Paper Prototyping Video Games
Generoso Fierro has just posted a set of podcasts on paper prototyping on the GAMBIT website. Since this seems to be something mysterious that new game developers frequently wonder about I figured it’d be worth reposting here. Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the videos yet, but Gene regularly puts together kick ass stuff so I’m guessing they’re pretty good.
Gene writes:
Have you ever wondered about the first stage of creating a video game? GAMBIT’s Technical Director Andrew Grant along with GAMBIT’s Lead Game Designer, Matthew Weise lead a group of three game designers (Kevin Laughlin, Alexis Brownell and Sophia Foster-Dimino) through the paper prototyping stage of videogame development. Video Produced by Generoso Fierro, Music and Editing by Garrett Beazley.
PART ONE: Andrew and Matthew present our game designers with a concept for a game. Here begins the process of creating the gameplay! Our designers use markers on paper, blocks, string and a host of other tools to make the game a reality.
PART TWO: Our game designers have decided to abandon the “paper” stage of development and go right for the whiteboard to hash out their game.
PART THREE: Design Consultant Tim Stellmach comes by to play and review the prototype the designers have come up with based on the game concept.
If you like these videos be sure to check out episode 2. Cool Stuff!
May 24, 2010 | | Comments Off
Category: Random
Tags: Alexis, andrew, Brownell, Fierro, Foster-Dimino, GAMBIT, Gene, Generoso, Grant, Kevin, Laughlin, Matt, MIT, paper, podcast, prototype, prototyping, Sophia, Stellmach, Tech TV, Tim, Weise
Fire Hose (and Slam Bolt Scrappers) at BiG
If you’re in Boston, making video games, and/or are even remotely interested in the business side of game dev I’d definitely recommend checking out the MIT BiG conference happening this coming Friday at the Microsoft NERD center next to MIT. It’s going to be a day long deal with all sorts of interesting panels on non-traditional marketing strategies, the changing face of social games, and “the next big thing”. Of course, the panel I’m most interested in is how to build and launch a gaming start up, mostly because I’m on it. It should be a lot of fun, I know that some of the guys here in the office are already starting a pool on what kind of stupid stuff I’m going to say.
Oh, and did I mention that we’ll be showing off Slam Bolt Scrappers at the conference? It’s true! We’ll have an awesome 4 player build for people to play, so if you didn’t get a chance to try the game out at PAX East be sure to swing by the conference and give our game a shot! Priority will be given to cosplaying conference goers, especially ones dressed up as Ghostbusters or giant chickens.
April 11, 2010 | | Comments (2)
Category: Events, News
Tags: big, business, microsoft, MIT, nerd, panel, Slam Bolt Scrappers, Sloan, talk
Words of Wisdom: Mia Consalvo on Western Otaku Culture
Attention anime nerds: Ever want to hear a academic reconstruct your obsession with all things Japanese related? Well you’re in luck! In this talk Mia Consalvo, noted game academic and all around kick-ass individual, delves into why we love Japan when it comes to games. It’s a long talk but pretty interesting and definitely worth watching. Thanks to Gene and CMS for the recording.
Here’s the talk description:
From Nintendo’s first Famicom system, Japanese consoles and videogames have played a central role in the development and expansion of the digital game industry. Players globally have consumed and enjoyed Japanese games for many reasons, and in a variety of contexts. This study examines one particular subset of videogame players, for whom the consumption of Japanese videogames in particular is of great value, in addition to their related activities consuming anime and manga from Japan. Through in-depth interviews with such players, this study investigates how transnational fandom operates in the realm of videogame culture, and how a particular group of videogame players interprets their gameplay experience in terms of a global, if hybrid, industry.
Enjoy!
January 11, 2010 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: academic, anime, CMS, Consalvo, Gene, Japan, manga, Mia, MIT, otaku
2010 IGF Finalists Announced
The 2010 IGF Finalists have been announced! Sadly, Slam Bolt Scrappers was not among the finalists, but there’s always next year (when we’ll be further along with development, and with any luck will have finished the game). There is good news though! Boston had a strong showing, and three of the finalists are made by locals!
Club Rochiro made AAAAAAAAAAA, the awesome base jumping game in which you get to flip off protesters, kiss buildings, and listen to Ichiro’s sweet, soothing voice while you meditate. Marc Ten Bosch made Miegakure, a mind blowing 4-D (yes, 4-D) puzzle platformer in which you navigate a Zen Garden and try to keep your brain from exploding. It’s a lot of fun! Finally, Rob Jagnow made Cogs, a fun sliding puzzle game with an awesome steampunk style. Yeah, Rob lives in San Francisco and made the game out there, but screw that, he’s an MIT guy and was making games in Boston until recently, I’m claiming this one for our side.
Congrats to all the finalists, these games are all really spectacular! We’ll give next years contestants more of a run for their money 
January 4, 2010 | | Comments (1)
Category: News
Tags: 4D, base, Boston, Cogs, Dejobaan, finalists, garden, Ichiro, igf, Jagnow, jump, Lambe, Marc, Miegakure, MIT, Rob, steampunk, Ten Bosch
Words of Wisdom: Eran Egozy talks about Harmonix at GAMBIT
Another lecture blog post? HELLS YES. We’ll stop putting these up when the awesome guys at GAMBIT stop making them. Thanks to Gene, Abe, Ken Zolot, and anyone else who was involved with making this that I’m not aware of.
In this talk Eran Egozy (co-founder and CTO of Harmonix, whom you know and love for Guitar Hero and Rock Band) talks about how Harmonix started out, how they got off the ground and shifted into (and ultimately defined the genre of) music games, and then fields a bunch of questions from some really smart MIT and Sloan students. Check it out!
December 7, 2009 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: Abe, Egozy, Eran, GAMBIT, Gene, Guitar Hero, Harmonix, MIT, music, Rock Band, Zolot
Words of Wisdom: Clint Hocking at GAMBIT
So while we were busy crunching for some competition deadlines, GAMBIT was in full swing with some awesome speakers. Most recently they had Clint Hocking, a super famous developer and the creative director of Ubisoft Montreal, in to give a talk on hyper realism in video games. Being the main guy behind Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell I think this guy has some serious cred in that area, and the talk looks fascinating.
Gene was awesome enough to video tape the entire 90 minute talk and following Q+A, watch it here!
November 16, 2009 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: cell, Clint, far cry, GAMBIT, Gene, Hocking, MIT, splinter, ubisoft
Words of Wisdom: Business Time
On Thursday I wound up spending the majority of the day at two business events – the MassTLC new technologies “unconference” and a panel at MIT on different ways to fundraise and bootstrap in a tough economy. Here’s a quick summary of the interesting things that were discussed!
MassTLC new technology “unconference”
This meeting was a gathering of entrepreneurs, business people, angels/venture capitalists, and just about anyone involved in creating and bringing new technologies to market. I went to a talk on how to raise money from angel investors which went over basic but useful information (know what you’re asking for, get an introduction, have a good story, have experience, find a champion for your cause at the angel group, and give it plenty of time because it’ll take 6 months). Afterwards I attended a talk on standing out from the crowd and capitalizing on your competitive advantages, and I basically got the impression that we need to stand up on our soapbox more and put together a more compelling story for people who want to learn about us. The most fun part of the day, though, was meeting with other entrepreneurs and angels. It’s interesting how different the video game market (and most media markets) are different from other tech ventures – whereas in other ventures you need to show how you’re better than the competition since the customer will only buy one product, in the games market you need to be “good enough” since most consumers will buy from multiple competitors. Really cool stuff!
MIT VMS panel on fundraising/bootstrapping in touch economic times
This panel was a lot of fun since I was speaking on it. I’ll save you the boring bits I spoke about and tell you about some of the cool stories the other guys on the panel told. Ryan Damico from Webnotes spoke about how he got his family and friends to buy into his company by giving them convertible notes, and how they’ve been racing to get customers for their still nascent application. Waseem Daher from Ksplice managed to raise a lot of money through various competitions like the MIT 100K (he won) and even got a European scholarship for development of a Linux version of his product. He ended up moving in to an apartment with his other 3 co-founders to save capital, and by being extremely thrifty they’re going to be able to go to market without investor funding. Awesome! Finally Bryan Schmid of Atlas Devices spoke about getting government contracts and how manufacturing physical hardware changes the game, and what you need to watch out for. All of us then fielded questions for about an hour covering a huge range of start up questions, all the way from how much stock to give advisors and employees to how to hire good employees to how to raise money from your family.
Ok, so not super video-gamey, but I think this stuff is neat to learn about. Don’t worry, next week we can get back to talking about how much Final Fantasy XIII is gonna suck.
October 5, 2009 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: angel, Atlas Devices, business, competition, entrepreneur, fund, Ksplice, masstlc, MIT, money, raise, start up, unconference, venture, VMS, Webnotes
Game ideas born at the lunch table
I know that a lot of the people reading this are game developers who make games themselves. So to that audience I ask, how often do you find yourself sitting around, talking with friends, and coming up with hilarious ideas for weird little games? If you’re like me then it probably happens a lot – I find that at GAMBIT we discuss weird concepts for little games all the time, especially when we’re eating lunch. Normally these ideas are funny in theory but would probably be terrible in execution, however this time I think that we came up with something that could actually be both funny and enjoyable to play.
So I think we’re going to try to actually give it a shot, and maybe put on a small game jam to make the game a reality. I won’t spill the beans about what the idea is about, but I will say that it involves explosions. I’ll either post a link to the results in a few weeks, or I will come back on the blog and admit, head hanging heavy in shame, that we did not succeed in making the game because we are super lame. Stay tuned!
June 29, 2009 | | Comments (1)
Category: Games, Random
Tags: challenge, explosion, GAMBIT, game jam, MIT
GAMBIT Prototyping Slides Available Here!
Today Sharat and I gave a talk at the Singapore MIT GAMBIT game lab on rapidly building video game prototypes. It’s something of a rip off of Ethan’s and my IGCE talk from last month but this has a stronger focus on development and how to make different types of prototypes. I suggest checking it out! For more info on prototyping you can also see my guest blog from last week on Sande Chen’s game design website.
June 15, 2009 | | Comments Off
Category: Words of Wisdom
Tags: Ethan, GAMBIT, how to, MIT, prototype, prototyping, Sharat
Using Mojo for Games
Our fearless leader was interviewed recently by Play As Life, discussing his role as founder of Fire Hose Games, his ideas about video games (and space), and he even got hockey in there. Eitan discussed his ideas for games, especially accessibility, learning, and having fun. He used these ideals for examples of how video games can have an impact and the obligation he, and Fire Hose, feel as developers to aspire to having this kind of impact through video games.
Random trivia – did you know Eitan bought his first game console with money earned from his paper route in 6th grade?
You can find the full text of the article here. Enjoy!