Last weekend I attended the Boston Game Jam held at MIT. A "game jam" is an event where a bunch of game developers come together for a few days and build entirely new games based around a central theme. This started with the Indie Game Jam a few years ago and has been repeated in similar forms around the world (more information here).
The direction for the Boston Game Jam was to build a game based around the theme of "shift" in 34 consecutive hours (9:00 AM Saturday to 6:00 PM Sunday). You can see a screen shot of the game I built below, and can download the executable and source code from the jam website.
For my game I tried to incorporate the "shift" theme on multiple levels. The core mechanic in the game is shifting the elevation of a planet's terrain to create or remove geographic barriers between the inhabitants. As you divide the people with oceans and mountains, they group into factions. Over time the people in a faction will shift so that they resemble other people in their group. You can also spin the planet which shifts the climate; trees which provide the people with lumber will only grow on the sunny side.
The concept for the game is that through your indirect influence you must help all of the people on the planet progress into the space age. The groups will build buildings and space ships when they've accumulated enough resources including knowledge, lumber, and ore from interstellar meteors. Groups on the planet are only productive when they are small (large groups devolve into anarchy), but if people are too divided they will despise each other and nuclear warheads will shortly follow. If everyone on the planet dies you lose the game.
The game is essentially a planetary balancing act with some not-so-subtle social messages built in. The nice thing about making a game in such a short amount of time is that you don't have enough time to make a conventional game, so you have to step a bit off the well trod path. It also means that if your idea sucks, well at least you didn't invest too much time in it.
Overall I was pretty happy with how my game turned out, especially in the implementation. I think it has a pretty polished look, does some interesting things, and attempts to tackle a pretty ambitious concept. As a traditional game I don't think it works very well, especially considering the game mechanics never turned out quite right and the final result is pretty hard to understand.
From the onset I didn't really expect this to work as a traditional game and my goal was to create something more along the lines of a virtual toy. Since I consider myself an engineer more than a game designer, I figured I'd have more success in that space, and in general games as toys seems to be an area that hasn't been widely exploited. The Sim games are notable exceptions to this as are some more recent games like Electroplankton, but for the most part computer games are used to tell stories or simulate competitions, rather than simply amuse.
Thanks goes to Charlie who provided me with game design input and ideas in the middle of the night on Saturday (does that make this an Unknown Worlds' title?) and the organizers of the event who did a great job. I'm looking forward to the next game jam.
Hey everyone,
Last week we launched a survey for our players. This survey was to find out some basic things that every business should know:
1. Who our customers (players) are 2. How they use our offerings (games) 3. What they like about our games and what they want in the future
It was my hope that I could use this information to help make some big decisions about NS2 and to generally have a better feel about how to we should operate. I'll go over some of the more interesting findings now.
81% of our players are between the ages of 16 and 25 and 98% are male I had thought our player base was a little more diverse then this, but I guess I'm not too surprised. NS is not the place to find your future girlfriend, that's for sure!
18% of respondents play NS with a sibling, parent or child This number isn't too high, but it is still heartening to know that families play games together, even team-based, online, sci-fi violent ones. I saw plenty of respondents who mentioned that they heard about NS from "Dad". I think this is great...I sure didn't play Dungeons & Dragons with my folks!
43% of respondents have been playing NS since it came out That's well over four years. I find this a bit incredible.
Most respondents play for the teamplay ...not "strategy", "commanding", "ambience" or "setting", but for "teamplay". "RTS/strategy" was close behind though I forgot to put in "action" as a choice so that might've changed the results.
29% bought a copy of Half-life to play NS If this is true, then I estimate NS has sold around 50,000 copies of Half-life (~$2,500,000 gross). If anyone is wondering why VALVe puts so much consideration into the mod community, this is as clear an answer as you can get.
People also took the time to write long feedback in the "essay" portion of the survey. The general feedback was generally:
- People like the game as is (obviously, if most respondents have been playing for four years!) - Don't change the game too much for the sequel (except update the graphics) - More developer information, site updates and progress transparency - Longer games, more game modes - Reduce the learning curve - More community involvement and tighter integration
Most of these results didn't surprise me, but "longer games" sure did. I think the bigger audience (ie, older audience, which I am) doesn't have the free time to enjoy longer games so that is my bias there. Most of our audience has 40-120 minutes to spend when they sit down to play. In contrast, most "casual" players probably have 10-15 minutes to play a game.
This feedback has reaffirmed my belief that NS2 should be roughly 1/3 the same, 1/3 improved and 1/3 new. That's the general rule of thumb developers tend to use when creating successful sequels and I think that goes for us too. I have a lot more confidence committing to some of the basic gameplay elements in NS2 now, so it's full speed ahead.