Shoot'em All!

A LARP (Live Action Role Playing Game) based on the following two quotes.
"A photograph is worth a thousand words." "Everything in this world is connected in some way or the other"
The other idea on which this game is based is that everyone can take photograph and one does not need to be a photographer to take a photograph. Everyone likes to take photographs.

All that is required here is loads of enthusiasm, crazy ways to connect things, a basic digital camera.
Every player in the game is a photographer. They could be a nature photographer, a portrait photographer, an abstract photographer etc.

The motivation behind the game is that we all like to click photographs and share photos with people. Its difficult for people to express when they are asked to draw, but anyone can take a photograph if given just slight instructions.

Players Profile:
Any number of people can play the game. There is no age limit to the age of the players. Ideally older people have more experience with things and hence the older the people, the more interesting stories are told. However,

Gameplay:
The players meet up at a common location. The setting can be selected differently every-time. For example, the setting could be at the Navy Pier, or a county park, and the photographs taken in and around this location.


Players are divided into teams and the game is time based. One person in a team acts as the chief photographer. Their is a healthy rivalry that exists between the teams. The photographers shoot the photographs and hence they are called the shooters! If a player from team A "shoots" a player from team B by clicking his/her photograph in a front portrait position, the player from team B is disqualified and hence they cannot take part further in the shooting photographs part. There could be further ways in which a shooter could get disqualified!

However, this disqualified person can take part in the second part of the game, which is to form connections between things and also build stories!

The players collaborate at the end of the stipulated time and collaborate to create a story. The idea is to create a story based on the photographs collected. Every photograph can have an interpretation in a particular manner and put into the story accordingly. Every photograph has a story or an intention as to why it was clicked.

Who Wins?
There are no winners as such in the game as the idea is to learn and play and go creative at the same time.
The idea is to create story everytime, and have fun while doing so!

A must for every designer!

IDEO CARDS.

A Learn, Look, Ask and Try approach to finding out the different processes, terminologies used by a designer / design consultancy firm.

Just Brilliant stuff!

The War on Terror

Thoughts behind a computer based game on "The war of Terror":
Can a game have multi-player model? Can each of the players have separate task to accomplish in-order to win the game?
Can a villain of a game win? Can a villain have their own set of goals and that is negative.

About the game:
This is a role based game. The player(s) selects the role every-time they start a game. The game works on a multi-player model.
There are multiple aims of the game, depending on the role of the people playing the game.
A person can be a paramedics person, a FBI /CIA official, Terrorist (the bad guy), a soldier. These are the main characters in the stage.

The aim of the paramedics person is to help lives without getting hit by the attacks themselves.
The aim of the soldiers is to track down the terrorists and shoot them down, without dying themselves.
The aim of the FBI / CIA officials is to find hidden clues and hints and other information from various sources and give information to the army to catch it.
The aim of the terrorist i to create more mayhem and cause more trouble. His aim would be to destroy the city and kill more lives.

The game is based on the premise of fighting terror on planet earth. There could be various ways in which a person is being a part of the help from terror. This comes out of a need that we often fail to help in the times of the humanitarian needs when a terror strikes at a particular place.

Its a multi-player game with people able to share resources. Multiple nations can get together to attack against a terrorist organization, and similarly, multiple terrorist organizations can target one or many nations. Information can be shared from across countries officials.
This because some countries have a very good land army, and some may have an excellent supply of ambulances.
It builds on the theme of sharing resources.

Age group: 15-30 years.
Number of players required: Minimum 1, Maximum: can be any number.

GamePlay:
Scenario:
At the beginning of the game, a overview of the situation is given to the person. The player selects their role from the prompt that is given to them.
After the player has selected the role in which they want to play, a player enters the situation of the game in that position.
For example : An attack has happened in the downtown area of the town. The special forces are called in. If there are multiple people who play , then the computer is not involved. If there is a shortage of players then apart from the role that is played by the player, the remaining players are played by the computer. The different players select the roles and start the game.

The idea is to have the terrorist killed, save more lives, or kill a certain number of people.
In all the cases all the people are also playing simultaneously.

How do the people playing the game win?
Role: CIA/FBI Officer :- The clues are connected and able to spot the target terrorist correctly. This is only possible by connecting the clues that the player keeps getting. If an Officer fires at a terrorist / or a terrorist place, they gain points. If they accidentally fire at the paramedics, they loose points.

Role: Paramedics: If they are able to help the specified injured people to safety and in the process let minimum lives die they win. This depends entirely on the fact that how many were the initial casualty.

Role: Soldier : If they are able to track down the terrorist, find out where they are, and combat with them without themselves dying, they win. If the set of terrorist is more than one, the player has to kill all of them to win.

Role: Terrorist : If the player is able to kill all the people in a certain time frame or cause maximum carnage in a stipulated time.

All the tasks are time based. If a soldier is not able to kill in certain time, he gets negative points.
Similar things can be arranged for the other roles.

Nurturing a baby...

Have you ever tried doing that?

Its happening.
The baby is being nurtured... The baby here is the "Bonus Year Game" for Dr Chef.
The Final Game is developing... and everyday the excitement level seems to be increasing.

Of late I started to analyze how difficult it is to be a game designer. Its challenging but its fun!
Its no easy profession.

The level of planning that goes in the development of each character, each frame, each flow, each level, each prop in the game.
the work s mind boggling.

Add to it the theory being given by our Prof Thom, along with the information from the Theory of Fun book by Raph Koster is really interesting.

Its interesting the moment you start to think about a game being designed you tend to add thousand features, only to realize late that actually nine hundred of them would actually not add to the overall experience of a game.

The theory point of a game is what we miss at times and its a pleasure to read this book.

Often, as a photographer and a designer I have felt that any system(photograph, video, game) would only be pleasurable to use, if there is a certain degree of fun associated with it. The way we not define fun is interesting.

Health-O-Mazic

This is a concept for a board game based on the book "The Bonus Years Diet" by Ralph Felder and Carol Colman.
The catch line of the book says: 7 miracle foods including Chocolate, RedWine, and Nites that can add 6.4 years on average to yourlife!


Now thats interesting! Isn't it! Almost every health doctor you visit, they would tell to avoid these food! And here is this person saying to have it!
You should definitely check out the recipes in the book!

The game setting :
We have a 2dimensional board (that can later be extended to 3d board) , this is a checkered
board like the ones on a chess board.



The crossings are called the nodes and there are some nodes that are called the Check Points.
The nodes are the points that contain the different kinds of food. Thus there is a bonus food or a junk food that is kept at the nodes.

Each cell contains some vital information based on the book. Some entertaining information about food that people would generally not know. This informatio could also mean some medicinal and calorific values of some food.

Some of the nodes in the grid will contain Check points. The purpose of these check points is that the players can exchange their collected food for recipes and accordingly get points.

The game play:
Two or more players can play the game and the idea is to collect as many recipes and points as possible and not let the points fall to zero at any time. The first person to reach zero points loses.


The idea is to travel along the paths across the board. There is no start or end points but the players can decide on a common place to start. (In the diagram it is shown by the yellow star. This can be changed after each game).
The turn is played on a dice and whatever number a player gets, they have to move that much places. The constraint however is that the move can be only vertical or horizontal and not diagonal.

On moving from one node to other , the nodes crossed gives the corresponding food (depicted on a card). This obtained card could be a bonus card or a junk card. Note that the collecting too much junk food maybe harmful for your body and hence carry less or negative points. At the nodes that the person crosses, they get points accordingly. Note that the bonus carry positive health points and the other junk food carry negative health points.

The aim of the game is not to let the points reach zero. Or in other words not to let the health of the player to reduce to zero.

The users can select any path to traverse and on reaching a node that is a check point, they can exchange their card for recipes. For each recipe there is a certain amount of bonus points associated.

The recipes are decided before hand and they can get the list of recipes beforehand. This way they can decide which path they should take in order to go to a particular check point to collect that recipe.

If the player decides to cross another person's path, the person whose path is crossed has to move one place in the direction that the first person chooses.

This game can be further developed to become a 3d maze where the players are required to go through a 3d environment to do the same thing. To make things more interesting, the walls could be made of chocolate, and the streams in the game could be wine streams!

Osama -The movie

I have no connections with the Taliban or Afghanistan. i am an artist and am just appreciating a great piece of art.

This is one of the most beautiful movies that I have ever seen.
The story of the Taliban times in Afghanistan, where females working are against the law.
This is a story of hope... It is a story of despair..It is a story of fate..Its a story where marriages turn into death prayer meetings...

The brilliance of the actors are evident in each frame and is truly captivating.
A lady looses her husband to the Taliban and her son in the war. Thus she is left with no males in the family. Her only hope of survival is to make her daughter a boy.

Soon the girl, who turns into a boy finds herself in an unknowm world. A world of oggling eyes, a world of roughness. A world that is too mean to be lived in. She is caught as a boy to be recruited and trained as the next generation Taliban.



Accompanied by brilliant photography and excellent direction, this is a must watch for the photo buffs.

Osama went on to win the Best Foreign Film award at the Golden Globe awards in 2004.

Frida

Yes, you saw it right! Its not that I have missed out the Y in the Friday.
Its Frida. Spelt as F R I D A.
She is intellgent! She is a courageous woman! She is beautiful! She is a brilliant painter.
She is Frida. She is Salma Hayek.



Nominated for six Academy awards in 2002, it managed to win one. Salma Hayek was also nominated in the best actress category. This is one movie that is really interesting. Its about the artists in Mexico in the times of the revolution. The protanogists in the movie, Frida and Diego are two artists who share one common love. The love for painting.
Whats really interesting in the movie is the transition from the picasso-like paintings to the real world. The paintings by Frida reflect a lot about her current mindset and what she is going through. This is not really evident in what we see of her, but it is evident in the paintings.
Each of the paintings speak a lot and one can spend hours interpreting it. And then only to come back after some time and re-interpreting it another way.
This is based on a true story of : Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who depicted the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. An active communist, she was married to Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera. She was known for her self-portraits, often expressing her physical pain and suffering through symbolism. In the last three decades she has gained admiration in Europe and the US. In 2002, Julie Taymor directed a biographical movie about Kahlo (Frida; Salma Hayek starred). The film sparked even further interest in Kahlo's life and work. Her house in Coyoacán, Mexico is a museum and visited by a large number of tourists every year.



The frames are lovely and the treatment spectacular! Its a visual Delight. There is no or very less violence, but there is drama. And there is passion in the shots. I would highly recommend it for people interested in art.