Moving around...

... this blog has moved to http://gamerbrasilis.wordpress.com. :o)

Game Design Friday

Last Friday I discovered this awesome section of The Escapist magazine called Game Design Friday. Over there you'll find a new game designed every last Friday of the month. The game designer in charge is Scott Jon Siegel, and he has such great games there.

Currently there are only five games, but that number will surely grow up monthly.

As Brenda Brathwaite said on her post about Game Design Portfolio, an aspiring Game Designer should create games. Any kind of them, and surely not only digital ones.

During my time studying Game Design I have discovered in me a creativity that I was unaware of. But what I did realize is that everyone has this creativity, but when they think they don't it's beacuse they haven't focused on creative tasks yet. As far as I know, everyone has been a child, and I during that period, everyone was creative. Everyone has drawn, painted, made up games, made up solutions to ordinary problems, made up stories to tell to other kids. Everyone has sung.

The problem with creativity is growing up. Taking responsibilities. Diverting your mind from creating things and focusing on copying things. You begin to do exactly what is expected, and get used to it.

I have been exercising my creativity lately. What about you?

War in Rio

I should have posted this earlier, but I forgot.

A 29-year-old brazilian designer created a version of Risk (known as War in Brazil) that takes place on the city of Rio de Janeiro, instead of the entire world. The territories are named after some "favelas" and famous neighbourhoods, while the armies are named after Rio's police squads and drug-dealing gangs.

The game was named War In Rio, and its creator have manufactured everything that the game demanded. In his own words "The project's goal is to generate discussion through a cynical proposal of having fun".

For those of you that are unaware of it, the city of Rio de Janeiro have a lot of favelas, that hold heavy armed drug-dealers gangs. The conflicts between theses gangs and the police are widely-feared by the population, since they take place within the streets of the city and often claims for the lives of ordinary passers-by.

You can find some photos below, and if want to see the official website, the URL is http://jogowarinrio.blogspot.com (portuguese only).

Flash Games, a profitable market

I've just read this article over Gamasutra, The Flash Game Business: Making A Living Online? - by Kyle Orland. And it does adds up a little info on how to gain money developing games.

As I stated earlier, to develop casual games is a good start on earning some cash, and nowadays casual gaming is a synonym of flash games. Actually, you can create any kind of games with flash, and you can create a casual game using any other language, but casual flash games are out there to stay (for a while, at least).

Since when I began studying games and game development I have decided that I should study flash and create a game using it. The reason was really to get in touch with one of the currently most used technologies, and feed my mind with another stuff than Java. But after reading these two articles I've made up my mind real good: flash games are going to be my next stop, and I'm heading towards it at full throttle.

No AOD Campaign

This is silly. Really.

When I joined my current team, almost one year ago, it didn't take much time until I heard an expression that was widely spread among teammates: "This code looks like someone coded it using his ass" (from portuguese: Parece que alguém programou isso aqui com a bunda!). After hearing it for a while I assumed it sounded a little "rude", and decided to create a nice acronym. Actually the acronym would be of the translation I came up with: AOD, standing for Ass Oriented Development.

A couple of lunch-times after that, and I created the following sign, printed it and taped it to on of my cubicle's wall:

So, if you want to spread the "NO AOD Campaign" all over your office, be my guest. Just download the PDF and get it moving.

By the way, I remembered this thing because a fellow worker stumbled upon the following lines of code:

try {
(...)
} catch (IOException ioex) {
throw ioex;
} catch (Exception ex) {
new IOException( ioex.getMessage );
}

Take a look on the code above.

Did you see it? No? Try again...

Ok, the thing is, where is the throw on the second catch? Some might say "The programmer was in a hurry" or "He/she was asleep", but the bug should be caught during unit tests, huh? :-)

(I'm not saying that I don't make AOD sometimes. I really do, like everyone else. I just think that we should be more careful, that's all) ;-)

I told you it was silly.

Casual Gaming: Start creating one now!

I've just read Gamasutra's article Cloning Created The Casual Game Business by Russell Carroll. It was no news for me, I should say, but I bet it does was for a lot of people.

Casual Gaming is a great business, and maybe it is filled with clone games (or clone game-types), but no one can deny the fact that these games do sell, and do become widely known. They're everything you wished for.

So here goes my tip, read the article above and start thinking on your next (or first) casual game. Because I think that earning some money with casual games before you develop that so longing 3D game of yours wouldn't hurt at all.

Level Design, the core element of your game.

Since I've seen the subject at the game design course I've been attending, it got my attention. The Level Design of a game.

Also, I've just finished reading Brenda Brathwaite's thoughts on the types of game designers, and there it was again, the level design.

Even though she didn't measured the importance of each type within a game project, I think level design is a game's core element, at least from the gamer viewpoint. Let me get this straight, the game might have a great mechanical system, astonishing graphics, terrific sound and music along with innovative gameplay but if all of that are put together in the wrong way... there you go, your game sucks. And you know that it is true. If you have been doing your first game like me, or have done a few before, you've felt that feeling, when you're putting all the pieces together, making your own prototype, and then you show it to someone that goes "uhhh... is that all I can do?". And he or she doesn't mind when you explain that it's just like that because you're still testing the mechanics and stuff like that. The point is, you gave a game to a gamer, and that's what he's expecting.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't show your game's prototype to anyone, but you should be aware that you might get some comments like that. The best thing to do is select the people carefully and explain to them what the game is about, and what is supposed to happen.

But when you do get passed the prototype phase, when you've got almost every other details done, take a plunge into the level design. And make it good. You have to focus on how to make the gamer to want to play your game. You have to think on the learning curve, on balancing the obstacles, even on allowing the player to turn off your game (as 400 Project's rule #7 says), and above all things, think on the fun. That's what your gamer is looking for.