Balthazar Auger

Author’s note: I’m attempting to develop a method for game analysis around irreducible game elements (gamels). This and all the other articles are a sort of log of my thought process, and are not definitive truths. Please feel free to react or comment in any way.

I had previously stated that a game element could be classified according to two criteria: whether it is abstract or concrete, and whether it is implicit or explicit. I’ve been giving this idea a little more thought now that everything is quieter on the job front, and would like to expand on it.

First off, I think it is necessary to clarify the labels applied to the criteria.

Concrete: Anything that can be seen, heard, touched, or felt in any other way. An object which has a physical manifestation.

Abstract: All that is not covered by “Concrete”. Abstract objects exist only in someone’s mind.

Explicit: Elements that have a direct, measurable or objective effect on other elements. Causality, correlation and deductive relationships.

Implicit: Elements that have an indirect, non-measurable or subjective effect on the player. Belief, emotional and intuitive relationships.

What emerges from these definitions is that the Concrete/Abstract axis is really about the passive nature of a gamel while the Explicit/Implicit axis is about its active nature. These divisions should be general enough to be all-inclusive and non-ambiguous; a gamel necessarily falls into either category and can’t be both at the same time. If an object appears to have characteristics in two opposed categories, this means it is in fact composed of two different gamels.

I doubt these “containing objects” need any description other than “contain gamels”, their in-game function being determined by their contents. Think of them as your computer’s directories.

The next logical stop from here would be looking into how gamels interact with each other…

Yesterday was the final presentation of our prototypes before a panel of industry figures, including Jordan Mechner and Benoît Sokal.

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I haven’t been able to give any sign of life lately due to the fact that M.A.Z.E. has to be delivered monday.

I’ll manage to have a lot of info on it around wednesday, I think.

I realize that it’s been very long since I last spoke about my current project. I guess that since I’m immersed in it I can’t really see any remarkable or newsworthy events. Hence the general update.

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There’s a reason I haven’t been able to update the blog in a month (a MONTH? that’s just no good), but it is kind of lame, so I’d rather say I’ve been too busy to even glance at my blog.

Luckily it’s partly true…

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Inexperienced people, absent hierarchy, doubtful team constitution, loose working hours, crummy machines, “almost-original” software running here and there, and of course, nobody gets paid… Many would say this is a recipe for disaster if you plan to make a game, or anything else for that matter.

And yet I think you could not craft a better environment to the creation of an innovative game prototype. No, really!

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Ok, so it’s been more-or-less one month since we started working on the game. What’s up?

First of all, it’s nice to see that there has not been any conflicts covert or open, SO FAR. Of course, it would be foolish to hope for peace and love during the whole pre-production period. This is (SPARTAAAA) the video game industry we’re talking about, after all. What has happened is a healthy mix of rational argument, open speech and open confrontation.

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Ok, so work has now officially started on M.A.Z.E., as from this tuesday.

Much can’t be said on the gameplay yet, as it is mainly in my head and it’s the other people’s job to ask the heck out of it, until everything’s been explained to everyone in everyway possible.

These are the people i’ll be working with:

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Our second year assignment at the ENJMIN is to prototype a game like we would if we wanted to sell it to someone and /or attempt to make money with it. They gave us six months with a 9-person team, something I gather is sort of close to the “real deal”.

So, then I got lucky and my pitch got selected (out of 22 pitches from students in all concentrations, 5 were kept) . To make it short, it’s a puzzle game based where you build a maze in a “Tetris” fashion for little computer-controlled heroes to have adventures in. The catch is that the further away from a hero you place the treasure, the more it will be worth when he grabs it, so you have to run your eyes through the maze you built to know where the hero will be in the future. A more thorough description will come later.

What I intend to do is to write weekly on the advance of the project, as an attempt to document the gestation of a game with publishing intentions, something that is usually kept secret in most studios.

Next week, the team!