Urban Pirates & Light Painting

Pervasive-Games-Expert Richard Wetzel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT who was instrumental in realizing the first project with our new master students – the 2011 class – mailed me these impressions:

The students were tasked with creating a game using the means of the theater. After my introduction into the history of pervasive games, each student pitched an idea. In the end we decided on two games that had to be developed in only three weeks - quite a demanding task.

The first game – a scavenger hunt with a pirate theme – was designed and staged by three students. A pirate captain introduced the players to their mission and sent them on the search for a precious treasure handing them a fragment of a map with an X marking the starting point. He also entrusted them with a backpack containing a variety of objects that might or might not become useful during the game.

When they arrived at the marked place, the players had to search for a while before they found a second pirate sitting on a bench. He agreed to give the players another fragment of the map if they would bring him a necklace he needed as a birthday present for his daughter.

The players managed to find the necklace submerged in a fountain and hidden inside a small treasure chest which they had to destroy to open. Guided by the new piece of the map, the players discovered a third pirate who again had a small task for them to fulfill.

A very nice scene happened in the middle of the game when the players were searching for the next clue and entered a shop selling live-roleplaying equipment. They asked the shopkeeper about the pirate treasure. He answered that he had no idea, but then he seemed to remember and asked if they were looking for the “Treasure Chest”.

The players enthusiastically nodded – only to find out that the shopkeeper was referring to another shop that used to be in the same place a few years ago.

This type of interaction between players and uninformed outsiders is one of the strong points of pervasive games perfectly illustrating social expansion.

In the big finale, the players had to beat a British pirate in a swordfight that used the insult mechanics from the classic computer game “The Secret of Monkey Island.”

The second game was designed by five students and was centered around light paintings created by using a slow shutter speed on a camera. Performing gestures or drawing objects with a light, an experienced light painter can create magnificent images. The story of the game had the Gods of Olymp wanting to choose a champion who had to proof him- or herself in a series of challenges.

At the beginning of the game, players were led into a room and handed an envelope. A narrator introduced everybody to the story and then asked the participants to open the envelope. Four persons were selected to be the main characters in the game. They formed two competing teams. An actor playing Prometheus created a light painting of an obstacle the players had to overcome, for example a zombie. The light painting was projected large-scale onto a wall and could only be seen by one of the two players in each team who then had to use pantomime to convey the information to his partner. The second player had to react with another light painting countering the danger they were facing. The audience voted for the better team.

Framing the game with Greek mythology worked really well, and the overall atmosphere created by darkness, light painting, the narrator and sound effects made quite an impression. Last but not least the imminent time pressure created by the automated camera for the light paintings assured that the players always had to think on their feet.

Overall, both groups of students created two very distinct games, which were very well received by the players and the audience.

For more information about pervasive games, please read “Pervasive Games: Theory and Design” by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waern (http://pervasivegames.wordpress.com/the-book/).

HD Remakes

A recent trend in the industry are HD remakes. Instead of developing new games, many game publishers decide to re-release old, successful games in HD. This is not a particularly new idea. HD remakes of older titles are already wide-spread among the Xbox Live Arcade titles, such as Rez HD, Ikaruga, Pac Man Championship Edition, Bionic Commando Rearmed and others.

But the recent influx of remakes is different. The sources for remakes become increasingly younger. Instead of downloadable titles, the games are being released on physical media, often at full price. The list of recent and upcoming releases is staggering: God of War, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid and many more.

The gaming community receives the remakes with mixed reactions. On the one hand, the remakes are another episode of the steadily worsening creative bankruptcy the traditional games industry is plagued with. Faced with the rising costs of AAA game development, the remakes offer a cheap and easy way out to release popular games at the fraction of the development of new games.

On the other hand, the remakes also offer the possibility for players to re-visit old masterpieces. The best example being Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The two critically acclaimed titles felt always somewhat inhibited by the limited capabilities of the PlayStation 2. The recent HD remake is an opportunity to re-discover what made them so influential in the fist place. At Cologne Game Lab, we decided to invite students to play the games as part of our new format, the CGL Game Club. Based on the idea of a book club, we will meet in a month to discuss our findings.

While the format is designed to establish and hone analytical skills of all participants, the final discussion will be also a good opportunity to evaluate the recent trend in the games industry. Stay tuned for more...

Radical Gamedesign II

In my previous post on Radical Gamedesign, I featured a video about a Gamedesign encounter with Paolo Pedercini of La Molleindustria at Spielesalon Kassel. At the event, Pedercini also presented a prototype of his new project PHONE STORY, which has now been released. At least it was released for 2 hours earlier today ...

PHONE STORY is officially promoted as "an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing". But in plain words the game is an anti-iPhone game for the iPhone. So it is not surprising that Apple has banned the game from the Appstore shortly after its official release.

I was quick and got to download one of the "rare" copies. Here´s the full report.

PHONE STORY (Attention: Spoiler)

When launching the game, the screen turns into a face and introduces itself to you as YOUR PHONE.

In the typical La-Molleindustria-style, the message is rather taught with the sarcastic hammer than in between the lines. Throughout a variety of simple minigames that are presented, the voice of your phone keeps on encouraging you to "meet the goal". Evil, huh? It´s not that simple.

While you try to be good and enhance your skills, you are being taught about the social costs of you current behavior in detail. After having successfully passed the mission, you are forwarded to the obsolescence mode where you compete in an endless spiral with market forces.

The gameplay is neat and well designed but most of all it´s the idea behind the game that captivates. A great game to make the perversion of turbo capitalism actually touchable - in a double sense.

The release and un-release might have the potential to open a discourse. And I think that is what La Molleindustria is striving for. Beyond the Radical Gamedesign of PHONE STORY the "real" game starts off now that the app has been unreleased again. Unlike the game itself this meta-game remains accessible to everyone.

Trauma - The Review

Eurogamer has a glowing review of Trauma, a game created by Cologne Game Lab's very own Krystian Majewski. And on top of that it is a very well-written and thoughtful review: 

"The interstitial movies are reminiscent of Julian Schnabel's film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, while the script and, in particular, Anja Jazeschann's performance as the young woman offer a tender insight into the frustrating vagaries of lying in a hospital bed, waiting to recover from a life-threatening accident. It's territory rarely touched upon by video games. ...

Trauma is too slight and too leftfield to attract a wide audience, but it offers a fascinating vision of game, film and still life meeting to create something both fresh and familiar. Its creator's aspirations may lie close to a filmmaker's, but this is a very different kind of homage to cinema than that espoused by Rockstar's Housers and their many imitators." 

So check them both out, the review and the game.

Expressive Videogames

The NOTGAMES FEST 2011 was our alternative games program to the mainstream events in Cologne. It was based upon the NOTGAMES idea of the Belgian Gamedevelopers Tale of Tales who also curated the selection for the expo.

From August 15-17 more than 250 visitors experienced the selected games. In addition to our fellow game enthusiasts, colleagues and friends from the industry, it was a pleasure to introduce so many first-time gamers to the facinating world of games.

Thanks again to all attendees and supporters. We had a great time and hope to see you back soon.

Adaptation

One especially challenging topic in Game Development is the adaptation of already established material. There are so many examples of poor movie adaptations in video games that they became a synonym for sub-par quality for most gamers. In a recent project at Cologne Game Lab, we tried to explore those challenges. We invited the experienced German game developer and writer Martin Ganteföhr to guide the project.

Martin suggested the use of a very interesting tool: Ren'Py. It is an open-source engine for interactive novels. It's surprisingly simply but offers an amazing level of customization due to it’s Python heritage. Ren'Py allowed our students to concentrate on the storytelling instead of the technical implementation.

The project was extremely difficult nonetheless. Each of the three teams chose a very different approach with it's own unique challenges. There were a lot of experiments, lengthy discussions but thankfully also profound insights. There are plans to do a public exhibition of the final games, so you will be able to see yourselves. Stay tuned!