The Chemical Heritage Foundation wants to set the record straight about alchemy. The medieval practice, often perceived as a dark art or pseudoscience, actually helped form the process of scientific experimentation and influenced our modern understanding of chemistry and medicine. On its quest to shed light on alchemy, the Foundation, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has enlisted help from Gossamer Games, a game design startup in Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio, and Frank Lee, PhD, director of the EGS, to create a mobile gaming experience about the “golden age of alchemy” using books, art and artifacts from CHF Museum’s alchemy collection.

“Recent decades have seen a revolution in how scholars understand alchemy,” said Erin McLeary, museum director at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. “Alchemy in the early modern period was not a fool’s quest for riches and eternal life: it provided economic opportunity, invited curiosity, and examined relationships between humankind and the natural world. Alchemy shaped ideas about experimental scientific practices and paved the way for modern chemistry. We are thrilled by this opportunity to use our painting and manuscript collections to bring this dynamic and exciting history of alchemical practice to a wider audience.”

Funded by a $100,000 NEH grant, game developers at Gossamer Games and the Entrepreneurial Game Studio will produce a mobile game, for iOS and Android devices, intended to help visitors engage with its alchemy collection.

Gossamer Games is an independent game design studio founded by students from Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio and supported by its Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship. Gossamer is known for its work with aesthetic-driven games that encourage players to explore, rather than compete. Its first release, “Sole,” in which players uncover the history of an ancient civilization by painting the world with light, was a finalist for the International Mobile Gaming Awards and has been showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade and the Boston Festival of Indie Games.

Through this project, Gossamer Games will design exploration-driven puzzles that invite players to investigate and experiment inside digital translations of the rich environments portrayed in the museum’s collection of paintings.

“We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with the Chemical Heritage Foundation to prototype a first-person puzzle adventure game set in the ‘Golden Age’ of alchemy. The game will invite players to step into the world of mid-17^th century London and play as a budding alchemist on a mission to unlock the secrets of early chemistry and metallurgy,” said Thomas Sharpe, founder of Gossamer Games. “The history of alchemy is deeply rooted in a blend of mystery and drama that lends itself perfectly to games. We’re thrilled to start exploring designs inspired by this beautiful collection of art that captures the excitement and wonder of scientific advancement.”

Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is often at the center of new, immersive and interactive game-play experiences around the city. Under the guidance of founder Frank Lee, an associate professor in Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, the EGS has brought arcade games to Philadelphia skyscrapers, transformed a library into augmented reality theater and could one day help us fend off an alien invasion.

“EGS brings deep knowledge of innovative game practice, fluency with navigating academic circles, and experience curating engaging digital games for the public,” Lee said. “The CHF–Gossamer–EGS partnership unites multiple sets of humanistic and digital expertise to create a game that is historically grounded, visually compelling, and informed by contemporary research on innovative gameplay.”

To learn more about alchemy and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, visit: https://www.chemheritage.org

Dates: June 10th, 2019, 6:00pm-9:30pm
Location: Drexel Square Park, 3001 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

On this evening, we will hold a public showcase of student developed video games displayed on the 29-story Cira Centre skyscraper. The event will be held at Drexel Square, Philadelphia’s newest green space. The event is free and open to the public.

Festivities begin at 6 p.m. at the newly opened Drexel Square park, on the northwest corner of 30th and Market Streets, with music, food trucks and games for people of all ages. Local game studios will show their latest experiences throughout the evening.

The highlight of the night, an opportunity to play video games on a display created by the LED array of the Cira Centre, will begin at 8:30 p.m. Everyone in attendance will be eligible to enter a free drawing for a chance to play the games

Skyscraper Games

If you’re an educator or developer interested in designing your own game for the Skyscraper, click above to find tutorials, game samples, and even a live codeable version of the Skyscraper itself.

The Chemical Heritage Foundation wants to set the record straight about alchemy. The medieval practice, often perceived as a dark art or pseudoscience, actually helped form the process of scientific experimentation and influenced our modern understanding of chemistry and medicine. On its quest to shed light on alchemy, the Foundation, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has enlisted help from Gossamer Games, a game design startup in Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio, and Frank Lee, PhD, director of the EGS, to create a mobile gaming experience about the “golden age of alchemy” using books, art and artifacts from CHF Museum’s alchemy collection.

“Recent decades have seen a revolution in how scholars understand alchemy,” said Erin McLeary, museum director at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. “Alchemy in the early modern period was not a fool’s quest for riches and eternal life: it provided economic opportunity, invited curiosity, and examined relationships between humankind and the natural world. Alchemy shaped ideas about experimental scientific practices and paved the way for modern chemistry. We are thrilled by this opportunity to use our painting and manuscript collections to bring this dynamic and exciting history of alchemical practice to a wider audience.”

Funded by a $100,000 NEH grant, game developers at Gossamer Games and the Entrepreneurial Game Studio will produce a mobile game, for iOS and Android devices, intended to help visitors engage with its alchemy collection.

Gossamer Games is an independent game design studio founded by students from Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio and supported by its Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship. Gossamer is known for its work with aesthetic-driven games that encourage players to explore, rather than compete. Its first release, “Sole,” in which players uncover the history of an ancient civilization by painting the world with light, was a finalist for the International Mobile Gaming Awards and has been showcased at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade and the Boston Festival of Indie Games.

Through this project, Gossamer Games will design exploration-driven puzzles that invite players to investigate and experiment inside digital translations of the rich environments portrayed in the museum’s collection of paintings.

“We couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with the Chemical Heritage Foundation to prototype a first-person puzzle adventure game set in the ‘Golden Age’ of alchemy. The game will invite players to step into the world of mid-17^th century London and play as a budding alchemist on a mission to unlock the secrets of early chemistry and metallurgy,” said Thomas Sharpe, founder of Gossamer Games. “The history of alchemy is deeply rooted in a blend of mystery and drama that lends itself perfectly to games. We’re thrilled to start exploring designs inspired by this beautiful collection of art that captures the excitement and wonder of scientific advancement.”

Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is often at the center of new, immersive and interactive game-play experiences around the city. Under the guidance of founder Frank Lee, an associate professor in Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, the EGS has brought arcade games to Philadelphia skyscrapers, transformed a library into augmented reality theater and could one day help us fend off an alien invasion.

“EGS brings deep knowledge of innovative game practice, fluency with navigating academic circles, and experience curating engaging digital games for the public,” Lee said. “The CHF–Gossamer–EGS partnership unites multiple sets of humanistic and digital expertise to create a game that is historically grounded, visually compelling, and informed by contemporary research on innovative gameplay.”

To learn more about alchemy and the Chemical Heritage Foundation, visit: https://www.chemheritage.org

Thomas Sharpe, who graduated Drexel last June with a degree in game art & production, was the project lead for the game. He is also one of the founders of Gossamer Games, a Philadelphia-based independent game studio that formed through Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio.

This was the first game from Gossamer Games, which made this accomplishment even more exciting, Sharpe said.

“When the nominees were first announced, I had to refresh the page three times before I could believe we were actually on the list,” Sharpe said.

“It’s hard to describe how humbling it is to see what started as a small passion project in the same conversation with some of the biggest mobile games in history,” he continued.

Sharpe described that in the game, the player travels through somber, desolate landscapes as the only source of light, leaving behind illuminating trails. There is no risk of failure or death and instead, players are rewarded for discovering secrets that are scattered throughout each level.

Most games consist of vivid, fast-paced visuals and are driven by social interactions with other players, but Sole is the opposite of that, which is what made the game stand out, he said.

He explained how the game is an allegory for the internal struggles we face in our lives. The player travels without an explicit direction or goal in mind, which represents the process one goes through when figuring out his or her life and who they are as a person.

“Ultimately, your goal is to discover who you are, where you are, and what your purpose is in this mysterious world,” Sharpe said.

“There is a zen-like meditative quality to the game. What is also most exciting to me is that this game is born out of Tom and the rest of the Gossamer Game team’s personal vision. For me, it is very close to art in that sense,” Frank Lee, director of EGS, said.

EGS assisted Sharpe and his team with the creation of Sole. The development studio started with a vision of bringing Drexel students who are passionate about games together to form startup game companies, and Gossamer is one of the incubating teams that EGS supports through access to software, hardware and technical and professional mentorship.

Sharpe said none of this would be possible without the endless support from EGS and the Drexel community in general.

The creation of Sole was certainly not an easy process, Sharpe said, so they needed all of the support they could get.

“Working on Sole is by the far the hardest creative endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of rejection over these past few years and working on such an ambitious game has been the ultimate test in perseverance,” he explained.

Over the past two-and-a-half years of development, the number of people working on Sole has varied, but there are currently four part-time members working on the game.

Nabeel Ansari, a junior studying a custom-designed major he created called applied mathematics and music, created the music that accompanies the game.

Sharpe and Ansari were also joined by Nina DeLucia, who graduated last June from the animation & visual effects program at Drexel’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, and Vincent De Tommaso, who is currently on leave from the game design & production program.

While the small size of the team has been beneficial to the creative process, it has also caused development to take longer than expected, Sharpe said.

Sharpe and his team are currently developing new content for Sole, and in the following weeks they will showcase the game at several local events in Philadelphia. EGS continues to work with Gossamer Games to finalize the game, which Sharpe hopes to release to the general public later this year.

“Though there are many challenges ahead, we couldn’t be more excited to see where they lead us,” Sharpe said.

You can see the original article here.

That’s the case for a student company from Drexel’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio and Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship, whose first game, “Sole,” is a finalist for an international game award alongside “Pokemon Go.”

The first offering from Gossamer Games, “Sole” is more a work of art than a competition, and its attention to aesthetics set it apart from a field of more than 3,000 submissions to the International Mobile Gaming Awards. It is now one of 150 nominees for the honor, pitting Gossamer against the likes of gaming powerhouses Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Telltale, and Square Enix.

The IMGA awards have been around for 13 years and they’ve helped build the popularity of previous winners like “Clash of Clans” and “Candy Crush.” While Gossamer founder, Thomas Sharpe, a recent Drexel graduate from Westphal’s Game Design & Production program, isn’t harboring dreams of dethroning “Pokemon Go,” he sees the nomination as validation of the team’s hard work over the past few years.

“For most of us, ‘Sole’ is the first full production game we’ve ever worked on. So to have our work-in-progress game, that began as a student project, selected as one of the best mobile games in the world is simply staggering,” Sharpe said. “Just being included on the same list as games like ‘Pokemon Go’ and ‘Super Mario Run’ is incredibly surreal.”

“Surreal” is also a nice summation of its gameplay. Frank Lee, PhD, director of the EGS, describes the experience of playing “Sole” as “zen-like.”

“Playing the game almost feels like meditation,” Lee said. “That’s certainly what I like about the game, and I assume that is what caught the judges’ eyes in their selection.”

This distinction is just what the game design industry needs right now, according to EGS Program Manager Arianna Gass.

“Sole is not your average mobile game,” she said. “Unlike the bright colored match-three, arcade clones that glut the app sore marketplace, its attention to somber detail and emotional journey set ‘Sole’ apart from the more than 3,000 submissions to the IMGA.”

In the game, players control a glowing orb of light that journeys through a world shrouded in darkness. The goal, put simply, is to turn on the lights.

In the demo, players explore a deserted city to find and activate obelisks that form a web of connected light beams. Sharpe describes it as “painting the world in light” to uncover its history and restore life.

As players progress through the game, the world transforms in response to the players’ presence. Grass spreads over the barren ground and trees bloom as the dark gray fog is replaced with bright colors and detailed textures. And there is a soothing, symphonic soundtrack accompanying the pursuit — composed by Nabeel Ansari, a junior on a custom-designed track in “Applied Mathematics and Music” — just to let you know there’s no hurry.

“While creating a therapeutic playing experience was never our intent, we’re excited that Sole is offering an alternative in a medium [that’s usually] driven by action and adrenaline,” Sharpe said. “One of our biggest goals has been to create an accessible game that resonates with audiences of all backgrounds and skill levels.”

IMGA’s recognition of Sole’s quality is, in itself, an acknowledgment of the evolving landscape of mobile gaming. Attention to detail and creative problem solving can be just as engaging as constant action or highly competitive gameplay.

“Nominees like ‘Sole’ highlight the new standard of creativity and the emerging quality of the productions found in mobile gaming,” said Maarten Noyons, founder of The IMGA.

Sharpe points to games like “Flower,” “Journey” and “Abzû” as the standard for aesthetic-driven indie games that “Sole” is trying to reach. Earning consideration alongside big-budget games, of any genre, would seem to indicate that Gossamer is on the right track.

The team at Gossamer, Sharpe, Ansari and Westphal graduates Nina DeLucia and Vincent De Tommaso, set their sights on building a game that would be accessible to players of all ages and skill levels. The goal was to use the theme of exploration to elicit the same emotions you might experience while being lost or alone — and then finding your way. It’s a different sort of thrill than the ones you’d get from vanquishing an opponent or solving a puzzle; one tapped straight from the team’s experiences in conceiving and creating its first game.

“In many ways the game is an allegory for a lot of the internal struggles we’re facing in trying to figure out who we are and where we’re going, both personally and artistically,” Sharpe said. “The premise of exploring through a dark world with no explicit direction or goal is a direct reference to the creative process we’ve undergone to make the game.”

Recognition from IMGA and, later this year at the Intel University Games Showcase, where Gossamer will be Drexel’s representative, could go a long way to bringing their work into the light.

You can follow the team’s progress on Facebook or Twitter and vote for “Sole” in IMGA’s “People’s Choice Award” competition until the end of the month by visiting: http://www.imgawards.com/winners-nominees/13th-imga/

You can see the original article here.

Video game as therapy?

Thomas Sharpe says that was not his intent.

But there is no denying the soothing quality of a new game from this 2016 Drexel University grad and his colleagues.

The game is called Sole, and it is one of 150 finalists for the International Mobile Gaming Awards, from among more than 3,000 entries.

In the game, the player guides a glowing orb, traveling through a shadowy, futuristic landscape. The dreamy soundtrack was composed by Drexel’s Nabeel Ansari, a junior on a custom-designed course of study in applied mathematics and music.

The object is deceptively simple: Turn on the lights. In the demo clip, the player activates obelisks that form a network of interconnected light beams.

Sharpe’s start-up is called Gossamer Games, housed in a Drexel-based incubator called the Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship. Other team members include Nina DeLucia and Vincent De Tommaso, recent graduates of Drexel’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.

Sharpe, who cofounded Gossamer while still a Drexel student in 2015, said the group wanted to provide an alternative to the typical video game.

“A lot of video games, they’re very action-driven. There’s a lot of risk and reward, consequences, and failure and death,” he said. “We wanted something a little bit slower-paced and more introspective.”

The game is not yet available for sale. It exists only in demo version, so its inclusion among the contest finalists was a pleasant surprise, Sharpe said.

Drexel professor Frank Lee, director of the university’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio program, is a fan.

“Playing the game almost feels like meditation,” Lee said in a Drexel blog post.

Other competitors for the awards include video-game powerhouses such as Electronic Arts and Nintendo.

The winners are to be announced in San Francisco on Feb. 28.

You can see the original article here.

A two-day workshop held at  Drexel University in Philadelphia will bring together 20 leaders in games for healthcare from the UK and the US. The workshop will begin with presentations from the invited participants followed by a funding agency panel, which is open to the public. The remainder of the workshop will be for participants only. Agenda is listed below.

Agenda

Tuesday, 22 March, ExCITe Center

[**Invited Talks section is open to public. If interested please RSVP here https://ukusgamesforhealth.splashthat.com/ **]

Breakfast (8:30-9am)
Welcome (9-9:30am)

Catharine Young – Head of DC, UK Science and Innovation Network, British Embassy.
Frank Lee – Associate Professor of Digital Media, Drexel University, US.
Suzanne Austin – Deputy Director for Research Councils UK.
Pam Kato – Professor of Serious Games, Coventry University, UK.

Invited Talks (9:30am-1:05pm)

Barbara Sahakian, Cambridge University, UK: “Serious Games for people with schizophrenia, people with mild cognitive impairment and also for healthy people”

Joaquin Anguera, University of California, San Francisco, US: “Using digital health to build good brain health”

Aaron Seitz, University of California,  Riverside, US: “The promise of brain training games”

Art Graesser, University of Oxford, UK: “Challenges in Developing Serious Games to Promote Challenging Subject Matters”

Dave Taylor, Imperial College, UK: “Major Incident Response Training for hospital staff”

Minhua Ma, Huddersfield University, UK: “Serious Games for Respiratory Therapy”

Walt Scacchi, University of California, Irvine, US: “Emerging Challenges with Game-Based Stroke Rehabilitation in a Nationwide Clinical Trial”

The Future of Research in Computer Games and Virtual World Environments: NSF Workshop Report.

Pam Kato, Coventry University, UK: “Perspectives from Both Sides of the Atlantic: Serious Games in the US and the UK”

[** Remainder of the workshop is for invited participants only **]

Lunch (1:05pm-1:45pm)
Funding Agency Panel (1:45- 2:45pm) 

Moderator: Frank Lee
Panel Participants: Suzanne Austin, Research Councils UK and Jon King, National Institute of Health

Break (2:45-3pm)

Breakout Session (3-4pm)

Facilitator: Pam Kato
Discussion about regulatory issues for serious games.
Leaders: Aaron Seitz, Thomas Talbot, Barbara Sahakian, Art Graesser

Breakout group presentations (4-4:30pm)

Dinner (6pm) – Cozara, 3200 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia PA. Google map

Wednesday, 23 March, ExCITe Center

Breakfast (9-9:30am)
Breakout Session (9:30-10am)

Facilitator: Art Graesser
Discussion of yesterday’s breakout session and review of first day.

Breakout Brainstorming (10-11am)
Break (11-11:15am)
Breakout Presentations and Discussion (11:15am- 12:15pm)
Lunch (12:15-1:15pm)
Panel from industry (1:15-2:15pm)

Moderator: Ioannis Paraskevopoulos
Panel Participants: Aaron Seitz (Carrot Neurotechnology), John Yosaitis (Medstar SiTEL), Paul Manning (Pfizer), Paul Diefenbach (enAble Games)

Break (2:15-2:30pm)
Next Steps and Whole Group Discussion (2:30-3:30pm)

Facilitator: Pam Kato

Media

“Drexel profs play games with Brits to improve health” Philadelphia Inquirer. (Front Page, Business Section).
“Philly’s health IT scene should pay attention to the rise of ‘serious games’” Technically Philly.
“Drexel Hosts Workshop For Therapeutic Video Games” CBS Philadelphia.
“Drexel workshop to discuss if video games can improve health” Philly Voice.
“Drexel’s US-UK Games for Healthcare Workshop” British American Business Council.

A wonderful curated tweet stream of the event on Storify.

Partnering with Temple Libraries as a part of their Beyond the Page series, Drexel University’s own Entrepreneurial Game Studio secured an informal Q and A session Feb. 19 with Sarkeesian. The event, moderated by Director Frank Lee and Program Manager Arianna Gass, posed student-authored questions for the feminist icon in a relaxed and honest environment: no audio or video recording was permitted, although tweets and photos were encouraged.

Lee was excited to have such a prominent name visiting Drexel, but recognized the sensitive nature of her visit.

“We wanted to keep it very controlled. The audience had to be restricted, which is why the event here [at Drexel] was invite-only and why Temple required pre-registration.” Such stringent security was far from unmerited as Sarkeesian had to cancel a recent appearance at Utah State University following multiple death threats.

Standing at just over five feet tall, Anita Sarkeesian displays enough charisma and confidence to make her the biggest person in the room.

Even during a lunch break while speaking with students, she gave off a quiet strength. Her back straight, Sarkeesian nodded eagerly along to points she agreed with, but became most engaged when she heard those she didn’t. At these points, she’d put down her food and scoot to the edge of her chair.

In Drexel’s ExCITE Center, she moved about freely, chatting with students who were there to hear her speak. The mandatory bag checks and the armed guards stationed about the room seemed almost out of place. However, for Sarkeesian this has become the norm.

“I was really frustrated with how inaccessible feminism and feminist theory was,” Sarkeesian began talking on stage, reflecting on her time in graduate school and the early days of her web series, FeministFrequency. “There’s actually not a lot written about the damsel in distress,” she continued.

When Sarkeesian began examining female representation in video games, no one knew that her mission would eventually be what catapulted her into fame and made her the center of one of the internet’s most notorious anti-feminist hate campaigns — Gamergate.

In their early years (circa 2009), Sarkeesian’s vlogs did not garner much attention, though both academics and those who also had a casual interest in feminism applauded her work. One of her more popular series is titled “Tropes vs. Women” and examines movies from a feminist perspective, featuring topics and titles such as “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” “The Straw Feminist” and “The Smurfette Principle.” This series was the one that garnered Sarkeesian national attention, and eventually shifted its focus from movies to video games.

“We contributed a feminist lexicon on how to talk about games that started from a working body of feminist study,” she said of the webseries’ successes. This marks quite a bit of progress — she’s progressed past arguing with people over whether or not Princess Peach was a “damsel in distress” — but Sarkeesian constantly reminded the audience about the long journey that the gaming industry has ahead of it.

The Q and A continued to describe the faults in video game culture and their impact on women. Sarkeesian viewed this discussion as a global one, a point she made clear when asked about the nature of differences in representation between western and non-western games.

“US media is exported across the world, and that’s fine except when it becomes exported ‘whiteness’ instead. In Japan, we see this as the exporting of Japanese culture,” she observed. “While culture can be exported, sexism cannot. We always need to consider the impact exported games can have on the community as a whole,” Sarkeesian continued.

She also noted that the definition of the gamer “community” has changed significantly, especially with the growth of mobile games.

“Who we consider a ‘gamer’ and what we consider ‘gaming’ has just changed so much. You’ll hear some mobile gamers called ‘casuals’ by others who focus on PC or console games, but I don’t think that’s fair. There’s nothing casual about the way my mom plays Candy Crush,” she added with a chuckle. This increase of inclusion hasn’t always meant better games, just a wider audience. She observed the redundancy of games in the mobile market, citing the many “Flappy Bird” knockoffs that litter the App Store.

These transparent cash grabs served as a case-in-point for Sarkeesian’s response to the next question posed: Do game companies have any moral or ethical obligations?

After a brief pause and a laugh, Sarkeesian responded: “I would love for companies to have moral restrictions, but they don’t.” She then dove into a multitude of examples of games or movies wherein female characters are used only as devices to show how depraved a male character is, citing specifically Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and the Grand Theft Auto series. “Video games are an art form, but they’re made by corporations, and corporations aim to make money,” she explained, noting a corporate flaw.

It was by this reasoning that she was able to answer the next question about how consumers can let game makers know that they’re unhappy with their games.

“We have more means than ever,” she said excitedly, referring to social media and all things online. Sarkeesian was quick to acknowledge how this connectivity can be a double-edged sword, especially given her own experiences with communities on the internet. She chose to look on the bright side instead, noting, “Entitlement campaigns can rise up, but we too can build up campaigns of our own using social media,” she continued.

Despite her history of online harassment, stemming predominantly from anonymous sources, Sarkeesian came out in support of hidden identities on the internet.

“There are so many [people] out there who can’t reveal their identities for the sake of their own safety,” she observed, pulling a hum of approval from the crowd. She was also careful to point out that her negative experiences came not from the anonymity itself, but the culture that hides behind it. “I think it’s a cop-out, really,” she said with a sigh.

Knowing that games work as companies, Sarkeesian emphasized that one of the best ways gamers can change the culture is through game reviews. “Getting bad reviews makes them really pay attention to what we’re saying,” she explained. Continuing, she noted how many gaming companies still operate on the now-archaic market research that white males ages 18-32 constitute a vast majority of the gaming industry’s clientele. However, video game market analysts have noted as far back as 2014 that the gaming industry is an incredibly volatile market with high levels of participation from many different demographics. The Entertainment Software Association reported that in 2013 nearly equal numbers of men and women played video games, at 52 percent and 48 percent respectively. When considering age as part of the equation, the same study noted that adult women made up for a higher percentage of the market share than teenage boys, at 36 percent as opposed to 17.

Sarkeesian also noted that there are, in fact, many developers out there who want to include better and more accurate representations of not only women, but of people of color and members of the LGBT community.

“We’re seeing more developers wanting to get better but not knowing quite how,” she said, making a case for why video game reviews should try to have a feminist or socially-aware edge to them. “Sometimes all that needs to happen is that developers are more thoughtful– and that could be as simple as being more aware of social goings-on,” she continued.

The next segment of the Q and A segued into next steps, beginning with a question asking how game developers could incorporate more powerful women into their games. At this, Sarkeesian rolled her eyes.

“There’s no formula for building a ‘good’ female character. A female character that can only be described as ‘strong’ isn’t a good character, either. They should be honest, meaningful, multi-dimensional characters, not just placeholders for the sake of ‘diversity,’” she explained.

Sarkeesian closed her discussion with notes on the power of media and education. “Progress doesn’t just happen, we fight for it,” she said while touching on the importance of women entering the game design industry and the implications that this could have on the quality of games.

“It’s not additive. It has to happen all at once. These are not issues that can be overlooked,” she said. In agreeing with Lee’s argument that more diverse groups create better games, Sarkeesian stood up in front of the group and concluded, “Look, all my work is based around the idea that media matters. What you produce goes out into the world and affects people. And that’s f-cking awesome,” she claimed.

Though she was on a tight schedule with a formal lecture at Temple at 4 p.m., Sarkeesian took 15 minutes to talk personally with interested students and pose for pictures. Joanne Wong, the President of the Drexel Game Developers Group and Ciera Gordon, the Head of Outgoing Donations for Drexel TechServ, were among the 70 students present for the event and both loved the honest environment.

“I love that she swore so much. It definitely personalized her and made everything seem much more casual and real,” Wong said.

Gordon agreed, adding, “I was happy and surprised about her stance on anonymity. I agree that there are a lot of people out there who need it to be able to connect with others on the internet.”

Following the cleanup of the event, Lee was tired but proud of how everything went.

“This panel really confirmed things I already knew and things I’m already trying,” he said, particularly excited about how this reflects on his Entrepreneurial Game Studio. “The EGS is not under any specific department or college. It is open to all [people].” Lee was most happy about Sarkeesian’s agreement of endorsing a diverse gaming industry.

“As I’ve always said, I want diversity in the gaming industry for purely selfish reasons: the more diverse the game industry is, the more interesting and awesome the games produced are. And I just want awesome games,” Lee said.

You can see the original article here.

“Controlling Chaos: Designing Compelling Combat in an Action Game”

Combat is unpredictable and chaotic. If games tried to realistically model combat, it would create random-feeling combat. We can use systems and design principles to create scenarios where we can control the chaos and teach the player to predict what may happen.

Adam Bormann is currently the lead gameplay designer at Hangar 13. His titles include, Tomb Raider (2013), Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II (2010), and Tales of Monkey Island (2009).