My humble opinion on this year's IC GD

• 05-04-2010 4:43 PM

  michnique Joined on 10-25-2007 Posts 29

  My humble opinion on this year's IC GD Contact I don't know how about you guys, but today I woke up with that strange feeling of not being under pressure and I just didn't know what to do with myself, so I was browsing this forum and watching new stuff you uploaded on YouTube almost all day long. Eventually I decided to unleash my graphomania and write about some reflections I came up with during recent few weeks of my involvement into game design competition. First of all - I was surprised with so many great looking games. MrAndy told that some of round 1 entries outshone previous finalists - and that's so true! I can tell because I've seen some of the final game presentations in Paris and Cairo. And there is possibility that what can be seen on YouTube is just a tip of the iceberg. In general winning the IC Game Design probably wouldn't get you a job at Crytech so far - Zynga at it's best. No offence here, I love casual games, what I'm talking about is technical side. Both winning games I saw had a great design - but there were no game that made me wonder - how did they do that? Which happened this year already. But what I like most: there are some games with IC theme only in the background or very well fitted in so I don't have a feeling that this game is made for particular competition. There are basically games I would like to play :) ever tried. ever failed. no matter. try again. fail again. fail better

• 05-04-2010 5:04 PM

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  Kolger Joined on 01-10-2010 Posts 17	Re: My humble opinion on this year's IC GD entries. Contact  After reading your first sentence, I just had to answer!   I have this same weird feeling of not being under pressure (not that much at least). Its so weird that I ended up staying at home and doing nothing all day. Guess it's some kind of vacations, after all the work :P

• 05-06-2010 9:50 PM

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  MHesham Joined on 09-13-2009 Posts 15

  New Judging Criteria Contact I watched most of the videos, this year is very challenging, the artwork and development were awesome really,  and I wish I have one of those art guys in my team, they really rock. Here in Game Design competition they judge on the game from a player perspective which is very logical as the player is the one who will buy the game, but as a computer science student participated in the game design competition I would be more happy if the judge were on the game architecture and internal design, those nice looking games are well polished with artwork and effects (which is good) but what about the game extension and modifications ? will it be easy for other team to continue development on the same game ? and if a company bought such game what about their developers who will extend it ? will they need to restructure the game ? or it is already with a good architecture and built on a robust framework ? I have no offense here, but I got this feeling because my team had problems in the Art side, and we spent a lot of time (4 months)  building our own 2D game engine applying GOF design patterns and OOD principles every where in the engine, and our entry for round 1 was developed in 3 days before the deadline, and round 2 entry was developed 4 days before the deadline :( Conclusion: I wish that the competition add a new judging criteria on the game architecture and internal design. No One Lives Forever

• 05-06-2010 10:35 PM

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  gudome Joined on 10-06-2008 Posts 8

  Re: New Judging Criteria Contact We, too, are studying computer science, but I think in the different view from you. To build a game, what we should focus is "player".  The only thing we should care about the architecture is it could provide a good performance, and the player can play the game without feeling annoyed. The internal things are important, especially when you want to rebuild and reuse the code, but you have to keep it in mind that "The player doesn't see it". When you choose a game to play, do you focus on how interested the game is, or its inner design? This is a fatal trap that many developers fell into. P.S. I had to find two good artists in our department, and it's sooooooooooo hard to find. lol.

• 05-07-2010 3:50 AM

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  michnique Joined on 10-25-2007 Posts 29

  Re: New Judging Criteria Contact It would require judges to be developers to rate games upon this criterion. Besides any game is internally well designed as long as you can make it work before the deadline ;) I don't know if my game is counted as a "good looking" for you, but I had the same problem with the 3D artist (in other words - we hadn't any) so one weekend I started Blender and did all the models. It was a struggle at the beginning but now I can do simple, low poly modelling quite easily and that's another great thing I learnt during this competition :) ever tried. ever failed. no matter. try again. fail again. fail better

• 05-07-2010 5:16 AM

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  manav251189 Joined on 10-17-2008 Posts 5	Re: New Judging Criteria Contact A game is always made keeping the player in mind, so it will only be fair and correct for the entries to be judged on this particular basis. Not to mention it makes the judge's job a lot easier. :P

• 05-07-2010 8:00 AM

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  CrippleAlex Joined on 11-17-2009 Posts 21	Re: New Judging Criteria Contact  I also love to create a good game architecture and the possibility to add new stuff easily to the game (game editor, tools etc ...) , but it would be to difficult to add this as a judging criteria :)     Alexandre Bardelot | Gears Studio (FR) Green Gears : www.green-gears.com

• 05-07-2010 8:39 AM

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  cmmadnat Joined on 11-14-2009 Posts 4

  Re: My humble opinion on this year's IC GD Contact michnique: I don't know how about you guys, but today I woke up with that strange feeling of not being under pressure and I just didn't know what to do with myself I have the same feeling. It's so weird. I have to go to my college to see my friends working on their software design project because i want to see some chaos. The technical and things under the hood shouldn't be used as a judging criterion. How well you've designed your game is nothing to do with the player. Only thing that's matter is about the player experience. If the game code is not well-designed, the one who is in trouble is the programmer himself. If the game is so lag that effects the player experience, then it's the crucial thing to be concerned. I need a new Smart Phone...

• 05-07-2010 12:02 PM

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  Dom152 Joined on 02-26-2010 Posts 2	Re: My humble opinion on this year's IC GD Contact That would make this a Games Programming competition, not a design competition. You can't easily link a game architecture to an Imagine Cup theme.

• 05-07-2010 8:34 PM

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  Kenny Davila Joined on 03-09-2007 Posts 32	Re: My humble opinion on this year's IC GD Contact Dom152: That would make this a Games Programming competition, not a design competition. You can't easily link a game architecture to an Imagine Cup theme.  Yes I think so!, after all this is game design not "Robotics & algorithms"

• 05-09-2010 3:00 PM

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  MHesham Joined on 09-13-2009 Posts 15

  Re: New Judging Criteria Contact I just dream of a special competition that merge a software engineering criteria in this competition. ... I think am very dreamy !! Judges have to get access to the source code, and we should supply them with game design diagrams which is hard :D may be not all XNA folks are used to this things, but let`s make it a special kind of competition in which the winner gets a Microsoft Intern in game development :D No One Lives Forever

• 05-10-2010 7:33 AM

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  Przywara Joined on 12-17-2008 Posts 34	Re: New Judging Criteria Contact To tell the truth, I'd rather hope that the Game Design rules would be like the Embedded and Software ones: Country finals, then each country finalist would advance to the finals.

• 05-10-2010 8:01 AM

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  cmmadnat Joined on 11-14-2009 Posts 4	Re: New Judging Criteria Contact I love the international competition. It's much more challenging! I need a new Smart Phone...

• 05-10-2010 10:22 AM

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  Przywara Joined on 12-17-2008 Posts 34

  Re: New Judging Criteria Contact Software and Embedded aren't international? :D Choosing the winner of each country then challenging each team on a world final is a lot more enriching and entertaining. Your presentation must be excellent, same as for the game. This just doesn't only require development skills but presentation skills too. It’ll prove which team/country really deserves (it is actually the same for the 6 finalists, but for all countries) to win.

• 05-10-2010 11:04 AM

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  Kenny Davila Joined on 03-09-2007 Posts 32

  Re: New Judging Criteria Contact Well, in my oppinion, this competitions is good as it is now, cause actually you can have more than one finalist game per country, it would not be fair if a nice game got disqualified by being the second place on its country if it is better than the best game of another country, so, for me the actual system is ok. having only 6 finalist from all around the world made this competition very challenging.  And why the judges don't want to see our source codes? well, I think it is just as it was stated on the last live meeting, this games are ours, and because of copyright and to protect themselves from any demand or legal problem, the best is to don't have any contact with source code, i think so.