RPI's 5th Annual Game Festival & Symposium is coming up on April 25th and 26th. The Albany IGDA Chapter will have a table at the Festival and we will be having a free raffle for members that attend the event.

Saturday's symposium will feature a series of panels and talks including industry luminaries Greg Costikyan, Eric Zimmerman.

Friday
Game Festival - Darrin Communication Center Great Hall
5:00 PM to 9 PM

Saturday
Game Symposium - Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies Auditorium
10:15 to 3:30 PM.

Check the website or read further for more details on this event:

2008 Game Festival & Symposium

For the past four years, the Annual Game Festival and Symposium succeeded due to the quality of the student games exhibited during the Game Festival, and the themes and caliber of speakers that are the focus of the Symposium. Our consistent purpose is to expand students' game development skills and to increase their understanding of potential career options in the games and simulation. For the second year, the Festival will feature the Vicarious Visions Student Awards for the top five teams. We encourage and are gaining an increasing regional audience.

This year, the Festival is on Friday, April 25, 2008. As in previous years, Games & Simulation faculty will select the games for exhibition from among those created by undergraduate students within the preceding twelve months. The Festival and Symposium this year will be part of the 50th Anniversary of the School of Humanities & Social Sciences with substantial alumni participation already anticipated.
Game Symposium: Influence & Independence

The following day, Saturday, April 26, 2008, our theme for the Symposium is "Influence and Independence: New Forces in Games."

Serious Games: What Are They: Who Is Interested

Social Games, Games for Change, Educative Games, Persuasive Games, Games for Civic Engagement: the possibilities for the uses of game and simulation technologies are developing rapidly. In the forefront of the research, evaluation, and dissemination of such games are leading U.S. foundations that have made substantial commitments to exploring these areas. The Symposium will focus on the Serious Games trend in order to provide a window for Game Symposium participants into this rapidly emerging world.

As the Rensselaer Game Symposium developed over the past four years, our event has grown from a few hours and a handful of students and faculty to a full day event that draws upon not only Rensselaer students and faculty but students from other campuses in the region and from local game development companies. We take it as a core of our mission to help our students and faculty gain a richer understanding of the many current perspectives on the possibilities of game technologies.

We are also developing the Festival and Symposium into a regional conference with ties to careers, research opportunities, and connections with other universities.

Rensselaer's goal with its Game and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program is to build a program and a culture of games on campus that enhances interdisciplinary skills that can open many career choices in the emerging games sector. The Game Festival and Symposium are viewed by the faculty and administration of this interdisciplinary initiative as integral to our pedagogy. A memorable and defining lecture was provided at the first Game Symposium when Ernest Adams laid down a challenge to our students: "if you came to RPI to build first person shooter games you came here for the wrong reason." What he went on to explain is that the world of games is much, much broader than the commercial sector which is often the first, admittedly powerful point of contact for young men and women who wish to study for a career in this field.

We are particularly grateful to our Level One Sponsor for 2007, Vicarious Visions, Inc., an Activision Studio, for their additional sponsorship of the Vicarious Visions Student Challenge Awards.

2008 Game Festival & Symposium Agenda

2008 Game Symposium Topics & Biographies

2007 Vicarious Visons Student Challenge Award Recipients

IGDA members Tim, David, Justin, Megan, Colin and Tobi at the protest on Tuesday

"Games are an expressive medium worthy of the same respect, and protections, as movies, literature and other forms of art and entertainment. We oppose any effort that would treat games differently from other forms of art and creative expression"

This act of shutting down Bilal's attempt to showcase his exhibit is in direct opposition to our rights as American Citizens. Bilal's freedom to express, and our freedom to engage in open dialogs about political issues. The medium used to express political opinions should not affect how the political statement is treated by authorities.

Protest and counter-protest in front of The Sanctuary for Independent Media. March 10, 2008

Idea Takeaway
Session attendees will get a better understanding of what prefabricated communities are and how they operate. Community managers will learn some of the pitfalls of having these groups in your game as well as how to harness them. Online game designers will learn how prefabricated communities act under different game rules.

Intended Audience
The intended audience are game designers involved in creating online communities for their games as well as community managers who deal with moderating online groups.

If you are an IGDA member, and over 21, then come join us at the IGDA members only event Tuesday, February 19th at the Westin Hotel. To RSVP and for more info visit IGDA Event Page.

Slides from Ernest Adams talk last night can be seen on his website here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/Rethinking/rethinking.htm

Real Audio from this lecture is also available: http://realserver.earthlink.net/~www.designersnotebook.com/Media/Rethinking.rm

All the rest of his lectures can be found here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/lectures.htm

27 people (including Steve Okimoto from Nintendo of America) joined us after for food and drinks at Holmes and Watson in downtown Troy.

At the lecture

Kathleen Ruiz, Ernest Adams and Marc Destefano

Hanging out at Holmes and Watson after Ernest's talk

Ernest gives his final farewell

Freelance designer, author, and IGDA founder, Ernest Adams, will be coming to RPI this Thursday to give a lecture on stories and challenge in gameplay.

Thursday, November 29th
7:30-9pm
Russell Sage Laboratory
Room 3303
RPI Campus
Troy, NY

Rethinking Challenges in Games and Stories

Abstract: In this lecture Adams will take a second look at the role of challenges in gameplay - how they construct the player's experience and affect his or her emotional response to the game. Starting with a new proposal for determining the difficulty of a challenge, Adams goes on to question the assumption that games should be challenging at all, and make a case for other forms of computerized play beyond the traditional challenge-achievement-reward structure. The lecture also addresses the effect of challenges on storytelling, and discusses how different mechanisms for influencing the plot of a story produce different feelings in the player. The lecture ends with a suggestion for a unifying meta-approach to interactive storytelling that obviates all the debate about the "right way" to design games.

Get directions to this event here.

The fourth Montreal International Game Summit is coming up on November 27th and 28th! For the last two years we have been going up with members of the chapter and RPI Game Dev Club. This a great nearby conference for professional and student developers. It features an excellent series of talks for all disciplines (including some of the best ones from GDC) and is an ideal length of time for busy game developers.

The Albany IGDA at MIGS 2006.

The early registration discount closes on November 1st and IGDA Members get a discount. If 5 or more people are interested we can get a group rate.

Send us an email to albanyigda@gmail.com
if you are interested in the group rate or joining a car pool to the conference.

Registration for the conference is here.

Welcome - Ian Stead
IGDA and IGDA Board - Tobi Saulnier
Introduction - Jamey Stevenson
Gameplay Metrics for a Better Tomorrow - Darius Kazemi
(Full Slides Available Here)

Introductory Comments by Tobi Saulnier on the goings ons of Board of Directors and the IGDA overall:

Lots of teleconferences and meetings. Programs and memberships committee has been trying to better coordinat with members. Part of this effort has been incorporating chapters into the decision making processes. They have also been looking at a new web solution for the IGDA. Currently it is a hodge-podge, and they are hoping to replace with a more robust solution. More organized. Should there be members only content? Re-negotiating with CMP with respect to GDC and Game Developer Magazine. IGDA and CMP used to be joined at the hip. GDC moved to February. Choice awards. Attempting to continue moving apart from CMP. Annual meeting may disconnect from CMP. Awards should focus on people and teams, rather than games or publishers. GDC call for papers are going right now. Deadline is October 1st.

Introduction to Darius by Jamey Stevenson, Darius is a "metrics mastermind". Worked for Turbine, D&D Online, and Lord of the Rings Online. Officer for IGDA Education SIG.

Darius Kazemi - Orbus Gameworks - darius@orbusgameworks.com

Considers himself a data geek. D&D Online (DDO) and Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). Now part of Orbus Gameworks. They build game-play metrics middle-ware. The scope is game-play metrics. Measuring what people do in a game.

Metrics is part science. You collect hard numbers. I like metrics because I hate focus groups. "People lie. Don't trust them." I like to have hard numbers with witch to work. It is also part art, because you're interpreting the numbers. Objective observations in opposition to subjective interpretation. You have to tease the information out of the numbers through "intuitive" analysis.

Why should I collect game-play metrics?
How do I collect metrics the right way?
What can I do with metrics?

2 things. 1.) Relational database. 2.) Reporting system.

DB's versus Log files. I hate log files. The only down file to a DB is the higher learning curve. However, they are flexible, relational, and you can run queries on them.

You have to have a really fast reporting system. DDO and LotRO. We had a database for DDO, but not a good fast reporting system. Netcharts. Fast reporting front end is really important. What good is data without ...

Most important slide. Design <-> Analyst <-> Programmer.

Wrong way to build a metrics system. What should we look at? What are we gonna record? "You, designer, what do you want to record?"

Way to build a metrics question is iterative and through questions. The "designer" is a person who wants to know something. What are the top five things you would like answered? I'd like to know about X. I'd like to know Y. Analyst takes ownership of the database. Works with the customer or designer. You have to sit with the designer, and sketch out what they're really looking for. The analyst takes that and specs what they need to record to get an idea of what the DB needs to have in it. Takes that over to the programmer and says, you have to help me get this data via hooks in the game code.

Start with one good question and you'll move to more and more questions.

Managers say, "Wow, that's cool. I want more."

There are tons of questions you can ask about your game, but there are really only a few that are the right questions to ask. You have to look at your core game design and think about what the best three questions are to ask about your game.

An MMO Example:

1.) Population - constantly updating what the status of your population is. You can keep a history in the background. It forms the foundation for other things.

2.) Items -

3.) Combat - Start simple by only keeping track of which members of the population.

4.) Economy and Trade

You don't want to track things that are "throw away."

Social Networks - Networks are easy to store. You have edge tables. It ends up being simple, because it's a relational database.

"Community event" - Piece of information you want to propagate. Send a blanket email. Spam people. 5% response. Post to your forums. People on there are more likely to join in. You can find connection points between networks, and the information will propagate very quickly. Understanding the topology of your social network.

Prefuse - Free graph visualization tool.

Economy and social networks - Linking your Trade and Item tables. Oooh.

Hunting down gold farmers.

Average value of an item in trade on your system. Street value versus

In-game advertising - Where are people hanging out / looking in a game? Visualization based on Quake 3.

Get a profile of what people who leave the game. Might help you identify aspects of a game that people don't like. Integration with a billing system helps.

Q/A (Bug Hunting) - Looking for outliers. Email this developer any time this thing happens more than 80% of the time. Caught a ton of bugs just by looking at data from a beta. 90% of people abandon this question.

Customer Service - If you know what they have been up to.

Billing - Integrating with a billing system.

Network Operations - Sanity check our in game and performance networks. Yes/no our servers are maxed out when lots of people are on. For sanity checks.

Question and Answer:

1.) Standardized log file? W3C log files. Data conforming to design of game. If you've got web log reporting networks, then generating data that fits that might be a nice easy start.

2.) Middleware - Describe you data. Generates API. Plug into game.

3.) How do you look at the numbers and ascribe agency? You can bridge the qualitative and quantitative data with surveys or other metrics. You can do it on the forums.

Albany IGDA Members listening intently

Ian introducing Tobi

Darius explains metrics in MMO's to the meeting

Some Tom Foolery

Albany IGDA Members

When designing and maintaining an MMO, developers are faced with a litany of questions. Do mages level faster than fighters? What vehicles are being neglected? Which players are hubs of our social networks? What areas are densely populated? How can we detect gold farmers?

These questions are often answered with intuition - and these answers often introduce assumptions that, while intuitive, are also dead wrong. Data metrics can provide a wealth of quantitative information about player behavior, provided that there is a solid technical backbone and that an appropriate methodology is followed.

This talk will cover examples of how data metrics can crush commonly-held assumptions about player behavior and give designers a new perspective on how their virtual worlds really work. Darius will show how to ask the right questions of your game so you can get the most out of a metrics system, covering basic census information, combat metrics, macro- and microeconomics, and social network visualization.

Darius Kazemi is a data junkie, and he knows from experience that metrics, properly collected and analyzed, can vastly increase the value of each iteration in a game's development cycle. He earned his gameplay metrics chops keeping track of player behavior in games such as Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. He's an active IGDA member, most notably as a Technology Co-Officer of the IGDA Education SIG. He keeps a blog about games and the game industry over at Tiny Subversions, and is a generally useful guy to know.

Casey talks about his experiences in India

Attendees listen intently

Casey fields questions after his talk

Discussion after the talk

On July 23rd the first annual Games in Education Symposium was held at WMHT in Troy, NY. Chapter Coordinator Jamey Stevenson was there to report on the event. Here's an excerpt.

"This past Monday I attended the Games in Education Symposium in Troy, NY. The event, which was put on by 1st Playable Productions and WMHT, offered a chance for educators and developers alike to rub elbows, share experiences and insight, and exchange ideas about the future of game-based learning, both in and out of the classroom."

Read the rest on Jamey's website: http://www.jstevenson.com

For more pictures of the event check out the GiE 2007 Photoset on flickr.

The rise of India, China, and South Korea as viable locations for game
production, and the increased use of offshore and inshore outsourcing
could have developers feeling like their worlds are eroding. But does
the process of globalization necessarily mean the descent of game
development in the US?

This talk will look specifically at game development studios in India
compared to those in the US. What kinds of studios are there? What is
the state of game development? How are they alike or different? What
is the state of relations between them? What do both have to learn
from the other? More broadly, what can this teach about the game
industry? And, finally, what does globalization mean for QoL here at
home?

"Learning to play Cricket with some of the guys from RedOctane. With a
tennis ball I'm an asset. With that crazy heavy leather covered thing,
I'm a liability."

Casey O'Donnell is a PhD. Candidate in the Department of Science and
Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His work
examines the diverse forces and activities - laws, technologies,
collaboration, and workplace cultures, for example - that shape video
game development, and make it tenable in today's globalized economy.
His broader research questions, "What can the everyday worlds of video
game developers teach us about the "new" economy?" and "How do these
worlds differ across national and cultural boundaries?" links the game
industry to global processes.

Portions of his research have been supported by an NSF Grant (Award #0620903).

IGDA Meeting Minutes by Casey O'Donnell
Tuesday, May 22
Colin Wilkinson - Senior Designer, 1st Playable Productions on Puzzle Quest: Co-development for the Handheld Market

Minute Taker's Notes: Colin had a nice set of slides which I'm hoping we can post here soon. Screen shots of early versions of Puzzle Quest both on the PC and DS gave a nice visualization of how much the game has transitioned through this process.

Colin was given a brief introduction by Joe Cecot, a former co-worker from Vicarious Visions. Colin is now a Producer and Senior Designer at 1st Playable, and was the Producer/Designer for Puzzle Quest on Nintendo DS. He has worked in the game industry for the last eight years shipping numerous titles on an array of devices. Most recently he has been focused on the DS.

They wanted everything to use the touch screen. They wanted a game that anyone could pick up and play, and that all necessary information was available to the user at all times. No need to flip through numerous screens and sub screens. An "RPG has lots to display," but they also didn't want to cut any features.

The first chore of course was moving from the PC to the DS, two platforms with very different specifications:

DS: 16MB Rom - 4MB Ram and 656 KB Vram - 4Kb EEProm
PC Demo Specs: 90MB Installer - 256MB RAM and 64MB VRAM - HDD Saves

They began by scaling the artwork down from the PC to the DS. The PC had used huge TGA ("TARGA") textures files. They did a lot of compressing down, scaling, removing of character directions that would be unnoticeable on the DS screen.

The second issue was that on the PC the LUA ("Lua") files were all loaded on startup. "We can't do that." They switched to a load on demand system. Lua was used for just about everything. XML was their data storage format and LUA their scripting language. The DS's simplified memory system was where they spent a lot of technical time.

The UI provided the single most important and time consuming aspect of the project. They did an extensive series of mock ups of screens on the DS. Moved lots of things around. They spent nearly a month or month and a half working on this aspect of the project. Attempting to figure out what you've got and what you're going to need to do. Later in the development cycle they encountered issues related to compression and the UI.

Designers looked at what many other games were doing and how they had been reviewed. What could they learn from those games that had come before them? The limitation of two 256x192 screens was a complex issue to work around. The main goal they decided was that the Puzzle Screen needed to take over the entire screen. The same ought to be true of the map screen. Ensure that the player has as much room as possible to work with those aspects of the game.

Since the release of the game, they've been happy to see other games making use of some of their design decisions, like the use of the DS shoulder buttons to swap to top and bottom screens.

Because the game was entirely stylus controlled, and they were working along with the PC guys, they found that the stylus was nothing like the mouse code on the PC. It somehow left the game feeling lifeless. Lots of time was spent fine tuning the touch screen.

Colin then talked a bit about the audiences that the game was being targeted at, two largely different audiences. Puzzle Gamers and RPG Gamers. They wanted the game to appeal to all of them, not simply those who were both. For the most part DS users have been interested in lots of different things, and willing to experiment with new concepts.

One of the major design changes that was made early on was that the PC demo had only male characters. The game needed female avatars. They also wanted to ensure that players were not being kept from the action. Ian relayed a story from the original designer of the PC game where his mom called him up at 3AM asking, "I'm at the sea serpent, I can't figure out how to win."

The game has been very successful:
Top 5 in sales 6 weeks in a row. It has since dropped to 6th, "after Pokemon came out."
1st in sales 3 weeks in a row.
Average Meta-Critic Rating of 80+ ("It would be higher if it weren't for Nintendo Power. Nintendo does have an upcoming puzzle game title.")
The games featuring in a Penny Arcade strip hasn't hurt either.
The PC version is the #1 downloadable game on AOL.

The question, "Where will this take us?" was asked of the audience. What are the implications of going from the PC to the DS? What does it mean for game budgets and scope? Will we begin to see more cross-development or fast-prototyping on the PC for handheld markets? Will we see more overlaps between existing genres or more casual versions of historically PC genres? Where too does this leave traditional licenses?

The question and answer session consisted of a few questions regarding:

1.) Q: There is a European and US Version, are there plans for a Japanese Version? A: Not yet.
2.) Q: How was cooperation from Nintendo on this title? A: Yes, it was good.
3.) Q: Would something like the use of Wacom Tablet on the PC help prototyping? A: Yes, that would likely help. It would also help if the DS was in your mind during the original design.