Games

The Come Out & Play Festival is a street games festival dedicated to exploring new styles of games and play. It was held last weekend (September 22-24) on the streets (and even on the buildings) of New York City.

Some of the interesting games include Space Invaders (giant game of Space Invaders on the side of a building, with your body as the controller), Identity (large-scale social game of secret organizations, covert intelligence, suspicion, trust, cooperation and betrayal), Snagu (camera-phone based scavenger hunt with no limits on time, space, or answers), Manhattan MEGAputt (gigantic game of mini golf, played in ManhattanÂ’s East Village), Cruel 2 B Kind (benevolent assassins stalk New York performing acts of kindness for strangers in an attempt to catch their prey), and Payphone Warriors (control city turf by capturing the cityÂ’s payphones).

CNET has pretty good coverage of the event:

• Gaming on the streets of Manhattan
• ‘Payphone Warriors’ call on New York streets
• ‘Killing’ gamers with kindness

The last couple of articles go into more detail about specific games. Sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Found a cute little Flash game earlier tonight (via Digg) called Sling.

As with many of the best games, this one is simple to play, but a little tougher to master. Here’s a brief description from the game…

Sling is a green glob of goo consisting of a hand attached to a head by a long strip of springy slime. Players use the mouse to click and drag on Sling’s head, pulling him around to attach him to different items, or pulling back and releasing him to ‘slingshot’ him to another location. Real-world physics are used to model Sling’s springy arm, his motion and collisions.

Each level of Sling’s world is made up of a single screen of different ‘grabs’ and surfaces that he can attach himself too. There are many different grabs with different characteristics. The most basic grab is a simple ‘gray’ grab. On most levels, Sling must attach himself to all the ‘gray’ grabs and turn them green. Once all the gray grabs are green a portal will appear to take him to the next level.

Be careful, though… As evidenced by the timestamp of this entry, Sling is extremely addicting. Make sure you have plenty of time to play.

Only a couple of people reading this blog probably have any idea what “ISK” is. (Of course there are probably only just a couple people reading this in the first place, so I think I’m safe in saying that I’m effectively serving my audience. )

Interstellar Kredits (or ISK) is the currency in the world of EVE Online (which I have discussed previously). EVE features an open economy, where the players are responsible for almost all of the buying and selling in the game. The economy is closely tied with the political aspect of the game, which of course is also player driven. Corporations rise and fall as they struggle for market dominance and control of valuable resource-rich territory.

Unfortunately the economy is so flexible and open-ended, players can fall for the same scams that sometimes work IRL (in real life). Recently, the mother of all online scams was perpetuated in EVE Online, as discussed in this article from the MMORPG blog on QJ.net…

It’s the story of a guy named “cally”, who ran a corporation, a player-operated bank called “Eve Intergalactic Bank”. Over the course of four months, hundreds of players deposited money in his bank, which offered interest, loans and insurance like every other ordinary bank. Except for the fact that one day, cally decided to grab all the money that was deposited and fly off to space with an alleged total sum of 790 billion Isk. In real life, this would translate to $170,000 – quite possibly the biggest MMO scam ever conducted.

Not only that, he also took the time to record a video in which he confesses his crimes, makes fun of the community, and reveals that he is a pirate, who once held the highest bounty in the game.

Here’s a link to the video on Google, but be warned… It contains some expletives, is occasionally difficult to understand, and worst of all, it’s really really boring. The most interesting quote from the video comes right at the beginning…

This is an official announcement from Cally of the EIB. Just to let you all know, yes, it was a scam. Sorry about that, but, what can I say? I scammed you.

As a result of this scam, a debate has broken out in the EVE community, and the MMOG world at large, discussing what if anything should be done about situations like these… Should the game developers step in to take action against the scammer and restore the lost money, or is it simply caveat emptor (buyer beware)?

Keep in mind, no actual money was stolen (just a huge investment in game-playing time) and no specific in-game rules were broken. So, in this particular situation, I personally am leaning in the “buyer beware” direction. (Of course, it wasn’t my ISK.)

I find it extremely interesting how virtual worlds like EVE (and Second Life and World of Warcraft and many others…) are starting to model real-world behaviors more and more.

I once worked with a guy that was attempting to single-handedly create his own MMO (“massively multiplayer online”) game. He tried to recruit me to his small team of developers who were helping to work on the game. I politely declined for a couple of reasons… 1) At the time, I had never played an MMO and had no personal experience to draw from, and 2) I thought he was a little bit crazy.

MMO’s require a tremendous investment of time, money, and manpower not only in the development of the game, but also to support on-going hosting and maintenance of the game servers once the game is finally released. The credit screens for these games roll on almost as long as most big-time Hollywood movies.

Which brings us to the subject of this entry… I found (via Digg) a Website for a new game called Genesis put up by a guy trying to accomplish the same Herculean task of developing his own MMO. However, the difference is that I think he might actually have a chance of getting it done.

This guy has already put a lot of work (more than two years) into designing the game and developing large portions of the software engine. He recently published the Website to ask for help in developing the game, by way of monetary, artistic, and coding contributions. And that’s why I think he might possibly succeed. The emergence of open source software development makes it possible for teams of developers in disparate locations (sometimes completely different countries) to work together on a common project. In fact, the Mozilla Firefox browser that I’m using to write this blog entry was developed in this very way.

Anyway, back to the game. The Website goes into much more detail about the overall philosophy and design of the game, but here are a few of the highlights…

Distinguishing Features at a Glance:

• Dynamic, Player-Created Environments: Build and destroy houses and other structures, one wall at a time (no pre-fabricated buildings). Dig out terrain and pile it up elsewhere. Plant seeds, watch them grow, and harvest plants and lumber. Anything that can be created in the game can also be destroyed.
• Volumetric Terrain: Terrain can be hollowed out to form caves and tunnels, versus simply raised or lowered like most games.
• Dynamic, Player-Created Storylines/Quests: All quests and storylines are generated naturally based on the current state of the world, its political structures, its economy, its ecology, and so forth. A very advanced expert/logic system analyzes the state of the world and its inhabitants to create motivations and aspirations that drive your character to play their role. For once, role playing truly lives up to its name, as players even go so far as to assign personalities to their avatars that actually affect gameplay dramatically.
• Reproduction and Permanent Death: Players have the ability to reproduce, but are also mortal (and can only be resurrected under very rare circumstances). However, player’s offspring absorb a mix of their parent’s traits, so they aren’t forced to start from scratch necessarily. The player permanently resides in one spirit throughout the entire game which can assume control of any available humanoid or creature.
• No AI controlled opponents or NPCs: Every player and creature (with the minor potential exceptions of fish, game, and livestock) is controlled by another human. Players can play as creatures that can evolve any manner of traits, allowing them to assume forms of classical mythological beasts or other creatures.
• Open Content: In addition to building content within the game using the game’s engine, players can contribute base content for the game (entities which must be built outside of the engine), such as music, artwork, models, and even some code and scripting. Of course, all content is approved for quality and appropriateness before it is included.
• Open Funding Model: Players can decide how they want to fund this game. If I receive enough donations to support myself (and potentially a small team of people), I will release the game for free. If I must find alternate methods funding to continue developing the game I will (as a last resort) accept a publishing deal. I am hoping that players will donate enough money to support this project independently, that way the game could be given out for free, and I would not be under a publisher’s budget/time constraints. I am not a greedy person, but I do need to put a roof over my headÂ…if there were some way for me to develop this game on zero dollars now that I am out of college, I would.
• Unique Graphics Engine: the engine used to power Genesis has an old-school isometric look, but is enhanced by new-school technology. Unique rendering algorithms are used that allow millions of polygons per scene, with displacement mapping and per pixel materials (not to be mistaken with texturing). The engine is designed from the ground up to facilitate procedural content creation.

Sounds interesting… I hope this guy is able to see it through. I know I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

No, this won’t be an article about porn…

Spore is the highly anticipated new game from acclaimed game designer Will Wright, creator of a number of classics including SimCity and The Sims. In Spore, you start out as a single celled microorganism, which you can grow and evolve as a species until eventually you are fighting other civilizations for control of the entire galaxy! Cool, huh?

Spore is played in phases…

• Tide Pool Phase – Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. ItÂ’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
• Creature Phase – Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!
• Tribal Phase– Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you upgrade their state of existence.
• City Phase – Bring your creaturesÂ’ race into a new golden era by building up the technology, architecture, and infrastructure of their city.
• Civilization Phase – Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.
• Space Phase – The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A ‘missionÂ’ structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.

Unfortunately, the game isn’t due to be released until early next year, but it’s already generating lots of buzz, even in mainstream media. Spore articles have recently appeared online at BusinessWeek, Forbes, and New York Times (registration required), as well as on major gamer sites such as IGN, GameSpy, and Yahoo Games.

Can’t wait!