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/).

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...

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.

"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.

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!

In collaboration with students from their animation class Prof. Meyer Hermann and Prof Bramkamp did an amazing job by bringing up an impressive games and speaker lineup.

Early birds that we are, @m_boesch and I got to do a little interview with Paolo Pedercini of la molleindustria. Here are some essential bits about his game design approach.

More info about the SPIELSALON: http://www.spielsalonkassel.com/de/

This represented a challenge for us. Only 1 week seemed like preciously little time for such a wide range of topics. Also, we were concerned about the language barrier. The courses at Cologne Game Lab depend a lot on the active participation of all involved.

But very soon, it became clear that our worries were completely unfounded. We were stunned by the active commitment and creativity of our guests.

The program we prepared consisted of various lectures, a visit at the studios of Turtle Entertainment and a couple of hands-on workshops in paper prototyping and Flash game development.

In Germany, China is often associated with bad publicity from the main-stream press. There are frequent reports of German products being copied. What we witnessed in the last week was exactly the opposite. All course participants showed an enormous creative potential. In just a few days, they came up with completely original and refreshing game ideas. On top of that, we were blown away by the attention to detail and out-of-the-box thinking apparent in the execution of the paper prototypes. Considering how most of the participants had little or no experience with games, this was a truly extraordinary result.

It was an exhausting but incredibly productive week for the participants but also for us at Cologne Game Lab. We have gained some key insights insights into the organization and execution of Workshops. We also hope we could inspire some of the participants to look more into game development in the future.

Although it was not part of the project´s framework, all students decided to design for the iOS plattform. Their argument: When it comes to serious games the touch surface of iPhone and iPad enhances the effect of immersion. As a player you literary take those world changing challenges into your own hands. 

At CGL we are looking forward to see the projects being developed further on. - Maybe as the students´master thesis?

THE GAMES

Nature - A game by Linda Kruse

You are NATURE, planet earth, upon which mankind has spread like an evil virus. Get prepared for the great payback: Create your own natural desasters to hit human mankind hard. Cure yourself by finally destroying them. - In the end it is all a matter of your own survival.

With her classy strategy based world simulation for iOS, Linda turns tables and puts the player in the role of mother earth who - in order to survive -  has to destroy mankind. "Nature" is a sarcastic comment on the current international climate politics.

Visuals by Fabricio Rosa Marques

Spirit Spots - A game by Achim Fell

Follow mysterious Prof. Malmström and unlock the essence of the secret bottles with Malmström-Demudolator. With their magic power you can dive right into the history of any touristical sight and see this place as you would have never imagined.

Spirit Spots is a crossmedia infotainment application for tourists. Using augmented reality elements Achim´s game lets users experience a city´s places of interest in a playful and sensous way.

Visuals by Fabricio Rosa Marques

Monster World - A game by Marcus Bösch

Travel with monsters. Learn about the world. That is the claim of a gaming and learning application for 5-7 years old kids. The game is designed to give players a creative and fun understanding of cultural differences. Marcus´promise: "There will be no boring stuff, no cute illustrations just because parents like them. No blatantly obvious educationa-purpose. No wagging finger. - Trust us. We have monsters."

Visuals by Claus Daniel Hermann

Pocket Steve - A game by Benjamin Gögge

In the role of a famous TV life counsellor (e.g. Super Nanny) you are responsible for the future of unemployed Steve. You better give him good advice, feed him well and make him pay his bills at the right time, otherwise he will end up broke, homeless and devastated. But beware - no matter how much you care for your unshaven Tamagotchi, he is eventually going to hate you.

With Pocket Steve, Benjamin features a satirical social role play game about prejudices against people who receive social welfare.

Visuals by Claus Daniel Hermann

At the IGF booth we luckily met last years IGF winner Andy Schatz who was very enthusiastic about this year´s submissions and the future of Indie Games.

Andy Schatz // Monaco

We had the chance to talk to some of the finalist and winners of the 2011 IGF competion directly at their busy booths:

Jens Nilsson // Amnesia

Brian Provinciano // Retro City Rampage

Jeroen D. Stout // Dinner Date

Peter Brinson // The Cat And The Coup

Richard Flanigan // FRACT

These and other questions related to Serious Exergaming will be investigated next week during the two-day conference "Sportlich spielend lernen: Lehren und Lernen mit Exergames?". The organizers (full disclosure: I am one of them) have assembled quite an impressive list of keynote speakers and panelists.

Let me just mention three of the English speaking participants:

• Ian Bogost, author of "Persuasive Games" and expert on exergaming, will deliver a webnote live from Georgia Tech.

• Eric Brown of Impact Games will talk about Peacemaker and Play the News and about designing Serious Games that are still fun.

• Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen of Serious Games Interactive and author of "The Educational Potential of Computer Games", will talk about lessons learned in the first ten years of the serious games movement.

The conference is taking place on March 16 and 17 in the ifs international filmschool, Cologne.

A detailed program can be found here.

Attendance is free though space is limited. You can register here.

So here is goodbye from San Francisco with the last (sentimental) episode and an interview with Game Design legend John Romero:

Björn Bartholdy meets John Romero:

Playtesting Nintendo 3DS:

Interview with Dr. Steffen P. Walz, author of Toward a Ludic Architecture: The Space of Play and Games and director of GEE-lab Melboune, talks about gamifying the world.

Indies rule!

Before FRACT was actually awarded as best student´s game, we had the chance to talk to game designer Richard Flanigan. Check out the video:

2011 IGF Award Winners:

Best Student Game:
Fract by Richard E Flanagan

Excellence in Design:
Desktop Dungeons by QCF Design

Technical Excellence:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Best Mobile Game:
Helsing's Fire by Ratloop

Excellence in Visual Art:
Bit.Trip Runner by Gaijin Games

Excellence in Audio:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Direct2Drive Vision Award:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games

Audience Award:
Minecraft by Mojang

IGF Nuovo Award
Nidhogg by Messhof

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Minecraft by Mojang

2011 Game Developer´s Choce Arward Winners:

Best Audio:
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games)

Best Debut Game:
Minecraft (Mojang)

Best Writing:
Mass Effect 2 (BioWare)

Best Game Design:
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games)

Best Downloadable Game:
Minecraft (Mojang)

Best Visual Art:
Limbo (Playdead Studios)

Best Technology:
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games)

Best Handheld Game:
Cut the Rope (Chillingo)

Innovation Award:
Minecraft (Mojang)

Game of the Year:
Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games)

See for yourself. Here comes the first of this year´s GDC-videopodcasts:

Also we had the chance to talk to Tracy Fullerton (USC School of Cinematic Arts) after the Educational Summit and recorded a litte Interview.

There has also been an AR Challange which closed at the end of 2010. Developers were asked to create the best next-genereation augmented reality application using the Qualcomm's AR SDK. The prize money is set to $200,000. The winners will be announced on February 15, 2011. It's a pitty that the AR SDK is not available for the iPhone since it only works with Qualcomm processor based devices.

But the future looks promising. Besides Qualcomm there are also other developers who try to tackle this issue and make AR even »more available« and easy to use, like for example Tonchidot with its SekaiCamera. Although some of the features seem promising the SekaiCamera is lacking 3D support plus the way objects are displayed is not sophisticated yet. But for sure it's only a question of time to see new, more complex AR platforms arise.

Video (German): CGL-participants of GGJ starring in "A Hard Day´s Night".

The Statistics

48 hours, 44 countries, 170 locations, 6500 participants, almost 1500 games, one weekend, one theme ("Extinction") that is the proud resume of this years edition of the Global Game Jam. In Cologne, we had 31 participants contributing 10 games - that´s a pretty good quota, too. Thanks to our highly ambitioned and creative crowd all games were finished in time (big deal) and now feature a broad range of genre, aestetics and plattform. 

Games Reviews & Prototypes

You want proof? Play-testing is very much appreciated by the Game Designers. Choose your game:

• Phantom Limb
• H.I.V. Extinction 1981
• Epic Extinction
• The Splitup Game
• An Accident in Paradise
• Cure
• Cybersecurity Emergency Assange
• The Great Tuna Escape
• Coherence
• 8 Bit(ch) Slap Apocalypse

Showtime

The Cologne-event was documented by a broadcasting team of "3Sat neues". The show aired on Sunday February 13.

Click here to Stream. The text version is here.

Ressources:

Get more info on 2011 Global Game Jam

• Official Website with all game contributions: http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2011/global-game-jam-cologne
• Our GGJ-Flickr-Album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/colognegamelab/sets/72157625806221889/

Recently at CGL we had a lecture by Claudia Küttel from the University of Klagenfurt. She is doing some research on Pen & Paper RPGs. She raised a lot of fascinating points during her lecture. One of them stood out for me personally. She mentioned a couple of reasons why Pen & Paper players disliked digital RPGs. The problem apparently was often the role-playing itself.

• Reflection Digital RPGs don’t do a good job at reflecting upon what the player already did. Previous events aren’t recalled. Of course they are in the embedded narrative but this part is not interactive therefore not really role-playing. Otherwise, players can often steal and murder and NPCs rarely remember or even notice. Of course there are attempts but they feel stiff and general when compared to the personalized, specific feedback you get in a Pen & Paper RPG. There, important events in adventures can have repercussions on many subsequent campaigns. Players build up a wealth of history they can draw upon. The recollection of the player’s actions become their character’s identity.

• Character Traits Pen & Paper RPGs are often about creating distinct characters. The characters go beyond simply a list of skills and a customizable appearance. The focus is very much on character traits, their idiosyncrasies. Those traits often heavily influence the kind of challenges the group will have. The example Claudia mentioned was having to cross a river with one of the characters being afraid of water. Again, some games try this (Fallout 3) but the traits often boil down to tame combat buffs. They do not inform the narrative like they do in Pen & Paper RPGs.

• Action / Reaction Possibly similar to the first part: in Pen & Paper RPGs characters change. The change is often influenced by big events happening. After almost dying in combat and being miraculously saved by a very lucky roll, one character may become religious, entertaining a belief of having been chosen (Pulp Fiction style). Changes like this may happen in digital RPGs (Cecil becoming a Paladin in Final Fatasy 3 / 2) but mostly in the embedded story, not because of events that were initiated by the player. This is basically what of Ludonarrative Dissonance is about.

• Crowded Storytelling more generally, Pen & Paper RPGs are more about participating in crowded storytelling, about experiencing a fiction in the making. It’s constantly about people throwing in ideas and other people picking them up, rolling with them and turning them into something more. It’s closer to brainstorming than to what you do in digital RPGs. Digital RPGs are more about consuming a story. There are some aspects of leeway and exploration but the fundamental course of action is not something that can be negotiated. There is nobody to negotiate with anyway.

I don’t suggest this is something game designers can or even should fix. But I think it may be something interesting to keep in mind. It may help us to see digital RPGs in a differend light.

(Crossposted from Game Design Scrapbook)