Philo Stuff » Master Theory Lesson

Last week of the semester!

Philo — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 13:48:34 +0000

Monday / Tuesday:
On Monday, Tuesday as well as Wednesday, I attended the final presentations of the Game Design Bachelor and Master students.

Wednesday:
After the presentations on Wednesday, I took the train to Lausanne to attend the local gamedev meetup. I talked briefly about the SGDA and our engagement at the Fantasy Basel.

Thursday:
On Thursday the ZHdK press apero and Sommerfest took place. After some walking around and listening we all enjoyed the various offers of free food.

Friday
On the very last day of the semester, the Incubator organised a pitching session. Swisscom and other big companies were present to listen to our pitches.

Well, that concludes the first semester of my master studies!
I’ll be spending the next weeks working on Niche – a genetics survival game intensively

End of semester is coming

Philo — Tue, 26 May 2015 19:06:23 +0000

I decided to write a weekly conclusion instead of daily updates. Slowly but surely, the daily routine of the master is kicking in so there’s not that much to report about

Tuesday:
In the morning I attended the 2. Semester Stroytelling analysis, great stuff! Then we got an input about politics which was quite strange -> Got the advice to buy a ferret for ma master thesis xD
And he had another input at ETH. The last one actually!

Wednesday:
At the Stammtisch we played and analysed “Quartett”

Thursday:
In the name of the SGDA I went to the ETH and awarded the best Matura Game of this year ^^

Friday:
Niche working meetup! Lots of decisions have been made. Look at these milestones!

A week in my life

Philo — Sun, 10 May 2015 09:31:03 +0000

This week was a rather calm one. So I’ll just recap everything in one post.

Monday:
Boring theory lesson. I almost fell asleep, seriously.
Isa and me headed over to the ETH to prepare our game for the upcoming presentations.
The working session was “interrupted” by a SGDA planning event. I really really love sitting at this table with these great and hardworking people!

Tuesday:
The input about News Games by Margarete Jahrmann was interesting.
Afternoon ETH presentations. Our game didn’t receive as much reaction from the audience as I hoped. We have to improve the “fun to watch” part

Wednesday:
News Games workshop with Marcus Bösch.
Nobody wanted to make a mobbing cardgame with me *sob* so I had to join another team.

Thursday:
Film Noir story input by Beat Suter, cool stuff!
A normal afternoon at Capsule Games. I did community/organisation stuff and Robin had a life or dead Tower Offense battle with his arch enemy Gian. Also, we decided to use Slack as a communication tool and setup a timetracking sheet. Very business, much professional.

Friday:
I visited Kobold Games at their new office, like it a lot!
We talked about the story, setting and art style of their upcoming game, but that’s a story for another day

R-Type analysis & ETH image

Philo — Fri, 01 May 2015 18:15:51 +0000

This happens when René is in charge of teaching us: We sit somewhere in the middle of the school building where lots of people walk by and watch a Let’s play of R-Type. I could read it in the passing peoples eyes: “What are those strange game design students up to now?”. It was great xD
Well we didn’t just watch a video, we had to analyse enemy waves, emotional arcs and movement strategies.

In the evening Isa and me met up with our ETH team to produce a screenshot for the upcoming exhibition flyer. I like the result

Board Games!

Philo — Fri, 01 May 2015 18:05:53 +0000

Today the 2. semester Bachelor students showed of their board games! I even skipped the weekly ETH course to attend this fun playround. It seems that each year the quality of the produced materials (board, tokes, …) goes up.

Spending the whole afternoon in the classroom, I tried almost all the games

These two are my favorites:
A turnbased 2 player strategy game, where you try to destroy your opponents space ships/base.

And a weird narration game were each players tries to reach his/her specific ending.

Great job everyone, the overall quality of the games was superb
In the evening Beat and me fixed a Source Tree issue we had with Niche.

“The Marshmallow Challenge”

Philo — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 08:07:09 +0000

Back at school after an amazing Games Week Berlin.
Oh well, today was quite fun actually. After a rather dull lesson in the morning (during which I got to answer some urgent mails) we did the “Marshmallow Challenge” in the afternoon. We won because we had a great Industral Designer (hurray for Sabine!) in our team. Look at this mighty mighty spaghetti tower!
Fun fact: Kindergartners are usually very good at this challenge while Businessmen tend to build breaking structures.

After school we attended the “Kein Kino” event at the ZHdK. Katrin Moll introduced the interactive audio game she worked on for Deutschlandradio Kultur.
I was especially impressed by a microphone device concept called “Kunstkopfmikrofon“.

Balcony studying & Getting ready for Games Week Berlin!

Philo — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 16:47:48 +0000

Ahhhh, doing homework on the balcony during a nice spring day is just THE BEST. Even the most boring texts can’t spoil that. Nah, the text was actually quite alright. Not the kind of thing I choose to read voluntarily, but ok
It was about the comparision of different innovation methodes.

In the afternoon we analyzed the text together.

After finishing up some SGDA and Capsule game tasks I can noooow….
pack for the International Games Week in Berlin :D!

Bachelor presentations, Gobo Games & Board Game Feedback

Philo — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 16:27:16 +0000

In the morning I joined the game design “technical prototype” bachelor presentations. Lots of interesting projects, can’t wait to see them all finished
As usual the teachers were harsh but gave some good feedback.

Next point on the list was our weekly visit at the ETH. This week: Studio Gobo told us about their new studio in Zurich and showed us their portfolio which includes developing games for Disney Infinity.

Since the day was so nice and sunny, we went for a drink in the university bar. Diego brought the board game he’s developing for his master thesis and we discussed the new layout of the board pieces.

Kairos Playtesting & Niche movement rework

Philo — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 12:36:08 +0000

The day started of with a theory input lesson by our teacher Ulrich. For me it was mostely repetition but I think the new students learned a lot.
In th afternoon we playtested Diego’s boardgame “Kairos”. We gave him LOTS of feedback, let’s see wath he’ll make out of it

After the testing session I headed over to the Inkubator for our first monthly meetup. There were only few people present, so we discussed our progressions and gave each other feedback for improvements. I mostely talked with Ettore, who is building up his business ROBBIANI, about web design and brand identity.

Late at night the urge to work on Niche overcame me. I decided to try out a different approach for the movement inputs.

The List

Philo — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 07:55:37 +0000

Theory lesson today was quite alright. Topic was writting.

The game design students keep skipping afternoon classes because of our collaboration with the ETH xD
Our presentation at the ETH went quite well, our game concept is taking shape.

During the theory input I had an idea. Lots of people are currently talking about or even already making lists of the Swiss Games Industry. Instead of just working all by ourselves and have many unfinished/outdated lists or survey that don’t contain all important questions, we should join together. So if you’re up to helping us, head over to the discussion group.