I have talked about my friend Mike “Brotha Kyo”  Burgess on this website before when it comes to working conventions. He has been an awesome friend over the years and I would do what I can to help him. For those who don’t know, he is an independent game developer who makes games whenever he can. His latest game is Banzai Pecan, a post-apocalyptic side scroller beat ‘em up in the vein of Kung-Fu. The title heroine fights for love and justice in an attempt to rescue her kidnapped boyfriend. The game has some cool things going for it with parries, combos, and high impact attacks that send opponents flying. It also has some great character artwork as you can see above.

The problem is that Brotha Kyo is essentially doing a lot of the work on his own; code, art, and music. He needs additional background and sprite artists to help him complete the game. Right now, the backgrounds you see are placeholders. Not only that, he needs some additional female vocal talent for his all-female cast of characters. Several characters are taken care of, but more help is needed.

I’ve played an earlier build of the game and it has a lot of potential. If you dare call yourself a game artist and are looking for some work, then do what you can to help Banzai Pecan finished. You can get in touch with Brotha Kyo through Banzai Pecan’s development blog here.

After revealing that to us, she had spent the majority of her lecture talking about the idea of games touching difficult subjects, as opposed to games solely being played for fun. She cited some examples, and one in particular caught my interest. She told us a story regarding a day when her daughter came home from school. She had asked what her daughter had done at school and her daughter told her that she learned about Middle Passage. That’s a pretty important thing to learn in history so Brenda had asked her what she thought about. Brenda told us they was she described it sounded like people from Africa went on a cruise to America to work and they weren’t happy about that. And then she asked Brenda if she could play a game.

That was pretty surprising to many of us because Middle Passage is not a trivial event. So Brenda decided that it was time to prototype a game(from her lecture, I gather that she often does this and maybe I should too)  with her daughter. The game was modeled after the event. She had her daughter gather her prototype figures up to resemble families. Some of the those family members went onto boats(represented by index cards) and some stayed, to resemble the families being broken up. They had ten turns to get a ship packed with the slaves across the ocean. They have 30 amounts of food for the whole trip. Each turn, they roll a die for the ship and the number that comes up is how much food is consumed. When they ran out of food, people on the boat had to die. It was then that her daughter finally got the seriousness of the matter. And there were apparently many tears to go around.

Brenda is clearly a creative and intelligent woman; the way she got her daughter to finally understand what happened during Middle Passage from an abstract level was truly inspiring. By actually doing something that affected the recreation of a historical event, her daughter was able to learn about the subject more effectively than what school had attempted to do earlier that day. Hearing this story and others during her lecture was truly inspiring and I can definitely see why Brenda is one of the most revered designers in the game industry. I was reading Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design again yesterday and he stresses the idea that what makes games fun is that we learn something from them; we may not know it all the time, but we do. It was something I was thinking about for the next game I want to work on.

Play is an important part of learning because there’s no pressure involved. The goal of Brenda’s lecture seemed to focus on designing games that covered challenging subjects like history’s atrocities that may invoke sadness as opposed to joy that games are known to bring about in us instead. However, every game she discussed as an example had a strong educational aspect to it. People would actually gain something from playing her games. I’ve been thinking lately about wanting to create a game where players work together to accomplish something and possibly even learn from the experience. I am still not sure yet what that will be, but Brenda’s talk presented some possibilities and for that, I am thankful.

Highlights:

-Ian Schreiber held a talk that not only proved that the argument for games as art was solved over fifty years by art critic Harold Rosenburg. He also explained how lessons from art history can be used to solve and influence many game designs. It was one of the most interesting talks I went to, even though much of his art histroy discussion went over my head. I’m not too sure about surrealism in game design, where games can not be comprehended how to play, but it does sound like it’s worth experimenting with.

-Dustin Clingman honored many game designers throughout history that have contributed much to games and have since passed away in his talk “Where do Game Designers go when they Die?” The talk was a little blue at first; however, Dustin built it up into a very inspiring speech letting those in attendance know that they are the heirs to the legacy left behind by many greats.

-Colonel Reverend The Fat Man George Alistair Sanger basically told us to “put our dick on the anvil” if we want to achieve true greatness. Everything that man says is amazing. It actually made me think a lot about what I am doing with my life these days. I think I’ve grown too comfortable in my current position and that is keeping me from truly growing as a person and a game developer. I think some changes may need to happen for me personally. I hope to find my bliss someday, that’s for sure.

-I missed Jason Rohrer’s presentation live but was able to catch it later on GDX’s website. He compared some big titles that have visual glitches and bugs to smaller ones that accomplished what they set out to do and told the attendance “don’t write checks you can’t cash.” His presentation had more to offer but that is what i got most out of it more than anything else.

-Richard Dansky, in his talk “Just a Lad”, proclaimed that “we are a young industry” is not a valid excuse anymore, noting that the videogame industry is older than the internet, disco, Star Wars, parachute pants, and most of everyone in the room. Because of this, he feels that it’s time for games to be better and that we take games and the content they can provide more seriously. I’d say that this was the most important presentation I went at GDX to and I agree with many of his points.

-Andrew Bains of Epic Games went into the process of how a single level of Gears of War 2 is created and visually showed us the steps. It’s a long process that takes many months that includes brainstorming, prototyping, multiple visual and scripting passes, bug fixing, and finally shipping. The amount of time and detail that goes into each level is very impressive and its a good thing Gears makes the big bucks for Epic. I think I will stick to making smaller games for now.

In review, GDX had a lot to offer to those who want to think deeply about where the industry needs to go next, as opposed to learning how to be a better programmer or artist. I think a lot of these lectures were very important for game students around the world to attend which made me wish that some of my students in attendance. Many of the SCAD students I met were very nice to me and I think Brenda Brathwaite and SCAD did a really great job hosting this conference and I hope a certain other game school does something like this on their campus someday. I feel like my mind opened up to some new ideas that I hope to implement in future games.

This weekend is when Full Sail University’s Spring Break starts. I haven’t been this excited for a break in a very long time! It’s definitely going to be a good chance to get some rest, work on my game, and reflect on my life as of late. It will also give me a chance to think about my future. I will be in the Tampa area this weekend to see some friends and possibly go to the beach. I’ll be there Saturday and Sunday and will be leaving Monday to my parents who live south of Atlanta. They have a cabin in the mountains that I will take advantage of thoroughly. I will also plan on using this time to pay respects to my grandmother and aunt, who have both passed away in the last year. My parents also decided to get pet goats on their land and I can’t wait to meet them.

After a few days with my folks, I’ll be heading east to Savannah for the Game Developers eXchange, held at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I wasn’t able to go to GDC this past year so this should sort of make up for it. There are a few talks I want to attend and I hope to meet many fellow game makers as well. It’s next Thursday and Friday and I plan to stay in town on Saturday to hang out with a friend who actually attends SCAD.

Overall, I’m looking forward to a fun vacation — with lots of driving — and I hope to have some great news to share in a couple weeks!

The 24 hour Playmine is an extra-curricular activity at Fullsail University where students in the Game Development program, coming from different parts of the curriculum, get together and work on a game from concept to completion in the span of 24 hours. The idea was that of Keyvan Acosta’s, Associate Course Director for Structure of Game Production at Fullsail.

Playmine’s Mr. Apple Head

This will be the second time this project will be happening. The first time this event was held was over this past summer where eleven students — sophmores, juniors, and seniors — of the Game Development program were broken up into teams of production, gameplay, quality assurance, and tools for this game. The students brainstormed a game where a toy golem, looking like an apple, had to piece together it’s parts and wreak havoc on a playground. The idea was simple in scope and the students accomplished most of what they set out to do.

The next Playmine will start this Saturday, September 27th at noon and conclude the next day, on Sunday, at noon. This time, students can pitch ideas ahead of time if they are to work on the project and I will be one of many Game Development faculty members to help guide and motivate students to completion. Fullsail also has a food and beverage budget, which I know hungry students will appreciate. You guys may want to bring a pillow, jacket, deodorant and of course your development laptop. Most importantly, take a shower before you come! 24 hours is a long time without bathing.

If some of my current student will work, I will totally bake my super-awesome strawberry cupcakes for the team to enjoy! It is important that students take advantage of opportunities like this where they can boost their student portfolio with more projects. It will certainly help to make such student more noticeable by potential employers. We hope to see as many of you there as possible!

Below are specifics on how you can be a part of the development team for this weekend’s Playmine:

The sign-up list is capped at 24 entrants, with any above that number not working in an ”official” capacity; though who knows if we need more people. From today till Friday, we’ll expect all communication related to the event (game proposal submissions, sign-up info, questions, etc) to be sent to kacosta_at_fullsail_dot_com with the subject of [24hrs]. And although the “tickets” issued are first come, first served, you must fill-in the following information before Friday Noon (12pm) in order to be allowed to participate:

Name :

GPA :

Current class :

Cell phone # :

Email :

You must have a minimum GPA of 2.00, a laptop, and a smile. The list will be sorted by seniority, in other words, those closer to Final Project get first dibs… Oh, you will receive confirmation by Friday evening. Bring a pillow, comfortable clothing, and a jacket in case the typical Full Sail frostbite Monster shows up.

DETAILS

Where Game Development Offices, building 130 (second floor) closest to Taco Bell.

Date 9/27/08

Starts Saturday, 12pm

Ends Sunday, 12pm

Food Dinner and Breakfast

Drinks Soda, Monster

… Punch and Pie…

We WILL be there rain or sunshine, will you?

We have our meetings in downtown Orlando on the fourth Thursday evening of every month. We meet at the Wall Street Plaza, usually at Slingapours, but this time we will be next door at the Tuk Tuk Room. All the bars are connected and in addition to $5+ drinks, there are sandwiches, burgers and sushi that you can order. This is nice because we can have a dinner and a drink while talking about our work and what’s going on in the game industry. People from n-Space, Zeitgeist Games, Full Sail, FIEA, and various simulation companies are there. I don’t know why the EA Tiburon guys haven’t been to the mixers but hopefully they can show up soon! There isn’t a formal lecture or presentation like in meetings past, just meeting up with people who create games and having a good time!

Once again, the next IGDA Orlando chapter meeting will on Thursday, August 28th at 7:00 p.m. at the Tuk Tuk Room in Wall Street Plaza on Orange Avenue and Wall Street in downtown Orlando. There’s a Facebook page for the chapter as well as an event page. Check them out and see you there!