PlayCrafting Student Spotlight Update

It was a delight to hear from my former game writing students at PlayCrafting. They attended the one-night Game Writing Portfolio Workout sessions or the multi-week intensive Game Writing Primer course. Here are some highlights!

Kyle Erf made a career switch. He is now Director of Technology at Moving Pieces Interactive, makers of Dodo Peak, available on Apple Arcade and Nintendo Switch. He describes his current position as the "best job I've ever had." 
 

Christopher Graf is part of the team working on the upcoming mobile title, Petzebeville, coming in 2021.

Mary Georgescu is starting a new job as a game designer at Exploding Kittens. She received her MFA in Game Design from NYU. She is a co-founder of Eat Melon Studio, which was part of the 2020 NYU Game Center Incubator. The studio's storytelling game Nothing to See Here! will be coming out soon.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the game industry.  Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing.  She is the co-author of the book, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing.

Live Action Online Games (LAOG) During Lockdown

In this article, Sande Chen reports on the use of educational live-action online games (LAOG), a variant of educational LARPs. 

During the pandemic lockdown, it was impossible to play Live Action Role-Playing games (LARPs) that require face-to-face contact. LARP designers like Isabella Negri were forced to consider how LARPs could be played in an online-only setting.  Live Action Online Games (LAOGs), as they were called, were not a new idea, but their popularity in Italy did not rise until 2020 due to the lockdown. 

Speaking at Games For Impact, an online festival celebrating games with social impact, in her session, "Justice Talk: Digital Educational LARPs Under Lockdown," Negri discussed the challenges in converting an existing LARP to LAOG format and gave tips on how best to approach the design of LAOGs. 

Negri first set upon trying to convert her existing eduLARP, Victorian Murder Party into a LAOG. She discovered there were several difficulties in this endeavor due to the nature of online spaces. Players could speak over each other, leading to chaos, or players could opt not to speak at all, which made for a very boring scenario. Most importantly, because body movement, touch, and voice were limited, the normal ways of energizing players could not be done. She further discovered that more than 6 players in a virtual room was not a good idea because it usually turned negative.

Negri found it far easier to design a LAOG from scratch and incorporate the online setting and facilitator into the narrative. Her design could take advantage of whatever digital tool the LAOG would use.  

Justice Talk, an eduLAOG based on the TV show The Orville, featured three convicted felons and a moderator (played by the facilitator) in a live broadcast. The viewing audience got to decide the fate of each felon. The educational goals were to explore biases, social psychology, modernity, politics, and heuristics.

LARPs typically have five phases: the icebreaker, workshop, game, debrief, and follow-up. Because of the online setting, Justice Talk needed a re-imagining of these phases. The workshop consisted of world creation with the audience and the game phase was split into 3 parts. First, the facilitator would get the three main participants to elaborate on their relationship and back story. Then, the televised Q&A would start, with some questions from the audience. Finally, the audience would vote on the verdicts. At the end, the featured players would step out of their roles and there would be a semi-structured debrief based on the issues.

In the Q&A section of the presentation, Negri revealed that icebreakers and energizers were difficult to conduct online. There were the logistics of muting and unmuting or accidentally leaving the microphone on for hot mic moments. Pacing was especially important as was ensuring there was ample opportunity for all players to participate and be involved in the story.

Sande Chen is a NYC-based writer and game designer whose work has spanned over 15 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.