Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas Presents: More Free Games, Racing Pitches, Etc.

Well, you got Super Sprint which is a great present on its own.  But because I'm such a nice guy, I'll let you in on a surprise Christmas stocking stuffer:


Download Pong With Guns!!!  I actually made this game years ago in my undergrad college.  Shoot the blocks but don't shoot or let the balls fall down.  Game gets faster as you score more points.  The catch is this game uses Seinfeld quotes as sound effects!!!  It's a shallow game but you may like it.

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Oh, and I do have this.  I got the racing game pitch I made in November.  Someone recorded them all and I had mine on the computer for about a month.  I was too reluctant to show anyone.  But since you are all my friends, I'll show it.  Please bear in mind this pitch was given in front of about 50 people (including the Production professor):



It's just not worth hiding from the camera anymore...I don't care, I hate watching everyone else showcase their winning pitches so here's mine.

For about a week, all I heard was how great my pitch was (from both students and faculty) though the game didn't make it.  Which sucks since the point of the pitch was to get the game made more than anything.   Now that I think about it, FIEA is just a bad venue to make games in anyway.  Just stick with the safe pick beat 'em up/adventure game and call it a day.  It's all about portfolio work more than anything.

I think I did myself in when I said "let's go for the iconic style over technical," cause these pitches were all about satisfying the artists (the largest voting block), let's just get that out of the way now.  But I'm going to say this now.  If you pitch it, they will come...no, I'm not pandering to these folks.  This is pretty much what I want and then people will get behind it, I know so.  We won't quit, even in the face of peer pressure, vertical slices, whatever.  Stay the course.

SOMEBODY E-MAIL THIS VIDEO TO SEGA!!!

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And I'll foreshadow my next post with this:

5 comments:

  1. Merry Christmas Eric...and here's to a great 2012!

    RJAY63

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  2. Merry Christmas man. Godspeed on this next year (yeah, I went there)

    I'm busy packing as me and the folks are off to Texas tomorrow. I'll check out SS and recent posts then.

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  3. Thanks guys, hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year.

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  4. Cool, we narrowly avoided being killed twice, and finally got my uncle's internet password.

    So I watched the pitch and thought it was pretty good. Pesky time restraints. Though if I had to play devil's right-hand advocate, the beginning with calling the other games bad, stupid and boring could've been perceived as polarizing by your audience, especially if they are fans of those games, more so if they are not fans of our beloved #41 or don't appreciate the classics. Even though I agree with it (and thought it was funny), sometimes slamming certain games or their traits to drive your point across can end up being counterproductive in the end. Some people will see what you're driving at, others might get turned off and have their mind made before it's done.

    Not that it's easy; I did a presentation about the gaming industry going stale and used a lot of popular games to demonstrate overused clichés. I was very careful in how I drove my point across, though it was more out of fear that some clownshoe would butt in and say "STFU, this is the best game ever made!"

    But on the other hand, instead of the audience going dead silent, you managed to maintain everyone's attention and made them laugh at times, when the absolute worst case scenario could've had some of them thinking "This guy thinks everyone else's ideas are crap while he thinks his is great." Didn't look like it, though. But like you said, everyone made it seem like it was all great, but the results told a different story...

    Make a game knowing other people will enjoy it as much as you do, as opposed to making a game solely to pander to other people's interests. That's what I think. Personally, I wonder if it's even worth it to try to make others agree with you on something, (Not you you, figure of speaking) when everyone's competing against each other like this.

    I'd personally trade FIEA for Westwood anyday. A year and a half in and finally we're getting into game design itself. And I definitely agree with the portfolio thing. Makes you wonder about these schools, huh?

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  5. Hey dude. Well, about the pitch, I rehearsed it twice before the present date. Both times, the main point I got (besides shorten the thing) was "make us believe this is good." And that was pretty much the theme of everyone's pitch. So even if it wasn't popular opinion, just give me reasons why we should go with this (which I did).

    So I noticed a bit of backlash, especially the dubstep comment, but I felt I was persuasive and tried to get everyone involved. I was fortunate to be in the best mood possible for the presentation otherwise I wouldn't have a chance. That's about it. Just that the source material wasn't as appealing as others, that's about it.

    Frankly, I'm frustrated enough with this one semester so I doubt I could've handled the Top 10 presentation, the pre-production meetings, Super Sprint, Christmas break, and all the other homework at once...

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