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I'm here today. Anyone else?

I'm interested if it's in Australia.

I can rate Melbourne as a good place

#livesinmelbourne

I've just bought Technobabylon and HackNet.

What have people bought, what's good

I'm in the Yes column. It's prettier, easier to use, i can carry out my daily workflows a lot easier; searching and navigating especially.

Hey, I remember you. Hello Glad to hear your doing well. Nostalgia is a good thing, just don't get stuck there

good read, enjoying your posts. I've dug up an old post I wrote a few years back. if you haven't read it it's worthwhile http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48814.msg636464740#msg636464740

Part two is up:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/27/constants-of-game-design-2/

"There are infinite paintings, but also a more finite sense of what is a great painting versus not. Similarly there are infinite games, but also a sense of what works and what doesn't. The boundless space of video games is bounded and their limitless possibilities have limits. There are, it seems, rules to game design."

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/20/constants-of-game-design-1/

I enjoyed the 5 minute read. Nothing revelatory, but worth a read.

DoubleFine.

They also announced the other day PC, Mac and Linux. So don't fret

http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/reap_your_heart_out_grim_fandango_available_on_pc_mac_linux_ps4_and_vita/

Is it looking like it'll be about the same time of year? I should be back in London by mid November, and am keen to come along.

Via Hand-Eye Supply http://www.handeyesupply.com/blogs/curiosityclub/13013453-jelly-helm-studio-jelly-5-13-14

I'm hoping the video for the Curiosity Club will be put up shortly, they seem to be a week or so behind. Anyway, Joseph Campbell is an interesting guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

You can also see his his 7 part series (each about an hour) on the Power of Myth. I can recommend the Hero's Adventure (it's about an hour) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBbt_bIDEg0

[Case Study: Indiana Jones]

I had great difficulty deciding whether I wanted to talk about story, narrative, characters, puzzles or some other segued conversation on the state of adventure games. I even started to write about narrative but quickly gave up when I ran into dependencies on character for emotion; locations have a dependency on characters e.g. Buckingham Palace means something different to a retired, British naval commander receiving an honorary award from the Queen as it would for a Chinese shepard living in the Guangdong Province of China. Characters give context.

So without further ado, I thought I'd talk about characters and characterisation. I'd rather not re-tread the beaten path so I'll point you to a lot of other articles and notes as I go. There's a nice podcast of a talk with Tim Schaefer on designing memorable characters, if you can find it good luck (it's from 2004 GDC) but here's an excerpt:

"To create a truly immersive game experience with a compelling fantasy world, you have to populate that world with real characters. Not just characters that behave realistically on the screen, but characters that ARE real to you, the game's creator. The more you know your own characters, the more real they will become, and the more they will help draw the player into your game's imaginary word. It's not enough for your characters to have distinctive speech patterns and tics. They need actual histories, motives, dreams, and secrets. Then they will have real depth with which pull the player in, and your fantasy world will be come a real place that the player loves to visit, and can't wait to get back to when they leave."

There's also a nice interview here: http://generator.acmi.net.au/gallery/media/game-masters-interview-tim-schafer (2m:31s)

Tim Schafer's Character Design Insight - things to think about when designing a character

- Make sure the characters are identifiable
- Blank player characters don't necessarily mean that the player will enjoy them more.
- Not everyone wants the same fantasy character.
- Give the star (Player character) the coolest dialogue
- In a game, you're asking the player to play the main role, as if you were asking an actor to star in your movie.
- Simple, deeply felt emotions allow for players to better relate to the character.
- Characters should develop and grow emotionally.
- Invest time in your characters, don't get sloppy!
- Question your characters, "Am I sure that this is right for the character?"
- Make sure that as the author of the characters, you truly care about them.
- Check to see if the player wants to impress the other characters, that means he or she is interested in your characters.
- Make sure the supporting characters react to the player's actions and choices, this creates an
additional layer of immersion making the characters that much more believable.
- Create a back-story, know more than you show the player.
- What are the character's relationships with the other characters? Remember that even characters should have relationships, even if they are fabricated.
- Don't be afraid to make a personal statement with your game. Games will never become an art
form if you refrain from putting your own emotions, thoughts, or views into the game.

Ways to create your characters/define characters:
- Borrow from real people or people from your life
- Collaboration & research
- Giving full names to your characters can help you think of who the character is
- Character Age
- What would the character say about themselves?
- What are the the characters interests, hobbies?
- What are the character's social networks, who are their friends?
- Have imaginary conversations with your characters.
- Take a previously done character and extract their abstract essence, and apply it to your own character.

It's really worth thinking about who your character is and the beginning and what they are going to become by the time you finish telling your story. They might start off as a simple farm boy on some dessert planet but they're going to end up saving the galaxy from a tyranny of a galactic empire. Whenever I have an idea for a character they're usually inspired by someone, somewhere either in a book or on TV, I'll try to look at why this person inspired me and the traits that make them loveable or not. It's also worth noting how these characters are introduced, first impressions are important because you only get to make one.

Case Study: Indiana Jones
I think this is some of the greatest character design here, if you have access to a copy of the Last Crusade, watch the opening scene now and you'll see what I mean. He's a lawful good, typically macho hero. He's got the rugged good looks, quick wit and improvisational skills of MacGuyver that make him instantly loveable. His opinions and strong beliefs are his vice that lead him into conflict and that conflict leads to the development of the story and the decisions he makes throughout the game - he's not a character to choose inaction. He's made even more likeable by his humanity - he bleeds, he cries, and he has a crippling fear of snakes.

In the opening scene to Last Crusade we see him fighting for what's right despite the world against him. He adapts to his situations and stands up to fight rather than run away. But it's all well and good looking at characters in a movie where we're just some  observer, but in the realm of non-linear multi-choice game where the player is donning the protagonist as an avatar we need to have the character adapt over time. What if the player had decided to run instead of pick up the whip - we'd then find a more cowardly hero. What if rather than being brash and obnoxious to the crooks he took a more diplomatic response (as opposed to spitting in their face). We have two decisions here, either make the player adopt the core beliefs of the character (Indiana Jones, Grim Fandango etc...) or have the character adopt the core beliefs of the player (Mass Effect, Fable etc...). This can usually be achieved by some sleight against the character, and transitively the player. Andail wrote a nice blog on how character decisions affect character development.

"I simply had to accept that players expect to understand computer game characters and their personalities almost immediately. I attribute this phenomenon to the fact that a player has a more direct, intimate, relationship with the protagonist than the reader of a book. While a book reader is merely an observer, a player /becomes/ the protagonist to an extent, and if their motives don't match, the player will experience disbelief and disengagement. It's not a question of sharing moral views or values â€" there are plenty of games that feature “evil” protagonists that most players will likely accept to control â€" but the player must at least feel like they're striving towards the same goal."

So, to sum up with my opinions:
- Characters need strong opinions, so much so that they won't stand by passively
- They need to be empathic to the player i.e. they need to adopt or share core beliefs with the player. In this sense you can attempt to make a character flexible to player decisions.
- The player needs to identify with them immediately. Background can come later (in Indy we didn't really find out his backstory until the third film) We need to care who the player is and what they're doing.
- They need to become someone. I don't think a character should ever finish the story as the same person. Changes can be minor but they need to be better because of the journey they've gone through.

[WE]

I'm no guru on game design, no sage of story-telling or ninja of narration. I am but a humble adventure fan who wants to figure out the ins and outs of game design, what adventure games really are and where WE can take them to in the future. We are the Shackletons of our genre! And to top it all off here's a great advert from the great Ernest Shackleton himself when he was looking for men for his Antarctic expedition that I think is fitting to this post:

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."

I'm hoping this long winded and opinionated ramble might kickstart some thoughts about the genre, game design and what we can do to really think about our genre.

You Are Eaten by a Grue.
Like any typical story I'll start at the beginning. But not the ‘beginning-beginning' as I'm sure that would take too long. Adventure games have been a big part of my life from the original text adventures such as Zork, THHGTTG and Hugo House of Horrors through Monkey Island, Kings Quest and Broken Sword. These were the days before the first-person shooter took aim and dealt an almost fatal blow to the adventure genre.

I can highly recommend that you read this article if you want a good description on the history of graphical adventure games. It's well written and full of lots of dates, facts and figures that will certainly be better than me trying to write my own.

Give 'Explanation' to 'Reader'
I remember a recent conversation I had with my flatmate, Alex, about the Walking Dead games from Telltale (I highly recommend playing these, they might not be perfect or even class as a 'good' adventure game, but they are great storytelling with emotional characters). I suggested to Alex that he would thoroughly enjoy them, being a fan of the show and comics and a relatively casual gamer, but he flat-out rejected them on the grounds that he "doesn't really like RPGs". I persisted and, despite my testament that they were adventure games and more akin to interactive-fiction, he simply brushed it off with the statement "Well, you play a role in the game so it's a role-playing game - and I don't like those"; enough said and he was back to playing Fifa. I spent a few moments 'explaining' (read arguing) that every game you play you assume some kind of a role but that doesn't mean that every game is an RPG; in a similar way that a game that takes you on an adventure might not necessarily be an adventure game. So I went back to my computer and started doing some frustrated writing about what an adventure game is - or at least what it is to me.

So what is an adventure game? I guess you could take a similar stance that Alex did and state that any game where you have an adventure is an adventure game. Would Tomb Raider be an adventure because Lara is always off on adventures... adventuring? Well sort of, but it's more complicated than that. Let's dissolve what it means to be an adventure game.

I know it's a little cliché but the dictionary has some really good points, I'll ad-lib a quote together from the definitions. I really believe this sums things up beautifully.

An adventure is a risky, unusual or exciting enterprise of a hazardous nature with unknown outcome.

I think that in the heart of an adventure game beats the rhythm of exploration - this purpose to unravel the world and expose it's mysteries and to liberate the story the game is trying to tell. The first time I played The Longest Journey (below) I looked at the world and just wanted to explore.

The latest Tomb Raider game was very much an adventure through a magical island full of history and myth... yet I couldn't interact with any of it besides 'smash crate' or 'use arrow on island inhabitant'. I couldn't delve into the history of the island beyond what I was linearly guided through and told about... exploration was visual and not scientific.

Point-and-click adventures have, IMHO, always been a deeply flawed genre with broken mechanics (flame-wars ensue), but I remember and regard them with such esteem and love - but why. I remember laughing till I cried the first time I played Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island; getting lost in mystery, murder and the occult in Broken Sword; roaming the vast realm of the undead in Grim Fandango and almost crying at the end; and taking down countless numbers of apocalyptic megalomaniacs in FoA and FotAQ. But the one thing I don't have many memories of are the puzzles. Sure I remember "Using Red Herring on Troll"... but I have no sentiment of it. What I do remember are the characters, the dialogues, the worlds and the stories.

The key isn't intelligence necessarily, but in first hoovering up every object from the painted scenery into your bottomless pockets (better not miss any!), then inserting them into your situation like keys into opinionated locks (better have the right syntax!). A strange, dead-end evolution where success comes from intuition and common sense, yes, but more-so from clicking around, forever, like a blind man feeling their way down the designer's own gaping colon. Use Baked Potato with Subwoofer. Use Sitar with Cow.

Now, I'm not saying puzzles are bad, in fact I enjoy them and the reward of figuring them out - well, the logical ones anyway - and they provide a good way of providing an intelligent gameplay element to the exploration of the game world. It often involves looking for clues, piecing various objects together or conversing with people to unravel the story.

There have been a lot of criticisms about the genre of the ilk to "opening a door by balancing three biscuits on your head whilst playing a flute" (Ian Livingstone, Eidos). People saw a lot of these puzzles forced and ‘artificial' lending nothing but illogical hindrances that debilitated the flow of a game. It's only recently that we're seeing a shift in this paradigm, mainly in the Walking Dead series from Telltale Games, that has finally taken a sigh of resignation that being a kleptomaniac member of Mensa should not be a prerequisite and that it is sometimes most logical to just kick down a door or coerce some information out of someone through cleverly written dialogue - and Telltale pull this off masterfully. But I digress and this is a topic for a later date and with a lot more caffeine in my bloodstream.

That last quote, a few paragraphs up, was from a fantastic article, Nostalgia vs Narrative, if you haven't already read it then do. Go and read it now, I'll wait here. I'm not going anywhere. Go on.

Do you want to be told a good story? That's one of the purest pleasures of the adventure game â€" the embracing of the linear, pre-destined story that someone wants to tell you.

So if the puzzles and gameplay mechanics where so bad then why do so many people hold them in such high regard? Well I think that, on top of exploration, they championed story over all else - which in the 90s not many other genres were doing, or at least not as well; the point of these other games was always gameplay first; Duke Nukem was about the shooting and Sonic was about the speedily dashing through brightly coloured worlds in search of gold rings.

Adventure games were popular because of their narrative and storytelling and the detailed exploration into unknown worlds both terrestrial and extra. Subsequently, the death was mostly due to these other genres realising the need and popularity of a good, in-depth story. I remember playing and enjoying Doom as a kid, but I couldn't tell you even the remotest snippet of what any of that game was about I just wanted to shoot monsters and not die. Adventure games missed a trick because sadly it was a one way street and there is a limit to the amount of monster shooting and ring collecting you can introduce into these point and click games. And so the adventure game died.

Into the Future
So if adventure games died I find it quite ironic that they seem to be partially revived by a game about zombies. Telltale have been massively successful with The Walking Dead and other franchises over the past years bringing adventure gaming to a more casual, console focused market. Indies such as Wadget Eye Games have been releasing hit after hit of classic point and clicks and it seems like people really care for this genre.

Kickstarter has also proved the love for this quirky and fun genre with the success of the Double Fine Adventure securing a whopping $3.3 million in pledges from fans - after only asking for $400k - and inspiring other successful campaigns from the makers of Broken Sword, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest for Glory, Gabriel Knight, Space Quest and Tex Murphy as well as many indie campaigns such as Resonance and Quest for Infamy and Nelly Cootalot 2 - adventure games certainly aren't as dead as the critics said they were.

I guess this is also where you and I come in. To try our best to potentially redefine the genre or, who knows, you could be building for nostalgia and want to preserve the ways of old as our forebears intended - that choice is yours.

A Recipe for Adventure
With all my waffling it still doesn't look like I've arrived at any conclusion over anything and only opened up more questions. But I've enjoyed these ramblings.

So here is my recipe list for the perfect adventure storm:

• story - a generous helping; the key component not to be skimped on;
• characters - sour, salty and sweet;
• dialogues - The intangible richness to the characters;
• locations - exotic and native;
• interactions - to explore and dissect the environment through verbs.
• ... and for those die-hard advocates:
• puzzles - for better or worse these have traditionally been the driving force behind game progression;
• inventory - a player must have one of these so they can collect all the things;

Sorry if I've waffled.

Things really haven't progressed at all since I last posted, not that I'm any less put off from doing this.

The big thing affecting me getting this done is my upcoming trip. I'm leaving the country at the end of September and won't be back for several months - I'm touring the world for a bit.

I'll be having lots of resources made public before I go. Game design lessons, structuring a GDD etc... most of which I have in draft format and just needs editing and publishing.

The other big thing is I'm working on coding up a travel blogging platform that will be used whilst I'm away. I've got a month to get this finished - so keen on getting it done

Hopefully my travelling will settle down in the New Year and I'll have my laptop with me on my journey to work on this. If I have time I'll try to release something (even if it is an early prototype) before I go.

Here's some older stuff on github: https://github.com/omgaz/ags-gdd if you want to have a look.

Don't worry, this hasn't been abandoned. It's just delayed somewhat. I'm working on some other projects as well as a game I hope to release soon. I came across a lot of things I wanted in and thought were cool, but at the same time were handled far better by Google docs and Dropbox. I decided not to reinvent the wheel but to create Something that fills the gap and creates a symbiotic relationship between these tools... For that I needed to go back to the drawing board a little which is also where my need for http://bigwhoop.omgaz.co.uk/ came into play (which I am still writing, but needs editing and sorting out - I'll publish soon).

Hopefully when the dust settles from a very personally chaotic xmas and New year I'll be able to continue.

selmiak - we already thought of that and got shot down by management

I'm liking Disco's choice (seconded by my favourite Italian).

Another suggestion was:
Alderaan
Bespin
Corellia
Dagobah

Noel Edmonds.

On another note there's a film coming out shortly that has a similar vibe. 12 hours, once a year where there are no laws and no repercussions. It's got Lena Heady (from Terminator: SCC). Think it's called twelve hours or something.

So, we're naming the teams at work and I needs some ideas. The names have to be alphabetical A, B, C and D (4 teams).

Some suggestions have been cakes and animals. I thought it'd be fun and helpful to get some ideas from you guys.

An example in the theme of Only Fools and Horses:
- Albert
- Boycie
- Cassandra
- Del Boy

I think it'd be funny to tell the clients that Boycie and Del Boy are on the job, diligently working to resolve the problem.

What would you guys and gals name the teams?

Cool stuff, glad to hear. Will be spreading the good word. That word being adventure.