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A Whirlwind of Game Design

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mad-phat-design-skillz dept.

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a feature on the videogames design students were able to create in 24 hours. From conception to completion. The games are quite basic but it is fascinating what they are able to come up with in so little time. From the article: 'The teams' challenge was to collectively create a mobile-game masterpiece using a "mystery ingredient" -- random verbs and nouns -- to guide design.'"

10 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds familar by Mortlath · · Score: 4, Informative
    This sounds a lot like the Allegro SpeedHack Competition.

    The annual SpeedHack competition has been around for six years already. The only difference is 3 days vs. only 1 day.

  2. Re:Sounds familar - yours too! by BitterAndDrunk · · Score: 2, Funny

    My SpeedHack was 4 days, with a valkyrie.

    --
    You better watch out, there may be dogs about . . .
  3. Life the game... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

    The teams' challenge was to collectively create a mobile-game masterpiece using a "mystery ingredient" -- random verbs and nouns -- to guide design.

    I guess some geeks discovered how to make babies.

  4. Hey, sounds like some Uwe Boll would do by Rifter13 · · Score: 3, Funny

    This sounds a lot olike Uwe Boll's way of making game-based movies. I bet these teams could seal some pretty lucrative deals with Uwe, to give him access to their IP!

  5. Input by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The real constraint with phone games is the input device, not the games themselves. Phone buttons are way too tiny to be easy to use, so games have to use only a couple of them, or be too hard to play. Also the tiny screen isnt very conductive either. What phones need is some kind of tilt sensitivity (for example), which would be easy to make games arround, and easy to interact with. Acceleration sensititivty might work as well, or possibly some game which uses the camera as an input device (i.e. you point it at differnt colored and shaped things to make the game react. Anther possibility is to use the audio input, but this could be annoying for the people arround you. While the games developed look nice, they still will all be a pain in the ass to play, and its not the developers' fault.

    --

    Philosophy.
    1. Re:Input by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The real constraint with phone games is the input device, not the games themselves.

      No, not really. The biggest constraint is development time and carrier/publisher politics. The biggest technical problems are phone bugs, memory limitations, and J2ME.

      While the input is a bit restrictive, it only takes a little creativity to use it well. (and of course willingness to change the game to fit the input methods available)

      What phones need is some kind of tilt sensitivity (for example), which would be easy to make games arround, and easy to interact with.

      There was a demo of exactly that at E3 last year. At ATI's booth they had a prototype phone with tilt sensors running a 3D snow boarding game. It was pretty cool. No news on any commercially available phones with this capability.

  6. A whirlwind link to the actual article by rabiddeity · · Score: 5, Informative

    The original link is to the images and captions. Here's a link to the actual article.

    http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar20 06/id20060317_074043.htm

  7. Actually, the real constraint was the network lag. by amarodeeps · · Score: 2, Informative

    The phone hacking was fine. The server setup was, while sort of a hack, also fine and fast. The browser-end actionscript was super fine too. The NETWORK LATENCY sucked balls.

  8. Random verbs and nouns by wowbagger · · Score: 2, Funny

    'The teams' challenge was to collectively create a mobile-game masterpiece using a "mystery ingredient" -- random verbs and nouns -- to guide design.'"

    Sounds like just another day with Marketing to me.

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
  9. The problem with doing this on mobiles by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The problem with making games for mobile phones and then distributing them publicly is thus:

    1. Too many carriers in North America lock all phones on their networks such that subscribers can run only applications purchased through the carrier's online store *cough* Verizon and Get It Now *cough*.
    2. Only developers affiliated with an established company can test their programs on many phones *cough* BREW system used by Get It Now *cough*.
    3. Too few individual users know of Cingular, T-Mobile, and other providers with a presence in North America that don't lock their phones.
    4. Providers that don't lock their phones generally tend to have poorer voice coverage than Verizon and Sprint, which do lock their phones.