The exhibition was about expressive games, games that through game-only means (mostly their rules and mechanics) can express an idea or make some kind of commentary, in the vein of what Ian Bogost calls procedural rhetoric. Short on budget, we had to chose only 7 games to expose, and 6 of them couldn’t be demanding since they would run on relatively weak hardware. We tried to chose diverse kinds of games, but all of them were indie in the end. The exhibited games were: Michael “Father” Kasprzak and co. Towlr (and other puzzles), Jason Rohrer’s Gravitation, David Shute’s Small Worlds, La Molleindustria’s Everyday the Same Dream, Jason Nelson’s Game game game and again game,  Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back and Jonathan Blow’s (and David Hellman’s) Braid.

The purpose of the exhibition was to promote games as a creative and expressive medium and also purge the common misconception, one that is rampant in Brazil, that the game industry and games as a medium can be summarized only by the mainstream AAA games. You can see some photos of the exhibition below (click to enlarge).

An overview of the exhibition space.

Visitors enjoying the games.

Guilherme Xavier from Donsoft chatting with the guys from Ratel Studio.

The minimalist Small Worlds.

The thought-provoking Everyday the Same Dream.

The frustrating experience of Towlr.

The eccentric Game, game, game and again game.

The metaphorical Gravitation.

The difficult, but rewarding, Don’t look back.

And last, but not the least, the time bending action of Braid.

About the MegaMergulho, it was a series of 5 workshops about some (but not all) game development topics: Conceptualization, Game Design, Visual Development, Sound Design and Project Management. The first one, conceptualization, was basically a workshop about going indie, about coming up with a vision and conceptualizing a game that follows that vision. We asked our participants to create a game vision about the theme “Desert”.  The second one, about game design, we showed our own conceptual framework about games and made a comprehensive overview about the game designer and his job. The third one was about visual development, showing our own case on Tsar. The fourth workshop was about sound design with some theory over sound design and then practice by composing sound effects. The last workshop was about project management, we showed our management processes and also we made our own take on Chris Hecker’s finish your game rant from the last GDC, by encouraging everyone to organize, develop and finish their games.  All in all, the workshops were a resounding success and we’d like to thank everyone that participated and contributed to it.

So now that we are relieved of our side questing, we will return to the development of Tsar Project. Expect a Tsar Update soon!

Yesterday was Aduge’s 3rd birthday!!!

After a long era of post starve, we have fresh news that just came out of the oven! And smells like cherry!
We are eager to say that Aduge is now an official supporter of N Design 2010, the National Conference of Design Students from Brazil, which will happen from 11 to 18 july in Curitiba, Paraná.

N Design is an event that brings together design students from all over Brazil to discuss topics related to design, generally speaking. This year the event’s theme will be “Immersion”, proposing to have more in depth discussions as well as the participants enjoyment of the event, caring about the continuity of the activities after it. The main activity format will be the “Divings”, workshops from students for students about something related to design (or not).

You may ask yourself what does it have to do with us, huh? We’re doing some interesting things for this event. It’s a very special package filled with:

· The MegaDiving, that is a series of divings with the theme “game developing”. It’ll be five days with activities about concepting, game design, graphics, audio and project management focused on small team game development. Our intention is to spread the indie word, looking forward to stimulate people to take part of the indie movement.

· An exposition about Art Games on which we’ll expose ten games that can convey the concept of games as an art form, so that more people can get to know about it. We had not yet decided what games will be there, but we’ll have a post about it later on.

· The organization of a gaming space on the Event’s Living Center. Thanks to the coordinator of the Positivo University’s Game Course, Rafael Dubiela, who is also assisting 4 adugans with their graduation projects and helping us make the exposition possible.

· Run the project management system of the event. This item may seem kindda funny and needs a further explanation. Two adugans (Ingrid and Marcel) and Florzinha (which helped Aduge on the Global Game Jam) joined CONDe (N Design Organization Committee) to manage the N 2010 project. They became part of CONDe family, ended up proposing the exposition and the MegaDiving, to then make this support formal so that all of Aduge’s effort towards N could be grouped in one place. Apparently with only an indirect link with a game developer, Project Management is a well esteemed area of Marcel, one of Aduge’s business differentiation and a subject that we put a lot of effort on our graduation.

We at Aduge are very pleased with the opportunities that are arousing through N Design! If you are a Brazilian design student don’t miss this event! (and if you are not, you should consider tenderly visiting us for this nice conference =)

If you want to know more about N Design, access ndesign.org.br (portuguese only).

More info about our work coming soon!

Before I start, a brief clarification. “Semblante” is a portuguese word that means “visage”. A good reason for the choice of this particular name was because it is a phonetically pleasing word (when spoken in native portuguese at least) the other reasons are pretty much subjective and we leave to each one his own to think about it or not.

The game is still a little incomplete as of now, even if it has a beginning and an end, as we need to work out some of the mechanics, asset implementations and general level design. Semblante is also quite simple, you control Jung inside its own mind as it searches for its own identity (represented as a mask) while avoiding the shadows that lurks within. The metaphor is obvious and I will not linger on it anymore.

The mechanics are pretty simple. Jung has 4 mechanics. It can move, jump, shine and scream. To shine, the character needs to stay in light spots to charge its body. Jung glows for a limited amount of time and while it is glowing, shadows are repelled by it. Jung can also use its remaining glow to scream and attract shadows to itself. We have a lot of bugs to work out still but the core mechanics are all there.

The guys at PUCPR jam site (we are at the right, with “uniforms”)

Aside from the game itself and talking about the Jam itself. It was a pleasing (and exhausting) experience to participate on a Global Game Jam. The extra hands were crucial for the game to come into fruition. In the name of the team I’d like to thank, Flor, Santo, Paulo and Rossato for their effort and dedication during the Jam. We also want to thank Bruno Campagnolo for organizing the Jam Site and the free sodas and sfihas. We’d like to do it again next year!

Also this weekend Aduge will be a bigger and baddier team as we will be adding muscle to our team. Adding to our usual lineup of six developers we will have the collaboration of other 5 people:

Daniel Rossato

A friend of Vermonde and fellow programmer. A graduated Electric Engineer, Rossato has also some hidden skills that are revealed when he sits in front of a piano. Rossato already helped us on Tsar Project with some nifty pathfinder algorithms and now will return working with Aduge at the Global Game Jam.

Gabriel “Florzinha” Jacobi

Our fellow ex-junior entrepreneur and colleague at the Graphic Design course at Federal University of Parana. Flor, as we call him, is a comic book and cinema aficionado, that enjoy his games from time to time. He will lend his skills in scriptwriting and graphic design. He will also be an asset with his more-critical-than-the-norm approach to things.

Paulo “Lies” Faria
http://www.myspace.com/andalucia

An ex-Adugan, Paulo Lies left Aduge to fully dedicate himself to his band, Andalucia. A skilled musician and composer, Lies will be a great asset to creating great music to accompany our game. He is also a competent programmer and knows a thing or two about game design.

EDIT: Paulo had another things to do on the weekend and didn’t attended the event.

Paulo “Pixel” Reinehr

http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3182.htm

We call him Pixel because he is very good at pixel art, but it doesn’t stop here. Paulo is a jack-of-all trades, knowing his way into various other aspects of game development. He will help us at the GGJ with his expertise in the art department mostly. Paulo is another fellow student at UFPR and already worked with Aduge before on a old project, being a great help with his pixel art.

Pedro “Santo” Medeiros
http://thelectricafe.blogspot.com

A ex-colleague of Pirin at Melies‘s traditional character sculpture course in Sao Paulo. Santo is a prodigal illustrator and a graduate in Digital Design at Anhembi Morumbi. He is leaving Brazil soon to attend at Gnomon school to further improve his already impressive skills as an artist.

With these additions we will be going full speed ahead to the Jam. Expect updates during the weekend and the results next week! See ya guys!

Hello again!

As promised, today I’ll present a more complete review of what we’ve seen in Rio during the SBGames. Yesterday we had our weekly meeting and basically discussed about the Symposium. Undoubtedly the most important aspect of our participation in the event was the networking we did there: game industry consultants, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (MinC), publishers incubating programs, fellow developers, students and researchers. Secondly we agreed that the panels, as Bruno said three days ago, were the highlights of the event. Two of them, on Game Development Education and Governmental Policies, promoted some good discussion, but sadly also highlighted some misconceptions that are still deeply stuck in the minds of many in the Brazilian Game Industry and Educational System. Some of these include: the belief that is by trying to do the “Next Halo” – as put by Jason Della Rocca – that new developers will prevail, that there is no opportunity in remaining independent and in small business, that games should be viewed as simple entertainment industry goodies, that the artistic aspect of a game is limited to it’s visual aesthetics, that sound design is something alien to game development, that Game Design has more affinities to Product Design than with Chess, and so on. But don’t worry, as a coin has two faces there’s always the bright side. We discovered that the MinC has a very interesting opinion of Games and their artistic value, found some small developers and starter teams with some nice ideas and made some good acquaintances. Jason’s keynote was a very interesting and provoking exposition. Talking about the trends and the innovative cycles that permeates our industry, Jason urged the Brazilian developers to ignore the mainstream box (big budget, big teams, blockbuster AAA titles) and look for other ventures (indie, casual, advergames, etc.) to flourish. We hope that those wise words will be heard by the Brazilian developers.

Other remarkable pieces of the Symposium were the Indie Game Festival and the VideoGame Art Exhibition. Despite the short time we had to appreciate all the material in them, both seem to be great initiatives and had some good material to present. The sad part is the huge disparity of the contents. The Art Exhibition presented some concept arts and visual assets with artsy aesthetics (although in general the final assets tend to completely destroy the most beautiful and experimental concepts trying to look “realistic”), a nice character design competition (with both good ideas and childish-awesome-super-ultra-characters) and specially good exemplars of games with artistic meaning, such as the indies Passage, Gravitation and I Wish I Were The Moon. On the other hand, the games in the Indie Festival, as we were able to percieve them, lacked in general the deeper meaning and potential to transform a player through reflection and/or more experimental mechanics that are among the key features of many indie games done around the world. Many of the games in the Indie Festival had more garage-made-like, low budget features, and a clear desire to be a mainstream game, instead of focusing on innovative and experimental ideas, creative freedom or meaningful experiences. Once again we spot the evilness of the “Next Halo” Syndrome, even small teams tend to believe that the best way to go is, with a team of less than 20 people and a small budget, try to do something that will compete with EA, Ubisoft and Activision-Blizzard. So, remember Jason’s words and let’s start thinking out of the box or, even better, show us that there’s already more than meets the eye in the Brazilian industry. As I said in the first lines of the post, the greatest treasure of the Symposyum was networking, and people we met in this and the past SBGames give us hope that the second option is true. Some of them are our friend Guilherme Xavier and his team from Donsoft, the developers of the great winner of the Festival, the promising Capoeira Legends.

So, creative minds, bold designers, indie developers from Brazil, we call you all, we ask you to show yourselves!

The last fortnight was a productive one. The game prototype is now running in 0.1 version, we’ve got the pathfinding algorithms improved and our test dummy character; a Kremlin Guard warmheartedly called Josino, Iosifka in Russian; is getting it’s first scratches of a.i., starting with the ability of hearing, which, by the way, will be of great importance for both NPCs and the Player in Tsar Project.

Another important Milestone achieved in this last week is that all the initial ConceptArts for the Characters are done, that means that we’ve completely defined the aesthetics of the game and the appearance of all the classes of characters and the individual special ones. At this stage the Visual Art Department changes it’s focus to the Backgrounds, and Character Design will be on hold ’til we got the initial development of the Concepts for the rooms of the Kremlin, which is scheduled to end at the end of the Month. Talking about schedules, the Project Schedule has just been revised and optimized in a new project management tool this week.

In the other Departments, Beto and Bruno finished the most important aspects about the Game Dynamics (combat and ambient interactions, to be specific), the Enemies descriptions, and have planned the next steps of the Level Design documentation. Aural Art Department just finished the plot of the Conceptual Soundscape. And, last but not least, our dear Screenwriter is heavily working in the creation and development of the many scenes and dialogues of Tsar Project including the multiple endings of the game. Of course, her work is highly confidential as it is a torrent of spoilers.

We are working on a “new” project! Actually started last March, the project is currently around half of it’s pre-production. We call it

Tsar Project.

We will start a production journal of it very soon on this same weblog and more info will be filled on a future special page.

NOT

Two days ago the Unis closed their doors. All of them. The education facilities are closed here in Curitiba until, they say, August’s 10th, but probably later. The reason?, you may ask, it’s the fear of Influenza A H1N1. The weather around here is terrible in the last few days, cold and moistly, and the numbers are growing fast. I should remember that I do live in an apartment in the old centre of the city, next to UFPR’s Design campus and it’s, oh!, Hospital! Yeah, the one place in Curitiba were most of the Influenza cases are being observed. By the way, that apartment is also Aduge’s Headquarters. Outside our windows it’s easy to spot people walking down the street wearing their panic (flu) masks, it’s sort of uncomfortable, to say least.

The classes are suspended and we can feel a heavy air around, but our work keep rolling. Mostly of it is being done alone, the Adugans staying comfortably at their homes, and here the beauty of the web is on our side. Tools like IRC, Google Docs, Gtalk, Gmail, SVN, Wikimedia, all of which are being used a lot during the workdays. We’ve passed through a similar situation when I was living in São Paulo and Marcel in Köln, however the funny (or not) part is that this time we’re all here in Curitiba less than 8 miles apart. I believe that at least we’ll keep our weekly meetings here in the HQs, but even if not, don’t worry, everything is just according to the schedule. This will eventually pass and we give our best wishes of hope (and good health!) to the world. This will pass. After all, we must be here to watch 2012 come.