Influx

Jim Wexler of Brand Games, one of the speakers at our “Meet the Makers” event, recently pointed me to an interesting idea of of the University of Utrecht called Game Seeds. Basically, it’s a way to inspire game designers to think differently about game design by forcing them to think about the actions of the character first, rather than the user.

As they explain..

“Game design usually starts off by defining the actions of the player(s). Christophe Berg at Metagama
wondered if the reverse would be possible, and created a new and
innovative game where the design of the characters (and their behaviour
patterns) is the first step.

The
result is a playful card game that confronts players with certain
constraints (e.g. they don’t create a character from scratch) in order
to foster their creativity, and pushing them out of their comfort zone
by having to make do with the given elements.

Each
Game Seeds card contains attributes and an action verb. By
choosing some actions, the players start to define their characters
behaviour… and by doing so create the range of actions that would be
available to the end-user.”

It’s another reference to the importance of character in the creation of compelling content, a topic both Frank Rose and Gary Hirsch will be talking about at Influx’s “Meet the Makers” (a “lab for a day”) taking place at Milk Studios in NYC on December 3rd.

Information about the event can be found here.

Posted by Ed Cotton