Matt Leacock Games

Matt Leacock, the creator of the Pandemic series, posts his thoughts, learnings, musings over at Matt Leacock Games (http://www.leacock.com/). Matt suggests four canonical books for the budding game designer:

• The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
• A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster
• Rules of Play by Katie Salen Tekinbaş and Eric Zimmerman
• Hamlet's Hit Points by Robin Laws

Ireland, Games, Board Games etc.

Playtest Dublin - one of Dublin's venerable board game designer meet-ups, hosted by Board Game Designers Ireland.
https://www.facebook.com/events/753314844838558/

Board Games Ireland http://boardgamesireland.com/ and link to regular Meet Ups

IMIRT, the Irish Game Makers Association. As it says on the website Imirt represents people making games in Ireland; the game creators: programmers, artists, designers, writers, music, sound engineers etc. http://www.imirt.ie/

State of Play http://www.stateofplay.ie/. Hosted by DIT, championed by Hugh McAtamney.

Colossal Cave Adventure

An archeology of interactive role playing games leads inevitably to a small handful of innovative and influential programs developed over the decade spanning the sixties and seventies. One of the most influtential of these games was a program call the Colossal Cave Adventure. Originally written by Will Crowther, then developed further by Don Woods with Will's consent.
Ports of Adventure to newer operating platforms and language environments have enabled users to play Adventure on successive generations of computing hardware and operating system environments. However the core of the game remains the same and concept, gameplay and feel. A player running the port to Mac OS/X or the console version for Windows XP is subject to essentially the same experience as those who encountered it on University computer servers in the 70s and 80s.
While the game is no longer actively developed the concept of Advent inspired a host of related programmes in the 1980s all vying for the hearts, minds, or money, of the world's growing band of computer enthusiasts and users.

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Seeing Adventure running for the first time is like walking along the beach and picking up an interesting looking shell. Someone has left the terminal logged in... It intrigues with three sentences:

YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK
BUILDING . AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL
STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY.

Ahh, a game. What do I do? The blinking cursor invites me to write something.

help!
 I DON'T KNOW THAT WORD.

help
 I KNOW OF PLACES, ACTIONS, AND THINGS. MOST OF MY VOCABULARY
 DESCRIBES PLACES AND IS USED TO MOVE YOU THERE. TO MOVE TRY
 WORDS LIKE FOREST, BUILDING, DOWNSTREAM, ENTER, EAST, WEST
 NORTH, SOUTH, UP, OR DOWN.  I KNOW ABOUT A FEW SPECIAL OBJECTS,
 LIKE A BLACK ROD HIDDEN IN THE CAVE. THESE OBJECTS CAN BE
 MANIPULATED USING ONE OF THE ACTION WORDS THAT I KNOW. USUALLY
 YOU WILL NEED TO GIVE BOTH THE OBJECT AND ACTION WORDS
 (IN EITHER ORDER), BUT SOMETIMES I CAN INFER THE OBJECT FROM
 THE VERB ALONE. THE OBJECTS HAVE SIDE EFFECTS - FOR
 INSTANCE, THE ROD SCARES THE BIRD.
 USUALLY PEOPLE HAVING TROUBLE MOVING JUST NEED TO TRY A FEW
 MORE WORDS. USUALLY PEOPLE TRYING TO MANIPULATE AN
 OBJECT ARE ATTEMPTING SOMETHING BEYOND THEIR (OR MY!)
 CAPABILITIES AND SHOULD TRY A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TACK.
 TO SPEED THE GAME YOU CAN SOMETIMES MOVE LONG DISTANCES
 WITH A SINGLE WORD. FOR EXAMPLE, 'BUILDING' USUALLY GETS
 YOU TO THE BUILDING FROM ANYWHERE ABOVE GROUND EXCEPT WHEN
 LOST IN THE FOREST. ALSO, NOTE THAT CAVE PASSAGES TURN A
 LOT, AND THAT LEAVING A ROOM TO THE NORTH DOES NOT GUARANTEE
 ENTERING THE NEXT FROM THE SOUTH. GOOD LUCK!

Right, I'm starting to get this, lets see what the 'DOWNSTREAM' command does...

downstream
YOU ARE IN A VALLEY IN THE FOREST BESIDE A STREAM TUMBLING
ALONG A ROCKY BED.

downstream
AT YOUR FEET ALL THE WATER OF THE STREAM SPLASHES INTO A
2 INCH SLIT IN THE ROCK. DOWNSTREAM THE STREAMBED IS BARE ROCK.

lift rock
YOU ARE IN A 20 FOOT DEPRESSION FLOORED WITH BARE DIRT. SET INTO
THE DIRT IS A STRONG STEEL GRATE MOUNTED IN CONCRETE. A DRY
STREAMBED LEADS INTO THE DEPRESSION.

THE GRATE IS LOCKED

downstream
YOU CAN'T GO IN THROUGH A LOCKED STEEL GRATE!

This is getting interesting, quick, grab a piece of paper and start drawing a mental map of where I was and where I'm going...

And so it goes on. Time passes, I snap back to myself for a moment, twenty minutes later! What's happening here? It's engaging, appealing, frustrating and rewarding, like getting into a good book but this one talks back to you.

Monument Valley, inside view

Making money from an App. The inside view, monument-valley-in-numbers. The peaks are nice but nicer still the (very) long tails. http://ow.ly/HKpDa 

Source: http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-valley-in-numbers

In-class videoing

Some in-class presentations will be videoed and may be included in a published video piece as an aide for explaining the module to future prospective students and to share with colleagues.

Inform me in class if you do not wish to be included and we will try to accommodate your request.

Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop

Tracy Fullerton is author of the Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Designing Innovative Games. This book is one of best attempts to encapsulate the diverse concerns, considerations, attitudes, historical and contextual awareness, and most of all a distillation from the wealth of experience earned by many many game designers. The list of game design greats interviewed and who share their thoughts and learning is evident in over 34 interviews with or reflective perspectives offered by designers.

Tracy's home site is a great branching-off point for learning more and discovering the latest developments: http://www.tracyfullerton.com/main/bio/

Game Industry touch points.

For boardgames and toys "Spiel" is the business; the world's largest trade fair. The "Internationale Spieltage SPIEL" - in the trade it's just called "Essen". Spiel is the boardgame industry's most important (public) international gathering. It takes place over four days in October each year in Essen, Germany. It is the place for anyone involved in the industry to catch up, network, present, announce, and do deals. See http://www.merz-verlag-en.com/

The Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair in Nürnberg is a business-only trade show held annually in February: http://www.spielwarenmesse.de/

The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) holds E3 annually around May/June. E3 stands for the Electronics Entertainment Expo. Initially a trade-only exposition launched in 1995 after the game industry became frustrated with its positioning and treatment within the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) it is now open to the public. E3 (along with GDC) is considered one of the key opportunities for announcing and launching titles, for pitching to publishers and seeking funding, attendance has grown every year. For more see the ESA website: http://www.theesa.com/about-esa/overview/