 A
Talk At The Rapids
Serious Game Presentation at Algoma University -
23 May 2008
By Tim Carter (5 June 2008)
Far north of Toronto - where in the winter you
often see the breathtaking Aurora Borealis, and in the summer
you can get lost in a vastness of the Bush in the lee of the
great lake Gitchee Goomee, having no contact with the outside
world for months and let deep creativity rise from a percolating
stillness of your soul... Up there is a land few Canadian
urbanites bother to find out about (to their detriment). Gather
around the campfire and listen as I tell you-
(...Okay, maybe I'm painting the wrong
picture for this. Let's start over...)
Up at Algoma University in Sault Ste Marie
there is a Masters of Game Technology program. At the recent
Game ON business symposium in Toronto I met Dwayne Hammond
(lately of Pseudo Interactive) from Algoma U. He asked me to
give a presentation about serious game design up there. Being
from the area (I grew up in Blind River and Bruce Mines) I leapt
at the chance.
Algoma's course was spun-off from their
long-time Comp Sci program. It's run in conjunction with the
University of Abertay in Dundee Scotland.
So I traveled by car the long drive to "the
Sault" (which means "the Rapids" - "Sault Ste Marie" being
French for the rapids at Ste Marie [St Mary's river, which
connects Lake Superior to Lake Huron]). I could have flown, but
being from the area, I wished to savour a journey I hadn't made
in almost 10 years.
Savour is right. The route is lonesome but
beautiful. Visiting old friends up there I mentioned my reaction
to the emptiness of the North: "My God, there are so few people
up here!" Then I remembered my reaction, years ago, upon moving
from the North down to Toronto: "My God, there are so many
people down here!" I guess I've just become urbanized.
A Serious Game Presentation
The presentation I made was on serious game
design. It was based on one I delivered to the Toronto
Independent Game Convention, awhile ago - but here tailored for
a more academic audience. I also added a ton more information
devoted specifically to the design of serious games.
The first two hours were lecture (the
presentation), but the remaining day was the real fun: breaking
the group into design teams who were to make a simple
paper-based prototype to experiment with core ideas. I had gone
to pains to stress to Dwayne we needed more than game design
people (i.e. more than the game tech students) - we needed
non-game folks as well. The paradigm of serious game development
is game dev types meeting non-game types. It's in that meeting
that success occurs... or wheels spin without gripping.
The group broke and reformed into three
teams, each a mix of game developer and non-game developer
people, working to make a prototype. Naturally, the what the
games became about coalesced around the messaging-needs the
non-game people had - how they could use a game to train or
promote something in their field. The game people, meanwhile,
tried to solve the problem how to meld this communication into
the format of a game. It was a lot of fun. Meanwhile myself and
Dwayne floated among the groups. I'll describe them without
giving away too much...
One of the projects forecasted a kind of
municipal planning game. I spent a lot of time with this group
(as I work a lot on sim-type strategy games). It was
interesting, because there is a deep legacy of municipal
planning in games - Sim City - yet what the
subject-matter experts (SMEs) outlined for us seemed quite
different from what you do in Sim City. Maybe there 's
room for a different take on Sim City?
Another group worked on a weight-loss game
which lead to a kind of whacky invention for a talking
refrigerator. However, I say this with gentle ribbing. I
stressed to the group suspension of judgement at this, the early
stage (which I also do in my classes at UOIT) - there is time
for judgement later; now is the time to ideate freely in a
fear-free atmosphere. Anyway, though it seemed undoable, the
idea for a talking fridge could - if you thought on it long
enough - morph into something quite practical. Crazier things
have happened. This is the route of creative innovation.
In the final project, the group's SME was a
physiotherapist, and they came up with a brilliant and doable
idea for a videogame for multiple-sclerosis therapy. Watching
them demo a videogame using paper-based means (one sheet became
the screen; some held cards which represented the moving
sprites) was fun and illuminating. How many of you could manage
to go from absolutely nothing to a videogame demo for something
that useful in less than 3 hours? I actually hope the people on
that team move their game forward to an electronic prototype,
because I think they could sell it. (Hey guys, if you're reading
this, remember to take your game to the
Games For Health Conference, okay.)
A fun time was had by all, and I was really
glad that Dwayne and Algoma U invited me.
Revisiting The Sault
Originally I was just going to fly up.
However, the original date for the presentation was postponed,
so I cancelled the flight. In the intervening time, I realized
it would be better for me to drive because I am originally from
a small town an hour and a half to the east of the Sault.
Driving would afford me time to reconnect with family and old
friends - so I drove.
Here's a cool tidbit. When Raiders of the
Lost Ark first came out, I saw it in the Sault. I was a yout'
then, hailing from a town 90 minutes to the east. Now, 27 years
later, the night after my presentation at Algoma U I went over
to the Station Mall and watched Indiana Jones and the Crystal
Skull - thus bringing full circle my relationship with that
franchise (in a way). Honestly, Raiders was better. The
Crystal Skull had way too large of a budget, in my
opinion. Spielberg brought Raiders in under budget and
ahead of schedule because he had to: his prior movie, 1941, was
a gi'normous bloated flop. Spielberg even said if he had a larger
budget the movie would have turned out pretentious. "I made it
as a B-movie... I didn't see the film as anything more than a
better made version of the Republic serials." Crystal
Skull wasn't pretentious, but it winks at the audience in a
sly way. I dunno - I just think if you're gonna do an action
flick, you need a sense of danger, and the pervasive feeling of
Crystal Skull is this is all just an amusement park ride,
none of the baddies jumping out will hurt us, and the hero will
win. (Yawn...) However, it did have a few fun moments - which I
won't spoil here...
(Okay, trivia: Who is Indiana Jones based on?
In my opinion, he's an American, pulp-adventure version of T.E.
Lawrence [Lawrence of Arabia]. Why? First, Lawrence is a huge
character in the minds of many filmmakers - including Spielberg,
who loved that movie. Second, both are adventurers in the
desert, wielding revolvers, shooting bad guys. Third: the
clincher: two key elements of Indiana Jones belong to the
British guerilla leader: Lawrence was an archeologist, as Indy
is; he was also deathly afraid of snakes, as Indy is. So if you
were a screenwriter reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
back in the late 1970s, I can see you might get an idea for a
guy like Indiana Jones. A swashbuckling archeologist from a
western nation, caught up in a shooting war out in the desert,
who happens to be terrified of snakes. Coincidence? I don't
think so...)
Saw Matthew, an old buddy I hadn't seen in
years. A gaming friend as well. He regaled me with his tall
tales of visiting
Vladivostok: hiring a friendly Russian as a guide; going
with a talkative American he met (who couldn't be persuaded to
keep mum on the fact he as a Yank - which kept making things a
little less than optimal); trying to avoid getting mugged, or
shaken-down by soldiers (who, at that time hadn't been paid for
months); accidentally running into the local Mafia warlord (and
getting out by the scruff of their neck); doing vodka with some
naval officers and managing to get a clandestine tour on a
Russian submarine. They are really interesting tales, and he
tells them a lot better than I (he should probably write them
down).
Most of my friends have left the north, but
their parents remained. So I visited them on my way back. Many
good conversations in towns dotting the north shore of Lake
Huron - Bruce Mines, Thessalon, Blind River, Elliot Lake. My Dad
lives in Blind River; visited him there.
A few days later I returned to Toronto.
Wrap Up
The north - at least the north of my youth -
is a place of long distances and lots of time to think. Of few
people and so few friends with whom you have to make the best of
things. A place with lots of space to let your imagination
wander. When I was young there I spent a lot of time coming up
with game rules, and dreaming up adventures and settings for
roleplaying and war gaming scenarios to put my friends through
as a gamemaster. It was good to return to the place of my
heritage to share some of what I have since learned about game
design and what it can do for us. |
