Artsy Games Incubator 3.1 kicked off last Thursday with 6 of us gathering at Jason and Rose’s quite wonderful apartment with piles of good snacks provided by Benjamin. Jim quickly recapped the goals of the Incubator and then we went around the room introducing ourselves.

• Benjamin Rivers is an illustrator, comic artist, and designer and he worked on the game Office Party at the last TOJam with Jean-Luc David.
• Miguel Sternberg does game art and art direction professionally, has previously worked in web and film, and studied programming and AI several years ago (but hasn’t programmed in a decade). He’s currently developing the PC game Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution.
• Jason van Horne is a visual artist with a sculpture background. He has exhibited post-apocalyptic miniatures with Katharine Mulherin, holds workshops with kids as part of the Soft City project, and has beautified urban spaces as a member of the City Beautification Ensemble.
• Rose Bianchini is a visual artist, filmmaker, documentarian, and writer. Her graphic novel Amygdala has recently also become an animated short. Rose runs the Soft City project with Jason.
• Davin Risk has a intermedia fine arts background and has been doing graphic design and new media production for the last 15 years or so. Davin has worked on a number of casual games made in Flash and is also a photographer.
• Jim Munroe is an author, filmmaker, publisher, and more and also the guy connecting us all together. Jim has recently completed Time Management for Anarchists with artists Marc Ngui and released Infest Wisely on DVD.

Once we were suitably introduced, we started presenting our game concepts.

Davin was first describing an rough puzzle game concept based loosely on the series of Waterful toys produced by Tomy in the 70’s and 80’s. The premise of the game is to use jets of water as the sole means of navigating through a series of fishtank-like rounds. The first levels would have a single water jet and involve basic stacking and sorting. An Tomy example made was Waterful Robot in which the pieces of a robot have to be assembled in order. As the game continued, the jets would multiply and the control would get more complex.

Benjamin went next and he described a game based on his comic Snow which is part simplified RPG and part existential narrative. He did a great presentation, showing us some his influences like Link’s Awakening and Super Metroid. He stressed the importance of story told through gameplay. Benjamin had loads of visuals like this well thought out gameplay storyboard:

The game environment is an isometric view of Queen St. West from Spadina to Augusta using existing buildings and businesses as landmarks and plot points. Benjamin had the great idea that the main character Dana would show some resistance to “wrong” choices in the game.

Next Miguel presented Night of the Cephelapods a top down game in which a dark forest is explored by a character with basic shoot and move abilities. The twist being that the players actions would be dynamically narrated in a melodramatic first person style reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft. For instance if the player failed to move for a while the narration might be: “I knew I should move but I couldn’t. The fear gripped me.” The other characters, like the titular floating octopus would feature very limited AI. Possibly the “life meter” in the game would be accompanied by a “fear meter” that could change the tone of the narration. We also briefly discussed the “hell gate” as a narrative device which allows easier suspension of disbelief.

Based on what Benjamin and Miguel had presented, Jim brought up the idea that character, atmosphere, and tone were often much more important that plot in gaming and that breaking from literal Authorial control could create deeper player shaped experiences.

Jason presented his game concept, The Landmarkers which draws from his own interests in architecture and urban planning. The game begins in a fictional city ravaged by fire in 1874. A single structure remains and the city must rebuild under the guidance of a planning and preservation committee which is essentially the role of the player. In decade-long rounds, the player has to make choices and leverage “sway points” to shape the city’s development, preserve some structures, and let others be redeveloped. The overall timeline would be 200 years with the city being once again razed by some great 2075 calamity. Along the way, newspaper headlines would inform the player and track the history of the city.

Rose’s game concept is based on the Amygdala character from her graphic novel. Rose showed us a new Amygdala animated short she’s created. Amygdala is equal parts fragile and powerful. She can ride on the wind, see into the future and the past, and is a friend to the birds. The game would have a needed female perspective in part as a reaction to the glut of high-violence and misogyny in games like Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock. The player would be taking the role of a somewhat timid girl who becomes stronger and more self-assured and could end up saving a boy in a reversal of game stereotypes. Amygdala would use elements of choose your own adventure and also incorporate basic games into the narrative.

Finally, Jim presented The Adventures of Plastico Bandera in which the player is in the role of Plastico a plastic bag among many other bags in a landfill. The bags use their nearly indestructible nature to battle against the swooping dump birds. Plastico and his buddies Hefty GB and Lil’ Zip poison and asphyxiate the gulls as a first stage in a war that will eventually lead them to rid their plastic world of humans too. fire and seagull shit could be possible dangers to the bags. McVideoGame was brought up as an example of this sort of reverse psychology approach to issues.

To end off the night, Jim mentioned plans for Canzine which is on Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 1:00pm – Gladstone Hotel 1214 Queen Street West. For round two, we will all be creating and play-testing a level design for the game N.