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DESIGNING FOR CREATIVITY AND KINDNESS IN GAMES Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari , Vaasa Game Days, 9 December 2015

Designing for Creativity and Kindness in Games

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Page 1: Designing for Creativity and Kindness in Games

DESIGNING FOR CREATIVITY AND KINDNESS IN GAMES

Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari , Vaasa Game Days, 9 December 2015

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OVERVIEW

➤ Design for creativity and kindness

➤ Case studies

➤ Making game design part of your life, some tips for indie game dev

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ABOUT ME

➤ Game designer, researcher, and indie developer.

➤ Research associate at Institute of Digital Games in Malta, and at Dept. of Computer and System Sciences at Stockholm University

➤ Recently founded Otter Play - one person indie studio

➤ Current obsessions are AI Based Game Design, Story Making Games, and watercolour painting

➤ Past: Game Programmer 2000-02, Liquid MediaTech Lead, Zero Game Studio, Interactive Institute 2002 - 04Then: 10+ years of game research & faculty work, mostly in Game AI & Design.

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KINDNESS“helpfulness towards someone in need, not in return for

anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped”

Aristotle (translated by Lee Honeycutt). "Kindness". Rhetoric, book 2, chapter 7

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CREATIVITYa phenomenon whereby something new and

somehow valuable is formed.

Wikipedia

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CO-CREATION

In management&advertising research: Added valueIn pedagogy: enhanced learningIn MMO research (wow) – add-ons, developer integrating good ideas into regular interface.

Here: Players creating actants, entities that can act within a multiplayer game world. CO: players + system The system providing the affordances given for creating instances that may act within the system(In the tradition of text based virtual game worlds, MUDs, and later graphical ones, allowing different levels of co creation to players. Adding own graphics, animation, audio, scripting of dialog and behaviour. Sliding scale of how persistent the player-created content is, and various methods of editorial control.)

Making things together

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GAME CASE STUDIES

➤ Pataphysic Institute

➤ Games in the C2Learn Project

➤ 4Scribes

➤ Mind Shadows

seeds

creativity

kindness

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PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE

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HOW PLAYERS DESCRIBE IT*

(Not how I describe it. My description is bound to contain design intentions, and perhaps not represent what is actually there.)

“In the game you use the characters feelings to cast spells, depending on how you feel, different spells become available to you. you can affect how others feel by performing actions such as hugging joking or insulting. long term playing creates relationships between characters so that the mere presence of another character affects you.” (Player with test id 16)

“The point of the game is to control the moodswings of your character. The world is full of the manifestations of different feelings and mindsets and only by interacting with them/your friends can you "get in the right mood" to counter them. Actions are things like "hold hand" which would counter a "fear/terror" abomination.” (Player with test id 26)

* When asked, after play-testing: “Picture that you are talking to a friend. Describe how this game is played.”

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THE PATAPHYSIC INSTITUTE

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CHARACTER CREATION

Big Five (OCEAN, FFM) assessed using IPIP NEO

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MIND MODULE INFO

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AFFECTIVE ACTIONS

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ENTITIES:

Colossuses of Confusion

Avatars,NPCs, Single Sentiment Manifestations, and Compound manifestations

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Colossuses of Confusion

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MIND MAGIC SPELLS

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MIND MAGIC SPELLS

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CURSES AND BLESSINGS

➤ Avatars can be affected by the spells Sentiment Curse and Sentiment Blessing.

➤ Sentiment Curse gives an avatar a strong negative sentiment that has a zero decay rate.

➤ Example: curse of Guilt. The way to get rid of this sentiment is to create a manifestation of the sentiment, a compound manifestation (CM). If the CM is vanquished, the sentiment disappears.

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Play Test

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Play testing

Player 2

Film Camera 1

Player 1

Film Camera 2

Game Master

Player 3

In Clients:-Log files of play (one file for each avatar)

Camtasia recordings of: -voice (microphone in headset),

-Face (webcam), - Actions (taping of screen)

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SCENARIO 3: PLAYER AUTHORED FOES

GM ask player to curse each other. Cursed player manifests the emotion they cursed with. Players’ goals: - defeat the foe using personal spells. - Use AAs to affect each others moods needed to defeat foe.

Video: Elmo creates the CM

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I TESTED FOR MANY THINGS…

When designing the test and the test scenarios I aimed to gather data on:

➤ Sentiments (relationships whose values are based in previous interactions)

➤ Semi Autonomy – players’ attitude to the control of the avatar

➤ Mood – the summary of the avatars state of mind based on events, controlling the avatars action potential

➤ Role-playing aspects

➤ Co creation of Manifestations – the main challenge in the play test. This was the most engaging part of the game playing in the test.

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WHAT WAS CREATED

The Manifestations players created in the play tests were of four main categories;

➤ Persons, named according to real-life role (for player), (ex. “mother”)

➤ difficult situations, (ex “an exam”)

➤ abstract concepts, (ex “blue”) or

➤ fictional entities. (“Goblin of Doom”) In several cases players brought material into the game that had personal meaning to them. These

meanings were developed further when players saw how their manifestation behaved within the rule system of the world

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PLAYERS’ DESCRIPTIONS OF THEIR MANIFESTATIONS

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FINDINGS

Players assigning meaningfrom real lives

Players assigning intentionality to AI entities of own creation

• Authoring,

• observing, interpreting, strategizing

• interacting, and

• re-telling

• players in dialog with each other assigning intentionality to their creations

• Viewing CMs as rational, having own goals (Dennet)

• Creation of narratives that rationalize behavior (Sengers)

”I’ll forgive her to oblivion!”

”Look how he ignores you! He made me

feel so useless. Hold his hand!

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POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS

• Transformation of problems, seeing them in new ways.

• Transformative play (Fullerton)

• Wicked Problem spaces (Rittel and Webber, Mateas)

A recipe for player generated content? • instantiated for only a small group

who can talk about it while it is instantiated;

• an authoring interface that is quick (max 5 min), but still allows players to utilise a quite elaborate AI system for specifying the manifestation's behaviour.

Players assigning meaning from real lives

Players assigning intentionality to AI entities of own creation

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GAMES FOR CO-CREATIONin the C2Learn project

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The C2Learn project aims to introduce an innovative digital gaming and social networking environment incorporating diverse tools, the use of which can foster co-creativity in learning processes in the context of both formal and informal educational settings.

All games in project are for android tablets, download at:

C2LEARN.EU

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THE HOUSE OF EMOTION

➤ House of Emotions is a game that gets you to play with how you and the others express and interpret emotions. By playing you will realise how you and others make emotive judgements: How do you express emotion in something you create? Do you have any control over how the others understand your expressed emotions or react to your creations? House of Emotions is a multiplayer game which you can play on your tablet or computer as part of a group of 2 to 5 players.

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GUESS WHAT

➤ Guess What is a game that invites you to guess what is shown in a picture and generally think through images, taking into account the perspectives of other players. It is a multiplayer game which you can play on your tablet or computer as part of a group of 2 to 5 players.

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ICONOSCOPE

➤ Iconoscope is a game that gets you to play with visual creativity and ambiguity. It invites you to do something quite unusual: to represent a given concept through an image that you will create so that it will not be obvious to everyone what your creation represents! Let the others guess what that image might stand for and enjoy the fun!

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EXPLORE AND EXPAND

➤ The Wizard is asking you to create a simple conceptual diagram in the English language. Starting from a given concept in the centre, try to think of four other concepts that are linked to it from a specific perspective. In reality, the Wizard has already ‘searched’ the world and is inviting you to guess concepts that he has found to be associated with the given theme, if you look at it from the specified perspective.

Your score increases each time you get it right – by more and more points at a time, as you are adding more of the related words.

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CREATIVE STORIES

➤ Creative Stories is a game inviting you to write creatively. Your aim is to use as much of the creative advice the Wizard is giving as possible, so that you win more points while you are writing.

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4SCRIBES

➤ 4Scribes is a creative story-making game for groups of 4 players.

➤ The story starts with a short starting statement or phrase. Your objective is to develop the story together with your co-players. Playing in turns, you add a little more to the story text each time…

➤ At the start, you get some cards, the ‘Creative Elements’. Each card has a word or short phrase on it. Every time it is your turn to play, you select to play one of your cards.

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DESIGN AIMS: COHERENT STORY STORY TELLING TOKENS THAT SPARK PLAYERS’ CREATIVITY (CARDS)

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STORY MAKING GAMES

In story making games players, via game rules, use tokens for narrative play in order to partake in a playful process that results in told stories (narratives).

Important difference from role playing games: Players do not act via an avatar or a game persona. Instead, players act as authors or narrators, collaboratively telling stories about the story tokens represented in the games

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EXAMPLES

Story Cubes, Once Upon a time, NanoFictionary, Fiasco, Microscope

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Story Cubes (Gamewright, 2005)are a set of nine dice, each with a unique image on each of its six faces, for a total of 54 images. To play the game, a player rolls all nine dice and creates a story that ties the resulting images together. Whether this is a game or not is debatable as there isn’t a clear goal – the player could succeed or fail at making a story, but there is no means to rank the stories against others or determine a winner.

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Nanofictionary (Looney Labs, 2002)

Players compete to collect a complete set of story elements: ➤setting, ➤characters, ➤problem, and ➤resolution.

Once each player has a card of each type, they all tell their stories that tie the four together. Players listen to all the stories and vote on the best one.

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After selecting a scenario, players roll dice to determine➤ characters,➤ settings, and ➤ plot points.

They then act out the story (adding a tilt along the way), trying to reach the agreed upon conclusion while also completing their individual characters’ goals.

Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games, 2009)a role playing game with strong storytelling elements. It is based on the standard screenwriting tropes common in crime movies.

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Once Upon a Time (Atlas Games, 1995) Each player gets a random hand of cards that they need to incorporate into the story being told collectively by all the players. The cards include story elements like characters, plot twists, and resolutions. One player begins telling the story, but may pass it along to the next player if they are no longer able to connect the cards in their hand. Players may also interrupt the current storyteller if they (the storyteller) mention an element that the player has in their hand. The goal is to be the first player to use all their cards.

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Microscope (Lame Mage Productions, 2011)The story begins with a single sentence, known as a Legacy, that spans the entire story, and players are tasked to cooperatively fill in the details. Palettes: each player takes turns writing down a specified number of words, such as objects, ideologies, concepts, etc. on a ``Yes'' or ``No'' list. (These words will define what concepts players will be able to use at any time during the storytelling phase and which words they can never use this stories universe.)A Period consists of a significant event in the time line and can be dark (bad) or light (good). Players are then tasked to recount the various stories collaboratively that define that period, which as whole serves as the creative stimulus for the game.

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DESIGN CHALLENGES OF THE GENRE

1. Inherent tension in the genre between winning a story-making game and creating a good story through the game.*

2. Changing the players stance - from player-stance to author stance.

3. Ensuring that the tokens and rules help the creative process of the players.

* Not much written (yet) on the genre, but both Mitchell and Wallis recognise this. Mitchell, A., McGee, K.: Designing storytelling games that encourage narrative play. In: Interactive Storytelling, pp. 98|-108. Springer (2009), Wallis, J.: Making games that make stories. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA (2007)

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CHALLENGE: COHERENCE

➤ Dichotomy by

➤ free-form fantasy explorations and coherence

➤ “winning” versus making a good story

Only challenging if the AIM of the design is that it should result in a ‘good’ story.

➤ Group play, individual styles, that may shoot out into space, can be moderated by rules. Though the rules themselves can gear towards ‘winning’ rather than a good story.

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CHALLENGE:THE PLAYER AS AN AUTHOR

Many players are used to play in roles, in character. Game mastering and instructions for play can encourage

➤Player to add more, new, characters to a scene

➤Talk/write in 3rd person

➤Adding objects

➤seeing things outside the current scene

➤etc

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CHALLENGE: HELP PLAYERS’ CREATIVE PROCESS

Common: Combine rules with randomness and combinatorics to aid players’ creative process

Ex: assign attributes to suites of cards, and to specific cards, then pull random ones from pile.

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MOTIVATION

Enhancing Story Making Games

Consistently Support:

-Player Creativity -Narrative Coherence

Adopting Computational Creativity Techniques

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MOTIVATION

For this work we focus on the word of the card

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COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA

Apply Ritchie’s (2007) Criteria in Story Making Games

Ritchie, Graeme. "Some empirical criteria for attributing creativity to a computer program." Minds and Machines 17.1 (2007): 67-99.

Novelty Typicality

Quality

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COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA

Apply Ritchie’s Criteria in Story Making Games

Novelty

Obtain the most distinct card from the entire set of cards

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COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY CRITERIA

Apply Ritchie’s Criteria in Story Making Games

Typicality

Obtain the most similar card from a pre-defined set of cards

how similar is this specific artefact to this sub-group of artefacts

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STORY MAKING GAMES

➤ Creation of stories through play

➤ Use of stimuli (cards, dice, text ...) during play

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OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES

A theme is chosen at the beginning

Ex: French Revolution

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OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES

Each player is dealt a hand of cards

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OUR GAME: 4SCRIBES

Turn-based – Each player plays a card and writes a continuation to the story

The warrior picked up his mighty weapon

With a swing of his weapon he was able to defeat the dark lord and save the city

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NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES

Why use Novelty or Typicality in 4 Scribes?

How to use Novelty or Typicality in 4 Scribes?

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NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES

How?

Think of the metrics as card dealers

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NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES

How?

Each metric will deal cards, in such a way that the cards dealt

maximizes novelty or typicality

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NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES

How?

Semantic Difference

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NOVELTY IN 4SCRIBES

Maximize semantic difference between all cards

in the card database

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NOVELTY IN 4SCRIBES

Compare semantic difference between each card and all cards in the database

Get card that maximizes semantic difference

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TYPICALITY IN 4SCRIBES

Minimize semantic difference between a pre-defined set of

cards

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TYPICALITY IN 4SCRIBES

Compare semantic difference between each card in the database and each card in a pre-defined set of cards.

Get card that minimizes semantic difference

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DEALING CARDS

For each player deal a metric selected card

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NOVELTY/TYPICALITY AND 4SCRIBES

Why?

Challenge Player Creativity

Keep it Fresh

Thematically coherent as possible

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C2LEARN RESOURCES

Knowledge-base about creativity and co-creation: c2learn.eu

Are you interested in the source code of our ‘behind-the-scenes’ technologies? Links to the GitHub repository:

➤ C2Assistants services: https://github.com/institutedigitalgames/c2assistants

➤ Semantic Reasoning Tools Suite: https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Semantic-Reasoning-Tools

➤ Diagrammatic Reasoning Tools Suite: https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Diagrammatic-Reasoning-Tools

➤ Emotive Reasoning Tools Suite: https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/Emotive-Reasoning-Tools

➤ Creativity Profiling Server: https://github.com/CRU-NCSRD/CPS

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MIND SHADOWS

Mind Shadows is a game of kindness.

In this board game, you and one or two friends together find ways to overcome Shadows - real-world problems or concepts that you approach playfully. You give each other super-powers that represent your strengths in the real world.

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You monitor each other’s wellbeing, finding ways to each other happy, and lending each other support when low. The shadow will fights that all the way, but by playing creatively you can reduce the negative emotion and the significance of the Shadow and win the game.

Photo of prototype

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You play with supportive social actions, while the shadow uses destructive ones. You can author new support actions as needed, to make new types of actions that affects both the other players, and the shadow.

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During play a story-pile is created, helping you to keep track of who did what, and so that you, in the end of the game have a summary of how you jointly approached your problem.

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In the end: pick the best new actions to become part of your play-deck, personalising it, and making it possible for one friends support action to help another friend, in a future game.

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KINDNESS LEADS TO

KINDNESS“helpfulness towards someone in need, not in return for anything, nor for the advantage of the helper himself, but for that of the person helped” Aristotle

At the end of play test #13, having overcome a shadow of pain “The one who is let-down”

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KINDNESS

Player actions of kindness in Mind Shadows:

➤ monitoring the co-players states of mind,

➤ giving co-players personalised super powers,

➤ by card selection diminishing negative emotions on the others player board, and increasing positive ones

➤ thinking constructively around how the co-players’ Shadow can be overcome or coped with.

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CURRENTLY WORK WITH MIND SHADOWS BOARD GAME➤ making nicer boards in colour to make a

print-on-demand board game

➤ and considering it for tablets

➤ having tests of a black and white version (for easy print out)

Would you like to play? Give me your e-mail and I’ll send you the BW print version!

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MAKE GAME DESIGN PART

OF YOUR LIFE

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MAKE INDIE GAMES

➤ Jam!

➤ Make!

➤ Reach out!

➤ Deploy!

➤ Maintain!

Have fun making Make fun for

others

= upwards spiral of fun!

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CREATE WITH YOUR CLOSE ONES

Gather friends and design together

Participate in Game Jams

Test the games with family and friends

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IN IDEATION: FOCUS ON GOOD DESIGN

In the ideation process: rapid prototyping on paper

Do’s Dont’s

Do not strive for perfection and polish - you will likely reiterate and throw away a lot

Focus on game mechanics

Test the game mechanics - are they fun? Do your players get the experience you you are aiming for?

Don’t work too long on your own - your risk polishing/perfecting parts that might not be enjoyable for the players

If you test a paper prototype - simulate in the test that the interactions are on your intended platform (mobile, tablet, PC etc)

Don’t forget to have fun yourself! If your work becomes a grind - its an alarm bell!

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PAPER PROTOTYPING AND GAME-JAMMING

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IDEATION TOOLS

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MAKE THE GAME!There is a myriad of tools - there are the

ones that I use

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NAN DECK

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PRINT ON DEMAND BOARD GAMES

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GET IT OUT THERE

Players of your game will be the games’ spokes persons

➤ pictures and musings about the design in social media

➤ Bring the prototype with you wherever you go

… do this as soon as you have an idea about the ‘gist’ of the game, when you can describe it in a few sentences.

Once it is playable:

➤ Kickstarter, Patreon, etc

➤ start-up support networks, such as Startup Grind or West Coast Startup

➤ Indiecade

➤ Sites specific to the genre of your game (such as Board Game geek if it is a board game)

➤ to people interested in the topic of your game - who might not be exposed to games otherwise.

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THE FUTUREis what we make, right now,

right here

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ENDING WORDS

➤ Make sure to have fun, and to do what is meaningful (to you) when making games. That way it can stay/become a part of your life.

➤ The design of a game governs what a player DO when playing: as designers we can encourage behaviours - such as kindness, such as creativity.

➤ It is up to us, as individuals, to create the future of games and play.

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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari Contact: [email protected]