What makes a Good Game, and a Game GoodDrew Davidson, Ph.D. (waxebb.com)
Director, Entertainment Technology Center – Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University
He is interested in in-depth ‘close reading’ of games to provide thorough critique and analysis, and capturing the gameplay experience. In addition, it better finds meaning and value. Through this process finds the true value of a game.
Presentation focus:
MINECRAFT – A SNACKABLE INDIE SANDBOX
http://www.minecraft.net/
Winner of a bucketload of awards at GDC this year.
Minecraft procedurally generates worlds. You start a world, and start a day in this world. You can join local servers and have friends play together in this game.
Create a crafting table to gain the ability to have a bigger crafting area, therefore better ability to make.
Varieties of Game Play
How do you measure where you are in your gameplay experience?
Involvement – at a certain point you are just involved in a game. If you can’t hook someone at this level you’ve lost them already.
Immersion – you don’t think about controls, it’s more about ‘doing’
Investment – you cross the line and wan to have a successful completion in this game experience.
Narrative – often like to look at the narrative. We make sense of the world by telling stories about our experienced. This applies to games.
Is it even a game? Yes - because you have to survive (there are zombies at night!)
Minecraft is about creativity and survival. You need to survive. It’s about what you want to do in this world, figure out your own project.
Minecraft is also very snackable, easy to play in short bites.
In this game, there’s 10 minutes of day time, 1.5 mins of sunset, 7 mins of night and 1.5 mins of sunrise.
The game was made by Markus Perrson, made it by himself. He built it publicly to get public feedback. Offered pre-order to testers. He’s now gone to BETA, hired a team of friends, now has 2 million pre-orders. You can play it for free by yourself but pay if you want to do multi player.
Community support via Minepedia and Mods. There’s also a ‘minepedia’ completely created by the community.
Developer has also opened up API for free so people can mod it from the ground up. The code is free – but with the condition that he’ll put cool stuff he likes in his game (eg. Texture packs)
Game is available on PC and Mac. It’s PC game style, old school gameplay boiling down to the core essence of RPGs.
What is Snackable?
- convenient and easy
- time easy
- complete play experience
- reduction of friction into
your life.
What is Post Secret?
- we are in a SPOILER driven culture
- You have to actively avoid things to keep a secret in a game or movie these days.
- Fits into the social networking hemisphere.
What is Literacy and Mastery?
- how people take control of and have ownership of games
- Minecraft was fascinating in terms of development – one guy, developed with the community and he’s made a fortune.
- How does it add up to an experience that has value?
How can we as producers leverage this open source code to find ways to create educational gameplay experiences through minecraft?
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