I'm a father of one boy and one girl. Husband of one wife. Senior Producer at LEGO at day. Amateur superhero at night.

Nordic GameJam 2006

Posted: January 30th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | 1 Comment »

Over the weekend me and my dream team of follow students from ITU participated in the Nordic GameJam and much to our own surprise we walked away as winners.

I’m honored that we won not only the jury award, but also the participants’ award. Taking home both awards meant a great deal to us. One thing is to impress the judges in the jury panel but a whole other thing is to impress all the other participants (many of the full-time professionals from the Danish game development scene). And that is one thing all of us in the group are very very proud of.

All the credits for the superb graphic design must go to group member and graphics artist extraordinaire Bo Behrmann Jensen.

Pen_&_paper_overview

Click on the image to see all the screenshots in more detail.

All game in the GameJam had to be about “Cooperative Multiplayer” and you had to create your game from scratch in less than 48 hours.
Our game is basically about two player working together to fill out the screen and score points. You cannot win the game as such; the aim is merely to score the most points.
One player controls the keyboard (the arrow keys and the spacebar) and is responsible for placing the circles as close to the center as possible. The other player controls the big pencil had are responsible for “fitting” all the circles by erasing the one that do not fit. This player must also eliminate all the monsters and rockets that spawn around the playing field, also by erasing them.
Confused? I bet you are! Download the game, and it’ll all make perfect sense (and yes it is possible to play the game one player, it’s just much more fun with two players).

If you download it, please give it some time to load (a couple of minutes) the long load time are due to an uncompress mp3 file that serves as the very moody background music.

Download the game here (Windows Zip file ~ 14 MB)
Currently offline

BTW: The fantastic background music is from The Marcia Blaine School For Girls.

Updated:
Ok, I’ll step down from the bow of the ship, stop shouting and turn down the Celine Dion soundtrack. We were just so overwhelmed by how our game was received, but some of the other games there really need mentioning. I personally loved the network game BoxWorld and the introduction and soundtrack from Farm Battle was worth every penny. Creating a network based game in less than 48 hours gears a lot of respect in my book.

Hopefully IGDA will host all the game on their website soon, DR (The Danish Broadcast Company) said they would but they are still working out the kinks. Stay tune for more information about this.

The entire GameJam event was a great success and has already created a snowball effect for us that we’ll hopefully be able to capitalize on.


Goodbye World of Warcraft

Posted: January 24th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Clippings | 3 Comments »

Goodbye World of Warcraft

… and thanks for all the fish.

Almost an entire year of playing World of Warcraft has come to an end. The thing I feel most sad about is all the other great games I missed while playing World of Warcraft.


No man is an Island

Posted: January 24th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

As mentioned earlier, just before Christmas I handed in a paper about a study we did of World of Warcraft.

We were looking for the dynamic relationship between the behavior of the individual player and the behavior of the groups they participate in, and how they mutually influence each other.
We used Bartle’s player types and two theories from the field of Organizational Theory; Richard Daft’s Life cycle Model and H.J. Leavit’s Open System Model.

Our problem statement:

  • When playing World of Warcraft, what are the key factors of the relationship between the player and the group?

To understand why players make certain choices regarding group structures, we will initially have to clarify how the game facilitates group structures and what types of players it is dealing with. We will therefore use the following questions as means to answer the before-mentioned statement.

  • How are groups structured within World of Warcraft?
  • Which type of players takes part in these structures?

Get the entire report here (PDF format)


New job @ GuppyWorks

Posted: January 23rd, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Noteworthy | 3 Comments »

I’ve just started my new job as a scripter / level designer at the Copenhagen based game company GuppyWorks.

Currently I’m assigned to their upcoming 3rd person adventure/action game called “HCA – The Ugly Prince Duckling” (based on the life of the world famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.

HCA

My work mainly consists of making HCA do the proper things using some LUA scripting and XML. I’ll let you know more when I get the final version of my NDA, and I know what I can and cannot say.


Incredible Stunt: GTA San Andreas

Posted: January 17th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Clippings | Comments Off

Crazy stunt captured in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you have to see it! Involves an ATV, a cliff, and an airplane

See the video @ Google | digg story


7021 spam comments and still counting

Posted: January 13th, 2006 | Author: Simon | Filed under: Clippings | Comments Off

Just before Christmas I installed Akismet spam comment killer plug-in, and I must say that it is the best darn spam killer I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

No spam comments have slipped through since I installed it. None, zip, nada… and no real comments where marked as spam either.

It is really really good.

As of now 7021 spam comments have been caught. Download it and install it, you will not regret it.