Most of the time, offline video games support one or, at most, a handful of players at a time. But sometimes, developers find ways to bend the rules and create local games that extend far beyond the confines of the living room.
Take Renga, the 100-player local co-op game from independent developers John Sear and Adam Russell. The game literally takes place in a full-sized movie theater, and allows players to work together and solve collaborative puzzles using nothing but laser pointers.
The game certainly plays with the rules of traditional multiplayer design, and at this year's Independent Games Summit during GDC Europe, the game's developers pulled back the curtain on how Renga came to be in a detailed postmortem on unorthodox game design.
Sear explained that the inspiration for Renga actually came from other media like music and film. As he put it, audiences can enjoy these media in multiple ways: they can enjoy their albums and movies at home, or they can go to a concert or theater for an altogether different experience.
"And the question we wanted to answer was: What does that look like for games?" he said. "If you try to take a single player game and turn it into a crowd interactive experience, what would that actually be?"
In the end, Renga's basic design was simple and to-the-point, but given its immense scale, Sear and Russell believe it feels less like a traditional game and more like a full-blown public event.
Immediately following the Renga postmortem, indie developer Zach Zebrowski took the stage at GDC Europe to discuss his own event-focused game: Rocket Bullet Storm. The game was built specifically with large festivals in mind, and let players to control a simple arcade shoot 'em up on an enormous LED screen. Like Renga, the game found its voice by giving players a chance to share their experience with hundreds of others in a large public setting.
For more insight into the development of either Renga or Rocket Bullet Storm, be sure to check out the full "Unorthodox Games" postmortem in the above GDC Vault video.
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This, I hope is the next generation of gaming. It's the right direction. I think however audience response and nature is going to be dependent largely on the social norms / social expectancies. the other thing is while this is a step forward for gaming it still misses a personal authorship (I believe).
I remember when I was a small child .. I found my way into a bar .. they were playing pong on a screen set on a TV ... everyone was watching. But only 2 people can play, when everyone has a controller I think the tendencies will be a few will vie for control and the rest will simply watch still.
Without the capacity to appreciate the audience that is interested many will find something better to do. This is an activity for a large family potluck .. higher art theatre ect (we just aren't as socially mature in the states). but with random people participating, I think a smaller group will be more likely get involved.
If you have a director however, the norms can be whatever's clever. I think you not only need to give perfectly equal potential control of the game, but also an individual contribution point .. maybe something as usable as an ipad. Where what you are doing from your ipad, isn't a mimic of what's on the main screen.
Optionally ... I could see the theatre aspect simply being free form as they demonstrate, but with something more complex and exciting going on than simply 100-man Tetris or "Clue". Maybe a macho survival game?
Whatever, this is without a doubt a much better direction than online.
I remember when I was a small child .. I found my way into a bar .. they were playing pong on a screen set on a TV ... everyone was watching. But only 2 people can play, when everyone has a controller I think the tendencies will be a few will vie for control and the rest will simply watch still.
Without the capacity to appreciate the audience that is interested many will find something better to do. This is an activity for a large family potluck .. higher art theatre ect (we just aren't as socially mature in the states). but with random people participating, I think a smaller group will be more likely get involved.
If you have a director however, the norms can be whatever's clever. I think you not only need to give perfectly equal potential control of the game, but also an individual contribution point .. maybe something as usable as an ipad. Where what you are doing from your ipad, isn't a mimic of what's on the main screen.
Optionally ... I could see the theatre aspect simply being free form as they demonstrate, but with something more complex and exciting going on than simply 100-man Tetris or "Clue". Maybe a macho survival game?
Whatever, this is without a doubt a much better direction than online.