During the second year of my Masters of Digital Media (Sept. 2010 - April 2011), I worked as the teacher's assistant (TA) for the Visual Story course for George Johnson. My degree in film theory and 9 years of video game reporting made me a strong fit for this course, which examines storytelling techniques in popular films and adapts them to the world of video games for inspiring video game designers. Averaging 10 hours a week, my duties included assistance with lesson preparation and tech support for the instructor, and project guidance for 25 first-year graduate students.
Between my second and third semesters at the Centre For Digital Media (summer 2010) I interned for a freelance game designer in Vancouver, BC. I helped write and design a Game Design Document for the sequel to a popular hidden object game for a major video game publisher. This title is under NDA. The delivered GDD served as a living guide for designers, artists and programmers on the European development team as they began creating the game over the following three months. The GDD, also under NDA, was 15,000 words over 77 pages, and written and designed in four weeks.
The Project I entered the 2nd annual Global Game Jam at the University of British Columbia in early February 2010, an event where amateur game designers from across the world create and collaborate on a video game in just 48 hours. The theme of this year’s jam was “Deception,” and the game had to involve “A skunk, a monk or a punk.” I lucked out with a great team, and we set about trying to rapidly prototype an idea that fit these parameters. Working non-stop from Friday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 3 p.m., we fleshed out a game inspired by Peggle (who doesn’t love Peggle!) that involved two skunks stuck inside the belly of a monster. They find a tumor-like outgrowth named Mr. Pickles who shoots them out from his mouth, and they try to break out of this monster’s belly by ricocheting themselves off dead cells and...
MyWorld is a digital literacy tutorial I worked on while receiving my Masters of Digital Media. By simulating the typical online experience (e-mail, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc.), this tutorial intends to inform high school students about managing online privacy and reputation, and understanding digital copyright laws. I was project manager and script editor on a student team that created the program for the Ottawa-based Media Awareness Network. I negotiated the scope and breadth of our deliverable with our client via weekly Skype conference calls, and created and maintained a schedule with milestones for our team to hit. In addition, I helped create audio and graphic assets for the tutorial, and played the part of homeroom teacher Mr. Billings for the Video Chat component of our game. MyWorld was created by Think Ray, consisting of Nick Lewis, Ian McDonald, Jeunessa Cheng, Khadija Ghazi, Matthew Schade Tools Adobe Flash CS4 (AS3), Photoshop, Dreamweaver,...
Courtesy of project lead and team mate Al Sinoy, you can play 7 Days here. Or you can view the trailer for it here. The Project The first assignment for our Visual Story class required us to make an interactive photo-film. We had to pick a strong image and then storyboard a number of narrative lines that all used that one image. We decide to build a storyline around the idea of a man dangling from a ledge, being held onto by another man who could determine his fate. We then weave this into a storyline that involves a supposed love triangle between three central characters, good friends Dave and Mike, and Dave’s wife Mia. My Role On 7 Days, I played the role of Head Writer, fleshing out a multi-strand, cohesive narrative. I also acted in the production as the husband Dave, created a production blog for our group over at...
The Project As our final six-week assignment for George Johnson’s Visual Story class, our task was to create a game that explored aspects of journey, transition, and character development through an interactive game or film experience. We were asked to consider the mythical tale of Charon and his boat traveling down the River Styx, transporting dead souls who may or may not interact with one another. But its main tenants included the following: “The specific challenge for this exercise is developing strong characters.” The idea was that the more the user explores the game space or environment, the stronger any sense of the personality of one or more characters becomes. Also from the assignment instructions: “The nature of the player should be addressed and made clear within the project.” As with most of this course, we were also working to understand implicit vs. explicit narrative and what role these types of communication...
