GameTruth

Periodically over at Game Career Guide they have a guest come in and create a game design challenge.  About a month ago I entered into one of the challenges and I was an honorable mention.  The info on the challenge I entered is below:

The Challenge
Design a one-button first-person shooter game.

Assignment Details
This design challenge comes from Brandon Sheffield of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, and his assignment details are extremely minimal.

Design a one-button FPS game. Describe

* the game idea
* the game mechanic
* the platform
* the target audience
* why your game will be addictively fun.

That’s it.

Succinct ideas will be highly favored! Can you describe all this in only a few sentences? Remember, the businessmen and women in the game industry don’t want to read a hundred-page design document. Get to the point.

Sheffield will weigh in on the results. (Hint: Search out his name to find out what kinds of themes and styles he might be into.)

So with my success in this challenge I may very well be entering into some more.

-Mark

I am reporting in from GLS2008 in Madison, Wisconsin (It is currently downpouring outside).  This is my second year here at GLS and having presented The Winds of Orbis yesterday I truly get to relax and take in some good talks.  One of the highlights of yesterday was Drew Davidson’s talk about Portal that focused on the storytelling and analysis of the game from a more standard literary standpoint.  Drew proposed some very interesting ideas about the game design itself and did an excellent job explaining how Portal teaches the player to play.

Today there will surely be plenty of other outstanding talks.  I sat in on a fireside chat this morning that was about building virtual worlds and discussed the idea of Constant Nieuwenhuis’s New Babylon.   I think the idea is really fascinating and Iplan to read more about it andmaybe I will post more later.

Expect more updates from both Mark and me as we try to get back into the swing of this again.

-Seth