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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
ARG design won the Game Design Challenge at GDC
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imbri
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ARG design won the Game Design Challenge at GDC

Harvey Smith won this year's game design challenge (the challenge was to design around the Nobel Peace Prize) with "Peacebomb." I'll describe it in much more detail later on ARGN, but wnated to give you all the heads up first.

Basically, the game would be designed for the web-enhanced Nintendo DS and, at various points, it would trigger flashmob activities. Players would be required to create various social networks and the game world would be just like ours only poised on the edge of a revolution.

It was very cool to see and hear the response to his ideas and to talk about them, and the potential of ARGs, with people afterward.

PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 8:53 pm
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GuyP
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That's wicked awesome, imbri - Go-oooo ARGs!

PostPosted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:40 pm
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Phaedra
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Wow. Very Happy

And this is for Nintendo?

/me glances sidelong at her XBox and wonders.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:12 am
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krystyn
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Man, this is why I love the DS so much. It's the cutest little sandbox. That's way cool, imbri.

/me goes off the cuddle her DS some more.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 10:03 am
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imbri
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Phaedra wrote:
Wow. Very Happy

And this is for Nintendo?

* Phaedra glances sidelong at her XBox and wonders.


It's a hypothetical game.

In short, the Game Design Challenge is presented to 3 of the industry's top game designers with a very vague topic. This year it was "the Nobel Peace Prize" with slightly more direction given to look at serious games (mock them, honor them, whatever). They then have several weeks to come up with a game design and present it at GDC where the audience for the session votes on each one with applause. Will Wright has won the past two and didn't compete this year giving a chance to Cliff Bleszinski, Harvey Smith, and Keita Takahashi.

Takahashi didn't really come up with anything, though his presentation was fantastic - lots of Katamari fan pictures and Katamari-esque graphics saying that when people play they create peace. Love of video games is good and we just need to make better video games all around.

Smith & Bleszinski both spent looked into fighting games and how to move beyond them. Bleszinski came up with something that seemed overly convoluted, imo. It was very much like a Sims meets Facade type thing based on the premise that games allow us to gain insights into other roles. So if a game accurately depicted the lives of the people from various countries/region, then people would be less willing to kill them (ok, that's very oversimplified, but was pretty much the basic idea).

Smith took the route of creating social action as well as a community. If you have community, you have greater understanding and if you can bring about social action you can bring about social change. So he combined MMOs with flash mobs, it was very arg-like and, the social hippie in me fell instantly in love Smile

Anyway, the games aren't meant to see the light of day. Just meant to show how different designers approach the same problem and come up with different things. When they present their games, they also present the process that they went through to come up with them.

PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:46 am
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SirQuady
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As a side note, i can't wait for two things: 1 Nintendo DS Opera Web Browser, and 2: Toronto Power is blanketing the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, with WIFI!!!!!!!!!!! (Now, if only uF works on the DS Opera browser, and if only we could have some massive ARG live event in toronto! (or any city with wifi!))

/me hugs his DS
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:18 pm
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Chewy
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http://psp.ign.com/articles/698/698300p1.html

/me stops reading at the mention of Katamari Damacy, fumes that "there is no way that any idea by Takahashi could be beaten by Deus Ex guy" and continues playing 'Me and My Katamari' on the PSP, singing along with the crazy, crazy tunes.

After that, I continued to read the article, and actually thought that the "Empathy!" game concept, though totally unrealistic, was hands down the best of the bunch.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 10:22 pm
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THX8612
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This just in! There was a bit more to be found in the world of mixed media reality at GDC, this is Troy. Created as part of the Experimental Gameplay Project by TJ Jackson a Technical Director for Dreamworks.

A Post-Mortem for the game can be found here.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:27 am
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konamouse
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Joined: 02 Dec 2002
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TJ Jackson wrote:
Doing an augmented reality game was very different from anything I've done up to this point in this project, and was a very different experience.


New term?

This sounds like a cool little "ARG" experience - wish we had found it back in January. Does TJ Jackson know about UF?
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:45 am
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colin
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konamouse wrote:
TJ Jackson wrote:
Doing an augmented reality game was very different from anything I?ve done up to this point in this project, and was a very different experience.


New term?

kinda new, I think mostly not used. ARQuake last had it's pages update in 2002, so it's been around at least 4 years.

edit: to make clearer what i was answering

PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 4:29 pm
Last edited by colin on Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:00 pm; edited 1 time in total
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luke
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I have to agree, this does sound extremely cool. Just the thought of playing ARGs on the DS is appealing to me. Plus, this seems like one of those small things that ends up huge.

I do have to agree with Sir Quady here too. Some sort of huge, live, Toronto-based live event should happen sometime. That would be amazing.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 29, 2006 6:30 pm
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brat-sampson
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Troy is a fun little diversion and works pretty well. I can only assume he's heard of proper ARGs, either that or he'll be very surprised by the large fish-shaped package landing on his doorstep very soon...
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:40 pm
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THX8612
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brat-sampson wrote:
or he'll be very surprised by the large fish-shaped package landing on his doorstep very soon...
hahaha
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:57 pm
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