Blog | Philo Stuff

March 3, 2015 by Philo

I waaannaaa be at GDC

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.

in Inkubator / Master Theory Lesson 0 comments

February 27, 2015 by Philo

Kobold visit & Happy hunting

I’m not a mornings person. Seriously, I’m not.
When I was a kid, getting up early for school was horrible. Some things never change.
On my way to visit Koboldgames in Olten this morning, I feel asleep in the train and woke up just in time to get out. Luckily, after arriving at the office my mood cleared very fast. Well, how could it not if you talk about funny story twists and discuss beautiful mockups for a brandnew game project? We also set up all my accounts and logins for the collaboration.

Back in Zurich we had visitors from Samsung Switzerland. They gave us an insight of their current working fields and we discussed possible cooperations. Let’s hope some of them come true
A bit later another visitor joined us at the ZHdK, Filip Kostovic. He’s currently working on an app for ice hockey coaches. So if YOU are an ice hockey coach, contact him right away!
René treated us to dinner (as he always does, he’s way too generous).

And after that… oh man, I haven’t been to the Real Life for ages. Last year, we often ran playtesting for several games at this location. So if YOU are a game designer who wants to have a playtesting session for his/her game, let me know. At the Real Life, there are plenty of people interested in games, so playtesters are just flying by one after another
We played some rounds of Monster Hunter together and after that it was time to go home.

PS:
If YOU are an ice hockey coach AND a game designer, you won.

in Kobold Games / Marketing 0 comments

February 26, 2015 by Philo

Workshop Chocolate Tower Llama day??

After a quick trip to the printer’s shop (you’ll see the result a bit later) I joined Gian and Robin at the Capsule Games office. It was a very entertaining morning with lots of joking and fun. Gian took care of the background music, mixing dupstep with funny goat sounds and Beethoven. My time was mostly spent building up the playtester group for Tower Offense.

In the afternoon, we (the game design master & 4. semester bachelor students) had a workshop together with the SRF. In a short session we had to develop a concept for a planned format. The first round was completely open in terms of projects size and cost. In the second round, we had to take financial restrictions into account.

Heading back to Capsule Games, I picked up the finished materials from the printer’s shop on the way. And here you see the result: Chocolate paper for the SGDA. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and hope it will be a helpful goodie at the GDC.
Before heading home, Robin gave me a quick program structure crash course to help me with my refactoring problems. Thanks Robin ^^

My life is crazy…
I was peacefully reworking the Niche code, applying the structures Robin taugth me earlier. Suddenly Patrick, the guy from Indiegames.ch told me about a “llama Jam” which seemed to be happening on Twitter. The whole ruckus was started by two Llamas that went loose in Arizona. We agreed that we should host the Jam on Playful Oasis. Let’s see how many people will participate
Do YOU like Game Jams and Llamas?

in Master Theory Lesson / Playful Oasis / SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 25, 2015 by Philo

Presentations all day

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.

in Inkubator / Master Theory Lesson 0 comments

February 24, 2015 by Philo

ETH “Party Evolution” & Cadence Marketing

After a short intro to blogging this morning, we headed over to the ETH again.
As you already know, the ZHdK Game Design Master student are collaborating with the ETH GameLab.
During the weekend, our group prepared a rough concept.
Our plan is to make a multiplayer party game about four animals that need to survive together.
The environment is constantly changing and confronts you with new dangers. Hmmm, sound kinda….familiar….
But but but! It’s all physics-based now! You can climb on top of each other and stuff. You’ll see!

Today, we had to pitch our ideas to the other teams and teachers.
Here we see team Andi / Diego / Manuel <- he worked on Overcoat
Please pay close attention to Andis faboulous presentation pose.

When I got home and started up my computer to play a relaxing round of Binding of Isacc, I suddenly became aware of something.
Cadence, a beautiful music puzzle game two friends of mine are making, went live on Kickstarter today!
After throwing in all my remaining money for this month, I started to write mails. Lots of mails. And tried to figure out different sites and people I could reach out to. Our teacher René Bauer was a great help, answering my spontaneous questions in the middle of the night! Thanks René.
Well now, if you’ve got an idea how to promote/push the game, please let me know
Please spread the word and if you have a cent to spare, please back their Kickstarter!

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Games / Marketing 1 comments

February 23, 2015 by Philo

Pro Helvetia Business Workshop

Today, the Niche and Tower Offense Team (and all the other Call for projects finalists) gathered in Bern to attend the Pro Helvetia Business Workshop.
The day started of nerdy, as we played Tower Offense in the train.

After a small breakfast we split up into different groups, all attending the following lectures by turns:

Accounting & Finance (Dr. Alexander Fust)
Business Model (Jasmin Mastnak & Marco Busse)
How to generate users (Erinrose Sullivan)
Market Analysis (André Bernhardt)
Pitch Training (Jan Fülscher)

I want to thank our teachers for their interesting insights and inputs!
Really enjoyed listening to the different perspectives on business models and strategies.
Especially interesting for me was the business André Bernhardt is running.
He would be a great fit to mentor my master thesis. *Getting in contact*

And THIS is were we had our Apéro.
Super fancy location and even fancier food.

Thanks a lot Pro Helvetia and Tech Bridge (hope I’m not forgetting anyone!) for today

in Marketing / Niche - a genetics survival game / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 20, 2015 by Philo

Sunny Sunny Kobold Friday

Haaa, today was such a nice, sunny day. I spend most of it working on our balcony. And later headed out with my laptop, typing eagerly on a park bench.
Friday is now the official Kobold Games day. Every Friday I’m helping the team (which are very very lovely people btw) to prepare for their first self-published release. They already released a big game, called Journey of a Roach. Daedalic published the game and took care of the marketing/PR. Now they want to try it themselves
It will be very interesting for me to see if we can reactivate the community altough the new game will have a new genre.

Also: During my lunch break an article about the “Call for projects: Swiss Games” finalists was posted on 20 Minuten Online. I’m very happy to announce that both Niche and Tower Offense made it into the finale! On Monday Andi, Robin and me will join the business training for the finalists

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February 19, 2015 by Philo

Capsule Games and SGDA

On Thursdays and Fridays all the master students have time to work on their master projects. Which means no school lessons, work where you want.
I spent most of the day at the Capsule Games office. Tower Offense (Capsule Games current project) is one of the games I’m supporting during the course of my master. My dear classmate Andi is the lead artist of the team.
The programmers are working hard to get the online multiplayer working. I’m currently trying to build up a small community around the game.
We are looking for playtesters and player feedback right now. If you’d be interested in trying the game, send us a mail.

Robin also introduced me to an awesome tool called Parse. I will definitly try it out for Niche. It can be used to track and store user data in a quick and easy way. And it even has an SDK for unity.

In the evening I went over to Bitforge for a meeting with the SGDA.
From today on, I will spend at least 4h a week to support this great initiative!
If you are a game developer from Switzerland, I highly recommend joining us.

in SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 19, 2015 by Philo

Meetings and Mau-Mau

After some rather informative lessons during the last two days, today shit got real.
All game design master students (1. & 3. semester) got together to introduce themselves and analyse some game mechanics. We started of with a simple little finger pointing game which we had to interrupt because of a mysterious alarm inside the school. Although our school has already achieved nationwide fame for its false amok alarms, we fled the scene.
We ended up in a restaurant / bar called sphères, where we analysed the mechanics of Mau-Mau.
Interesting fact: About half the group didn’t know how to play Mau-Mau (me included).

After the end of the schoolday, we had a group meeting for our game Niche – a genetics survival game.
We mostly discussed possible improvements and new features.
Better organisation and tracking were also a big topic. Lots of things to improve!
Beat (our Sound Desiger) even helped me fix my stupid delegate bug, hurray

in Master Theory Lesson / Niche - a genetics survival game 0 comments

February 17, 2015 by Philo

ETH cooperation & Pecha Kucha

The second day of my game design master has come to an end.
In the morning we were introduced to the structures of our common design classes and saw a few presentation about potential projects to work on for our master thesis.
In the afternoon things got really interesting, when we headed over to the ETH.
This year, the game design master students are joining the ETH GameLab (for the first time). Which means that we will make games together in teams of four people.
A big public presentation and exhibition are awaiting us at the end of this collaboration.
I was especially happy about this years topic: Evolution. Yeeeeeah! Jackpot!
Can’t wait to start working on the prototype

After that we went back to the ZHdK to watch some Pecha Kucha (20 slides, each displayed 20 seconds) presentations from 3. semester master students.
The whole thing took place in the club Mehrspur which is a really nice spot right next to our school. There was an awesome apéro and after half of the presentations, they even figured out how to use the microphone

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Master Theory Lesson 0 comments

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