Making games a game?
No matter what the current ‘user-generated content’ trend tells you, game creation software and ‘moddable’ games are not a new thing and have been around for over 20 years. The urge to do-it-yourself has always been there and console manufacturers have recently been tapping into it (XNA and WiiWare). Time for a quick flashback …
The first complete game I programmed was in 1982, a top-down racing game called ‘Wheel Burner’ for the Sharp MZ-80K computer. If you happen to have one of these things lying around and you don’t want it anymore, please let me know as I’d love to own one again. I digress; I was the programmer and my two friends were co-game designers. We devised huge scrolling levels and a revolutionary gearing system that changed the colour of the power light on the computer to show which gear you were in - a pointless gimmick, but one that we thought was the coolest thing since Atari 2600’s. We had an incredible time making that game and from then on, I knew that I would enjoy making games just as much as I would playing them. Thankfully, in 1983 BASIC was the way a ten year old could make commercial-quality games. These days, of course, things are a little more complicated.
Zipping back to the modern day I want to mention something I’m excited about called ‘Gamestar Mechanics’, where players make and share games they create in an on-line multiplayer environment. Slated for completion in 2009, the project is a collaboration between Gamelab (New York) and the Games, Learning, and Society Group (University of Wisconsin-Madison). The difference between typical game creation software and Gamestar Mechanics is that the latter takes place within a game world set in a steam-punk future as users create games to contribute to the in-game economy whereas game creation software doesn’t tend to have anything to do with punks. Ahem.
The biggest challenge for Gamestar Mechanics is going to be finding a balance of game design theory and game design fun. There is talk of a ‘gamepedia’ containing references to game design theory and implementation to use within the game world and it is interesting to note the involvement of Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, authors of the game design textbook ‘Rules of Play’. Having static and dynamic content co-existing in a multiplayer environment is a huge undertaking even without having a complex set of design rules and regulations to adhere to. Klik n’ Play this ain’t!
If GameStar ends up being everything it’s hyped up to be, I believe that it could well be one of the most interesting paradigms in gaming history.
[via Clickable Culture]
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 9:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 26th
2007 at 8:26 pm
It’s funny but people looking for one click game creators usually get mocked in forums etc. I must be getting old because sometimes I wish I had something like that. Say I want to make a game with a slight twist I don’t have the time to sit down and write it all, even using existing technologies. So I wish I could click a button, have a basic game prepared/developed in front of my eyes so I can concentrate on gameplay instead of technology. Guess I’m tired of inventing the wheel. It’s like designing GUIs in Netbeans. Sure I could do it all by hand and learn how to lay out forms and dialogs, but I’d much rather concentrate on the applicaction logic.
Was that even on topic? Hmmm..
July 26th
2007 at 8:52 pm
I totally agree… the more time we can spend concentrating on building the game and not on button rollovers, the better! I’m a big fan of re-useable code and third party tools
August 8th
2007 at 7:12 am
Yes! I used to enjoy re-inventing the wheel, but now I’m older and my attention span is fad….
I got tired of re-inventing the wheel. That’s why I used to like Torque; it gave me a basic FPS with minimal (ok zero) effort. Until I kept hitting flaws/limitations at which point I gave up. This was a few years ago though so it’s no doubt improved somewhat.
On a side note - many people mock Torque for various reasons, but they miss the point that you get an older AAA engine (is it still classed as a AAA engine?) for a low price and it’s fairly feature complete. The vehicle physics are rough, but for many games that’s sufficient. You get solid scripting, multi-player support, scriptable GUI, networking, combined interior/exterior and reasonable terrains.
Sure it can’t push a lot of polygons round in comparison to more recent engines and it (TGE) doesn’t support shaders. But for most indies and even for mockups and demos, it’s more than sufficient and gives you a usable, decent asset pipeline and gets you up and running in next to no time. And it’s cross platform. But still many don’t “get it”.