A short view about the game design process

Social causes and ludic mechanics

This post is about a recent Brazilian advertising campaign for blood donation named “Meu Sangue Rubro Negro” (something like “My Red and Black Blood”). A friend of mine – Rodrigo Jatene from Leo Burnett agency – was the creative director of this campaign.

Basically, the idea was to use a football team (the Brazilian team “Vitória”) as a platform to encourage people to donate blood. For this, the team uniform was changed.

The red colour of the t-shirt was replaced with white, and only with blood donations the color will (gradually) change. The image below shows this process.



And the video below explains the campaign better (subtitles in english).



We can see the ludic element used in a social cause in this case. The idea of bringing the color back to the t-shirt based on the number of liters of donated blood is a fun way to mobilize people to get involved in a real social problem.

Maybe it's correct to say that with ludic interfaces even serious messages may become entertainment.

And you? What do think about that?

Slender

I'm a big fan of indie games like Braid and Limbo. The latest (free) addition to my collection is SLENDER.

SLENDER is a short experimental horror game based on the Slender Man mythos. The Slender Man is a faceless creature with long arms in a black suit. A living nightmare from horror tales for children.



SLENDER is a first person horror game created by independent studio Parsec Productions, where your only goal is to find 8 manuscripts about the paranormal creature.

The more directly you come in contact with the Slender Man, the faster your sanity drains away. You can’t look directly at the Slender Man, or your game is over. So it’s a kind of horror hide and seek game.

The game has a lot of good features:

1) Simple first person mechanics: you only need to walk and aim your flashlight at the scenery. Perfect gameplay;

2) Very fast: you can play the whole game in fifteen minutes, and each time you play it the manuscripts (the goal) are in different places;

3) Disturbing graphics and good horror atmosphere: it’s the perfect combination for a dark environment experience;

4) A good narrative: as Dille (2007, p.16) wrote, it is important to remember that the history is working in unison with gameplay. The more your story can be told through gameplay, the better. SLENDER has a good balance between horror narrative and the gameplay, you can feel really scared playing this game.

I’m very happy with indie initiatives like SLENDER. Let's support this cause!

Check the creepy trailer below:



And to download it for free from the official website, click here.

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REFERENCE:

DILLE, Flint; PLATTEN, John Zuur. The ultimate guide to vídeo game writing and design. New York: Skip Press, 2007

Highlights from "The Grasshopper"

Some good quotes from this excellent book. Informations for reference: SUITS, Bernard. The grasshopper: games, life and utopia. Broadview Encore Editions: Toronto, 2005.



p.37 – Let us say, then, that games are goal-directed activities in which inefficient means are intentionally chosen. For example, in racing games one voluntarily goes all round the track in an effort to arrive at the finish line instead of ‘sensibly’ cutting straight across the field.

p.48/49 – My conclusion is that to play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affair, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possibly such activity.

p.55 – Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

p.59 – Cheaters at games are precisely like liars in everyday life.

p.120 – (about Role Playing Games) For at first it seemed that the performing of assumed roles was the essence of the kind of game we were trying to capture.

p. 130 – By amateurs I mean those for whom playing the game is an end itself, and by professionals I mean those who have in view some further purpose which is achievable by playing the game.

Gaming is good for you

This infographic by Frugal Dad details many benefits of games. Stolen from www.marcelodevasconcellos.com/portfolio



Szia!

Just for fun: Quest for the Crown

An epic adventure! Click in the image to play.



Be steadfast!

A brief presentation of gaming market in Brazil

I received a mail from an american user asking me to put some information about gaming market in Brazil. So, I'll share some brief ideas about this subject.



First of all, Brazil doesn’t have a formal industry of games. In Brazil we have high levels of piracy, high taxes for foreigners products, and a Playstation 3 game could cost around U$ 90.

However, Brazil is a wide country (190 million people) and is the country with greatest navigation time in the internet of the world (22 hours a week). Brazil is the country has 200 millions of active mobile devices (30% smartphones and 70% mobile phones) so, internet and mobile are good platforms to develop games and entertainment.

I'll try to find some researches about our market (in english) to publish here.

Szia!