Art, con-, con art

July 28, 2019 ~ Gleb K. ~ 1 Comment

Conferences, conventions, congress, convergence, concord, conversations

One of the best opportunities to learn during education on Gotland is the conference organized by the faculty. I have already discussed this event once in my recap of the first year, but it is a gift that keeps on giving (no sarcasm here). Unfortunately, most 3rd-year students are too distracted from really utilising this opportunity due to the thesis writing. The 2nd-years, on the other hand, are presented with a problem to solve: how to make a product with the course requirement in mind, that would also be good enough to pass the requirements of the exhibition part of the conference?

One could disregard the conference, do the course assignment and that’s it. Or one could make an interesting thing for the display and to woo the judges/industry representatives. Or one could try to juggle both balls. And the majority of students decide to try their juggling skills.

The result is the pressure of a hydraulic press, a certain amount of stress, high probability of drama within the groups and a bunch of demos (because that’s what you are supposed to do for the course) that will most likely not be continued to work on. Some wounds might be soothed by a token reward at the end of this crazy race. But one has to wonder how it feels when you end up walking away empty-handed despite your creation not being a complete piece of garbage?

So, if you walk into this challenge as just two people, an artist and a designer, what is a developer to do? Analogue games and role-play are a way to approach this. And no need to look for a competent programmer which are surprisingly hard to come by.

An interesting thing about role-play is the influence over the game by a GM (Game Master; or DM for Dungeon Master). All you need is an imaginative person with a certain level of acting skills and anything can be turned into a source of entertainment. And in this way, a little conference can indirectly show what is has been happening at events like E3 and similar Cons. A company just throws into a room someone who is good at playing (no pun intended) the crowd. This is how they are able to walk away without showing any legit game footage or giving any detailed information about their project. Only the hype created by a talented GM.

So yes, GotlandGameCon is a great teaching tool. Almost no cons about it.

Corelan

July 20, 2019September 8, 2021 ~ Gleb K. ~ Leave a comment

…

Corelan was a middle-aged man of a medium build from a bigger Molrava city.
He got stationed to Trell after he accidentally let through a cart filled with goods among which were several barrels of rare delicate spices somewhere from across the Endless Sands. The outbreak of conflicts based on angry cooks and housewives fighting over the piquant spice turned the town into complete chaos for a week. The head judge of the city was so fed up by the cases of destroyed kitchens and sabotaged dishes that the spice was banned. Corelan petitioned to get transferred to somewhere where people didn’t give him the stink eye because he simply let a merchant with some ground herbs through the gates.

…

Interactive Storytelling 2018

WoW raiding as an analogy for the game development process

July 16, 2019July 18, 2019 ~ Gleb K. ~ Leave a comment

Recently, a couple of fellow fresh graduates and myself observed that applying for jobs is similar to applying for a place in a raiding guild in World of Warcraft. This made me reflect on how this can be taken further and that there is a similarity in the experienced frustrations when it comes to making a game in a group VS the frustrations of raiding in WoW.

Back in 2013 Blizzard claimed (source) that they have reached the number of 100.000.000 created accounts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that so many people actually played the game (an account ≠ a player) but it is likely that the person reading this blog post has at some point played WoW (also, a WoW player ≠ a WoW raider), but has never developed any kind of game. And if the reader falls into all the needed demographics they will probably have a laugh from reading this.

So, allow me to name some all the things I can remember, that made me roll my eyes in a WoW raid. All of these frustrations can be translated into the frustrations of a game dev. Let’s go!