The reason? Well, one of the ideas I posted yesterday was a regular feature called something like "How They Would Make Games" or "If They Made Games." The concept behind it is that I want to interview different people -- students, professors, friends, friends of friends, anyone -- of different fields of business and/or study to find out 1. how they view video games, 2. how they would make video games for themselves and who they think play video games, 3. what they'd like to see in games.
The whole concept is based on a conversation I had with my roommates Keera and Ray. I told them that I wanted to take cinematography / film classes to which Keera promptly scolded me for overloading myself -- I'm notorious within my circle of friends for taking on ten too many projects and throwing away any free time I have. She was worried that I was flip flopping on my choice of study because of my numerous interests. I reassured her that I was not going to change my major and that I'm sticking with Game Design/Development and Computer Science. What I said next struck even me as I said it:
"I don't want to learn how to make games the way gamers make them."
I wanted to see how film makers direct their projects -- how they treat their audience, how they portray their visions to them -- and incorporate that into game design. I want to learn how they manage their projects, what goes into actually making their films and incorporate that into game development.
And so that got me thinking. Why stop there? I wanted to take a vast array of courses not traditionally related to Computer Science like Music Theory, Color Theory, Creative Writing, a handful of History courses. All to have a broad vision of what can and must go into a video game.
Fast forward to today. I have a mission: To learn how people want to make games and what games people want to play. Not just gamers and not excluding gamers.
Final thoughts and ideas: This could prove to be an interesting project for the Game Developers Association at UCCS to undertake. Perhaps it's not a project one person can handle easily. Besides, this could be quite the defining factor for the GDA. We could offer something of an "e-zine" or even a physical magazine that compiles all of the interviews, game development journals along with distribution of the games themselves (should we decide to create games based on what the interviews).
One more thought: I have GOT to think of a good name for this new project. Also... I should consider taking journalism. I seem to ramble a lot in these blog posts..!
--Todd Dionson
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