Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #gdc18
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Experimental Gameplay session is mega full, so instead I've ducked into @joningold (80 Days) talking about narrative design for Heaven's Vault #GDC18 
Ingold argues "player freedom" in single player story games follows a sort of axis / spectrum, from "where do I go now" to "yikes what have I done" (systemic games making your plans go wrong) #GDC18
to design for "yikes what have I done" player feelings, you have to maintain pacing and make choices seem meaningful... Ingold argues most adventure games fail to do any of this #GDC18
At #GDC18 @danctheduck is talking about how so many naively-implemented social systems (like say, twitter dot com) are deeply dehumanizing, and that we could do so much better at creating spaces to foster friendship
He’s presenting a framework, based on psych and sociology research, on how games could do better at helping players make friends.
First, proximity: people have to be able to bump into each other in unplanned, serendipitous ways, repeatedly. Density makes a huge difference to allow you to bump into the same people again and slowly move towards friendship
Six steps to creative recovery: 1. Acknowledge what is happening to you. Trauma/emotional distress - cause feeling of fundamentally being lost and broken. If you feel broken, your work is broken. @Laralyn #gdc18
Trauma robs you of the ability to focus on anything but the trauma. Creative symptoms: thoughts just don’t flow. Can’t make decisions. No confidence in decisions. Impostor syndrome.
It’s not you. Requirements for creativity: look at heirarchy of needs. Your foundation of fundamental needs is wrecked; how can creativity, at the top, escape intact?
Next up: #gdc18 microtalks hosted, as every year, by the ever-kindly @rich_lem . This year’s theme, “playing with 🔥”
Opening question from Rich: why are the people in charge of running this world so terrible at running it, and at endangering marginalized people? “Yes, it’s a shitshow, but we have opportunities to spread hope.”
First up @michelle_clough saying the game industry is overdue for a 50 Shades of Grey—not the bad parts, but an acknowledgement that hey, women and queer people like sex too. We could be exploring new potential at the juncture of erotica+gameplay.
At #gdc18 @flantz is about to give one of his high-minded talks... about brains. Inappropriate use of expanding brain spotted?
The subject of the talk: “do games have a significant impact on how we think?” And also: should we care? Having reviewed neuroscience studies, he doesn’t find low-level empirical evidence that useful for answering the question. Instead, looking at: culture, habits, norms, values.
Pointing out two very different positive takes on what games do: Jane McGonigal’s unqualified yes, it’s our duty to apply games to real problems. And Eric Zimmerman’s “this question is somewhat inappropriate,” art needs no justification, it’s an end in itself.
#gdc18 About to start: Narrative Design of Reigns Her Majesty
Planning a co-op Reigns mode on Switch. Something about needing consensus between players.
The original Reigns was successful; players wanted a queen mode. (Author starts by apologizing for the gender-binaryness of the game tropes.)
At Hisashi Nogami's GDC session! "'Splatoon' and 'Splatoon 2': How to Invent a Stylish Franchise with Global Appeal." Starts in 15 minutes. Will be livetweeting a bit. #GDC18
Starting now!
Introduced himself as Hisashi Nogami for the Squid Research Lab, then re-introduced himself as from Nintendo. Nogami joined Nintendo in 1994 and worked as artist for the NES and Yoshi's Island.
After just 2 days, I'm leaving #GDC18 pretty energized! So, I started thinking about what a non-dystopic AR future could look like (are there any?)
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It seems to me that the rise of AR could treat ~physical spaces~ like we do platforms like iOS/Android as well as Xbox/PS4/etc.
For decades, technology has fought to tear down limitations brought upon by geography. It brought us the internet, remote work, social networks, etc.
Today, @joshscherr is talking about @Naughty_Dog’s Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and the art of character development in non-linear spaces. Helpful slides to follow!
Starting point: @joshscherr talks about a need for companion characters to help drive character interactions. “If an Uncharted hero is alone in the game, it’s usually because they [morally] screwed up.”
Lost Legacy open world was built on top of Uncharted 4’s non-linear levels, which were large, but still signposted and with linear paths through. #GDC18
#gdc18 Gorogoa!
Gorogoa is pronounced “Go-ro-GO-a”, I discover.
Gorogoa took a long time, more than five years. You can’t skip the learning process. Gorogoa was ambitious and inexperience added years to the project.
#gdc18 Level design in Tacoma. Tacoma was one of the really interesting design problems of last year, and by “design problems” I mean “I wanted to fix it but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to fix.”
“everyone in the business has heard of a level designer but the term is really poorly defined.”
a first-person three-d exploration game. The game is about finding out what happened. It’s communicated in multiple ways.
