Episode 72: “… it’s mind boggingly detailed”

I haven’t played the Tomb Raider games for a while now, but this one looks pretty cool. This ‘Beneath The Surface’ video debuted last week at E3 and I can’t wait to see the real trailer.

Episode 70: “The future belongs not to those who wait…”

I’m addicted to the Final Fantasy games and seeing this new trailer just makes me more excited for the newest addition. Now all I need is a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360…

Btw, if you want, there’s another lower quality version of this video with subtitles.

I love playing games and wish I had the time to play more. Video games, board games, running-around-blindfolded games (I’ll come to that later), I’m a sucker for it all. Suffice to say, the Hide & Seek Festival last weekend was right up my alley.

The Hide and Seek festival is an annual event in London, where people come together to play and talk about games. It celebrates the creative and social aspects of gaming and they invite artists and professionals from all disciplines to experiment with game design. Hosted at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, the festival is a couple of days of pure social gaming pleasure, harking back to the unfettered fun of childhoods past.

I couldn’t find the time to spend the whole weekend at the festival, so I had to decide between the Saturday and the Sunday. I chose Sunday, cause the games seems somewhat funner and less spots were taken for them. I would have loved to have gone both days, but this year that just wasn’t possible. I did however go to the Werewolf gathering on Friday night, which was a lot of fun.

I didn’t get to play as much games as I’d like, but the games I did play were great. I’ll try to write a bit about each of them (and also one I didn’t get to play, but is unique enough to talk about).

Werewolf

Ever since my first Werewolf night (got dragged to it by Cristiano, I had no idea what I was getting myself into), I’ve been a huge fan and with all the BarCamps I’ve been going to, I’m proud to say I’m a pretty good player. If you don’t know the rules, check out the Werewolf wiki. In short: group of Villagers with a couple (2-3) hidden Werewolves (and maybe extra characters, like the Healer or the Seer). At night everybody has their eyes closed, the Werewolves kill someone. During the day the Villagers have to figure out who the Werewolves are and lynch someone. Game is over if all the Werewolves or all the Villagers are dead. The game revolves around talking; if nobody talks the game just doesn’t work. For me, it really helped to become (a little bit) more outspoken, cause you do have to be a bit blunt if you want to get your point through.

I played three games at the H&S; the first one being the most fun (and stressfull!). During that game there were 12 Villagers, 2 Werewolves and one Seer. And I was a Werewolf… Before the game had even really started, one newbie already had a question: “What exactly does the Seer do?” Okay, so she’s the Seer. Now my stroke of genius was not to kill her straightaway. Later on in the game it gave me the edge towards other experience players (like Sheila and Glynn) that of course I wasn’t a Werewolf, cause otherwise I would have killed her at the start. Anyhow, my fellow Werewolf got lynched in the very first round, but I managed to survive right to the last round, where two of the final three Villagers nominated and (with my help) lynched the final other Villager. The Werewolves were victorious!

Now that was a great game, but of course after that nobody trusted me anymore. So in the two following games even though I was a simple harmless Villager, nobody believed me and I got lynched both times. I’m trying to find a venue (separate room, no hire charge) so that we can organize a couple more Werewolf nights, cause I want to play this more often than only at BarCamps!

And I Saw

I went to the Southbank and I saw… remember that kids game? That was the basis for And I Saw. Throughout the Southbank “game area” they had hidden big blue stickers with a 5-digit number on them, like the one in the photo below. Idea was that you had to find as many of those stickers as possible and text the number when you found one. Every player also had a sticker, so the more players you met (or sneakily shadowed) the more points you collected. At the end of the day the scores were tallied on their website and you could see what you had seen that day. Results: I was seen 10 times and I saw 28 things.

The Lost Sport of Olympia

“Discovered” by Jane McGonigal while doing research for The Lost Ring ARG (for the 2008 Beijing Olympics), the Lost Sport of Olympia is a mysterious game the ancient Greeks used to play that was eventually banned from the Olympics. If you haven’t played it yourself, I’m guessing it will sound just plain weird, but (like Werewolf) I really enjoyed myself, albeit in a different manner.

With The Lost Game one person is the Runner who is blindfolded and put in the center of the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is drawn out on the ground with chalk; it’s not really a labyrinth, cause there’s only one path, but it winds a couple of times around. The other players have to create the walls of the labyrinth, standing on the drawn-out outline. With his arms folded across his chest (grabbing his shoulders) the Runner has to go navigate through the labyrinth, but is not allowed to talk to the walls. The only communication comes from the Walls humming. How they hum or when they hum is part of the tactic of the game, but you can imagine that only Walls infront of the Runner should hum, highlighting in which direction he should go. Now what (to me) makes it even more interesting is that the Labyrinth isn’t built completely from the start. There aren’t enough players for that, so the Walls have to keep moving around making up the parts of the labyrinth only moments before the Runner goes through them. Here’s a video of one of the groups at Hide & Seek:

The Lost Sport: 5 circuit labyrinth from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

It’s not your most conventional game, but I love how it combines tactics, co-operation and skill. I started out with a group in a small labyrinth of 3 circles, playing a Wall, and after a couple of tries one Runner managed to get 30 seconds. Most other groups at the time were still stuck at 1 minute plus (the world record is 13 seconds!!), so we graduated to the bigger 8-circuit labyrinth. Turns out it was a lot trickier, but still a lot of fun. When one of the other groups wanted a go at the big labyrinth, a couple of us returned to the smaller one and I attempted my first blindfolded go as Runner. I did it in 36 seconds! Not bad for a newbie apparently. I’ve even joined the London Olympic Team, who are training for (you guessed it) the Olympics.

Cruel 2 Be Kind

Now this game I didn’t play, cause I was too late with registering for it, but I saw people playing and it just looked crazy. With Cruel 2 Be Kind you register a team and with your team you go out and kill other teams. You “kill” by being kind. This means serenading them, complementing their eyes or mistaking them for a famous person. Problem is you don’t know who are players and who are normal people enjoying a day out on the Southbank. So you could be is singing to a complete stranger! Besides that once you kill a team, they become part of your team and as the game continues you get bigger and bigger groups.  Because all members of a team have to be participate in a kill, you get these large groups of about 20 people running towards another group singing some love song. It was hilarious to watch!

All in all, it was a great festival and next year I’m definitely keeping that weekend free to enjoy the full two days. If you want more information, check out the Hide & Seek website.

I used to love my My Little Pony’s (seriously, what is the correct plural form of ‘My Little Pony’? Pony’s or Ponies?). I had one favorite: a pink pony with blue hair and the most fragile translucent butterfly wings. So fragile they broke within a month and left my pony with stupid little stumps on it’s back. Still even after that it remained my favorite (resulting in many daydreams about the princess pony that sacrificed her wings to save her kingdom).

By now most of you must have seen the My Little Master Chief, when it did the blogosphere rounds a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t that impressed by it; I’m not a Halo fan and it was just a pony in a green space suit. Only now I’ve discovered though that the creator of that pony AnimeAmy has a whole range of custom My Little Pony’s (a lot of them from Final Fantasy, hence my interest). Here are some of my favorites:

If you want to see all of them, head on over to AnimeAmy’s gallery on deviantArt.

I’ve been following the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight ever since their first “stunt” appeared a couple of months ago. Sadly most ARG related real-world activities had been previously only arranged for the US, forgetting (as usual) there are over seas fans just as willing to participate in these crazy events. Last Saturday I discovered the Joker’s website had been updated with countdowns to special events in 12 differet cities, including London. Yeah! Finally an event I can participate in!

The timer for the London event was counting down to Monday 28th of April 9:00pm and had this message along with it:

Gather with 300 of your closest friends at this exact spot on April 28th.

You’ll need to be in contact with a partner-in-crime who has online access to relay your instructions once you’re there. These instructions will give you the TRAIL to follow, but be sure to look both ways when crossing the street; we wouldn’t want you to make an unscheduled visit to the ER now, would we?

Put on a smile and plan to spend about an hour or so bonding with your fellow clowns.

Notice the TRAIL and ER? Chances were we were going to get to see a new trailer! The coordinates on the page led to this spot, a 5 minute walk from Piccadilly Circus. So at 7pm I arrived nice and early at the meet-up point, where I met up with some of the guys from the SuperheroHype forum. I had also arranged for another member on the SHH forum to be my online oracle, who would phone me all the clues through. For two hours we waited patiently and (of course) it started raining. A couple people were hard core enough to paint their faces Joker style and convinced several others to do the same.

I guess there were about 150 people gathered together, when we got the first clues in:

Step 1: By the “ubique-itous” statue with the alien friend, face forward and count every ground floor column to your right. Beware the policemans’s black and blue stare.

Step 2: Up the stairs prepare for battle. You’ll be greeted with open arms. On the island, discover those who died in war and divide by the woman who surround them.

Step 3: Go to the place of the frilly collar and count the number of steps you see in stone and light.

The first one took some time to figure out what we were supposed to do. The “ubique-itous” statue with the alien friend was clearly the memorial where we had gathered (it had ubique engraved on of it’s pillars). If you stood in front of it and looked forward, you were facing steps leading to Nelson’s Column with The Mall stretching out on both sides before it. On the right side, you can find the Carlton House Terrace with (well, wouldn’t you know) a long line of columns. Some people counted them and we got two different tallies: 34 or 35.

The second clue took us north, past Nelson’s Column to the Crimea memorial that featured a statue of a woman with open arms. After standing there for almost 15 minutes, nobody could figure it out so we continued to the third clue. This one was easy: the frilly collar had to be the fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Once there we counted the stone steps leading up to it (9) and discovered the neon lighted musical “The 39 Steps”, leading to number 48.

By now we found out we needed three two-digit numbers to open up a (online) safe, which would lead to more clues. Together with a couple others, I decided to walk back to the Crimea memorial to try and figure the second clue out. Still no luck and I made my way back to Piccadilly Circus. I then got phoned by my online oracle, who told me the safe combination was 35-90-48 and that there was a fourth clue:

Around the bend from the Miserable People is an exotic gate. Your contact will be waiting there. He will give you your final set of instructions.

By the time I made it back to Piccadilly Circus, the big group of people were of course all gone. Now around this time I kind of started bumbling around. Remember, I had been walking/running around for 40 minutes (on too high heels) and apparently my brain doesn’t work that well under exhaustion. Looking back the clues seem so straightforward and I’m kicking myself that I could mess this up so enormously. I’ll first describe what I should have done.

I was supposed to go into Shaftesbury Avenue, where I would find the theater with Les Miserables. Two corners away from that is China Town, whose entrance is marked by two large oriental gates. There I was supposed to find two of the Joker’s henchmen who were giving out raffles, Joker cards and instructions to the final destination: the Odeon at Leicester Square. Where I would see the newest trailer.

Ehm, yeah. I didn’t do all that. Instead I blundered around Shaftesbury Avenue, having no clue where to go. I came across some others who had lost the large group too and I ran along with them. We actually did pass the gates at China Town, but I’m guessing we were already too late, cause there weren’t any clowns there. Eventually we heard we had to be at the Odeon, raced over there, got into the cinema… only to discover we were too late. It was over. We had missed the trailer.

I’m still a bit disappointed with myself that I managed to miss what the whole quest was about. Maybe I shouldn’t have walked back and tried to figure the clues out and just have followed the big large group. Maybe I should have gotten the phone number of one of those big large group people, who could have told me where I should have gone to. Maybe I could have been a bit smarter and actually figure the (stupidly simple, now I know them) clues out. I know, I know, a lot of maybes.

Was this a waste of time? No. I actually don’t think it was. I may have not seen the trailer, but it should show up online in these next couple of days, right? I haven’t really missed out on anything; I just won’t see it as soon as I had hoped. It’s mainly about the experience: meeting other fans, figuring out the clues, and the thrill of the quest. That’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to do, if I had stayed at home.

From what I heard the trailer is intense and extremely awesome. It appears the rest of us will have to wait for it till Sunday though. I mentioned before that everyone who had gotten in to see the trailer had received raffles. After the trailer there was a draw and one person won a can with the reel with the trailer. Everybody kind of assumed there must be a DVD also in it, so that it could be put online. Now I’m not that sure. The Joker site has a new page called Happy Trails, showing an advertisement for a projection system (using reels) available this Sunday. So I guess we’ll all have to wait.

Even though this didn’t go exactly as I had imagined (now that’s an understatement), I love participating in these type of games. After We Tell Stories and this event, I can only hope I’ll be seeing (and doing) more in the future. Anyone want to join me next time?

For more photos, check out my Flickr.

I linked to this project about a week ago, but We Tell Stories is interesting enough to dedicate a complete post to it. The idea of We Tell Stories is to tell Six Stories by Six Authors in Six Weeks inspired by Six Classics, with each story using a unique presentation form. It’s created by Six to Start in partnership with Penguin Books and at the end of the six weeks there will be a contest to win 1300 (!!) Penguin Classics.

The first story The 21 Steps came out two weeks ago and is written by Charles Cumming. It’s inspired by The 39 Steps, but you haven’t had to read that to understand this story. The story is told through Google Maps, showing the places the character goes to and giving the reader the ability to follow his journey.

The second story came out this week and is called Slice. It’s written by Toby Litt and is inspired by The Haunted Dolls’ House. It’s about a girl named Lisa, nicknamed Slice, who had moved to London with her parents to separate her from bad influences. Her story is told through her blog, her parents blog and their Twitter feeds (Slice and her parents).

The next four stories will each be coming out in the next four weeks and I’m curious to see what type of form these will be in. So far it’s been interesting to see these different type of methods of storytelling and it gives the stories a whole other perspective.

Besides the six features stories though, there is a cleverly hidden seventh story with more ARG elements, inspired (of course) by Alice in Wonderland. The first clue that there was a seventh story is through this blurb when you sign up for the Google Group:

Over six weeks, six authors will write six stories designed for the internet, from Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid to prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French.

The six authors featured on the We Tell Stories site are: Charles Cumming, Toby Litt, Kevin Brooks, Nicci French, Matt Mason and Mohsin Hamid. So what story was Naomi Alderman working on? It’s also interesting to know that Alderman was the lead writer for Perplex City, a previous ARG the founders of Six to Start were involved in.

If you want to catch up on the seventh story, check out this forum. A lot has happened already, but I don’t think it’s too late to join all the fun. I know I’m going to try and figure it out! Let me know if you’re playing too; it’s always good to join forces.

One of the traditions at BarCamp is to play Werewolf during the overnight. Although there wasn’t any overnight with this Berlin BarCamp (and we were kicked out at 12), we get the chance to play Werewolf. Now this is not going to be a post on how to play it, so if you’re not familiar with it, check out the rules here or here (or just skip this post entirely). What is this post about? The weirdest probability-wise most unlikely game of Werewolf I ever played.

Okay, some facts before I start: there were 13 people with 3 Werewolves, 1 Seer and 1 Healer. We played with 4, maybe 5 experts and the rest were all newbies, which may be reason it went so weird. I was a Villager, so I’ll be describing everything first from my viewpoint.

Night1
randomperson13 dies

Day1
The seer declares himself during the introduction “I’m not A Werewolf” round and says he has important information. Turns out the “important” information is that MrA (who is sitting next to him) is a Villager. Worst newbie mistake ever! There’s a whole discussion that maybe the “Seer” is a Werewolf and he’s just pretending to be the Seer, but probabilistically that’s very, very unlikely. In the end, we lynch randomperson12, who was asking too many questions.

Night2
MrA (person11) dies. Logical right? The Seer told us MrA’s a Villager, so the Werewolves take him out, leaving less information for the rest of the group.

Day2
The Seer identifies MrB as a Werewolf. After some discussion, we lynch MrB (person10).

Night3
The Seer dies (person9). Hmm, interesting. This meant that or a) the Healer didn’t believe him or b) the Healer was dead.

Day3
The Healer reveals himself, saying he didn’t believe the Seer, so kept healing healing himself. I realise that he could just as well be a Werewolf, cause either way he’s not going to die next round. After some discussion I do believe he’s the Healer and we lynch the guy (person8) who to quickly wanted to kill the Healer.

Night4
Nobody dies! The Villagers win! With 7 Villagers over!

Now look back at the structure of the game: 3 Nights and 3 Days. You’d think the Villagers lynched one werewolf during every day round, right? Wrong. Here’s what really happened:

Night1
randomperson13 dies. The Seer picks MrA next to him: MrA IS a Werewolf, but the Seer misinterprets it and thinks he’s a Villager.

Day1
The Seer declares himself and says he has important information. The “important” information is that MrA is a Villager, while he IS in fact a Werewolf. What’s the chance of first finding a Werewolf, reading it wrong and then give it out as important information?! We lynch randomperson12, who was in fact a Villager.

Night2
MrA (person11) dies. Wait a minute…that was a Werewolf, right? He dies, because the Game master misinterprets the finger pointing. They were actually pointing at the Seer!

Day2
The Seer identifies MrB as a Werewolf. After some discussion, we lynch MrB (person10), who really IS a Werewolf.

Night3
The Seer dies (person9), because the Healer didn’t believe him.

Day3
The Healer reveals himself and we lynch the guy (who IS a werewolf) who to quickly wanted to kill the Healer.

Night4
Nobody dies! The Villagers win! With 7 Villagers over!

Phew! Bit of a different perspective, right? There were 2 mistakes that caused this strange (the misinterpreting of the Werewolf signal by the Seer and the misinterpreting of the finger pointing by the game master), but somehow the second mistake did cause to correct the first mistake. I love probabilities and the chance of this happening is mind-boggling small. Freakishly small! Anyhow, it just seemed like a very surreal game to me and I’m still amazed at it all.

So who’s in for more Werewolf this week?

A long, long time ago in a country not so far away I had great dreams of becoming a visual effects artist for some big studio, creating a little bit of movie magic and earning an Oscar in the process. The backup slightly more attainable dream at the time was to work in the games industry, preferably for a game (series) I loved. Since then 6 years passed in which at one point I realized:

1. there aren’t any real cool movie or video games studios in the Netherlands,
2. there is no feasible way I’m moving to some interesting place where you do have those studios, and
3. linear algebra and computer graphics are not my strongest points.

So I let my dreams of visual effects (and that Oscar) fade away to make room for a more probable and attainable future. At that time I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined that I would now live in London, with all different opportunities just waiting to be taken. It is worth saying though that without making the choice not to pursue computer graphics, but choosing another direction instead, I wouldn’t have ended up where I am now.

Why all this sentimental talking about my dreams garbage? Last Tuesday and Wednesday was the London Game Career Fair, again an event of the London Games Festival. Even though I knew I’m not what they’re looking for, it couldn’t hurt to take a look, right? So last Tuesday I found myself in the middle of the fair at the Old Truman Brewery, surrounded by booths from EA, SEGA, Lucasarts, and many more.

I stopped by almost every booth (I skipped the university and college booths) and with all of them the conversation went down similar lines: What do you do? What do you want to do? Are you looking for a job? If so, here is a business card/website/email address where you can send your resume. Oh, and here is some free cool/crappy stuff.

I discovered (had forgotten) that a lot of companies aren’t only looking for people specialized in Computer Graphics and that my background in AI and pattern recognition can actually be quite useful in the games industry. You do, however, have to be very strong in C or C++. At the moment there’s a discussion going on about whether or not they should step over to C# (similarly 10-15 years ago there was the discussion if they should jump from Assembly to C or C++). Regardless though whether or not C# is adopted in the future, if you want a job now, you have to know C or C++ now. One tip I got was to have some programs/code ready to show your skills when you’re applying for a job.

There were three times that I talked to a woman at one of the booths and each time they were surprised to find a girl interested in games and with a background of Computer Science. One of them even went so far to hug me! They all remarked on the fact that while there are woman working in games, they are still in the minority and most of the time in a non-programming role (character design, environment design, QA, etc). I was planning to go the Woman in Games mixer that same night, but sadly other plans cropped up (free exclusive tickets to 30 Days of Night, which btw wasn’t that good).

So after a day of walking and talking around, I’ve got a list of websites and email addresses, for if I ever feel ready to try to get into the games industry. If I do, I will definitely have to brush up on my C/C++ skills first and create at least some sort of portfolio. I also ended up with a great bunch of freebies: 3 T-shirts (SEGA, Realtime Worlds and Other Ocean Interactive), a Lucasarts squishy pen, an Xbox 360 bottle of water, SEGA stickers and a whole bunch of other less useful stuff (mousemat, folders, etc). Not bad for a day’s “work”, huh?

If you’re looking to get into the games industry, I really recommend going to a fair like this. The people are genuinely helpful and give a lot of advice on how to get in. I noticed that a lot of people had brought multiple copies of their resumes (plus dvds with their work) with them to give away to companies, so make sure to bring along your resume. I’m not sure yet if I want to get into games myself, but these type of events are definitely interesting.