Master Theory Lesson

March 28, 2015  by

Freedom!

The Workshop is OVER! In a dance of joy I left the school building and headed home. Take a look at the boring boring device that came up with in this torturous week. There are still a few things I learned though. More in the psychological than in the design corner but what ever.
Here goes: As a teacher never ever feel you’re something better than your students. Even if you try to act all cool and hide it, we can smell your attitude from 1000 miles away. Don’t treat us like we’re in a happy go lucky state of our lifes and have no idea of what it actually means to work for our money. Also, don’t be unprepared for your lessons. Every minute you’re blabbering nonsense because you don’t know what to do next is a wast of all our time. Avoid blabbering in general please.
The week is over now and I left my feedback so time to move on to more interesting tasks :)

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I realized that I missed drawing/painting a lot. Will start doing it more frecently again now :D
Here’s another quick sketch (took about 50 minutes). The topic was “Swan princess”
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March 27, 2015  by

A painty lunch break & Niche research all night

Workshop. Again. Picture. No ranting.
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During lunch break some game design students met up for their weekly drawing session with the common topic. The whole thing was Steffis idea and she’s giving us great advice while doodeling. The topic this week was “Fish Rider”. This is what I came up with, my first painting in AGES:

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Back home I felt that I need to refresh my knowledge of Population genetics again. We’re currently rethinking some of Niches mechanics and need to be very informed for that. Here‘s a cool video about the topic I found quite informative.

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March 24, 2015  by

Ranting and some insight to the Niche team meeting xD

Welcome dear friends of fright and horror to another WORKSHOP WEEK! Our teachers: Some “business business” architecture guys, talking about how important it is to be on time and are late constantly. Also, starting a lesson with the words “I’m not prepared at all” is not a good idea. Especially if you than still think everything coming out of your mouth is gold and students are toootally interested in your random thoughts. After some “inputs” we were send out to find and document a so called “Urban Device”.
Andi and me went to the cinéma Abaton to look for our devices there. He chose a movie projector and I decided to document the Selecta vending machine. Mr Popovic, the cinéma boss was so kind to open the machine for me. Hoorray for mister Popovic! Andi and me had fun on our trip, so the day turned out ok.

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After school it was time for a Niche team meetup. Actually, it was the first meeting where ALL local team members came together. To celebrate this, we went to the Tibits to have diner together. Was nice to see the whole pack on one table and I’m glad they all get along great so far ;)
We mostly talked about the future of Niche, defining roles and goals. We will soon meet up and tear the whole game apart. Meaning that we will only keep the core mechanics and see what we would change/improve. That might also includes building a small new prototype. I’m really looking forward to this experiment!

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March 18, 2015  by

Playing mentor & evolving the party

In the morning we were supposed to have another theory lession, but it was cancelled. So my fellow master students and me headed over to the game design bachelor classroom to check out what they’re up to. For the 6th semester students the bachelor exhibition is crawling closer and closer. It feels so strange that I was in the exact same situation only a year ago.
Well, I had a chat with Dodo and Fabian about the recent chances in their concept. And then played the prototype Martina and Alice are working on. It’s a roguelike about curing the inhabitants of a planet from a mysterious illness.

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In the afternoon we headed over to the ETH again, like every Tuesday. We had to present the learnings from the paper prototyping session we did last week. After the presentations were finished we got to play the prototypes of all the other groups. Isa had to leave early. She’s flying to Hong Kong for the Workshop (not another wooorkshop, nooo!!) next week. Our team gathered in an empty room after the lesson and we started working on our digital prototype.

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March 17, 2015  by

Scrotum gegen Votum > Self Analysis

Today was “self-analysis” day. We had to fill out a lot of questionaires and received the evaluation for them. Seems I’m an enterpreneurial/artistic person, who would have taught that?? Sadly, another day without any big learnings. Just let me work on my master thesis!

After school, part of my class headed over to the “Kein Kino” event. Günther Freisinger from monochrom was the guest speaker today. Haha, we had a blast. Especially the groups art projects “Scrotum gegen Votum” (think twice before you click it), “Hellraumprojektor cumshot” and the one that made you eat your own blood as blood sausage were disgusting, but hilarious xD
I had to leave early unfortunately, so I didn’t watch the movie they showed after Günthers talk.

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March 13, 2015  by

Grafik15

Theory lesson again in the morning…
I’d REALLY prefer to just work on my project. I mean input is good and all, but it’s too much. The good side: I got the idea to shape my master thesis into an interactive pdf instead of a printed booklet today. The longer I think about it, the more I get to the conclusion that my product needs to be completely digital.

After lunch we headed over the Maag Halle to setup our booths for the Grafik15. Niche, Tower Offense, Koboldgames and many many other Swiss games are exhibiting their games there (13. – 15.3). LOTS of visitors attended the Vernissage :)

 

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March 13, 2015  by

“NotInYourMouth” Conference :X

Haha, what a crazy day. We had to organize a “fake conference” in just 4 hours. Everything from talks to workshops to branding and social media documentation. I volunteered to take on the role as conference chair to practice my organisation skills for the next gameZfestival :D
The whole event went smoothly. The highlight: I had a fight with my teacher. A PHYSICAL fight! In one of the workshops we had to play games against each other. And one the games was: Steal the opposite persons shoe! Well, she got mine, congrats Mela :P
You can find the conference documentation here.

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In the evening Isa and me headed over to the ETH to work on our game again. Well we ended up wasting all our time setting up Source Tree and it’s STILL not running on my Mac. Oh well…

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March 11, 2015  by

… Playdoh!

So, as you already know we’re currently having a theory week. This includes lots of reading, listening to inputs and discussions.

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During lunch, Andi and me metup with Dragica. We talked about the need for a proper list of Swiss game development studios. As a first step, we will setup a format with slots for all important information. The form will then discussed with the SGDA. If YOU have any inputs for us, let us know!

My head, almost blowing up from the amount of information, was so happy when we reached the ETH. We paper-prototyped our evolution party game with PLAYDOH! Hurray! I haven’t played with playdoh for AGES. Had so much fun building these little creatures with my team :D

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The rest of the day was spent with preparations for the SGDA trip to the Nintendo Headquarter in San Francisco. I’m not going there myself. I only prepared a trailer video featuring some successful Swiss games.
In the afternoon I gave a quick interview for a magazine, will show you once it comes out :)

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March 9, 2015  by

Master model & Shelter 2 review

This week we have a special master course, which means school lessons every day…
In this course we pretend to finish our master thesis within just one week. We even have to present a product in the end, the real deal. Today we had to build a 3D model of our project idea. Here is a snippet of mine, still very undefined:

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During lunch break, I published my FIRST REVIEW EVER on our site about nature and biology games, Playful Oasis. Thanks Andi and Isa for spell checking! Go reeead it :D

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In the evening a friend of mine went live with his game kickstarter.
Really? Again? I have too many friends running kickstarters ;)
The game is called Dino System. I had the pleasure to try it a few weeks ago. This game is so full of love, perfectly worked out systems and potential. Daniele, the project lead, has spent countless nights to bring the project this far. The Kickstarter goal is only 5000$, seriously this has to work out!
Support <3?

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