File:Zelda E3 climbing.jpg

2019-02-28T14:52:32Z

Richard:

File:BOTW-Share icon.jpg

2019-02-28T14:52:05Z

Richard:

2019-02-20T21:44:43Z

Richard:

Richard Comeau

2019-02-20T21:11:40Z

Richard:

[[Bio]]

Hi, I'm Richard.

I'm perplexed by jumping cursors, but in someways maybe they replicate (or at least in some small way reflect) the meandering path my life has taken. Except that my life seems at some point to get on track, whereas those are just really really really annoying.

I have a degree in electric bass, which somehow has evolved into working with college students on the autism spectrum - I guess the teaching degree may have played a part in that as well. I have a 15 year old - which means I was looking towards an empty nest at 46, but that has been recently thwarted by the new life about to pop into the world. I train budo (martial arts), meditate, and have a pretty solid relationship with psychedelics. I'm interested in consciousness-expanding things that help life to unfold more effortlessly.

Games? I don't know if I am some kind of imposter here, but I don't really play games anymore. I used to play those linear RPGs on the NES, SNES and SEGA Genesis, but the last time I tried to do that, It all just seemed lie so much of an investment compared to the time I have out here, and there's music to make, things to create, business to build, etc. etc.

I do have a hankering to play Breath of the Wild though. I'm a total sucker for 3D Zelda games, but I can't justify buying a system just to play that, so I may have to wait until computers can emulate it.

I'm a first year master's student in Education. Looking forward to venturing further into the world of all of this games stuff.

[['''Production 2''']]

[['''Production 3''']]

[["Production 4"]]

My Game idea [https://youtu.be/2lqf6pvED9Y]

Immerge

2019-02-14T03:04:20Z

Richard:

'''Immerge 7/2/2019'''

'''"Simulation Group" - From the big paper:'''

== Premise ==

Global Warming scenario (specifically flooding)

Perspective still unknown (3rd/1st Person probably)

Mechanic, and eventual win condition based on survival and building

Symbols, informative objects, and environmental storytelling are also possible narrative devices.

== Mechanics/Winning ==
The survival and building mechanics occur along a 'realistic' time line. There are definite goals/constraints based on time (finding food/water sources, getting a first shelter/HQ built). Furthermore, many changes that make the environment that much more complex, dangerous, accessible etc. are based on normal rhythms of day/night, tides, (perhaps even seasonal?), and 'random' events of weather, or future/chained catastrophes.

Survival and building are broad mechanics, and additional mentions include collaborative puzzle/problem solving, operating with stealth, racing, etc. Building involves objects materials and resources, tools, and 'outcome' objects (a boat, filtration system, etc.).

Collaboration is a major theme - as there will be a cast of controllable characters, and non-player characters. Characters have generic and unique skills (strength, crafting ability, dexterity, etc.) which may overlap either of survival or building goals. Skill 'trees' were mentioned to also provide some sense of character development/progression.

Exploration is another major factor. A 'do-nothing' policy is rarely good for driving narrative, and/or character motivations. This is especially relevant in the resource-scarce environment of the flood.

== Interwoven Character Team ==

This will be a narrative, and control/simulation mechanic. We are envisioning a 'party' system (say 3-5 characters) that may be controlled on an individual basis by the player, and also through their character interactions (requesting assistance from, directing, ignoring other characters, etc).
Another interesting possibility was raised regarding motivations of party members.

The narrative aspect of this, is that the characters each have different perspectives and information. This is historical and ongoing. During play they are not in constant contact and one or more may leave the immediate party to explore, leave because they are upset with another party member, are on a mission, etc. If the character(s) return, they will usually also bring information which continues to drive the story. This could be relatively 'important' information that drives the story, or goals; or more peripheral information that may aid with narrative character development, or historical understanding of events.

== Procedural Rhetoric ==

Global warming has become an abstract discussion about future consequences of our present actions, which largely takes place in the theatre of the mind and therefore remote from our experience. Even erratic weather patterns and extreme temperatures are attributed to incremental rise in the earths average temperature, our relative distance from the more extreme experiences allows us space from the immediacy of the experience. To this end, there is deliberately nothing fantastical about the setting nor the tasks in the game. It situates the player in what most experts agree will the consequences of global warming (massive flooding) and having to solve the problems of basic survival that are predictable in a post-ecological apocalypse scenario, including scarcity of resources, and the interpersonal dynamics that come when survival is not a given. While skills trees are one possibility for character development, gameplay may be more intriguing (or more realistic) if the player does not actually gain artificially-increased abilities, and must instead face each task with what can be scrounged, negotiated (through collaboration, or through coercion - each having its own consequences).

While the player is in direct control of one character, this can alternate. The game's AI would influence what a character does when not under direct control by the player, which would be based on what the player was asked to do - and how successful they were at doing it, while under the player's control. The goal here would be to use the players to emulate plausible reactions to the situation, so that even if the player themselves sees it as "just a game", the other characters may sensitize the player to "their" experience - perhaps even to the point where the player could not control them to do certain things, if it was not "in character".

Immerge

2019-02-14T03:03:49Z

Richard:

'''Immerge 7/2/2019'''

'''"Simulation Group" - From the big paper:'''

== Premise ==

Global Warming scenario (specifically flooding)

Perspective still unknown (3rd/1st Person probably)

Mechanic, and eventual win condition based on survival and building

Symbols, informative objects, and environmental storytelling are also possible narrative devices.

== Mechanics/Winning ==
The survival and building mechanics occur along a 'realistic' time line. There are definite goals/constraints based on time (finding food/water sources, getting a first shelter/HQ built). Furthermore, many changes that make the environment that much more complex, dangerous, accessible etc. are based on normal rhythms of day/night, tides, (perhaps even seasonal?), and 'random' events of weather, or future/chained catastrophes.

Survival and building are broad mechanics, and additional mentions include collaborative puzzle/problem solving, operating with stealth, racing, etc. Building involves objects materials and resources, tools, and 'outcome' objects (a boat, filtration system, etc.).

Collaboration is a major theme - as there will be a cast of controllable characters, and non-player characters. Characters have generic and unique skills (strength, crafting ability, dexterity, etc.) which may overlap either of survival or building goals. Skill 'trees' were mentioned to also provide some sense of character development/progression.

Exploration is another major factor. A 'do-nothing' policy is rarely good for driving narrative, and/or character motivations. This is especially relevant in the resource-scarce environment of the flood.

== Interwoven Character Team ==

This will be a narrative, and control/simulation mechanic. We are envisioning a 'party' system (say 3-5 characters) that may be controlled on an individual basis by the player, and also through their character interactions (requesting assistance from, directing, ignoring other characters, etc).
Another interesting possibility was raised regarding motivations of party members.

The narrative aspect of this, is that the characters each have different perspectives and information. This is historical and ongoing. During play they are not in constant contact and one or more may leave the immediate party to explore, leave because they are upset with another party member, are on a mission, etc. If the character(s) return, they will usually also bring information which continues to drive the story. This could be relatively 'important' information that drives the story, or goals; or more peripheral information that may aid with narrative character development, or historical understanding of events.

== Procedural Rhetoric ==

Global warming has become an abstract discussion about future consequences of our present actions, which largely takes place in the theatre of the mind and therefore remote from our experience. Even erratic weather patterns and extreme temperatures are attributed to incremental rise in the earths average temperature, our relative distance from the more extreme experiences allows us space from the immediacy of the experience. To this end, there is deliberately nothing fantastical about the setting nor the tasks in the game. It situates the player in what most experts agree will the consequences of global warming (massive flooding) and having to solve the problems of basic survival that are predictable in a post-ecological apocalypse scenario, including scarcity of resources, and the interpersonal dynamics that come when survival is not a given. While skills trees are one possibility for character development, gameplay may be more intriguing (or more realistic) if the player does not actually gain artificially-increased abilities, and must instead face each task with what can be scrounged, negotiated (through collaboration, or through coercion - each having its own consequences).

While the player is in direct control of one character, this can alternate. The games AI would influence what a character does when not under direct control by the player, which would be based on what the player was asked to do - and how successful they were at doing it, while under the player's control. The goal here would be to use the players to emulate plausible reactions to the situation, so that even if the player themselves sees it as "just a game", the other characters may sensitize the player to "their" experience - perhaps even to the point where the player could not control them to do certain things, if it was not "in character". T

Production 4

2019-02-08T17:34:51Z

Richard:

[[File:H2x1_NSwitchDS_Gorogoa_image1600w.jpg|400px]]

Gorogoa, by Jason Roberts is an interactive puzzle game. It is also a meditation on the passage of time, beauty, and the meaning of a life. Originally conceived as a graphic novel, and rendered in hundreds of beautifully hand-drawn pictures by the game designer, it’s the story of a boy who sees a mythical beast in a war-torn land and becomes an adult and an old man trying to understand its secrets. In fact, you play as reader of this story and co-author. Characters don’t not move of their own volition. It is only when a puzzle is solved, or on its way to being solved that a path is paved for the characters to move and the game progresses. Gorogoa’s win condition is satisfied when all of the puzzles are solved, and narratively, the boy/man has uncovered the secrets he’s chasing. The only other outcome is that there are puzzles remaining to be solved.

The game is played on a 2x2 square. Each quadrant can hold a picture tile which can be shifted, overlayed onto another tile, joined and separated from other tiles, and zoomed into and away from. The puzzles are not at all conventional. Using elements of time, space, inversion of the macro and the micro, metaphor, congruence, and visual pun, the solutions require to the player to manipulate the pictures on the tiles and the objects contained in them to reframe, recontextualize and make abstract connections. To play the game, a player can make one of two basic moves, either moving the tile from one square to another, or clicking on a picture element or directional arrow within a tile. The player cannot physically move any object, but character movement is triggered from the correct association of the objects in the tiles, either overlaid, or juxtaposed horizontally or vertically. An example of this is an archway in one picture left behind when the tile is moved. This archway becomes a transparent overlay for an implied door in another picture, which then opens. Another example is a train-track depicted on a map, stylized to appear like a ladder, which when placed properly functions as an actual ladder allowing the character to ascend in another tile. The resources, in the form of what the tiles can do and what connections can be made are not immediately known to the player. Though exploring the different tiles, and how they might move and relate, the game continually unveils new ways the tiles may be used, and increasingly clever mechanisms that relate the tiles. Thus it exemplifies what I believe is an essential ingredient in sustaining interest in this type of puzzle game, and what bores me about most “escape room” games, of which Gogogoa might be said to be a distant relative. The ludus of tile manipulation provides a nice balance of constraint and gradual loosening of those constraints with novel tile functionality. In so doing, the game succeeds in “capturing the player’s interest with an attractive goal, teaching the player the rules in a seamless and interesting way, giving feedback during gameplay that keeps the player engaged, and rewarding the player appropriately at the end” (Fullerton 39).

[[File:gorogoa-final-6.png|700px]]

Gorogoa is full of incidental learning, or at least opportunity for reflection. The stunning art, architecture and iconography in Gorogoa references ancient civilizations. In some scenes these things are in shambles, decimated by the pointlessness of war. This is where the game reflects the triumph of the human spirit. Here, the character you lead is crippled or blind, a personification of the world around him, and yet through even these circumstances, you lead him to persevere towards his goals. The ancient figures that are sometimes employed to aid you in your quest are usually performing difficult labour. The tasks they perform are recontextualized to “move” elements within other tiles. Incidentally, this “skin”, allows the player to learn and appreciate, through metaphor, that our world was largely built through arduous manual labour, and to see how it was all done to support the movement (and relative lack of manual labour) most of us freely enjoy.

[[File:gorogoa-07-1918x1079-q75.jpg|700px]]

The boundaries restricting player movement to tile manipulation and very limited clicking on the pictures on the surface might seem to lead to a simple player experience. However, it is not possible to solve the puzzles by randomly shifting tiles and clicking on things. Each puzzle has a sequence and a distinct logic that is seldom replicated in other puzzles. The game play is to find and facilitate the connections in seemingly unrelated elements, to see things beyond what they appear to be, and fashion a world of interconnectivity which has one function, to support the journey of the boy/man through his life. In this way, we are in effect playing out a Buddhist cosmology and philosophy of sunyata, which is simultaneously the concept that nothing exists independently of anything else, and also that nothing exists the way we think it does. It is a world of relative constructed “truths.” The fun in this play, is to learn to see - in fact require yourself to see - beyond what you normally see.

'''Works Cited'''

Fullerton, T. (2014). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovation Games, NY: Taylor & Francis

Caillois, R. The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games. In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 122-155). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Production 4

2019-02-07T19:35:23Z

Richard:

[[File:H2x1_NSwitchDS_Gorogoa_image1600w.jpg|400px]]

Gorogoa, by Jason Roberts is an interactive puzzle game. It is also a meditation on the passage of time, beauty, and the meaning of a life. Originally conceived as a graphic novel, and rendered in hundreds of beautifully hand-drawn pictures by the game designer, it’s the story of a boy who sees a mythical beast in a war-torn land and becomes an adult and an old man trying to understand its secrets. In fact, you play as reader of this story and co-author. Characters don’t not move of their own volition. It is only when a puzzle is solved, or on its way to being solved that a path is paved for the characters to move and the game progresses. Gorogoa’s win condition is satisfied when all of the puzzles are solved, and narratively, the boy/man has uncovered the secrets he’s chasing. The only other outcome is that there are puzzles remaining to be solved.

The game is played on a 2x2 square. Each quadrant can hold a picture tile which can be shifted, overlayed onto another tile, joined and separated from other tiles, and zoomed into and away from. The puzzles are not at all conventional. Using elements of time, space, inversion of the macro and the micro, metaphor, congruence, and visual pun, the solutions require to the player to manipulate the pictures on the tiles and the objects contained in them to reframe, recontextualize and make abstract connections. To play the game, a player can make one of two basic moves, either moving the tile from one square to another, or clicking on a picture element or directional arrow within a tile. The player cannot physically move any object, but character movement is triggered from the correct association of the objects in the tiles, either overlaid, or juxtaposed horizontally or vertically. An example of this is an archway in one picture left behind when the tile is moved. This archway becomes a transparent overlay for an implied door in another picture, which then opens. Another example is a train-track depicted on a map, stylized to appear like a ladder, which when placed properly functions as an actual ladder allowing the character to ascend in another tile. The resources, in the form of what the tiles can do and what connections can be made are not immediately known to the player. Though exploring the different tiles, and how they might move and relate, the game continually unveils new ways the tiles may be used, and increasingly clever mechanisms that relate the tiles. Thus it exemplifies what I believe is an essential ingredient in sustaining interest in this type of puzzle game, and what bores me about most “escape room” games, of which Gogogoa might be said to be a distant relative. The ludus of tile manipulation provides a nice balance of constraint and gradual loosening of those constraints with novel tile functionality. In so doing, the game succeeds in “capturing the player’s interest with an attractive goal, teaching the player the rules in a seamless and interesting way, giving feedback during gameplay that keeps the player engaged, and rewarding the player appropriately at the end” (Fullerton 39).

[[File:gorogoa-final-6.png|700px]]

Gorogoa is full of incidental learning, or at least opportunity for reflection. The stunning art, architecture and iconography in Gorogoa references ancient civilizations. In some scenes these things are in shambles, decimated by the pointlessness of war. This is where the game is a mediation on the triumph of the human spirit. Here, the character you lead is crippled or blind, a personification of the world around him, and yet through even these circumstances, you lead him to persevere towards his goals. The ancient figures that are sometimes employed to aid you in your quest are usually performing difficult labour. The tasks they perform are recontextualized to “move” elements within other tiles. Incidentally, this “skin”, allows the player to learn and appreciate, through metaphor, that our world was largely built through arduous manual labour, and to see how it was all done to support the movement (and relative lack of manual labour) most of us freely enjoy.

[[File:gorogoa-07-1918x1079-q75.jpg|700px]]

The boundaries restricting player movement to tile manipulation and very limited clicking on the pictures on the surface might seem to lead to a simple player experience. However, it is not possible to solve the puzzles by randomly shifting tiles and clicking on things. Each puzzle has a sequence and a distinct logic that is seldom replicated in other puzzles. The game play is to find and facilitate the connections in seemingly unrelated elements, to see things beyond what they appear to be, and fashion a world of interconnectivity which has one function, to support the journey of the boy/man through his life. In this way, we are in effect playing out a Buddhist cosmology and philosophy of sunyata, which is simultaneously the concept that nothing exists independently of anything else, and also that nothing exists the way we think it does. It is a world of relative constructed “truths.” The fun in this play, is to learn to see - in fact require yourself to see - beyond what you normally see.

'''Works Cited'''

Fullerton, T. (2014). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovation Games, NY: Taylor & Francis

Caillois, R. The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games. In K. Salen and E. Zimmerman (Eds.) The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (pp. 122-155). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.