Game provides, at the same time, challenge, curiosity, and motivation.
Game design is the process of designing the content and rules of a game, and the design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters.
Gamification involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging, converting users into players.
Game offers a creative solution to almost all challenges that any company faces, including marketing, research, management, etc.
Game design is more than just creating game concept, how we present the game, and how we deliver experience to the player. Game design is also about team work, bringing the same vision, structuring the idea, and improving along the way with the whole team.
One of the biggest challenge in introducing board games is about how to explain the rules in the simplest way yet interesting. Some board games make you scared just by looking at the pile of components and a few sheets of rules. Even though not everybody feel the same way (I know some people who gets excited by thick rulebooks and complex gameplay), it’s definitely not easy to introduce board games to those who never played it before.
At 21st April we held Kartini’s Day, a day for us to remember Kartini’s fight against gender. Now days, woman emancipation had reached to the level equal with the man. Not only in a real life, but in fact now woman are gamers too, especially on social game.
For Moslems, Friday is a weekly holy day. In that holy day, Moslems go to masjids and mosques to do a special worship called Jumatan. There are two sessions in Jumatan: khotbah and shalat. Moslems are required to fully listen the khotbah for the whole prayer to be accepted by Allah. For that reason, they have to remain silent and listen throughout the khotbah.
Back Gamon is one of the oldest (board) game that we know. It was created around 3000 BC and we still enjoy it until today. Mancala is another classic game, created around 700 C, and we can still find it quite easily in the toy store around us. Those game are existing for more than 1000 years, still playable, and providing no less excitement than before.
I have just tried a new game on my smartphone. The game is about managing a cake store. I kinda like it, because it is full of colors and I like cooking too. So it is fun for me to see meals in any shapes. The artworks are awesome, make me want to learn to mastered vector technique. Anyway the interesting thing about the game is their strategy to keep players engage with their products.
When common people hear about game designer, what are actually they think about it? In my case, people usually think game designer are the person who create artwork for game. Then when I explained about game designer job desk, they would say “ohh, so you’re the game programmer?” or they just say “ooh” and think “is this job really existed?”
Segitiga.Net, together with Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) have held a talk show and seminar about how games can be used not only for entertainment matters, but also other wider areas. The event is called Gamechanics Talk.
Most people are seeing game in narrow point of view. They associated game heavily with digital game, table top game, or sport. There is nothing wrong with that, but I think it is much more fun if we are able to see game in much broader sense because nevertheless we are playing "real life game" everyday.
Kids love to play games, because they provide fun, and many interesting aspect. Games can be a tool for children to learn while having fun.
