I just finished running Into the Woods in Bristol at igfest and it went really well. The game mixes street games and social games with a bit of theatricality to hopefully deliver a compelling experience. I envisioned the game as a series of linked fairy-tale games. I had playtested all of the elements of the game at Eyebeam and as The Duel out in COaP SF last fall. But I had never run them all together as a theatrical experience. MCing the game as the character of Robin Goodfellow was an exciting challenge.
I really wanted to deliver all instructions for the game in narrative as the character. In order to do this I had to keep the games simple and focused so that we wouldn’t get bogged down with players asking questions about rules and how to play. Instead I wanted them hurled directly into the game where they had to figure out what to do. For the most part it actually worked in play. Plus the games are short enough and repeated several times, so players have a couple chances to watch and figure out what to do.
Here’s the description of the game:
Into the Woods takes players on a fairy-tale like journey into the darkness of the forest and their base instincts. The event is suite of five short interconnected games that pit a group of Villagers against a pack of Wolves in a contest for control of the forest. Players will find themselves exiled from the village, cast into a whispering forest and blindly dueling one another as they try to shepherd their kind to safety or hunt down intruders to their dominion.
At the beginning of the game players will be assigned roles, which they act out over the course of five games. Some games find players working alone, while others involve the cooperation of the entire village or pack. In the end though, only one player will be crowned king of the forest.
To read the script of the game download the the full script here :Into the Woods Script
Some photos outlining the play of the game:
Before the game, I talk to each of the players and stamp a claw or bone into each player's palm. This is the player's identity.
Little Devils gather players for the start of a round of "The Bell in the Forest"
The Children hunt the Wolf in a round of "The Bell in the Forest"
The circle collapses on the Children chasing the Wolf in a round of "The Bell in the Forest"
The Wolves and the Villagers strategize before a round of "The Whispering Forest"
Player navigate the player trees in the "The Whispering Forest"
Watch a video of a round of The Duel at COaP SF. The Duel is the climactic final game of Into the Woods. It can play like a slow burning terror for the blindfolded shepherd or a fast-paced almost martial arts-like game, depending on the players:
Things were awfully bright and glowing in the old fun mine this week. I largely spent the week working on levels for our port of LEGO Fever to the iPhone from the PC.
On Wednesday I realized I hadn’t actually done level design in over a year. That’s kind of a strange realization when you consider game design your profession and level design part and parcel with that notion. The games I’ve worked on of late have largely been systemic procedural systems. The design all happened at the global level.
Diving back into actual level design has been great, if very laborious. You really feel like you’re making a game when you’re constantly tweeking variables and checking how they impact the game. Plus laying out the general level flow for LEGO Fever has given me the chance to explore some ideas about pacing that I’ve lately found of interest. Namely, I’m trying to switch up the gameplay style and feel every four or five levels. I want the experience of playing to constantly shift and evolve.
None of this is revolutionary, I know, but its nice to have some time to put some ideas into practice. The frustrating thing about professional game development is how rarely you actually get to make new games.
Right now most of these games/services revolve around check-in mechanics. And I can totally see why, check-ins are the atomic unit of location-based data–”I’m here.” With Foursquare you simply raise your hand and state your location. MyTown offers some further gameplay beyond your hand-raising with players collecting rent on properties they’ve visited. They may seem overly simple, but these casual mechanics are what’s required to get the average player used to real-world gaming, easing them into more complex and demanding games.
I recently gave an hour long webinar on casual game design for the International Game Developers Association. The talk touched on some of the ground I cover in my book Casual Game Design. I also gave a very brief analysis of some of the design decisions that informed our iPhone Gigaputt. The slides provide a visual guide to the ideas illustrated in the talk (though they make much more sense with the audio).
In the presentation I try to define casual games and define some defining characteristics of casual play. I also touch on the importance of developing a mental model to explain games before going into the process of being a game designer. After laying this initial groundwork I look at some specific games and the mechanics that comprise the gameplay.
Do you think the characteristics I’ve identified for casual games make sense? Are there others?
Gigaputt, our new golf game has been out for about a month now and has sold decently. We were featured by Apple for a week, which boosted our sales 10 times over. But as many app developers know, the iTunes Store is a giant haystack. It’s worse than finding a needle in a haystack. At least a needle is made of different material. This is like finding a strand of hay in a haystack. You can find the ones on top but finding ones in the middle, well that takes some real perseverance and digging.
With the flick of a button Gigaputt transforms your neighborhood into an exciting 3-hole mini-golf course, complete with popping manholes, treacherous fire hydrants, and giant coins.
I plan to have a more detailed post-mortem on the design decisions behind Gigaputt available very soon. But in the meantime check out the game. The post-mortem will make a lot more sense if you’ve played!
Gaming 3.0 is about leveraging game mechanics and models to re-invigorate other markets: humans are inherently geared towards addictive behaviors and biases that can be exploited through game mechanics like points, achievements, and leveling up. Gaming + Commerce = Swoopo. Gaming + Music = Red Octane, Harmonix. Gaming + Healthcare = Lumos Labs. Gaming + Local Search/LBS = FourSquare. I often joke that “gaming will rescue us all.” I don’t mean that we all become hardcore WoW players, but that we can utilize game constructs to perhaps revive other industries which no longer monetize as effectively via macro-transaction or advertising.
It’s definitely something I kept thinking about while writing Casual Game Design. More and more I think the lessons of casual game will make a greater impact outside of the game industry than in it. Now I wish I had chapters in the book looking at the “game” mechanics of things like collecting friends on Facebook or bidding on eBay auctions.
New York University / Interactive Telecommunications Program – Spring 2010
Greg Trefry
gtrefry at iamtheeconomy dot com
646-644-1995
Office Hours: Friday after class, 6-6:30 PM or by appointment Download Syllabus
Class Description
What happens to games when they escape the boundaries of our tabletops and desktops and TV screens and living rooms? From massively multiplayer online games to networked objects that turn the city into a gigantic game grid, new forms of super-sized gaming are expanding at an alarming rate and opening up vast new spaces in which to play. Whether these games are measured in terms of number of players, geographical dimensions, or temporal scope, they represent a new trend in which the ‘little world” created by a game threatens to swallow up the “real world” in which it is situated. This class is a hands-on workshop focused on the particular design problems of large-scale games. In this class students: develop a foundation of basic game design understanding from which to approach the specific issues particular to big games; analyze existing digital and non-digital large-scale games, taking them apart to understand how they work; as interactive systems; and work on a series of design exercises that explore the social, technological, and creative possibilities of large-scale games.
The class will be broken into three sections: People, Time and Location. The first section People will focus on games that bring together large numbers of players into one game. The second section Time will focus on games that stretch over long periods of time and begin to integrate with our everyday lives. The Location section will examine ways in which games can utilize specific spaces and integrate with the world around us. For the final we will bring all of these ideas together to create games that challenge established notions of gameplay.
Assignments
Game Presentation on a Big Game
People Game: a game for a large number of people
Time Game: a game that spans a large amount of time
Location Game: a game about a location
Final Team Project
Expectations
Attend the class and talk – For every two absences your grade will be lowered one letter grade
Do all of the reading
Turn in all assignments on time and complete. For each week your project is late you lose one letter grade.
Grading
15% In-class discussion and weekly blog comments
10% Game Presentation
15% People Game
15% Time Game
15% Location Game
30% Final Project
Class Schedule
January 22 / Class Intro
In Class
What are Big Games
What do people think they are
My expectations for the class
In Class
- Hand out water guns to play Assassins over the next week
February 26 / Alternate Realities
Readings
- Jane McGonigal, “This Is Not a Game: Immersive Aesthetics & Collective Play,” http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/mcgonigal/notagame/paper.pdf (if for some reason the link doesn’t work, Google the paper title. You’ll find it)
- Montola & Waern, “Ethical and Practical Look at Unaware Game Participation,” 2006
March 5 / Time Game Due
In Class
- Teams will introduce players to their game.
- Each game will be played over the following week
March 12 / Everywhere
Readings
- Linda Hughes, “Beyond the rules of the game, Why Are Rooie Rules Nice?,” Game Design Reader, page 504-517
- Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun, Chapters 2-3, pages 12-47
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED talk on flow, http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html
In Class
- Play a Scavenger Hunt
- Play Capture the Flag
Matthew Kaplan provides a great wrap up of reactions around the game criticism blogosphere to the airport/terrorist level in Modern Warfare 2. I’m a little surprised at the number or writers voicing rather strong opinions on the level without yet playing it. Of course there’s been so much talk about this level and the position it puts players in, that it’s very easy to have an opinion. However, I do think this level bears playing to get the full measure of its impact.
When described the level before playing, I thought it seemed like a rather obvious attempt to court controversy. And after playing it I hold to that opinion, but I don’t really fault the game designers at Infinity Ward. Sometimes obvious is the right approach and with a game as unsubtle as Modern Warfare 2, obvious fits right in. As I played the level I felt genuinely disturbed. I felt helpless. I felt a little dirty. And I think that’s exactly what the game designers wanted. So they did their job.
I think much of the discussion of the scene has ignored the fact that this scene is not a significant departure from the mechanics of MW2. You have no real agency in this level. You are along for the ride. If you try and shoot the terrorist you are quickly gunned down. Essentially you are forced to simply follow along, navigating the space. However this is not unusual within the mechanics of the game. The game repeatedly puts you in short sequences where you must press a specific button. Walk up to the railing and press X to clip on. Ferociously tap X to throw a knife. In all of these situations the game reduces the player down to one button press. The game asks you to press now and then plays out the action for you.
This level is not really any different. I suppose it allows the player to shoot civilians if they want. But other scenes allow me to press X more than I need too as well. This sort of narrow interaction channel drastically limits player choice in an attempt to deliver a moment of narrative clarity. Sometimes this is the thrill of rappelling down a cliff wall, sometimes it’s the emotional wallop of witnessing terrorism. It’s not a deep and subtle interaction, but then one button press interactions don’t tend to be subtle. They tend to be obvious and to the point.
Charles Pratt has been conducting a series of great podcasts with different game designers and academics under the name Another Castle. He’s interviewed everyone from Eric Zimmerman to Jesper Juul to Heather Chaplin. He even interviewed yours truly–giving me the chance to expound on the Come Out & Play Festival, my definition of “casual” games and the design process and style taxonomy behind Jojo’s Fashion Show.
I highly recommend checking them out. They’re great listens for anyone thinking about games. Here’s the list of all of the shows.
In this book I dissect a range of different casual game mechanics in an attempt to find out how they work and why they engage players. View the book on Amazon.com
In this book I dissect a range of different casual game mechanics in an attempt to find out how they work and why they engage players.