Old Testament Adventures » cgdc2011

From Penguins to the Pacific – CGDC Day Three

andygeers — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 04:26:26 +0000

It was hard tearing us all away from the Christian Game Developers Conference at the end of the day today – everyone I’ve spoken to has been in agreement that it’s been a fantastic time, and such a blessing to spend time with other Christians with whom we share our passion for video games and the potential they have to touch people.

Today’s sessions were every bit as great as yesterday’s, a real highlight being some great insights shared by Lance Priebe, creator of the hugely successful online game for children Club Penguin. Here’s a brief summary:

Iterate – a marathon is won one step at a time
Listen – pay attention to what your audience is saying
Grow with your audience – you don’t need to be all singing, all dancing, all at once
Partner – as Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans go wrong for lack of advice; may advisers bring success”
Tribe – people love to be lead
Perception – what the audience perceives is happening is more important than what really is, so sometimes you can save yourself a lot of time with a little sleight of hand. I don’t want to spill Lance’s secrets here, but one particular example he shared of this was pure gold dust.
Delight – create moments that connect your audience to your game
User Experience – make every click count
Aim, Fire, Miss – don’t be afraid to try stuff, even if it may fail
Don’t be a twip – rather than going into obscene levels of detail that will never be seen, sometimes it’s better to stay deliberately simple and leave room for the imagination
Coins For Change – this is an innovative programme by Club Penguin that allows kids to use their in-game credits to donate real money to charity

It was a fascinating and inspiring talk, even though I didn’t really know a lot about Club Penguin beforehand.

The day closed with a big discussion headed up by a panel of the conference speakers about the challenges and opportunities for developers of Christian themed games. It may not have produced any new answers, but it was still a valuable discussion to be had and provided a bit of context for those of us who are slightly newer to the game. One thing I took away was that perhaps it would be good for more Christian developers to participate in Speed Game contests (like those run by the Christian Developers Network) to experiment with novel game mechanics and so on that can create meaningful experiences.

After the conference closed, a few of us had the privilege of heading out to the Pacific coast to stay in Charlie’s beach house – thanks Charlie!!

CGDC2011 Day Two

andygeers — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 03:02:15 +0000

The Christian Game Developers Conference 2011 is now well under way, and it’s been a great day of fascinating talks and top notch company.

Os Hillman kicked off the day talking about the Seven Mountains that influence our culture: arts & entertainment, business, education, family, government, media and religion. He outlined how crucial the media and entertainment industries are in shaping how we think and respond to issues, and how historically the church has abandoned Hollywood and given up trying to work with them. Os gave us the challenge to use our creativity and inventiveness to exert a positive influence on culture.

Next up was Gary Barkalow, talking about identifying your calling and finding the way that God has for you to serve him with the gifts and passions he’s given you. Gary used the metaphor of the need to find your bearings when you feel disoriented. When a medical professional is seeking to assess your level of disorientation she’ll use the “Alert and Oriented x3”: who are you? where are you? what day is it? Personally I think I enjoyed his metaphor maybe more than the way he actually applied it, but I think these are great questions for us to ask ourselves when seeking to live to the glory of God – this triplet of identity, situation and place in salvation history. Knowing who we are, that we’re children of God saved by grace, where we are, that we’ve got a specific set of gifts and a specific set of opportunities before us, and when we are, that the time is short and Jesus could come back any moment, gives us a great framework for making decisions about our lives. As an aside, Gary closed with a great example from Apollo 13 – sometimes we just “need more time in the simulator” – God knows that we need to be refined by the trials of life for a while before leading us to where we’ll eventually end up.

After lunch there were various workshop options. I went along to one by Mark Soderwall, a game industry veteran whose worked on a lot of the Star Wars games, on various issues related to industry best practice and how to get into the industry. I also went along to one by Tim Johnson on “games that reflect God’s glory” – how to employ game mechanics themselves (rather than story) to reflect aspects of God’s character such as grace. The four values he particularly focussed on were cooperation (that two is better than one), individuality (that God has made each one unique), sacrifice for future gain (as per the parable of the treasure hidden in a field) and “eucatastophe” (a word coined by Tolkien to mean a “good catastrophe” – a sudden joyous turn in the midst of seeming disaster, ultimately a reflection of the resurrection of Jesus), but naturally there are a tonne of others. The nature of my game, Ebenezer, like Monkey Island before it, is that I’m much more focussed on story rather than gameplay mechanics, so I really enjoyed thinking about this different perspective for a while.

I wouldn’t say I agreed with everything said today, and I’d probably have but a few emphases in different places, but they were all wonderfully thought provoking and led to some great discussions. It’s fair to say that a real highlight of the conference has been turning some virtual online friends into real life buddies, and it’s been great to be able to chat through the stuff we’ve been hearing.

Time now for Barlow Girl!

And We’re Off… Christian Game Developers Conference 2011

andygeers — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:06:04 +0000

After weeks of anticipation, it’s finally time for the Christian Game Developers Conference 2011 to begin! It’s been terrific so far, great to finally meet a whole bunch of people I’ve known online for some years now, mostly through the Christian Developers Network.

Besides the burritos, the conference began with a brief intro by Chris Skaggs of Soma Games and one of the organisers of this year’s conference. Chris was setting out some of his vision for the conference, as a place where Christian in the games industry and developers of Christian games can come together and find refreshment for their souls before being sent back out to be salt and light in their industry. He spoke of how our world, and the games industry in particular, is crying out for meaning, something that Christians are uniquely placed to provide. He laid out the challenge for us all, that if we don’t step up to the plate and provide it, other people will – games like El Shaddai, based upon the apocryphal Book of Enoch. The fact that it’s not canonical means nothing to the world at large, and the fact that it’s based upon a broadly Christian mythology, with angels and demons and so on, means that to most people, it may as well be Christian. If we don’t put our message out there clearly then it opens the door for a lot of confusion.

And yes, I am wearing my T-shirt and handing out lots of business cards

Seattle

andygeers — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:31:17 +0000

Being the 6th July today, it’s my birthday! I’m being looked after by the lovely Jon Collins and his family, and today we went large in Seattle. We began at the Science Fiction museum, where they currently have an Avatar exhibition. It was interesting getting to see and play with some of the technology they used in the filming of it, such as real-time motion capture and virtual cameras and so on. It’s possibly a bit sad to say that the most interesting part of the exhibition was the Microsoft Surface they’re using

After that we made our way up the Space Needle, where you get the most incredible views out to Mount Rainier and so on. Fortunately we had incredible weather for it today, so you really could see for miles.

Burritos for lunch, then naturally we paid an obligatory visit to the first ever branch of Starbucks. We also stopped by the Pike Place fish market, as made famous by Sleepless in Seattle. It’s quite a spectacle, watching the guys throwing fish about as the customers order it.

Tomorrow it’s time for the Christian Game Developers Conference to begin – really looking forward to it now!

Portland, Oregon

andygeers — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:11:49 +0000

Today has been a day exploring Portland, Oregon. It’s a beautiful city, with the gigantic Mount Hood dominating the horizon off to the East, and a river running through the heart of it. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous – not too so ridiculously hot as the be uncomfortable, but really nice and sunny. A real bonus, considering that the locals tell me it’s been raining really hard until last week.

I braved the city’s excellent “TriMet” public transport system – consisting of buses, a light railway (the “Max”) and also some trams, I believe. They’ve got a great website that Transport for London could learn a few lessons from, where you can plan your route and see it all on a nice interactive mappy thing. When I got a bit lost the locals were also incredibly helpful and soon put me right.
I used the buses to go and visit the science museum here, OMSI (pronounced “Om-Zee” rather than “O.M.S.I.” – people had no idea what I was talking about at first when I was asking for directions!)

Among other things they have the Game On exhibition at the moment, where you can sample the history of video games, going all the way back to Pong and Space Invaders and so on, through to the present day. I was invited to have a go at a game involving some kind of contraption that supposedly measures your concentration to make a little man push a tomato – I can’t say I was convinced, since I won despite being thoroughly distracted by the fact that this thing was slowly slipping off my head!

In Toronto Airport

andygeers — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:19:46 +0000

I’m sitting here in Toronto airport writing this, before heading off to Portland, Oregon shortly for the Christian Game Developers Conference. Air Canada has taken good care of me so far – absolutely no hitches, friendly service, and even a couple of great films. I watched Limitless and Morning Glory, both of which I really enjoyed.
Limitless taps into that desire we have to actually pull off all those grand ideas we have – to operate at 100% of our capacity, with crystal clear focus. I won’t ruin the ending of it for you, but I’ll say that it really surprised me.
Morning Glory isn’t exactly profound or original, but it’s exactly my kind of film – simple, feel-good fun.
Anyway, stay tuned for all the latest news as I head on into the States!

Almost Time To Fly – Pre-CGDC Roundup

andygeers — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 12:04:12 +0000

Tomorrow lunchtime it’s time for me to fly out to Portland, Oregon in anticipation of the Christian Game Developers Conference at George Fox University, Newberg. I’ve had my passport renewed, I’ve got my holiday money exchanged, I’ve got my business cards packed – I’m ready and raring to go!

I thought it would be worth doing a little round-up of some of the highlights from my little series of blog posts over the last few weeks:

How to make the most of a conference – a summary of various blog posts giving advice on how to use a conference well
What I’m hoping to get out of the CGDC – my four big reasons for attending this year’s conference
Connecting with culture – thoughts from the Evangelical Ministry Assembly on Francis Schaeffer’s life of connecting with the people he met
CGDC Promotional Stash – details of all the gear I’ve ordered for the conference
Christian Video Games: The Underserved Market – thoughts on the Christian video games market

I should be on email over the next week but I won’t have mobile phone access – so feel free to drop me a line! If you’re going to the CGDC, then I’ll see you there!

P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for my e-mail newsletter – sent out no more than once a month

Getting Ready for CGDC

andygeers — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:18:10 +0000

Today has been a day of last minute preparation before I fly out on Monday for next week’s Christian Game Developers Conference.

The demo of the first scene of Ebenezer is shaping up quite nicely. I did a bit of user testing last night, and the consensus is it’s too waffly and I need to trim out some of the dialogue, but by and large it’s a lot more obvious what’s going on than it was before. It’s amazed me in all of my user testing over the last few months how incredibly consistent people’s responses are – they virtually all try exactly the same actions in exactly the same order; they virtually all ask exactly the same questions.

I did, however, find one show-stopper of a bug: when you go to talk to one of the main characters, Saul, the entire screen goes blank and you can never get it back. Oops! Wouldn’t be such a concern except that I can’t reproduce it from within the Unity development environment, only when it’s compiled for the device, making it much harder to identify and fix the problem. Let’s hope I can get it sorted before the conference starts on Thursday!

This post is part of a series attempting to blog every day in the run up to the Christian Game Developers Conference 2011

The Underserved Market

andygeers — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:21:25 +0000

If you’re an indie game developer, then hopefully you already know about and read Jeff Vogel’s blog The Bottom Feeder. Jeff is the man behind Spiderweb Software, purveyor of old-school RPGs since 1994, and so I think there’s a lot to be learnt from him about how to make a successful business out of games targeted at a niche audience (which, let’s face it, is going to be the case for most Christian video games).

One of the things that Jeff frequently talks about is the value of finding an underserved market and serving it:

“That is the Magic Power of the Indie developer. Find an underserved market and serve it.”

(yes, that’s under-served, not un-deserved!)

My feeling, given the response I’ve had to some of my videos on YouTube and forum posts on TIGSource and so on, is that there is a lot of pent-up demand for genuinely good, well-designed Christian video games. People are jaded by what’s been done in the past, they’re skeptical that it can really be pulled off, but deep down I think they still hope it can.

Sam Washburn says that Jeff Vogel’s situation is different to ours: the market for old-school RPGs may be underserved, but it does at least exist – his games fit a well-known profile and people know what they’re going to get. In the world of Christian video games, however, people desperately fear that they know what they’re going to get – they expect it to be awful. There won’t be that high demand on day one – it will take a while for the word to get around that this game is different, that it doesn’t suck. That kind of slow and steady build-up isn’t necessarily all that amenable to App Store success, where your position in the league tables is everything.

But I’m convinced it’s possible – we’re in a much stronger position than we could be. The demand is there – it’s just figuring out how to overcome people’s skepticism that’s the challenge.

This post is part of a series attempting to blog every day in the run up to the Christian Game Developers Conference

Embracing Your Limitations

andygeers — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:03:31 +0000

When trying to make a game like Ebenezer, one is constantly walking a fine line between your grand ambitions on the one hand, and what’s actually practical on the other. Whether that’s a case of ruthlessly culling content or choosing to do the game in 2D rather than 3D, you constantly have to make these kinds of judgement calls about whether you’re ever going to be able to find the right talented volunteers to help you realise your vision, or whether you’re going to have to alter that vision to make it happen.

As I mentioned recently, one of my most urgent needs for help is for somebody to take the 2D character concepts that I have and turn them into 3D models, which can then be animated and then rendered out as sprites. But I have to face the possibility that I may not be able to find somebody to help with this, in which case I’ll need to come up with a plan for how I can get the game made without a character modeller on board.

I constantly find myself inspired by examples from within the indie gaming scene of people embracing the restrictions imposed upon them by lack of budget and so on, and turning that into a strength rather than letting it get them down. Sometimes by admitting to yourself that you’re not going to be able to produce Disney-quality animation, you can come up with something a lot simpler and more stylised that has a personality all of its own, and which can be achieved with a fraction of the resources.

Below is a nice little animation based on the book of Jonah that models one such approach. In particular, note how each character is only ever shown front-on or from the side – everything else is achieved by rotating one of those two perspectives in one or other axis.

This post is part of a series attempting to blog every day in the run up to the Christian Game Developers Conference