Hi all – I’m Reko, the lead game designer at the Helsinki-based Sumea studio of Digital Chocolate. We recently released California Gold Rush for both iPhone (get it from AppStore) and Mobile and here’s some design insights into the development of the game that has already garnered some critical reviews.
The Hypermedia Laboratory at the University of Tampere has been officially buried from the beginning of this year as we are fused into bigger complex with information studies. The name of the new department is Department of INFormation studies and Interactive Media (INFIM). But at the moment we are still spread into two locations at the university. During the summer there will be some moving and renovating to do as we are changing places with the Department of Mathematics.
As mathematicians are not that enthusiastic with our dynamic and collaboration driven office space, our rooms are renovated into more traditional ones as well as their space needs a small retouch before we move to their premises.
The game laboratory that we have had for a while is now moved into a bigger classroom, which gives us also possibilities for getting a playful meeting room connected to the laboratory. As one of the GaIn objectives is to study playful innovation methods in general, this is a good opportunity to plan a setting for data collection and experiments. Together with our department assistant Kati Koivu, we are planning the meeting room setting of the play(ful) room. Let’s see what we are able to build!
Suda 51, from Grasshopper Manufacture, the “Video Game Band”, was at Nordic Game to talk about how different influences affected the development of their game No More Heroes. Those influences were from movies, anime, other games and certain personalities.
The presentation consisted of Suda going through those influences, explaining what their effect was and then for many of them, showing a video clip. Showing videos turned out to be a good way to keep things rolling as the presentation needed to be translated from Japanese to English.
Nordic Game 2009 conference included a session “Pitching the Game”, in Art of the Deal panel series (Led by Jason Della Rocca), that was topical for our interests.
“Pitching the game” was interesting panel from the point of view of ownership of vision and practical issues with communication between developers and publishers. The panel discussion included interesting approaches and was also rather entertaining – much obliged to our homeboy Jussi Laakkonen from EveryPlay.
The Creative Director of DICE, Lars Gustavsson was talking on behalf of the designers of critically acclaimed Mirrors Edge and the studio’s approach towards innovation at the Nordic Game 2009 conference. The presentation was titled as “Innovation – Making the Leap of Faith” (Lars Gustavsson, DICE (SE)).
In the beginning of the presentation Lars Gustavsson was describing the studios design philosophy as “suicidal approach of making games: Let’s do something that no one has done before”. This applied also with Mirror’s Edge. According to Gustavsson the innovation and risks in the Mirror’s Edge were: introducing a new heroine Faith, game being 1st person platforming adventure and fresh art direction of the game. The innovation paid of, since the game has been a commercial success as well as praised by the critics. This years Nordic Game 2009 the bold approach of the studio was also rewarded with first positions in two categories of Nordic Game Awards:
gamesandinnovation.com 