Here's an old paper she did with Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek that I really like: MDA - A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research
That Game Company Games
We are focused on the total emotional pallet when people play game. Current set of games is focused on a narrow part of the emotional spectrum (action, sports, and the sorts)
Next up:
Journey (Ships in 2011)comment: I just took a look at this page. This is going to be a beautiful game. (They'll make a ton of money from Dune fans...)
Journey is a game to experience with others. What it mean to us that it's an opportunity to explore how people play with each other and experience things together.
Journey is a game where you are in a big open space. Inspirations: We are very empowered by living today (internet, mobile computing/communications, technology.) The game is a journey: The Hero's Journey.
The characters we see in games exercise this elixir of power and knowledge. They are compelling because they make us feel even more like a God (than we already fell like).
Charles F. Bolden Jr. said that without exception every single person he has taken to space on the space shuttle, they were hardcore scientists...but when they came back, that had been changed. VERY strong conversion. (Change the world, religion, or whatever)
When you stand on the face of the moon, everything you care about is smaller than your thumb, and when you look out into the vastness of space...what else is out there? The characters in our games we play are not out there.
Even in games where you are in a team, 99% of the time you are freaking out about dying...how do we create better interactive player experiences.
This is the inspiration for re-imagining multi-player games. people are intellectual, emotional, and social, we are all these things? What if Game Play combined intellectual and emotional, and also had a social experience. The importance of effective social interaction is what starts the conversation about the Journey.
The current social interaction is dated (think green screen MUD).
How do we find the value of the social interaction and how do we bring it to the players. This Human to Human focus is what Journey wants to be. Most games feel like everything is focused on the stuff. What if we focus on people instead of the stuff. What if the player didn't have power.
We've all been in the Internet space, with all the glory and opportunity of collaboration and equality and love...that gets polluted with all the noise that others bring to the environment. STRIP it ALL out.
The more constraints you add to the interaction, the more meaningful the interaction has.
We decided that there would be no verbal and no textual communication (due to noise constraints, and due to technology issues.) Players communicate through their behavior.
We really wanted to focus on the nebulous connection between people Imagine in a cave that's really scary, and the person ahead of you went around a corner and you couldn't see them, and you felt alone. What would the "monsters" be like? We even talked about making the people monsters, but thought it would take us too close to Shadows of Colossus.
How can you interaction...struggle against wind, help a friend who has fallen, hold something in place, collaborative climbing. Sandstorm and shelter. 1 is in a shelter as storm approaches. 2 more come, but only room for 1...the other...
how many people would there be here. We decided to work with 4.
We made the screen view bigger when you were with other people, empowering the players to do more and see more.
The lessons from Dragon (prototype of Journey).
People did such mean stuff to each other. We did our best to not let play-testers see each other. We had a problem in that people were mean.
Tracy Fullerton said that you "can't punish me for being myself". We all need to play journey the way that we want to play. The solution: it's a single player game that you can play with other people.
Elastic Online Experience that does Flow (Flow theory)
Create Collaborative experience, but not one that is dictated.
In a game where you are exposed to many people, you might find one that you can go all the way with (she just got married so she's really into that metaphor).
Moving from 2d to 3d was really tough.
At That Game Company a thesis is very important...the thesis for journey was together we can move a mountain. Then we shifted to "We ALL walk the Path; Each Journey is DIFFERENT."
2d is not 3d because in 2d you can see things very quickly that in 3d becomes a very different, more difficult experience. (Movement through space).
It is really hard to make a 3d game that is collaborative when you are not forcing people to cooperate.
We don't know if it will be successful, but searching for it is worth it.
One of the things that Hunicke would like to be true is that the second time you play you will find something different, but doesn't know if they'll get there.
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