The IGF Audience Award is open for voting, and do give Sean a leg-up by supporting Battleship Forever!

On 12th January, Saturday, the SSC held its first meeting and gathering. In total 30 people attended this gathering. We are honored to have Donny and Chor Guan from MDA and Alex from NUS to join us for this gathering. To everyone - Thanks for coming to support the SSC!

During this gathering, Kun gave his opening speech as the Coordinator of the SSC and shared with us his vision and goals for the SSC with the participants.

This is then followed by Donny’s very informative presentation on the Games Industry in Singapore with highlights of the business opportunities in the Games Market, the demand of the market for game-related professions and MDA’s role to support the local Games Development Industry.

Chor Guan then followed up on presenting the various approaches taken by MDA to support and provide resources to nurture budding talents who are passionate and dedicated to producing games. Among these enticing approaches are: a new Games Lab in town dedicated for game development teams to brainstorm and create games, and recruiting a larger contingent of students for this year’s GAMBIT program at the MIT. Chor Guan also mentioned that what matters most are young talents having the passion and dedication to make games, and complementary skill set, rather than possessing top grades in school.

After the presentations, the participants adjourned for light refreshment and spent the rest of the session interacting with each other.

After the event, the main members of the SSC got together for a short and relaxing get-together session to… play games! We crowded around to look at the demonstration of the game Monster and Justin’s demo play of the indy game Mogura - yes, gaming is our way to relax too!

With the start of this first gathering, the SSC strives to bring more events to the local gaming community to learn, interact, play and create! Stay tuned to this site =)

*photos on the event coming soon!

We are launching a new categories of articles on the IGDASSC Portal! As its name implied, Learning & Resources will be articles on how you can learn the means of game design, creating games (such as the dreaded programming) and other interesting pieces of knowledge. We hope to accumulate as many helpful tutorials and resources in this categories, so if you have any, be sure to mention them in the comments!

For starter, let’s touch on the dreaded topic of programming. In the past, the easiest way to pick up programming was through a language so easy that it was called BASIC. It is hard to find any decent book that teaches BASIC and good programming techniques back then (and not to mention nowadays), so it is great that one still exists online, which is called “You Should Learn to Program”. Though this book is written in 1985, it teaches important concepts of programming in an understandable way which I feel other books never achieve.

There are many variants of BASIC you can choose from. The one that works best with the examples in the online book is GW-BASIC, which you can get from this fan-site. Those who prefers a modern update to the language (or still lust after good old QBasic) may want to check out FreeBASIC. And yes, with FreeBASIC, you can do games too!

A lot of people has long known the fixation and love I have for the game Saints Petersburg. It’s a light to medium city building game in which you try to amass basic industries, build up Saints Petersburg and recruit noblemen to your cause in an attempt to gain the most points at the end of the game. It is light, casual and fun, and have quite a number of interesting rules; applicable to computer game too!

So after playing almost a dozen games (someone help me keep count please!) , I have decided I want to do a game of using the same mechanics but with a different theme. At the same time, a different theme leads to a different premise, and different premise, to mechanics.

The name of the game is Dynasty. In a cradle of civilisation unrecorded by any historians or listed in any chronicles, four civilisations struggled to dominate the area. From small settlements, such as fishing villages, crossroad towns and mining settlements, they form into cities and towns. With such permanent places of settlements, they begin to expand their city and gather people who are the pillar of any great civilisations - laborers, scribes, warriors, merchants, noblemen and even mystics. But there come a point when the cradle is too small for four teeming civilisations  and it comes down to conflicts.

War is one form of the conflicts possible, but one thing I wish to experiment, as in Petersburg, is the multi-prong approach to victory. After all, it is the amount Victory Points (or Dynasty Points, in this game), which influence if your civilisation is going to last the ravages of time, or would just disappear from the surface of the world, perhaps mentioned in a footnote in some obscure tome of lore. Hence buildings and character cards allows different variety of actions.

The original Petersburg has four phases - Industry, Building, Aristocrats and Trade. Sean “th15″ Chan has long pointed out that there is no much direct competition; and considering that its premise is of building, direct competition does seem out of place. Dynasty, however, is about 4 civilisations vying for supremacy, and some form of direct competition is expected.

Dynasty has two extra, optional phases - planning and conflict. The planning phase is where you spend resources to buy Action cards - and what characters and buildings you have built and recruited influence  what actions you can play. The conflict phase is where all things go wild. War, assassinations, political schemings, double-back-stabbing, calling down of heavenly fires etc — all come into play.

But the thing that is puzzling about the conflict phase, even as I am planning for it now is, the victor is not necessary who endures. Remember, Dynasty Points is the only measurement of victory. Having a large army at your bid and call is not.

Well, this is just a quick brief on what Dynasty is about. However, the mechanics used in Saints Petersburg or more or less duplicated here. It’s interesting just how a change of premise (which leads to a couple of new mechanics and direct competition) may come up with a different game. I believe Dynasty will is about 1.5 times to 2 times more complex than Petersburg, and the direct competition aspect 100% more!

There is no mistake in that combination of sound industry knowledge and wise business decisions for achieving commercial success in your games. That is a definite granted.

There are however, those who consistently view this as a struggle against the fundamental passion of it all. If you’re one of them you’ll know it.

1. You’re flooded with extraordinary ideas for making games.

2. You eat, drink, sleep, breathe, see, touch, thrive on making games.

3. If you were born in another time, another world, you’d still be making games.

4. If you were born in the renaissance, and because you were there, you’d influence Michelangelo and his contemporaries into making games.

5. If there were no money in this business, you’d still be making games.

6. If you had to pay for it rather than earn from it, you’d still be making games.

7. You hate programming, but for your passion, you’d pick it up so you could be making games.

8. You want to motivate the deaf and put smiles on cancer patients by making games.

9. You made the mute speak by making games. (”I won!”)

10. With regard to 4, I’m like talking the whole Sistine Chapel emanating game design concepts.

Essentially, you know you really are passionate when deep in your soul you long for that ideal circumstance - where no financial concerns existed in the field of your game production. Which brings us to

1000. You’d retire to make games. And not make games for retirement.

Many thanks to everyone who came down to the IGDASSC Kickoff Meeting; without your support we wouldn’t have such a lively interaction and have a great time of sharing. Special thanks to Ms. Teo and Donny from MDA who came down specially to share with us about Gambit and the possible ways in which the government could help us to break into the games industry.

More photos and write-ups to come!

On the 6th January, Sunday, the members of the SSC joined Gambit members for an evening of fun at Settlers Clarke Quay. Thanks to Joshua and Bruce for inviting us to the gathering! Kudos to Xuanming for the fun and laughter you have brought us! (More on that later =D)

In the previous meet, we got to see Desmond’s game, Junkyard. This time, Joshua has kindly brought his Heroes of Might and Magic inspired, 2-player board game - Elementary. Through the demo play by Joshua and Sean, Elementary allowed us to appreciate the game dynamics of turn-based games, where the player has to evaluate information from various aspects and employ effective situation-based strategies to win the opponent. Information, deduction and clever employment of the various game elements like Magic and terrain advantages are key to Victory. Elementary also showed the contrast between different genre of games, say hack-and-slash.

With every boardgames event the SSC is involved in, there will always be one game that we will play - St Petersburg! The game has become a part of the culture of the SSC and more passion can be felt by reading this article. This event is no exception and the love for the game has been spread to Joshua, Guo Yuan, Edwin, Ren Hao and Fabian. This time we played the expansion of the game - The Banquet. A tip for you reading this post: Can’t find people playing St. Petersburg? Give a call to Kun and/or Justin! =) Given enough traction, a event on the game can even be organized! (Hmm Jus’ Petersburg… Kun’s Banquet… =D)

The other games we have played are Samurai and Saboteur. Though suspicions and tension are experienced while playing the game Saboteur, you can’t help but feel “Hey but that’s the fun!” haha. It is in this game that Xuanming deserves the MVP award. In his quest to purge out the Saboteurs, he has shown ardent passion which brings more spice and excitement to the game play. On the other hand, his earnest effort in wanting to steer his team towards where the real gold can be found leads him to being suspected of being a saboteur. This twist of fate caused Xuanming to get constant disabling spells from Bruce and Sean. On behalf of the team of Saboteurs from that round of the game, I present Xuanming the Most Wronged Person award!

In the words of Sean, boardgames serve as a means for people to come together to play, interact and enjoy. Stay tuned for more updates or even better… Join us in action! Till next time then, Cheers!

Not talking about a trip to the Russian city, I’m afraid. But better than that — it’s all about our recent fascination with that 4 year-old board game.

It’s beauty lies in its delivery of satisfying strategies in the simplicity of play. You do little else but make purchases, yet the complexity arises from deciding what to buy and when. It’s about a balance of investing in your economy or your cultural advancement - the cash is merely a tool; victory lies in the progress.

The thing about it which makes me smile the most, is that it’s a constructive game involving indirect competition. It’s nothing about diminishing the achievements of others, but rather a race to overtake and maintain that pace of development above the other players. It’s wholesome, friendly, warm and immersive in 18th century Russia.

And that’s why it makes me smile. Just a little tribute here. Perhaps someone with the more analytical mind would be willing to go into a critique in Game Philosophy further down the road.

I yearn for many more rounds of St Petersburg in the days to come. Thankfully, a copy of it being in possession of ExtraKun means that the SSC has that privilege of benefiting from its easy availability. Yayness!