The 2011 Game Design Challenge

[Music] okay everybody settle down settle down it's uh it's a final day of Game Developers Conference everyone have a good conference this year yeah surprisingly good amazingly good I'm I I have no complaints except for maybe how late I was out last night I'm sure like many of you so before we get started on the Game Developers Conference a few quick words about something else that's happening at the game ball press conference that's the metagame any players of the metagame here in the audience yeah thank you well on behalf of local number 12 which is Mike Edwards Colleen Macklin John sharp and myself we want to thank all of you for a really fabulous incredible conference game this year I think I've been doing conference games at the game golfers conference every year for the last 12 years and the metagame I think really is a sort of unqualified success it's really been a great time and you guys have been so

great and we've gotten so many requests from people that want full decks of the metagame that as of this moment I am prepared to announce that just about 15 minutes ago we launched our Kickstarter page to raise money to print meta game decks for all of you to order so so uh so look for us on Kickstarter and thank you players and game boppers conference and our sponsors the NYU game Center and BBC and the IG da for helping make that happen you've been fabulous after this session immediately after this session at 1:30 at the IG da booth in the South Hall is the final tournament even if you don't have a lot of cards you might qualify for a local number 12 t-shirt just for showing up and if you show up you definitely will help determine the winner because like all the other meta game matches it will be a vote by V bystanders all right without further ado let's get down to it the game design challenge GDC 2011 now yeah let's hear it okay game design challenge we we have an

absolutely sort of like face-melting roster of game design challenge on on stage here today um you know the game design challenge is about challenging game designers how about that to think about really unusual difficult game design problems it gives us a glimpse into how these incredibly talented and brilliant designers think about problems and and it also gives us a glimpse into new ways of thinking about games that that might spark ideas in their work or or in your work or in the industry as a whole I've been doing the game design challenge for a long time we've looked at at themes like the love story last year was real-world permadeath where Jenova Chen our returning champion had the winning I had the winning entry here's how it works about a month or two before the game toppers conference I let our panelists know about our theme and they have to put together a concept that they're gonna pitch to you the only

restrictions are that it really has to be for present day technology and and other than that they can present it however they wish and I think we're gonna have some unusual and interesting presentations today um I always try and pick a theme for the game design challenge that somehow is a is a riff or or parody or a reflection of something that's in the air of the game industry at large and um you know some of the things that are going on this year really have to do with the explosive growth and and and maybe controversy of games played on social networks like Facebook you know these these games are pervading our lives in in unusual ways they they take over a time there's sort of appointment style asynchronous gameplay they make us use our friends our instrumentalize or play with our friends in new ways and and some people haven't linked this to the idea of gamification right the idea that games are potentially a lens for looking at everything and the entire world and and all of our social relationships and and societal structures and and and cultural

artifacts as games right within the lens of games now the funny thing is that human culture has had an idea of putting a sort of metaphysical of rayma round around everything that we do and and who we are and how we behave and what we should and shouldn't do and kind of grading and judging our actions and some might call that religion and and so that the theme this year of the game design challenges merging these two ancient forms of human practice right merging merging games and and religion and and what would that mean so the challenge that I gave our intrepid designers was create a game that could also in some way be a religion and not a game about a religion right not a game which tells the story of a you know a priest who has a spiritual a journey or something but but rather a game that that really in its practice and in the way it operates on its players or in society is also in fact in some way a

bona fide religion so I can't wait to see what these guys have come up with and I'm sure you can't wait as well um you all have a really big part in the game design challenge every year which is to vote on the winner through applause so listen carefully and I think that um I want to share with you guys surprises so the winner will get to pick which of the which of the three prizes they want but everyone gets a prize first we have this New Testament Pocket Edition which I can now say that I've done some bible-thumping at at the game toppers conference we also have the Book of Mormon another great book and l ron hubbard's Dianetics just for a different flavor so this is what they'll be competing for all right without further ado we are gonna bring up Jason R or Jason Wars a legend in the in the art games movement he's made wonderful games like passage that that have moved many of us and recently reached his game inside a star-filled sky let's hear for

Jason war yeah sorry switch the there so one thing that where can you move over because I like to walk around and do my Obama thing so one thing Eric didn't tell you guys is that we have to say yes before I find out what the challenge is is that's that's a key part of this right and also the the Dianetics prize is awesome because I actually went to the college library and was reading all the Scientology books that they had there when I was thinking about this so yeah so Scientology is close to my heart okay so chain world so a very old purpose of religion was to explain physical mysteries in the world we don't like these huge mountains they're so impressive they close with these spiritual feelings like where did they come from how did they get here a good example of this comes from Aboriginal Australians which have this have the spiritual idea of a dreaming or

or dream time that kind of existed for Humanity this is a painting by a famous Aboriginal artists Clifford possum of a dreaming of a particular dreaming from from Aboriginal spirituality and if this painting looks like a map that's because this painting is a map so over time that purpose of religion seems like it's mostly been replaced by science and like this particular sub purpose of religion has been replaced by technology right so maybe as a coincidence or maybe because of this I'm not sure religion kind of turned inward right so we don't explain physical mysteries anymore we explain non-physical ones mysteries about death mysteries about how one should live one's life and things like that but we still have physical mysteries and I'm not talking about like gravity or unified the theory of physics or anything like that we still tell stories to explain them very simple physical mysteries not that complex esoteric ones as an example this is my grandfather this is a guy who at the holding the pen pointing at the map this is from 1961 he's standing next to

the Ohio highway director and two ohio state senators and he's pointing at a map because they were talking about this this is i 77 interstate 77 goes all the way from Cleveland down to South Carolina and as google map shows at the blue line here and and back then in the 60s they were building this thing part of the interstate highway system and my grandfather was the first mayor of Farallon Ohio a tiny little village and right after incorporating they were like well here comes this highway we're gonna put it through the center of your village we're gonna bisect your village with it and he of course as mayor said this is gonna ruin our village and put up a fight with the state and so on it lasted a number of years and there were some lawsuits and and that kind of thing but in the end he won so this is where they wanted to put the highway where those red dots are and this is where they ended up putting it and the circuitous route around Fair Lawn into some countryside but then became the fastest-growing commercial area in the country back in the 80s and 90s because it went this big highway pass to farmland right near a city a populated center so now to this day millions of

people who drive on this road every year take this long circuitous route because of my grandfather it's like my grandfather's dog leg and i-77 so so I knew my grandfather I remember him but he died when I was like eight or something like that and my real memory some of them have become vague and these larger-than-life stories like this have grown in importance there was recently a newspaper article they got passed around my family about this thing my grandfather had done which is how I found out about it and the physical traces he's left behind have grown in importance to that's another example at a recent family reunion we took a drive around Fair Lawn as the first mayor the legend has it in my family that my grandfather designed this sign you go to the Caroline City website you see the sign and you drive around Fair Lawn you see it today and we took a trip to this park where there's a big stone edifice with this sign embossed on it and we saw stood in front of it and got our picture taken at this family reunion on that same trip we also drove past the house that my grandfather built you know at least that's what we always said when I was growing up double brick construction

in an era of timber frame and so on you know so how are these these places not like shrines and how are these these visits that we take to them not like pilgrimages my grandfather's become less of a man and more the idea of a man as the real details have faded and been replaced with these imaginary details that we're kind of filling in you know remaining photographs of him become like religious icons and we also hold on to these supposed to utter incidence a this but we say that he said it right and I actually gave Chris Hecker this piece of advice at the top just last week so anyway yeah so I'm still treat this as kind of this holy wisdom passed down from my grandfather that I I'm willing to foist upon a friend right like proverbs and so what is an idea of a man an ideal man but a god and our connection with him becomes very spiritual religious as time passes and this is more dramatic the farther we go back in time like I never even knew my

great-grandfather but I've driven past the house that he built and I've seen a couple of photographs and I have all these imaginary details that have filled in about him all these stories that have heard about him so the same process happens for historical figures like if you're really into a box painting you know you go off to Long Island and visit Jackson Pollock's barn where he did his famous splatter painting drip paintings and you know it's like this shrine all these things are preserved the paint splotches that he left right when he died his cigarette butts his shoes they're sitting there you can walk up to them and and it really is like a pilgrimage for people who are into into this kind of thing and and taking this process to the limit we get deep human mysteries like Stonehenge we imagine the Druids when we think about Stonehenge we really do imagine them somehow magically lifting these things up or our figuring about technology to do this you know I guess even though supposedly the Druids didn't really build the thing but we still think of them right so here's my summary of this humanistic religious practice that I'm observing in the world that we become like gods to those who come after us okay so what I want to do

is foster this kind of religious practice through a game design so here's a meta game that sort of comes close to doing that a game where instead of everyone playing the game at the same time out in the world one person in the world plays the game at a time and they're the only person playing it and then when they're done they pass the game on to the next person and they play it and they're the only one in the world they pass it on and pass it on and so on so this also along with starting to get close to this predecessor successor relationship that I'm talking about the spirituality has the properties of religious practice like the chain can be a secret practice there's mystery about the nature of the game because you're you don't get to you know talk to everyone who's playing it there's this one person mysterious person out there in the world planning and you're waiting to turn you're waiting to be chosen there's this anticipation you might get to have this experience sometime in your lifetime and you might not right but it doesn't really foster the predecessor of success or spirituality and the connection that I wanted when you start a game normally you sort of assume that this start state then you get when you start the game is the start state right you start playing the witness and this is like the reality

for you this is what has been laid out for you cheer in game foundation it's like you know like the game designer is God and they create the start like that's Jonathan Blow there with the crowd and he creates the start state in the witness and understanding the witness is in a lot of ways like understanding that one God like what did he put the here for me why what is this supposed to mean what's he trying to communicate and we really do think about the game designer a lot of times when we're playing a game and trying to understand it but what if your start state wasn't actually a start state what if it was someone else's end state and as an example of this I mean this is a simple reconnection of that of that chain chain game I talked about before like when you start a Mario level and you're in there you see some configuration of blocks and so when you sort of think of it as a given and when you see this you might say well that must be put there for a reason I'm small I can't break the blocks maybe I look for some coin blocks right onto the bottom or maybe I'll get big and try and slide under there and break through to see there must be something up there that must be there for a reason you assume it's a start state created by the designer but what if it was really somebody else's end state from a start

state that looked like this right so there's a story here about how that tunnel came to be and and it wasn't really put there by the designer on purpose of sort of a side effective of how the previous player got through the level I think a chain platform is a really bad idea because the challenges can be spent right this turtle is spent and the second player gets maybe a less interesting game or maybe a confusing game the previous player pretty much ruined that part of the level for the next player but what about a game where that has these properties so you have a goal to accomplish modifying the game world is a natural side effect of pursuing that goal but modification simply changes the terrain that the next person will face without ruining the Train for the next person it's being modified but it's not being roomed it's like creating maybe new challenges along the way and the platform is maybe too simple to have that have that that those side effects be have that property so in a game with those properties you might not realize how your modifications of the world will be perceived by the next player as playing along doing what you're trying to do or you might realize it and modify the world's intention the way my

grandfather might have been thinking about what successors would think about the state of Fairlawn when he made the choices he did about how to redirect the highway and so on he might have been thinking about posterity and as the next player you'll wonder how the world came to be in the state that it's in you know like wow what was the previous player doing that left these grooves in the game state these gouges in the Train you know what's this road for where does it leave what was this what was what what does it mean and you'll tell yourself stories to explain how these things came to be just the way just saying whether we tell stories about Stonehenge and have this sort of spiritual connection with these people so I ran in circles for a while trying to come up with a primary game to plug into this chain metagame I tried to invent a new game with these properties but my mind kept circling back I just kept track I was trapped in the gravity of an existing game a game where you modify the world as a side effect of pursuing your goal and a game where you leave traces behind and discover other people's traces and it also happens to be and I think it's probably true for a number of people the audience one of the most spiritual experiences I've ever had with a game in

my entire life I think and I think a lot of people agree so my game design is a minecraft mod or a Minecraft meta game a game is played with Minecraft so you receive the game on a USB stick in fact it's it's this USB stick right here this is the only one in the world and I've ever written some scripts there on this stick that make the game glue the game together but minecraft is also on the stick along with a Minecraft world that's on the stick so this is kind of like the Ark this is the the sort of holy object that gets gets passed down and here are the rules so this is the canon law of chain world so you plug this into your computer you run minecraft via one of the included scripts that's on here you don't just run minecraft directly you start a single-player game on minecraft starts up and you pick chain world as the world you're gonna go into and you play until you can die exactly once and while you're playing there's a couple of sub rules you can erect wooden signs with text to communicate to somebody in the

future and suicide is permissible so you don't have to keep planning till you die naturally maybe you play for a while and say I'm done I'm going commit suicide and immediately after dying and respawning you quit to the menu so after dying you respawn you've lost all your items you're back to the default state and you're back to the small end point and then you quit to the menu and then allowed the world to save because minecraft does that automatically and you exit the game and then my script is kind of waiting in the background there and it will automatically copy the world that you've modified back onto the USB stick replacing the what's on there and it also deletes it off your hard drive so then you pass the USB stick on to someone else who expresses interest not just like hey you want to play this do you I don't even know if you play minecraft you've got to find someone who like it's already sort of interested in the idea and interested in the idea of participating in this religion find a seeker right so and then you never discuss what you saw I didn't change world with anyone although I'm gonna break that rule here in a second a little bit and you never play again you were only allowed to play once in your lifetime so I was player 1 and I had all

these plans and I don't wanted to credits truck these things for the next person to discover a no and my seven-year-old travels with me and he's coming up with ideas and we're playing along and then I'm not gonna tell you how it happened because you'll probably run into it too because it's still waiting for you there but I had one of the most heartbreaking and poignant deaths that have ever way too soon that I've ever experienced in a video game in my entire life and my child who was sitting there was in tears and he wanted to tear this out of the back of my computer and stomp on it we didn't do anything for them we didn't leave anything for the mascara oh my god what you know yeah so someone in the audience is going to get to be player two but you know according to rule number seven you know it has to be someone who expresses interest I didn't just want to throw it into the crowd or have it taped to one of the bottom acre seats that would break rule over seven so I got any I need you know someone someone in the front row who's gonna who's gonna know I

can't give it to a friend to get me a friend it can't be a friend yeah okay yep so that's chain rule thank you everybody [Applause] thank you Jason I think I might be a convert although I've also been told I'm a religious so maybe I'll experience a few religions before the end of the session okay that that joke did not maybe not comprehensible we'll all wake up the middle of night chuckling about it so next I'd like to bring to the stage someone who truly is the legend of the game industry John Romero who among other things is responsible for games like doom that that helped invent what

we know as like the contemporary computer and video game without further ado ladies and gentlemen John Romero [Applause] all right I'm not walking around this time I've got to get my thing up there okay I'm glad that I didn't do the same thing I think it's a great idea okay [Music] yeah okay awesome okay here it is what is a religion I'm asking that question a religion is a deity it has worshipers there's a lot of devotion there were some religious

events in history that were game-like such as the Crusades which excelled at deathmatch a great job but I decided you know I kept on coming back to the Trinity to the deity to the worshipers into the devotion nice in the beginning there was at God and actually there were a whole lot of gods lots of numbers but then Rose the one true God God 6502 located in Cupertino but then God 6502 had a son it was Messiah 6502 here in San Francisco and the the Messiah six-five Oh too soon collected followers

first the first twelve are the apostles now follow on Twitter immediately Messiah 6502 anybody that's in Twitter we only have we only have twelve apostles we have actually let me let me check it out because I know that some people already kind of jumped on the the Messiah was discovered a little bit earlier by by several people and we have one two three four five six seven eight nine right now Messiah is trying to get followers and you guys can't see okay okay that's okay I don't need to show everybody okay one two three four five six I think we have 12 all right Wow we have way more 12 for those of you that can't see John is looking at a Twitter page with followers

of a twitter user called okay all right I got the first 12 let's I'm gonna need the the okay we have 12 apostles they need to come down to the front of the stage so I'm gonna need the lights to come up a little bit and those apostles are Christine and Norma whole FF paladin if you guys are in the room so you know that it should be people in the room mo more internets there's more internets in the room I need my colored stuff here okay each of the Apostles is going to get a stack of a paper squirrel tweets that's all right

all right squirrel Ian Bogost Chelsea how is Chelsea how here Jane McGonigal yes you made it let's see Paul Rylands Richard Lamarr Sean Brian cash John sharp and Colleen Macklin did we get all 12 1 2 3 4 5 12 are all here alright alright each no no each of the 12 needs to come up and get one of these and then stand right in front here over this way

okay you're ready all right now let's go back okay so the apostle rule is you each have a pad of sticky notes to gather followers in the audience and you have to find followers and return here after precisely two minutes go now all right they're gonna try and convert everybody as fast as possible if you've been converted you can you can resist conversion you know you can you can be a theist don't take a piece of paper sometimes it's you know involuntary you know you don't have to stick to one apostle you can like trade paper with other people if you like all

right you guys can crusade if you want crusade all over this room feel free to check into Mecca GDC on Foursquare it's right here in this room Mecca you can meditate and silent prayer you're not getting converted I see some papers are getting shredded up and thrown in the air you can drop your beliefs immediately if you don't want them if you want to be converted you can throw that paper down start a holy war mentally with somebody else tear them down everybody's got almost like a minute left what all right when you're done at converting people come back up to the front I feel that I remember you guys can resist this

conversion maybe if you don't like the Apostle you can throw away the paper okay times up all apostles come to the front all right if you didn't hand out all of you if you didn't convert everybody that's great everybody back don't be desperate can't convert the Messiah alright is it everybody back Coleen you're not

supposed to get them all converted there okay that might have been disobedient okay now the winner is the Apostle with the most miracles and the Apostles are all upfront here if your apostle marker has a star on it then you've received a miracle disciples of miracles come to the front yeah everybody come up to your apostle so we have to kind of spread out if everybody's been converted [Laughter] [Music]

[Applause] now everybody all apostles count your miracles [Music] gather your followers with the miracles yes [Music] lime is over here with the squirrel [Music] [Laughter] okay count miracles okay the Apostles have to count the miracles stack them up like gather the miracles

all right now as everybody counted miracles of all the Apostles he counted okay then all right all the followers can go back if you've handed off your miracles the Apostles and then the Apostles can come out front [Applause] yes if you've if you've counted them okay nice okay what are the let's find out who the winner is that's not that's

not real it's a real sticker six real ones five okay six is the sixes so far anyone else five right right six anyone else oh six Oh [Laughter] all right the winners squirrel the Apostle yes but squirrel don't go away yet of course we all know that that's not the end you're gonna have to come up here on stage because to to win the game you must kill me John Romero and now I present to you the new Messiah thank you and while I believe that lime

is the only true path all paths lead to truth all right thank you John Romero for that truly unique entry into the annals of the game design challenge history next we have our returning champion one of the founders of that game company responsible for favorites like flower and flow the man standing just beside me Jenova Chen ladies and gentlemen all right so first of all I resist this because it is now religion to my standard okay so well I was

presented this challenge I find it's particularly difficult because I am supposed to be a racist from China so I was trying to guess what is a religion and did a lot of research in fact I did so much research that I realized this is a final opportunity for me to put everything straight about my own belief so I take this presentation very seriously in China we do believe in gods and we have gods who created the world gods who created human but it's the believing part you know like we don't necessarily believing a God of Earth you know what can we believe about I mean in my opinion the Chinese gods and Egyptian gods are the old religions they represent a nun you know why is you know certain things in a way we don't know well there's a God for that right but according to Wikipedia a religion is

not really about you know having gods it's more about creating truths and values that can change people's lifestyle they can define morality promote certain behavior and this you know this regard certain behavior and really change our life values so if you look at the religious map I found interestingly all the Western religion they have God as a symbol to represent those values while the Eastern religion like Buddhism dollars and all these things they more focus on the actual life value and what is the way you to live I mean gods are there some of them has mythical characters but they don't really represent the way of living so dog ISM is actually you know dog means the way of life you know how it's supposed to live in my opinion I think that is what religion is it's about how you're supposed to live and you know there's confusion Confucius is more

considered as a philosopher but many people in China believing its value and living based on the moral standard he created so for a while I was a believer in socialism max ISM Morrison and eventually it's replaced Chairman Mao failed at convincing everybody that's the right way to live the end comes chairman then he promotes tourism which is pragmatism he really think we should develop economy to make everybody happy and for a long time people believed in that they put economic growth ahead of everything until today I think not just in China but also in America there's this new religion actually I see this awesome online dictionary says consumerism is a religion I think there's a way it does promote certain value and you know when they say the the consumerism beginners right and I

noticed that all these you know philosophies are religions essentially are trying to lure people into some kind of happiness even the socialism you look at the propaganda they have there but they actually failed you know this is more of a kind of rich recreation of that so my understanding my view our religion is that it is a core value that through a particular sets of practices and dogmas to that's developed based on the time and the environment it is a and two I mean the final goal is really to people who believe in it feel happy and to do that our religion has to address two of the biggest problem and humankind faced which is number one that boredom from a lack of purpose many people kill themselves when they don't have a purpose the other one is the feel for

death that's a the most common issues that religion has to solve in order to do that our religion has to explain the origin and the meaning of life and to create a belonging towards something that's bigger so even if you do die you're not afraid there's something else that continues of course as a religion it is organization you need to spread this idea obviously to many people to spread the way of life and their values and used to adapt to the changing environment and you survive the past the test of time and that's what our the religion is left today so far so as a designer I want to construct my own religion which itself is very insulting so my inspirations are usually from you know mythologist everybody knows the hero's journey monomyth from psychologists to the founding father of positive psychology people researching

on what makes people happy and this guy because we need to survive and we need to create something that is better that is more adapted to the current environment will be a religion that can you know really survive today and then other thing is what's happening around you know that's my inspiration but as a designer I want to make something simple and intuitive because kids today I don't have time to read menu they don't have time to read Bible it has to be very simple right we all just figure it out so I wanted to make sure this religion definite create happiness there's a very famous chart about happiness this is at the bottom is the GDP of the country and at the top is the country that has the most happiness and a lot of people who believe in - Marisa's see you know you need to consume more so you can create it higher

GDP so you will become happier but what they don't see is the other map which is often shown in the positive psychology this is a map about the percentage of American who are very happy which is about 30% and you can see from 1955 to today the economy has Skyride you know like 5 times people are making a lot more money they can consume a lot more but the happiness percentage is now increasing what does that mean then another chart from psychology this is the average income of America and the happiness curve and you can tell that was you know you have over 60,000 annual income the happiness level does not increase at that point but if you are making Lord and that yeah more money does make you feel slightly happier but this chart addresses a point that is once people have money that's not enough that money doesn't drive the happiness to a higher

percentage there needs to be something else and if you look at the science of happiness everybody familiar with Maslow's basic needs of human and all the lower stuff can be addressed by money you know once you have money you have a shelter you have food you have a family you can't afford something and if you do make money you do have a respect from others but there's a top one the self-actualization you know the purpose that happiness the money doesn't address in Joseph Campbell's work every single mythical story every religious star it has been told about a human which he calls as hero here is really everybody has to go through this path and what's important is that the hero in the end has to bring something back to his community to something that's bigger than himself if the hero goes dude all this journey

and only benefit himself this star would not be told and this is not a happy story but then if would you say our goal is finally contributing to our community many people don't get to do that until they retire what about the rest of their life you know how can you make sure the rest of your life is actually happy and we are designers we make game so we know how to make a life activity very fun very happy and we use flow as flow 3 we want to create something that is you know that has a balance between your owner ability and the things you're pursuing but then what is this thing in my religion that is really was pursuing the religion has to address this next problem which is the purpose of life you know what where are you heading to what is worth living right very difficult issue okay I'm trying to address this here so there are

various religions you know worse things that tells you why you are born in a certain thing like when I was in China I was told that we are born to really realize communism and you know really have you know defeat the capitalism and empower ISM but that didn't really gel with myself the consumerism says you should consume more to make more money and then that's more successful you will be more happy but I think that my work in today because we have all these knowledge but I think it wouldn't work for people from a million years ago I mean the human exists for a long time before they could even use language how could they understand the discount so I think even before human there's other lives a lot of people think religion is only for human but doesn't every life deserve to have a purpose in order to live many people who lose their purpose

wanted to you know kind of throw their life away but I wonder what animal does these days so I think if there is something that is so intuitive in these two survives through the test of time so if it worked for today's people it needs to work for people who don't speak so I think that purpose is so primitive yet has to be so profound and I'm trying to compare the simplest life form like a single cell and a human and try to see if there's anything shared between them and I think there's something common you know a for life it needs to have the rights to be born to grow and to propagate and you die and I think if we really want to find a purpose we could say propagation is probably the most interesting part of the purpose of life okay so it's not wrong to say we're born here to give birth to children but I think as the

technology and society evolve there's a better way to propagate these days which is the propagation of ideas you can do way faster like I'm propagating - what how many people here a thousand can I give birth to a thousand people so I think propagation is a good purpose for life but then what's the bigger purpose you know I think on the macroscope everybody is trying to spread their ideas so you know this is kind of like a natural selection I mean everybody tries to do try to spread their ideas as much as possible but then the idea that survive and that the most adapt to the environment would stay and it will be most optimized I mean that's how eeveelution works that could also be how idea works I think it's a refining process in a in a macro scope that everybody contributes you make the best thing they could do to this world and

the best and the most adapted idea will survive and it's a cycle you know what's your then someone else's work continuing proposed ideas it's a refinement of mankind it could be also refinement for you know the definition of life in the future but then how is the selection be made and who is making these selection and why this is the area of a nun and this is probably what the God is there for and God has been always this image to explain and says we couldn't understand but people always associate God was the technology and the knowledge they have at the time initially gods are animals and then they become elemental like earth mother and then become the stars and then they become the human but now up to today I mean our knowledge right now says we can trace everything back to the Big Bang but we don't really know

what happens before that so it's almost something happening in the other dimensions I don't think the God in my religion is gonna be a human character anymore it's it's the other dimension so for every religion it needs to have a value and a dogma right what do we do for this religion well we promote anything that enhance the opportunity for propagation on ideas instead of making you feel happy by consuming we make you feel happy by influencing each other we wanted to enable a flow experience of everybody to be in their life to propagate ideas to others trying to influence others we also want to protect the rights and the fairness of everybody's you know we are our life we all have rights to propagate so there are things that we don't like such as

monopolies and especially you know like when the company monopolized the market and not really propagate and evolve itself it's really slowing down the whole process of human ideas if evolution so then what is this game I am very happy to find someone already believing what I believe but there's no good game designers so what I'm trying to do is to give them a little bit help and make their things into a game first of all how many people actually watch tad videos here yeah we have all these people already but how many of you find it's very difficult to navigate the website alright it's it's a problem I think they should be watching on my talk so it's a very passive site

and you can see the slogan isn't none right ideas worth spreading it's not cool and if you look at the speakers other people who represent ideas there is no there's nothing to represent them I mean the speaker don't have a count it's just basically a database so first thing I want to do is to make this thing active right make it a game it needs to be interactive everybody needs to be involved I will change the slogan into a verb you know like influence with your ideas this is going to be a platform where everybody will have their own account what I want to do is to make the spreading of idea into your flow experience on the Ted website and to do that there are a couple of things I need to address first of all Todd has no immediate feedback how could that be fun as a game if you look at all these videos there's not even a view counts you know you can't even tell which idea really spread it we can learn something

from YouTube right at least there's a view count you can sort all Ted videos to see which video is the most popular which I couldn't even do right now and the second thing is like you can't doesn't represent whether you actually influence each other maybe we need to something like I'm inspired by this video you know that then you can really track how many people have been influenced by idea then the other thing is like we need to have personal page accounts like Twitter's I mean people have followers but instead of followers we need to have people who is influenced by you we really need to be able to track that you know have some charts really do all the web 2.0 stuff so you know you're the video and the idea is you post it there actually influence something and right now Twitter is now doing this in the best form I'm using the Chinese version of the Twitter and you can see on top right there is like a pop-up basically tell you how many new world people are starting to follow you I think it's a

lot better than the email spam I'm getting from Twitter the other thing is they implemented the badge system which is kind of like the fourth you know what people are doing augmented reality is it just gives you additional incentive to try to create more influence and the Chinese Twitter actually have a very complicated level of system for the badges so the other thing is like for game to really work to really promote a certain behavior we need to have a feedback loop just having badgers is not a real game it's just kind of fake impractical feedbacks but if the feedback actually contribute back to the core gameplay it will make the game fun you know a racing game you you you drive faster and you'll be more matched you can buy Oh faster cards so you can drive faster people who play Diablo 2 get addicted because you know killing is actually making you kill better and you just continue wanted to do more so for that I

wanted to implement a feedback loop of people spreading ideas then they win badgers they win honors they win points and then these points converts into you a bonus system which actually helped enhance the promotion of the idea you know they can be cross promoting they you know if you really have a badge you can use that to baby send it advertisement to 100 people really get more people to watch your videos and then people would really want to do more and to win more badges and they have more influence they could do our website and the last thing is tab doesn't have any social mechanics and operation you know these days online games and on our community requires operation to drive people to want it to do more gameplay I think one thing people can do is to do you know the most influential people after year based on the Ted website instead I really drive people to want to push more and want to be able to influence more so basically I haven't even named my

religion or name yet but here's tat the game and for sorry okay well whatever it's that it's a game for right I'm gonna name it propagation ISM that's it Thank You Genova for that highly philosophical and enlightening presentation now we have a few minutes left to for our for our three panelists to get questions from you the audience so this is your opportunity to ask questions because again you are going to be deciding who wins the game design challenge is it going to be Jason with chain world is it going to be John with Messiah 6502 or is it going to be Jenova with propagation ism yes all right um I have

a question for Jason are you worried about people maybe charging money for the propagation of your of your pen drive or is it all fair interrelation panel panelist mics on thank you there we go I actually thought about it yeah the collection basket or something but yeah no I don't there's no rules about that I guess and religion doesn't seem to have rules about that either okay John this for you how come you're still life how come you're still alive John alright well I finally understand your haircut by the way that's not an insult at most wardrobe hi Jason another question about rules

what happened when people game your religion take a big lava pit underneath the spawn point or play more than one time after dying what happens Wow yeah someone could cause an apocalypse yeah there's a there's actually a lot I mean I'm not supposed to talk about what I saw and chain rule but it just so happened you know passed down from Naches procedural generation on herbs that there is a lava pit right near the spawn point which makes suicide convenient at least so yet another question for Jason how do you feel about the potential of false chained worlds propping up in the world right those would be like you know like the twelve theses names that nailed to the church door or something right exactly yeah no that's that's sort of maybe anticipated thanks this is for propagation negative feedback loop you had a positive feedback loop but what about a negative feedback loop so we don't get bunch of Microsoft's I think there is a lot of

things to talk about I personally was talking with my coworkers we didn't really talk about active loops but we did talk about what what scene we should support which is saying we shouldn't support and I realized created religious is the beginning if you are the Pope there are many issues it's very hard to address for example like patterns in gaming us who we don't like patterns because in my opinion it stopped propagation of other people's ideas in limited other people to be able to do things but at the same time patterns are trying to protect the people who try their really hard to propagate so if I'm in the Pope for propagation ISM I will have a hard time to tell whether we should support an autumn or disregard that and I have to look into more like an active loops to really say something is wrong is very difficult that'll happen in Vatican 2 or something all right those were excellent probing questions unfortunately we're gonna have to move to the the voting section of the of the of the game design challenge now I'm

gonna ask up as I sometimes do in past years previous previous game design challenge participant to help me judge a Steven wretzky you have me sitting conveniently on the aisle why don't you come up and you can listen in this way you know if something goes wrong during the judging that here's the guy to blame so uh here's what I want you what here's what I want you folks to do think about who you want to who you want to applaud for you can obviously applaud for all three but we're gonna be listening to who gets who gets the loudest applause as I stand behind each of our each of our panelists and I'll stand behind them in the in the order that they that they present it okay are we ready here we go John [Applause]

Jenova I would like to announce the winner of the game design challenge but before I do I really want to thank all of our panelists I think I think in many ways this was an unprecedented year in terms of the really the scope and kind of philosophical depth of the challenge and I also think that we we had an unprecedented depth in terms of actual playable games two out of three and also real real deep thinking I think from all three of our all three of our panelists so let's let's really thank them all once again but rather than a fantastic year and I want to remind all of you that that that people on the stage

should not be the only ones thinking about these strange interesting and important and crucial ways that we can invent new games we all can be doing games that that challenge all of us I'd like to present the game design challenge 2011 award to Jason Moore Jason so I get offered the Book of Mormon all the time for free so I and I gotta take Dianetics nine minutes what did I just say and and our other two panelists will get their conciliatory prizes and let's give them all one final round of applause for free on some presentations see you next year same design charge twenty clone thank you