I have been on vacation for a week and I cant be enjoying myself more. I have had some luck with the weather, and stockholm has been treating me really well.

I dont regularly talk about personal stuff on this blog, and I am not going to make a habit of it. But since im starting my vacation I am not going to do any Gamedesign stuff for a month, but allot of other stuff instead.

On sunday me and a friend are trekk near kebnekaise (2107 m), its the tallest mountain in sweden and is located far in to the wild. We are planning to trekk Kungsleden which has been nominated as swedens best natural “experience” by a few foreign dudes that rate this kind of stuff. I dont think its very official, but its cool anways. The plan is to walk around and catch a few breathtaking views of swedens ceiling. Im whatching the movie “in to the wild” again for inspiration. We will probably try to get as high as possible up kebenekaise aswell, but im not sure if there are any safe paths for nonclimbers. The walk is about 140 km and will take about 6 days.

Apart from that I would like to introduce Fylgjas blog, its a developers diary for the game I was telling you about earlier. The cool thing about this dev diary unlike most other ones are that this is not a commercial game, so we will be posting alot of behind the scenes information. Dev diaries are mostly about PR and commercial, this one is about that aswell but without the fancy words and smoke and daggers. There are no secrets so we will probably post about the negatives and the positives. Just one heads up, the blog is in swedish.

Link to the Blog

As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been working at Hello There as a Producer and Game designer. Right now im involved in many many projects as a designer, but none of them are in production just yet. But one thing that I actually can show is Equalize.

Equalize is a game about Type 1 Diabetes, and I was the Producer on the project. You can try it here at www.equalize.se.

The project was succesfull and the team did a great job, Arcade, a buddy and colleague of mine handled the Design. He did a great job of turning his experiences of Diabetes into the game mechanics. Thumbs up! Check out his blog.

Other than this I am also consulting as a designer on a project about swedish history. We are developing it because of a really cool arkeologi site was found close to Gothernburg. Approximately 200 firepites forming three lines and a secretive Keep nestled between two hills. Its going to be a adventure game and It’s got a really AAA talented team behind it.

Sadly my thesis has been paused for the time being. I will resume work on it during the summer but right now im swamped with work.

As you know I have been working on my Thesis and I thought I would tell you some more about it.  First let met get something out of the way.  I didn’t make the deadline so I am going to keep working on it until august.

The thesis is about Player types. Im focusing on Yee’s playertypes, but for familiarity lets use Bartles more famous player types in this post. Im focusing on the Explorer and Achiever types and defining them by what Motivates them and what Play Patterns they have.

For example the Achiever player type is motivated by getting a head in the game and its play pattern is collecting stuff… That allows him to get ahead in the game.

What Im am doing is making a game that has a few features that appeal to the Explorer definition and a few that appeal to the Achiever definition. Im using a Patterns in Game design to pick the patterns that are most similar to the Motivations and Play Patterns.

When the game is complete I will interview a test group and determine what player type they are based on aquestionnaires. When I have determined what player type they are they will be forced to play the awesome game. The game will then logg what the player does and tell me if the player type acts according to the definition set by Bartle and Yee.

What is interesting, in my opinion, is watching how the player types act in-game.  Bartle opposed this type of experiment saying one can never know the motives of an action by just watching it. He has a very valid point, but I cant find a source that has actively watched how playertypes act in-game. And even though I wont get any information on their motivations, I might see actual play patterns instead of theoretical ones. Prior examinations have only been made by interviews, questionnaires and polls so the player type definitions are based upon only asking and not observing.

PS. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m actually more interested in making a cool game than actually completing my thesis.

I have been very busy these last couples of weeks  so I thought I would tell you what I have been up to.

From last month I have been working part time as Game designer at a company called Hello There. We make flash educational and advertisement games. These games are smaller compared to the work I am use to. Its very challenging in this new atmosphere. One would think working on small games is easier, but in fact since we work on so many titles at once and the time frame for each is small its not at all easier.  I’m really proud of some of the games we are making, hopefully I can show you them soon =).

Last week I also started working as Producer at Hello There, the plan is to produce some games and Design other ones. And maybe both one some special ones. Well I hope anyway.

I have also been writing my Thesis for The university which has been talking loads and loads of my time. I seem to have lost my ability to write correct and academic Swedish so the professor in charge of grading me think I suck. Which I probably do.

But I am trying my best so lets hope it works out. The thing that scares me is the fact that I have worked alot of hours on the paper, and its only one/third of the entire thesis. Keep your fingers crossed!

Other then that I am in discussions with another start-up company working on an internetbased game. And also going for a meeting for a  project I dont know much about yet. It seems interesting though as some other friends are working on it.

So there you have it from me,

New ideas sometimes shed new light on old problems. I have been reading a a lot about player types these days. I am talking about Barles  player types and the other types that have spawned after his.  And even though they are (achiever, explorer, killer and socializer) mostly aimed at MMO/MUD players their usage don’t stop there.

In regular single player games it can be hard to discern player types as single player games seldom allow freedom of personality, and because they guide the player through a predefined rule-set. Having a pre-defined rule set brings (most often) with it a defined rule set for reward and punishment. And since most singeplayer games are about progressing they would have a punishment system based upon that. Which also seems to be the main way we talk about the notion of “punishment vs reward”. We use hardcore vs casual dividing, which really is a crude tool if you think about it.

We might call facebook games  ”casual” but they also are more geared towards social player. These players that might not like the achievement paradigm that most single-player games follow.  And that paradigm also involves the regular reward punishment way.

A very quick and dirty evolution of games could be that games are moving towards other play styles rather than just casual and mass market. A larger player base that don’t naturally like the idea of  ”you must achieve to feel good”.

I personally think reward vs punishment is a universal “thing” of game design, but it doesn’t have to be the ol´ death/health/hard/easy discussion. Instead I mean action and reaction, effect and cause, action and consequence, challenge and reward.

An example would be facebook game X that’s geared towards social play. It tasks the player of doing task Y. Making Y hard to do with lots of reward/punishment would be the old way of doing it. Instead doing Y could be very open ended without any punishment for doing it “incorrectly”. That means the “how” of completion of Y is not important. Instead when its done, other players review your effort and give you praise or criticism. That would result in the reward/punishment being moved from execution of tasks to a more social tool.

What I am proposing is, stop thinking about punishment vs reward as a way of making the game hard or easy in the old sense. But look at what player type you are geared towards and then make conscious choices about what types of challenges they like and how they like to be rewarded.

Crossbow/Ballista

The crossbow is a fairly proven concept, from the idea, to the building of it and further down to the use of it.

Trebuchet

On the other hand the spring powered trebuchet was very unique. And here comes the point of my post.  The host of the program asked the designer of the Trebuchet about his design, he answered something in the lines of  ”.. its a very unique design, but there might be a reason for it. Some one might have tried it before and realised it didn’t work”

I realize this might make me sound stupid as this might be very obvious to some people. But I haven’t really thought about it as bluntly. I mean, sure, I do realize that almost everything we think of nowadays has already been thought of by somebody else before us. But when I come up with a “unique” or “innovative” idea, I usually think, this could be either good or bad. But I haven’t thought about the prospect of somebody else prior to me reaching the point of trying the idea AND dismissing it as a bad.  Because if we “agree” that most ideas nowadays have been thought about by someone else before us,  a natural conclusion would also be that they have tried it. If we go further down the line the idea has either survived because it was good, or been weeded out because it was bad. If an idea has been weeded it out, none of us seen it in action. And here we are redoing something that somebody else has already “proven” to be bad.

Are some ideas unique simply because they are tried over and over again, deemed bad and buried in the sand just waiting for someone new to come and “brainstorm” it up again.  It gives you an idea why your super unique idea is unique right… And here you were thinking you were smart! Davinci probably tried it waaay back before you.

I’m not sure if I have a point or a punch line about this. I just thought it was a humbling thought. Maybe I should research after I come up with a “new idea”. Or maybe I shouldn’t? Maybe it would  be to depressing.

Its similar to Tower Blox, but while that game mostly focuses on the timing of you drops, this game is also focuses on balancing your Tower.

Objective: Build a high tower

Controls:  Space to Drop, “1″ to use a power up, A/D to rotate the ground

Game

If you have any comments don’t hesitate to share them.

I haven’t been thinking on theoretical Gamdesign stuff for a few weeks so I actually haven’t had anything interesting to share.

But I have been working on some practical stuff. I have been making a little prototype that I might make into a Iphone game.

I’m going to put it on my blog for a few days so you can play it and give me some feedback if you have any.

In this day and age, society is built rigidly around careers and development. A lot of us game developers work a very hard, and the moments we aren’t working, we are thinking about games. We do so simply because games are our passion.

I would like to encourage everyone to always remember to take some time off and reconnect with life. To relax and think about other stuff that really matters in your life.  And I’m not only talking about your loved ones. I’m talking about everything that is important for you, whether its appreciation for nature, the will to see the world, the thought about people in less fortunate situation, reflection on what and how you affect others, do you do enough or to little in fields  other than your carrier, etc etc.

Having perspective is always very important, both business perspective and a larger grand perspective about your life and where you are headed. Ultimately it gives your life purpose, meaning and direction. Being aware of these things are a very grand responsibility for every person. Far more important than how successful your last game was or how large your bank account is.

Remember your career is only one aspect of your life.