First Test

Added much as possible... Can add a lot more...
Check out video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzQ35eiWG9k

on the level

I have been enjoying the Amanda/Megan level game, even though I can't seem to get the banana. It is a simple premise and the goal of the game is fairly ridiculous, which is just what you've been talking about lately. What I like the most, though, is that the visual content demonstrates the paradox of how important visuals are to the design and also just how unimportant they are in some ways to the overal gameplay. Basically all of those level game are pretty similar, you start in one place and figure out through a combination of trial and error how to click on the right keys or move the mouse just right to jump from level to level. Changing the visuals does nothing to this basic game structure, but is extremely important to creating any interest in playing yet another level game. Can we strip the visuals to their essence and somehow make a radical game through a fundamental change in this design?

Game Test And Social Experiment.

I have been working on a common game design idea today. “The platform game.” I have uploaded the game that I did today (You download here). About one and half hour work. The design of today’s platform game design often leads into disappointment as other games. So, decided to experiment with social idea. I took two people who I know very well and incorporated them into my game. I was thinking about the first post you made. If everyone plays games it could change the world. Also, I was thinking of the Christmas Story the movie, where he learns the secret code was an advertising but the kid was so into it and got really annoyed. Some advertising agency is playing around with this idea. You will get this when you win my game that I uploaded. I posted this game only my Facebook site. There is something powerful with social gaming. Ball Gravity game has a lot potential for this. Simple and puzzling.

Here are some quotes on my FB from my game.

Megan XXXXXXX (censored) megan video game??? oh, swede...
Megan and Amanda Video Game
knuthybinette.com
about an hour ago • Comment • Like • Share
Jeff **** (censored)likes this.

Knut Hybinette
ja ja hej hej he he . .
52 minutes ago •

Megan ******** (censored)
Anything with a Megan in it has to be good.
37 minutes ago

Jeremy ********(censored)
oddly, this game has me craving a bacon pie...
11 minutes ago

I am thinking of other ideas. Going to work on Maze and Social idea of Gaming to universal community.

Short Response

A short response to your post. Life and everything is a maze.
See here a quick 3D Maze. Can you find it. Click

baby, I'm a-mazed...

So, what I was wondering about with the whole gaming thing is whether most games really aren't just about mazes in some form or another. I mean, look at something like "Call of Duty" where you are wandering around the ruins of a European city and unable to see the edges of it or any way out; your basic maze. The maze is an environment with strict limitations that keep the inhabitant from leaving its borders. Whatever you do, right or wrong, you are essentially trapped within the maze. Even if the maze doesn't lead to the center like a labyrinth and instead leads you back to the outer edge, so what? There is typically nothing outside of the maze except empty space. So what do you get for finding the solution to the maze? Nothing. And this is why the maze it the quintessential game, it is all about putting forth effort with the reward for solving it that you can stop putting forth the effort.

What do you think?

Links to some mazes:

logic mazes

kids mazes

The maze generator

puzzles: mazes

What not to put into Video Game or CGI

What not to put into Video Games. Here is a list that I made and I heard from other game developers/VFX artist/Animators and so on. I think we should make a game that uses all of these and test it. Or an animation/video that pokes fun of this. Did I leave anything out of this list. Cheers~TR

*Babes - There ARE other types of women or big-breasted ones
And holding sword or other bad ass weapons.
*GI Joes - There ARE other types of men
*For compositing reels. No Light Sabers or shooting out fire and pixel dust from
*Cars with stock sunset HDRI backgrounds (you know which one!)
No animations of more uber clean get the cars get them dirty
*Bryce or Terragen landscapes with a moon reflected on a lake's water
*For compositing reels. No Light Sabers or shooting out fire and pixel dust
*iPods - There should be a primitive in every 3d package for iPods!
*Race cars, NO CARS again…. Cars… Cars....bla bla
*Dragon (s) and no plural dragons
*Robots-
*Demons, and any kind of zbrushed monster with horns. Enough already with the
Horned creatures. What’s the obsession about them anyway?
*Remaking characters from "Pixar", "Blizzard", "Marvel", and cartoons.
*ANIME
*Spaceships unless they are ubber cool, cause otherwise, after 3 decades of sci-fi
TV, I’ve seen them all.
*KITCHENS, Fireplaces and bathrooms. Boring clean ones…. (I would like to see more exterior architecture)
*T-Rex
*Mechs…. However if they have cool mechanical machinery better and could be ok
*No unfinished 3D Models saying work in progress
*No star wars crap and sadly Star Trek (even thou it kicks Start Wars ass)
*No Harry Potter Spin or lame Wizard art
*No Ninjas unless they are getting killed.
*Fan Art (Unless so different)
*Trolls (unless John Bauer work)
*Premade CG models rendered into scenes: c'mon .. we all recognize a model made
by Poser or DAZ studios.
*No Pushing or Lifting Animation. You know it is Student work. Its boring... Yawn...
*No Pirates unless…Unless they are getting honed by Vikings in the North

WHAT TO PUT IN:
*Anything I've haven’t seen before. Surprise me people!
*Of course, I'm not immune to any of these rules. I must adher to these standards, o
I'm just a hypocrite.
*Dirty up things. You Know what I mean.
*Be of aware of Time for Clichés….
*Make the demo reel exciting and try to keep it under two minutes.
Refrigerator = Boring
Refrigerator eating man = Exciting

Lost in Time

Ahh. I remembered hearing the the idea of smelly movies and even the stinky, lovely smelly stickers. Also, I heard they were going to put in smell into video games. Just imagine smelling Mr. Mario. He sure would smell from all that running, hoping and doen’t shower. Guess he has to prove his touchiness to the princes.

“Spacing out,” I see as positive concept. It is exciting for gamers to lose themselves into a virtual worlds. Which is said a lot in game theories. The magical circle talks about that. It is easy that gamers like a lot information or detail structures in virtual worlds to help them to escape. Does the detail world help them to lose themselves or the interactivity. No. I think it is pace and freedom (which is limited sometimes).

I always wonder why Tetris made a huge impact on the game world where none hard gamers and hard cord gamers came along. There is no deep details or escape into its environment. Which I call a successful game and approach. Both spent long playing it. Was it the music or the interactivity that made us lose time or did it hypnosis us in . Was it useful time playing it and will Tetris hold up in time. I think I will.

There is “space out” on activities that we do to pass time. Like doing house work, playing cards, sewing and yes video games. Which I have to admit I have done before, more when was young, as we age it is harder to want to speed up time. I remember watching the movie Click (Adam Sandler) and the long lesson here is that he missed most of his life by speeding it up. I wondering as X and Y and other generation want time for a space out like playing games. As we get older we want to feel more accomplished in our activities. Where does gaming come into that. I think the older we get we want quicker to learn things and less time doing that activity.

If it would be possible for a video game that is quick play and the interaction help gamers to learn something quickly. Don’t we all remember when we were students in college and we have to do that dreaded final exam week. We all wanted to learn most as possible in shortest time in each subject. We made flash cards (like go fish), make up rhymes, make fun of the subject in order to learn. Just imagine having games that is easy to setup for students to learn; easy to play. Probably in the future it will be easier.

From this I was thinking of the RPG game we are making. Like including Beckett, Greensberg and other art, theories and more. It is generally target to one group but we want larger audience. Which is large concept for Game design. Also, a good game designer they don’t want to make the player feel stupid but for smart ass we are we might want to. LOL.

Also, we talk about RSS and games that behave to the website. I found this. Check this link out. http://www.codeorgan.com/. Something I was thinking of.

you are getting sleepy...

This post is about 12 hours later than I wanted it to be Knut, sorry for the delay, but I overestimated my stamina yesterday and ended up falling asleep after sitting down with a beer.

Now, tasting games, huh? I think there probably is a future in exploiting the other senses in virtual gaming, but then again I believe there was an attempt to make movies that smelled at one time too (and those just ended up just plain stinky).

Looking at hypnotism is interesting...I was just reading in wikipedia (I admit to loving wikipedia) that the definition is "a wakeful state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility, with diminished peripheral awareness." It seems to me that video games are capable of producing similar effects, maybe a kind of low level hypnosis. Did you know that Tiger Woods uses hypnosis to play better?

What I actually find intriguing about this idea is concept of using games to help focus attention, especially since most of the time is seems that video games are more associated with "spacing out". To focus attention, though, I think the content and form of the game need to go beyond the repetitive reaction oriented games that seem most popular. There is a kind of focused attention that happens when playing something like Tour of Duty, but it is not either intellectual or creative and ultimately I hope that satisfying those criteria is what we're after with our games.

Start and it is a go

Cheers Troy, I am interested in games that could cause change from feelings, attitude, love, hate, jealous, power and more. My attitude for video game when I was young was ultimate epic games and these days I like the simplistic interaction or I don’t see the interaction or I don’t feel part the game. It is the same for me making art and the art work I like is more simplistic approach but the meaning is more. I have always wonder if life is game. Reward is how we feel and maybe the money represent how successful we are. When we both were designing Ripon Video game we tried create a certain feeling for the player. I think we failed and succeeded.

Long time go game designers question if the gamer could cry while playing the game and now video games have made us cry. I see the clique in that. However, I am still intrigue about that. Few years ago in Japan Pokemon casues seizures (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=19971218&id=RacaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ES8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6794,3840553) for 600 kids. From this I have always wonder if there is video game out there that can do Hypnotism. I just imagine if the game goes crazy and screws with our brains. You know me I have dark sense humor. But the Hypnotism game idea could be a good. I would use it before I go flying. LOL. Also, the Angry gamer video I am intrigue (http://rhizome.org/editorial/tag.php?tag=game
). I like the strong emotions that these kids present. However, I question it.

From the art part you talk about. I agree. I agree we stink at commercialism and we both get bored very fast. I think because we both artists and we started to critize the meaning of it. I have certainly done that when I work as commercial artist (photography, game designer, video and others) and I happy I can leave that world and comeback. Art idea for video games is said to be old topic in the interactive world. I see more mimicry and easy predictions what designers call art for video game. Is it the feeling the art in video game. Sure it could. In culinary world they talk about how the food looks like (the art form). But taste is not really describe as an art form. But sometimes it is. Maybe in future they create tasting video game. I guess I am interested in what interactivity will be in the future and what does it mean.

As we continue making new art/video game/animation for uh…game we both agree simplistic approach and something we have define. Is it visionary, interactivity, feeling or something else.

We might begin by watching a video

Hey Knut, I am of two minds on the whole gaming thing. One part of me is not that interested in playing most video games, but there is another part of me that feels that "play" and "games" are vital concepts. Also, that the idea of the interactive is really important to art right now and may be the best strategy to being relevant in our culture today. I am also split in just what we should be pursuing with games and interactivity, do we work with games designed for education or games created as art? You can't have both because art made to be educational is almost certain to fail. Also, Knut, simply put we are not great commercial artists. We get bored, we get restless, we get angry and worse yet we make mediocre commercial art. And games for education tend to be commercial affairs. Having said that, I think that Jane McGonigal's proposition to use games to collectively solve our most pressing problems is too damn inspiring not to make our first post here at uh...game. So, check out her website Her TED video is pretty awesome....