Master Theory Lesson

Today, the second part of our SRF cooperation took place. We all had to present our concepts that we started developing the week before. Our team: René Krebs, David Krummenacher and me. Our concept made it to the next round! Let’s see what happens now
Thanks Noël Wierema for creating our mockup!

In the afternoon I flited over to the Inkubator to join my very first lesson. I was expecting a chilled afternoon, quietly listening to an input about Businessmodels. I was wrong. All the Incubatees had to present their projects and answer the following questions:
– What am I doing?
– Who is my customer and what is my USP?
– How do I achieve my goal?
– How do I earn money?
– Who is my team?
– What’s the current state of the project?
“Ok people, 10 minutes to prepare your presentation, then we’ll start”. Just sitting there, completly unprepared, trying not to freak out, I decided to just talk and explain my project a bit. The resonance was pretty good (to my relief) and we kept discussing the Swiss (games) industry for quite a while.
Here you see two  of the other project pitches of Konzertschneiderei and WormUp. I’m a big fan of OpinionGames, a game series for political opinion making.

I was also running around, organizing stuff for the Tower Offense tournament tomorrow at the Spielhalle Oslo in Basel. You’re all very welcome to join and participate in the tournament! You’ll see more of that tomorrow

Here I am, sitting in a classroom listening to a lesson about scientific writting. That’s nice and all but I feel that I should be somewhere else right now. I should be at the GDC! Meeting lots of fellow game developers from all over the world, networking, making friends. This feeling will be haunting me the whole week I guess, until the GDC is over. Next year, I’ll go there FOR SURE!
Well, dispite all the daydreaming the writing lesson was pretty decent. We even got to draw a bit

In the afternoon I headed over to the Inkubator for our Kick-Off meeting. All the Incubatees gathered to welcome the newcomers (including me) and everyone explained their projects briefly. My first semester in the Inkubator will be spent on gathering data about the Swiss games industry. Let me know if you want to help with that

I almost missed the deadline for the “Call for Transmedia Projects“.
There is an idea that has been floating around in my head for a while. If you take Niche and add a functionality to trade animals, you could simulate a fictional species, living in the internet. In the beginning only a few animals will be given to players (ex. 100 total). The players can then breed them and send them to friends. Animals can die (as they do in Niche) because of hunger, events, old age and so on. If all animals die, the game is over, FOR EVER! The species has become extinct and the game can never be played again.

Presentation day! All game design master students (1. & 3. semester) had to present their projects today. For the 3. semester this meant showing us what they worked on the last two semesters and their final goals until their graduation. Here we see Diego presenting his project “Kratos”, a not so serious Serious Game

The 1. semster had to present their ideas and goals. Andis master topic is… SEX! OMG! Sex in games to be more precise. If you want to follow this project, head over to his blog.

I had to leave early (Sorry!) and head over to the ZHdK Inkubator for a meeting. The entry ceremony for the new “Incubatees” (including me) will take place next week. I’m really looking forward to all the business inputs/lessons and hope they will be a solid foundation for my master thesis.