September 16, 2007
August 2007 Meeting Summary
The August 2007 meeting of the Philly IGDA was another well attended success. Big thanks to the FireWater Games for providing the conference room to host the meeting.
A recap of the night is as follows:
-We opened with the usual around-the-world introduction session and were pleased to welcome a few new attendees into the flock.
(1) The group then debated the question "What is wrong with Games today?" as posed by Tom Bennett.
Some of the points made during this discussion were:
--> the failure of many games to effectively leverage multimedia capability
--> a tendency to poorly develop characters
--> inconsistent or ineffective storytelling
The debate had to be cut short to address the next agenda item.
(2) High School Curriculum for Game Development
-We briefly discussed what the goals of a proper HS Game Dev track could be and suggested some tools such as ALICE (http://www.alice.org) that may provide an appropriate balance of instant gratification vs. practical knowledge for students in that age group.
(3) Game Demo - Tsuro, The game of the Path
-Al Vazquez provided his copy of the board game Tsuro (http://www.wizkidsgames.com/tsuro/) to demonstrate its unique flow and mechanics.
Take-aways were:
-->The game had a simple rule set that required seconds to explain
-->The flow of the game created a sense of calm. There was very little speaking as the game progressed. Players placed tiles and moved pieces in relative silence.
-->The game pace accelerated dramatically toward the end. As fewer squares on the board were open, many players got pushed off the board in only a few moves.
-->Easy to learn, difficult to master. That is the trademark of a great game.
(4) Philly Game Jam update
There has not been any progress on determining the logistics of hosting the event at Drexel. Dan is going to pursue having the event hosted at the University of Pennsylvania. Dan is set to meet with the SIGGRAPH coordinator and department game chair on the evening of 9/18 to pursue the Game Jam issues as well as:
-->increasing the visibility of the Philly IGDA to the students at Penn and
-->determining whether Penn may be able to provide a dedicated space for hosting future IGDA meetings.
Updates will be posted to the mailing list later in September.
(5 and 6)Meeting wrap up and plans for next month
The meeting wrapped up with a recap of events that had taken place in the other local chapters - specifically NJ and NYC. A suggestion was made to host a Halo 3 LAN party in lieu of a regular meeting in September. Everyone seemed to like the idea, so we are working on making that happen. Details to follow.
Thanks everyone who continues to donate time, space and effort to make these meetings fun and informative. See you all at the September meeting.
If anything was omitted or misstated, please let me know.
thanks!
-dh
Posted by DanielHettrick at September 16, 2007 02:12 PM