Monday 5:40pm – “Flower: Design Post Mortem”

Flower is known for it’s simplicity, stemming from an idea to evoke the feeling of breathing nature and the sensation of love giving…. so what took us two years? While evoking the feeling of nature and love have known solutions in traditional passive media, designing an interactive gameplay experience that goes well with, or even amplifies that feeling is almost unheard of.

It took the team 12 different gameplay prototypes and almost an entire year to figure out a viable solution. A countless number of times traditional game design conventions we tried out went against our desired experience. Familiar elements like realism, challenge, clear goal and compulsive loops slowly turned out to be anything but helpful. We learned that innovating on a completely new gaming experience often requires game makers to abandon more than what they are comfortable with. In this talk, Kellee will walk through the team’s design process and playable prototypes that led to the final product.

Tuesday 11:20am – “Desiging Women”

Four female industry veterans discuss game design and the interplay of gender, brand, narrative and genre. The panelists will discuss their own work and writing in the area of game design best practices and debate whether they design for gender inclusivity. What examples of practices and assumptions go into their design processes for addressing issues of audience and gender? How relevant is it to distinguish gender and audience for good game design?

The GDCEurope Website.

by billsmugs

Forum member billsmugs has done it again, and designed a LEGO creation depicting a scene from “Cloud.” Keep up the inspiring work!

Click here for more pictures of this LEGO piece.

Click here for pictures of billsmugs TGC LEGO collection.

MadeMan recently posted their 2009 list of “50 Guys You Want to Be,” and apparently, you want to be Jenova Chen.

Listed in one of the top tiers next to Sam Hauser from Rockstar and Davis Guggenheim of “An Inconvenient Truth”, they state,

“Jenova Chen is an artist and a gamer whose latest Playstation release, ‘Fl0wer’, explores the expressive possibilities of gaming by using emotion rather virtual violence, and gives users the chance to experience what it’s like to be a flower petal. It’s that simple. But this isn’t Chen’s first moment of wild success; his thesis project won his company a three-game deal with Sony.”

Cross-posted from the PlayStation Blog:

From flOw composer Austin Wintory:

“I have a cool treat for fans of flOw! Ever since completing the original score for the game (shockingly, already more than 2 years ago!!!) it was my dream to adapt the music for live performance by an orchestra. Obviously the in-game music was entirely electronic, with the exception of choral voices, but I had an idea floating around my brain (somewhat resembling the jelly fish, careening out of control after spinning too quickly) for how to handle an adaptation.

Well, the opportunity finally came thanks to Steven Allen Fox and the Golden State Pops Orchestrabased here in Los Angeles. On May 16 they performed an all game music concert featuring scores to Afrika, God of War (the Guitar Hero rendition), Final Fantasy VII, World of Warcraft and others. I was proud to feature flOw in that lineup and later cut together a little video combining the concert footage with some in-game footage. I hope you enjoy it!!!

And if you want to just listen, the mp3 of the concert performance can be found here.

Click this link to watch the video on YouTube.

Also here was Jayson Napolitano’s review of the concert from ‘Original Sound Version.’

John Edwards is bringing “Flower” to New Orleans at SIGGRAPH this week. His itinterary:

Monday-Thursday, 6:30pm-9:00pm – He’ll be playing through the first level of “Flower” for the audience at the Computer Animation Theater.

Wednesday, 1:45pm – John will be discussing the decision-making process behind the aesthetics of “Flower” in a talk entitiled, “Immersive and Impressive: The Impressionistic Look of Flower.”

Monday-Friday, 9am-end of day – “Flower” will be playable at The Sandbox.

If you see John, tell him ‘hi’! And tell him we miss him terribly. =(