So it looks like I haven't posted in a few weeks. Whoops a daisy! Here's a rundown of what I've been up to instead of posting here and entertaining you all:

-Mom and Grandma came to visit! Yaaaaaay! They were here for a little over a week, so we did a pretty good sampling of what LA has to offer. Shopping (hooray for Mommy and her Visa!!), trying new restaurants (hooray for In N Out and Sushi Dan!), a rainy afternoon at the spa, driving around to see the sights (and almost falling off a couple mountains, haha), etc. The weather didn't cooperate enough to make the beach fun, but I guess there's always next time. Good times were (I think) had by all. It was nice having them here; I probably won't get to go home for another few months, but at least I've had a dose of family to tide me over for awhile :-)

-Game class! After three weeks of iterations, playtests, and refinements, my group submitted the final version of our prototype board game. I think it turned out rather well, considering how complicated our concept was. If you're particularly bored today, head over to http://evolveyourpresent.blogspot.com for our group's production blog. We kept track of all our testing notes, versions of the rules, game art, etc over there, so if you're curious to see how the process works, this is a decent illustration. Hey look! Pictures!

Our logo for the project, done in about ten minutes by yours truly. Probably could have been snazzier, but oh well. We weren't being graded on art.


In every game design class that does prototyping, you will see at least three variations on this basic setup: a board with a hex grid on it (attached to a piece of foam board), a deck of cards made with printable Avery business cards, and pushpins. Ours was slightly more ambitious in that it provided a cheat sheet to each player.

With the prototyping assignment complete, we've moved on to feature design. We're supposed to design an addition or new feature for an existing game. My partner Mike and I are calling ours Guitar God. It's pretty straightforward. Guitar Hero + real guitar = AWESOME. It's so obvious, I can't believe no one has done it yet. The fun thing about this project is that for the team that has the strongest presentation, the prof is going to try to bring in someone from the game company we're pitching for, and they will see and critique our presentation. I don't need to tell you how awesome it would be if someone from Red Octane came in to see Guitar God :-D

-Thesis space! No, it's still not done. The basic setup is done (it's a livable workspace for the students), but now we've moved on to prepping the space for the thesis show. I'm learning all kinds of things about electricity, hiring moving companies, and the kinds of personnel one hires to put on a thesis show. Speaking of hiring, it sounds like if my boss can't find someone to fill the Production Manager role, at least some of it will fall to me. This is a nervous proposition; I feel like I'd be up for the challenge, but I think I'd like it a lot better if someone else were in charge. Say, someone who's actually seen an IMD thesis show before (because I definitely have not). More on this as it develops.

-Writing class! Man, I love this class. I think Andre said it best: "i feel like i get too much credit for bullshit work sometimes." Basically, I sit down, I blab all over a Word document for awhile, and I get an A. Good deal! The last assignment was to write a concept for a theme park or similar interactive space. Mine was a variation on Tomorrowland. Instead of presenting one version of the future, it presented four: Brave New World, Star Trek, Firefly/Serenity, and The Matrix. The idea is to present four very different ideas of what the future might look like, each with a semi-plausible explanation of how we'd get from the world of today to that particular future. It's probably too cerebral to be commercially viable (I'm asking people to come in, pay attention, and draw comparisons and conclusions based on four possible future visions), but it was fun to write. Next up: take an existing source (a book or film, etc) and reimagine it in a new medium, extending the story and the world as you see fit. I'ma play with Orson Scott Card's Enderverse, see what I can come up with. Probably a game, since Card himself is already writing the movie script.

Whew, okay. There's more to tell, but I should probably go ahead and write my Enderverse paper, seeing as how it's due tomorrow morning. Hope you all are doing well and keeping warm.

Was flipping through my camera, found some pics from the last week that I thought I'd post:

So here's Mike, me, Jamie, and Andre celebrating our victory over a board game. Shadows Over Camelot (which, by the way, is an EXCELLENT game) is a game where all the players team up against the game...and the game usually wins. We were really, really proud of ourselves for winning. I believe I mentioned in a previous post that playing and critiquing board games was homework for one of my classes. Turns out this is a weekly assignment. Mike, Andre, and Jamie are my usual group for this activity. As you can see, we're all very, very cool.

Do you know who this guy is? That's okay, I would be extremely surprised if you did. His name is James Kiefer, and he's head of game development at Mattel. He came to our game class and talked about the process of designing board games and getting them to market (and of course, getting them to SELL). Apparently he will be coming to our last class to see our final projects, and if he sees something he likes, that group will be given the opportunity to develop their project further at Mattel (or with Mattel, or with Mattel's blessing, or something...I'm a little vague on the details). Neat!

Ah, here are two members of my game design group with our latest prototype, Butterfly Effect. As you can see, Lily is thinking EXTREMELY hard, and well she should. We're developing a board game version of what would eventually be an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game...think World of Warcraft). The basic idea is that it's animals versus plants, with each side competing to control the most territory. As the patron god (or goddess) of your side, you have the ability to place resources on the board, Risk-style, and battle your opponent to take their territory. The twist is that you can do these things both in the present and in the past; whatever you do in the past will change what is happening in the present. It's an interesting premise, in theory. In execution, getting the mechanics of it worked out is a PAIN. I liked this better as a hypothetical computer game. Then, we could just say things like "well, then there would be magic on the server, and BAM, what you did in the past would be reflected in the present!" Oh well, we're having fun with art supplies and dice, and that is definitely something.

Spent the afternoon/evening in San Diego today. Al, Mike, Andre and I decided to take a mini road trip to attend a panel on serious gaming (professional gaming, the economies of game worlds, etc.) at UCSD, Mike's undergrad. It was a pretty good trip. The panel was interesting, if a bit esoteric at times. Highlights from the trip included:

• Ralph Koster, of Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online fame, gave a response to what the rest of the panelists had been discussing. His remarks were insightful, particularly his argument that the line between games and play is largely an artificial one, and that games inherently create structures and rules that are very difficult to get out of (one reason why innovation is so hard to create in games). After two and a half hours discussing such things as virtual economies, the social ramifications of gold farming, and the different playstyles of different nationalities of MMO players, Raph's impassioned and accessible style was very much appreciated.
  
• Lev Manovich, a well-known new media theorist guru type, attended the panel, and joined in the discussion afterwards. Most of you will not know who that is, and no harm done. However, for those of you who've done the Bradley Multimedia thing, and have taken Ed's MM250 class, remember The Language of New Media, a blue and white book that was really dense and sometimes hard to parse? Kinda read like the author wasn't a native English speaker, or was just an uber-scholar type or something? Yeah, this guy was the one who wrote it. And as it turns out, he is both not a native English speaker AND an uber-scholar type.
  
• We got to meet Mike's sister, which was cool. She's a great deal of fun, and I am quite sure that the Rossmassler siblings are far cuter as a unit than my brothers and I will ever be. (sorry guys, but it's the truth. we're way too devious to ever be that adorable)
• Al's battery died. And I discovered that Californians do not have the "always be prepared" mantra drilled into them the way that Midwesterners do. I swear, we must have checked with 5-10 people (including Al and Mike's sis) and NO ONE had jumper cables. Also missing was a flashlight (so we could, you know, see the battery we needed to jump) and the owner's manual for the car. I was both amused and appalled. Man, I remember when I got my license, the FIRST thing my dad did was take me out to the driveway and show me how to check/fill all my car's fluids, change a flat, check tire pressure, etc. I thought everyone did that. Apparently, we Midwesterners are far more pragmatic than our Western brethren, who simply call AA when these things happen. Who knew?
• CALIFORNIA BURRITOS. Holy crap, these things are amazing. They're burritos with carne asada (steak), salsa, shredded cheese, and french fries in them. At $4.45 each, they are basically the perfect food. I was sad to learn that they are only available in San Diego. I guess this means we will have to go to San Diego again.

That is all.