Not very surprisingly, many speakers talked about the thatgamecompany’s game : Flower as a good example of the future of gaming in terms of emotions, target audience, and design in general. So I expected a lot about this conference… and wasn’t disapointed.

Kellee Santiago, game designer on the project, gave us a look at the complete design process. All through this process, they kept in mind the feelings (peace, love) they wanted to give through the game. This simple idea allow them to define clear  gameplay mechanics following this guide. But I think the most interesting (for me) thing was that with 5 gameplay mechanics defined they took months (15 exactly) to playtest it (at the frequency of 2 playtests per week and 1 at the end). One by one, prototyping the mechanics with Flash or other.
I think this working method reduce considerably the mistakes in the production… This is maybe an exception in the industry to have so much time prototyping but it clearly gave strong basis to the production itself. In facts, Flower was made in 2 years that is to say only 8 months of production !

Next to this conference, “Designing women” starring Kellee Santiago and other women game designers was more of a debate.  Not only on women in video games or as gamers but also on diversity in the industry. They really want to give a different point of view and feelings in the design concept and I totally agree with them that it is essential and enthousiastic !

As gamers, it appears that women and girls (because researches focus on young girls games) don’t learn to play the same way as boys. When a boy directly rush an unknown game and learn from his mistakes, girls tends to observe first how the game works before starting to play (obviously it’s not a law which is confirmed each time). You may suppose that it is not the only difference between boy and girl gamers.
I think that our work as game designer must take into account its established fact… You know that currently 40% of all gamers are female ?
And the same parallel can be made with the age of the players whhich do not cease to increase.

You may suspect what it remains to be made ? To diversify !

That was very interesting and relevant for one thing : I-must-learn-to-speak-english ! write in english, eat in english, drink in english and finally dream in english.
That really was a torture not understanding all conferences.

One of the most famous for me was David Cage’s one, Quantic Dream’s founder, with his speech “Writing Interactive Narrative for a Mature Audience” and this sentence “We need to be proud of who we are” about the censorship (which resonating especially in this GDC in Germany).
He asked why making games should be always for teenagers with big weapons, big tits and poor mechanics. We can assume to be adult and we can show others feelings than kill-jump-kill… and it’s not dirty to see people kissing in a game, or making love. That can be shown without pornography, like movies.

“Movies”. It’s the word around this speech turned. And it’s there I found the argument went too far because video games was automatically compared to movies, to conclude video games are only like children toys.

Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding by me about what said David Cage but video games needn’t to have the same language of movies. No to count a story doesn’t mean not to give mature emotions.
In his speech, he explained video games can have two playing ways : The sandbox (the most of games) and a Rollercoaster (rare).
He told us he prefers the Rollercoaster than the sandbox, where a child are caught for God, pushed by simplist feelings where as the rollercoaster offers an emotional trip… but we can be very passive in a looping and waked up inventive in a Sandbox.

We can assume to make “toys” without meaning “childish toys”.
Playing is a shame for an adult ?

Why saying “we need to be proud of who we are” and being mixed up by the cinema ?

Picture from Unity website

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