Panel: Dustin Clingman – Full Sail University, Dave Werner – Atmosphir, Michael Agustin – GameSalad, Adam Saltsman – Flixel, Troy Gilbert – Mockingbirdgames, Shanna Tellerman – Wildpockets
Building a game is getting easier and easier, and the panelists build tools to help people without tech skills/knowledge build video games. From simple to complex, it sounds like the video game industry is hungry for new ideas since many games are built upon the same premise – shoot ’em up, explore, etc.
Games don’t have to be just fun and/or entertaining, they have proven to be used to teach very effectively. While it can obviously be used to teach simple tasks, games are tremendously good at teaching individuals organization or organizational models such as world-politics, physics, math, science. If you have trouble explaining your business model to employees, consider a game that teaches them what the elements/values/principles of your model are. When used for good, these games can communicate and engage users in things like the impact of natural disasters, geopolitics, and other significant societal issues.
Some games and systems choose to take advantage of “regular operative conditioning” which rewards you for a repetitive task. It has been proven that people have an innate need to solve things and with things like gambling, people become addicted to the dopamine that is released when they are challenged and rewarded. This is a tremendously effective tool for getting people engaged in your game, but it can also be dangerous if people start working toward “points” rather than pursuing the true purpose of the game. However, reward structures – in the form of points, virtual items, money, etc. – can be a tremendously effective way of hooking people in and keeping them engaged. Feedback, recognition, rewarding, earning, and achieving are human urges that come through in games. You don’t necessarily have to make a “game” in order to incorporate this or exploit these urges.
If you are interested in getting started building your own game, here are a few resources to consider:
- Game Maker, by yo-yo games – Not great, but it does the things people want it to do.
- Game Jam – An event that is a good way to get with a group of developers.
- Mockingbirdgames – Provides easy, super basic tools, and very limiting. It’s flash based for the browser with plug-ins with existing communities.
- GameSalad – Good for scaling and porting across formats. Xml format to be ported to mobile devices, flash for browser, etc. – want to be able to scale.
- Flixel – Flash games for pc/linux – both web browser and download and play – incorporates social sharing
- Wildpockets – Web based 3-D games that supports community – all points/currency shared across games
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