November 28, 2007

Meeting Recap - November 2007

The Philly IGDA closes out the year with yet another great meeting.

Chris Jurney, Senior AI programmer at Kaos Studios, gave us an overview on his pathfinding techniques as well as the interesting path he took to get into the game industry. We learned the 3 rules of designing good AI:
- iteration
- iteration
- iteration

There were also some pretty awesome videos of stuff getting blown up. Good Stuff.

Margaret Chen, Microsoft Student Rep, brought bags of swag and some great info on the Imagine Cup.

Rounding out the session, Al Vazquez, Owner, Catch Phrase Games, and Corvus Elrod, Storyteller and Owner of Zakelro, brought their insight into game design via:
- mechanics
- dynamics
- aesthetics

Over the course of the discussion we dissected the non-electronic games Mousetrap, Chess, and Clue. Parallels were drawn to the language of non-electronic games to the rules supporting electronic game functionality.

Some good resource websites mentioned were:
- http://www.8kindsoffun.com/
- http://www.projecthorseshoe.com/
- http://www.lostgarden.com/

Posted by DanielHettrick at November 28, 2007 09:35 PM