How (and Why!) to Write an Elevator Pitch

This week, at our penultimate meeting of the semester, Jeremy hosted a discussion about elevator pitches.  How do you talk to someone about a game you're working on without coming across as a complete madman?

Imagine it: You're in an elevator, when suddenly Hideo Kojima gets in!  What is he doing here?  It doesn't matter!  Now you only have about a minute to get him to remember your game.  Oh no, his floor is coming up, and you can't quite communicate why your game is so exciting!  If only you'd rehearsed!

Suddenly, you realize... this isn't real!  You're back in 2017, and now you have time to come up with your pitch before that once-in-a-lifetime encounter.  Whew!

We also talked briefly about affordances in game design!  Affordances are an important concept in UX, especially so in something as complex as a video game.  There's no need to teach something which your design naturally affords!

The slides for both of these topics are here!  See you next week, at our last meeting of the semester!  There will be food!

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Tips for 2D Animation

This week, club-renowned 3D artist Joseph Scheidemandel delivered his best advice for producing fluid, consistent 2D animation!  Stop being so good at so many things, Joseph!

His slides are here!  You may recognize Joseph's animations from this Spring's game-jam-winning Wulfric and Pip, the only game I know of with a 20-frame animation for throwing a box.

Also, art professor Joseph Farbrook gave us an overview of the classes being offered for 3D art next semester!  They're open to students outside of the art department, but only if you get his permission first, so be sure to let him know if you're interested!

Weekly Announcements

• Our final game night is this Friday!  We'll be going all-out on this one, with more snacks than we've ever offered, Smash Brothers and Hearthstone tournaments and, of course, the usual smorgasboard of board games.
• We finally have a Discord server!  This will be the best way to stay connected with other club members.  Share things you've made, ask for advice, or just talk!  Click here to join.

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Officer Election Results!

This week, we had our annual officer elections to decide who should run the club next year!  The results will SHOCK you if you've never attended a meeting before.


Here are next year's officers!

President: Chris Klimowski
Vice President: Riley Driscoll
Treasurer: Dani Jaramillo
Outreach Officer: Vincente Figueroa
Secretary: Joseph Scheidemandel
GDC Planner: Joseph Corona

Look at this team, we're gonna do great!

Weekly Announcements

• This Saturday at 2PM we're holding our semi-annual Twine Jam!  We looked briefly at Twine again this meeting, and played an extra-spoopy skeleton-themed game I made at last semester's event.  Join us this weekend to make a bizarre text adventure of our very own, no experience required!
• Next Friday, the 21st, is our next (and final) game night of the semester!  We may or may not have a bit of a budget surplus, so we're planning on making this one extra special.  I don't want to get your hopes up too much, though.  We still didn't have that much money to begin with.

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Game Mechanic Micro-Talks

At this week's meeting, instead of just having one talk, we went all-out with a veritable barrage of three talks about some of our favorite game mechanics!

First, Jeremy talked about Hearthstone again.  He's talked about Hearthstone before, right?  Yeah, I think we remember that one time.  But this time, it was specifically about how, being a digital card game instead of a physical one, the game is designed with its UI in mind, and I think that you'll find that what he opined should be underlined in any aspiring digital tabletop game designer's notebook.

Next, Miranda talked about Fire Emblem... again?  Well, no, it was actually Dani who talked about it last time.  And Miranda's talk was specifically about how the games handle permadeath, the closest that video games can come to physically taking your loved ones away from you.  What does permadeath add to a strategy game?  How does it change its dynamics?  Who is that one anime sword guy from Smash?  Fire Emblem answers all of these questions, and more.

Finally, I gave a talk about Invisible, Inc, a game that I haven't been able to shut up about in any "what have you been playing recently?" discussions since last summer.  I specifically talked about how the game lets players choose their own goals for each level, balancing the risk of failure with the potential reward of precious loot, and along the way got a bit distracted by the absurd floor plans of fictional dystopian corporations.

All of the slides can be found here!  We hope these details in games were as interesting to you as they are to us!

Weekly Announcements

• We're holding officer elections for next year in one week!  If you're at all interested in becoming an officer next year, click here!
• Next Saturday, April 15th is our semi-annual Twine Jam!  It only lasts a few hours, and always ends in laughter.  No experience required!

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