Final: Adventures...Adventures Everywhere: Some Adventures Not Included.

For our final Tim and I decided to work on a game, this time using RPGMaker. I came up with the story and all the characters and helped design some of the areas in the game as well as adding random Easter eggs. Tim did a vast majority of the work with RPGMaker. I had a could of back to back finals I really needed to study for so while I was in the library studying he went home to his parents house and really cranked out most of the game. We used some of our friends to playtest the game they were amazed at what we made and described it as "looking just like Pokemon", being a fan of the Pokemon games as a kid I took it as a complement. There were some bugs here and there and after some work we managed to iron out most of them. The worst part of playtesting games in RPGMaker is that you basically have to play through the entire game to get to where you made your fixes because there is no way to automatically start off in an area other than the beginning. If I had to give Tim a grade I would say A+ because he really went to town on this game and put in a lot of work when I wasn't able to. I would probably give myself a C because I came up with the story and with the characters, but I wish I could have contributed more if it wasn't for a bad final schedule. I would like to continue working on the game just to be able to have a finished product and possibly make more games. All in all it was a great experience and I definitely now know that it is not easy to make a game.

Gamification

Gamification is when you add a game mechanic or attribute to a non game item, for example foursquare. It is really an app about checking into places, but the fact that you can earn badges and points and compete with friends adds that game element to it. Coming into the class I had no idea what gamification was really, now that I know what it is I can say that I still have mixed feelings about it. I am in favor of it being used to make a service more enjoyable and fun, however I am not in favor of it being implemented just to try and get money out of people. I do not agree with the existence of companies like badgeville. All in all gamification could serve a good purpose, but I am still not 100% convinced its all good.

Plan for Final

For the final I will be in a group with Tim Williams. We are going to be working on an adventure game in RPG Maker. We want to call it "Adventures...Adventures Everywhere." So far I am planning on making the storyline and coming up with all the characters and their attributes as well as helping Tim with the actual development of it. Without a story or characters there would just be an empty map with houses so I have to get working on this quick so we can get working on the rest of the game. I am excited to see what we come up with.

Anna Anthropy

Unfortunately Anna could not make it to class, however watching that video interview of her with Frank Lantz was almost as good in my opinion. First off the fact that the interview goes for about 90 mins, to me is a testament of how in depth the interview was and how good it was. At the beginning of the interview Anna was asked to read a section of her book in which she lists a variety of things one could make a game about and the biggest idea I got from that was, well you can basically make a game about whatever the hell you want! I somewhat agree with this but, I believe it opens the doors for an epic flood of bad games. By bad games I mean those that are, as Anna put it "ostracized" for not being normal. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you make a game about whatever you want then you will inevitably end up with games floating around that are probably going to never be played because they are weird or not very good. However, I am all for more quality games being made and I think that designers should not be limited to certain game genres or game topics all I ask is that they don't make crappy games. I hate wasting time so if it is going to be a crappy game then why am I wasting my time playing it and why did you waste your time making it.

Erraticness

Erratic...that's all I can say

After reading a couple of articles on her blog and playing some of her games the best word I can come up with to describe Anna Anthropy is erratic. From dictionary.com, erratic is defined as, "deviating from the usual or proper course in conduct or opinion; eccentric; queer: erratic behavior." In my opinion Ana fits every sense of the word. She isn't exactly what most people would call a usual man or woman nor is she like the usual game designer. The two games I played were Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars and Jill Off with one hand both of which were interesting to say the least. From what I saw in class of Mighty Jilloff and from what I played of the other games all I can say is "What the hell is this!?" Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars is somewhat of shooter and maze game combined, enemies keep coming at you from different directions at various speeds as far as controls go it was simple enough only using the arrow keys. It also tied in well with the whole BDSM thing because you shoot lasers at there spider queens and tie them up and you end up "eating them". As far as the book went it seemed like most people thought it was an alright book, but thought that  it just wasn't for them. It seems like all in all she isn't well received outside of the gaming community or the LBGTQ community and even then she isn't really well received in the gaming community or at least not at first. 

Jokes on who?

For the longest time I could not really think of any game I wanted to create, I had random thoughts here and there but no real solid ideas. One day it hit while I was looking through my deck of cards. My game would have to incorporate the Joker! As soon as I got the rules thought up I rounded up a couple of friends to test my game and see if 1) the game was fun and 2) what I could do to make it better. We played through a couple of rounds and at first it was kind of plain and too simple if the Joker was the only card with negative attributes so I incorporated the Jack, really just because it also had a "J" in it, but also to add another degree of difficulty to the game while still keeping everything simple. Play testing the game in class was helpful because it allowed me to see what would happen if you have some sort of spoil sport who would ruin the fun for everyone by swapping out his entire hand of crappy cards. The best advice I got was to make the game last longer, since it was originally a one round and done type of thing, and also to find a way to counteract people who might want to spoil the game for everyone.  So I went back to the drawing board... seriously I had a drawing board especially for this game... and came up with a way to extend the game play by a couple of rounds and still keep spoil sports from ruining the game for the rest. The only other thing that I wish I could have come up with was a way to use the suites in some way.