family together and alive during a conflict. The player (a national leader) goes through the process of joining the military, and has to deal with the stresses of training and the disruption to their family. The game would be intended to evoke sympathy in the civilian, not in the soldier. A key would be realistic graphics, to ensure empathy with the family characters.

Keita Takahashi's Presentation -

The creator of Katamari Damacy essentially stated that games are a luxury. Games are only around when the game player is in a peaceful situation. If we could somehow get games to everyone all around the world, it would lead to peace by osmosis. His presentation was marked by his struggle with English and a surreal Katamari-esque powerpoint presentation. Despite his obvious effort, Takahashi's English was quite good and his warning at the beginning that we might not understand him turned out to be unneccessary. The presentation ended with a smiling globe and ever propagating happy gamer-people.

After a few questions from the audience, the audience voted via their applause for the design they liked the most. The vote went to Harvey Smith, for his Peacebomb idea, by virtue of a huge audience outpouring. Will Wright was on hand to put his pretty 'reigning champ' tiara on the head of the winner.

For another view on the event, please check out Next Generation's coverage of the challenge.

+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Emily Dickinson - The Game 58 comments
The panels, lectures, and roundtables are what makes GDC so interesting to attend. The opportunity to hear the thoughts and opinions of game developers in this setting is unique, and every day there are dozens of options for the curious-minded. Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend one particularly intriguing session. The "Game Design Challenge" attempted to stretch the bounds of game design by tasking Peter Molyneux, Will Wright, and Chris Hocking with coming up with a game under the Emily Dickinson License. Read on for impressions and images from the unique experience.
[+] Katamari Creator Critical of Revolution 397 comments
Gamasutra has an article on Keita Takahashi's reaction to the Revolution controller. From the article: "Takahashi commented of the Revolution, which has drawn widespread praise for its underlying concepts from other Eastern and Western designers: 'I'm not really interested in it. I don't think a controller should have that much influence on the enjoyment of games.' He continued: 'I see what [Nintendo is] trying to do, but they're putting such emphasis on the controller; 'Woah, this controller lets you do this!' and I'm thinking - are you messing with us?'"
[+] Passively Multiplayer Gaming 72 comments
errorjustin writes "In a recent Mobile Games Conference keynote speech, Justin Hall had the audience imagine their life as a videogame: 'You gain 'experience points' by using MSWord or by sending emails. Every item you cross off a 'to do' list gives you an experience bonus, until eventually you 'level up' your life. You become U+1.' So what can be done with all this user-generated data? That's where the idea gets exciting: 'Imagine a mobile game that alerts you that a bomb is going to go off in 24 hours. To defuse it you need to assemble 16 levels of chemistry expertise, and 22 levels of physics expertise. The friends on your friends list all have levels for both skills - levels that have been determined by their real-life expertise and activities. You'll need to pull enough people together, either friends or friends of friends, to defuse the bomb.'" Would certainly make your average Monday a little easier to handle. The winner of this year's Game Design Challenge had an interesting idea that was somewhat similar.
[+] Serious Game May Help Track Missing Kids 22 comments
GameSpot reports on a title announced at this year's Women Games conference. A University of East London project called Lost and Found may bring some sense of social responsibility to gamers when it is eventually rolled out to cell phones. Much like PeaceBomb , the game envisioned by Harvey Smith at the 2006 Game Designer's Challenge, Lost and Found will try to assist gamers in finding missing people via smart-mob activities. "Users can, for example, sign up for alerts when someone goes missing in their area, and if they see someone who resembles a photo of a missing child, take a photo, which will alert authorities to the possibility that an abducted child is nearby. The game will also present people with a series of objectives and mobilize groups to block roads and search fields."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

GDC - Game Design Challenge 19 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • His presentation was marked by his obvious struggle with English...

    His English was quite good, and his admonition at the beginning that we might not understand him turned out to be unneccessary.


    Which one was it??
    Oh well, I'm sure it was pretty cool either way.
    .....
    Jeffery: Where's your Katamari, Weedmaster P?
    Weedmaster P: We are inside it we have always been inside it.
    overcompensating.com [wigu.com]

  • Peace Bomb payout? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Allen Varney (449382) on Friday March 24 2006, @11:38AM (#14988520) Homepage
    Harvey Smith's Peace Bomb idea sounds great. To sustain its community base, the game would need some incentive for players to keep playing, because in this case the "grind" would be genuinely valuable. Possibly players would make micropayments for small in-game enhancements, such as avatar wardrobe or something; then the payments would be aggregated and paid out to one winner at the end of each community project, voted by each member present at the project. If there were a genuine profit incentive, this would draw a lot of idle players.
    • Of course, upon awarding the dosh, the game and/or flashmob would encourage you to donate the funds to whatever project you just completed....which isn't a bad thing....

      Dave
    • as well as the good feeling players would get from putting back into the community, perhaps they would be awarded with a Karma modifer ;) and get ranked on how helpful they were. gold star anyone ??

  • Possible at least theoretically. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vo0k (760020) on Friday March 24 2006, @11:41AM (#14988546) Journal
    Relativistic mass is gravitational mass (a body approaching speed of light gains mass instead of speed, the heavier a body is, the stronger its gravity -> the faster the body moves the stronger its gravity). The movement doesn't have to be in a straight line, it can be equally well a circular trajectory. So if you get something to spin fast enough that material on the outer edges reaches linear C, it gets heavier and as result its gravity increases. By pumping arbitrary amounts of energy into rotation you're arbitrarily increasing the mass and as result creating a small body that isn't travelling at any significant speed but has arbitrarily high gravity. Slow it down and its gravity drops.
    Now theory hits practice and centrifugal forces break it apart long before it nears C. But if you managed to get a piece of material hard enough not to break and withstand the forces, you can quite easily make it into a controllable gravitational mass.
  • The creator of Katamari Damacy essentially stated that games are a luxury. Games are only around when the game player is in a peaceful situation. If we could somehow get games to everyone all around the world, it would lead to peace by osmosis.

    Once everyone is in a position where they can stop worrying about where their next meal is coming from, where they're going to sleep at night, how they can avoid dying of a nasty disease .. then they can start thinking about luxuries like games. Giving them the games
  • As a Katamari fan, I can't say that Keita Takahashi's presentation is the least bit surprising. I do notice they made no mention of him being on an psychoactive substances, however...

  • Really... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eightyford (893696) on Friday March 24 2006, @11:52AM (#14988672) Homepage
    His presentation was marked by his obvious struggle with English and a surreal Katamari-esque powerpoint presentation. His English was quite good, and his admonition at the beginning that we might not understand him turned out to be unneccessary.

    One of these things is not like the other...
    • "marked by his obvious struggle with English grammer"
      "His English pronounciation was quite good"

      Is a way of making sense of the quote. Meaning he had some problems thinking up the proper sentence but you understood the words that are coming out of his mouth.
      But thats just my 2c.
      • "marked by his obvious struggle with English grammer"
        "His English pronounciation was quite good"

        Is a way of making sense of the quote. Meaning he had some problems thinking up the proper sentence but you understood the words that are coming out of his mouth. But thats just my 2c.

        You know, I'm starting to get very used to being wrong. ;)
  • A fourth game idea, a GTA style game where you run around preventing crime and helping pedestrians. It could even be a MMO.
  • The creator of Katamari Damacy essentially stated that games are a luxury. Games are only around when the game player is in a peaceful situation. If we could somehow get games to everyone all around the world, it would lead to peace by osmosis.

    People play games for entertainment and to escape. Soldiers have been playing games for centuries, whether they be games of dice, cards, or on the GBA. Besides, when I was younger, my siblings and I fought over the Nintendo far more than anything else.

  • UN did it (Score:2, Informative)

    by Finkbug (789750)
    http://food-force.com/ [food-force.com] Currently available for Windows & Mac and localized to more languages every day. Surprisingly, crucially, it's actually a solid game.
  • Osmosis, as you may know, is the diffusion of a solvent between two distinct 'cells' through a selectively-permeable membrane where there is a concentration gradient.

    This brings the question, is peace is to be transferred via osmosis, what dissolves in peace? Well, many chemicals found in the household dissolve in peace. You put sugar into water, stir it gently, and it dissolves in peace.

    Games, however, do not dissolve in peace. Experiements placing various cartridge and optical media into a large enough be
  • Wouldnt it be great if all games were done in a virtual battelfield, of using robots? but, alas, the loser would just resort to real warefare to win. it makes me wonder if peace would actually work. theres always one guy who wants to spoil things for everyone. if the world had no weapons, and peace was everywhere, what happens when one guy with a home-made weapon comes along? surely no-one could stop him that easily?

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.