Monday, February 06, 2006

Opening Keynote at Animex Game Day

University of Teesside, Middlesbrough

This was just a quick trip, up one day, lecture in the morning, and back the next. I was given the honor of being the opening keynote at Animex Game Day, and the lecture I gave was "Emerging Issues in Game Design," which I had already given at FuturePlay a little earlier. The best part of the day, though, was hearing Kaye Elling's talk. Kaye is from Blitz Games and was head of the art team that did Bratz: Rock Angelz. She gives a wonderful lecture on developing for women and girls. I had heard part of it before at the Women in Games conference, and so was anxious to catch the whole thing. She talked about the five C's that she feels are particularly important: Characterization (the avatar has to be someone that a female character can feel some empathy with), Context (the game has to take place in an environment she would want to visit), Control (one-size-fits-all designs and punitive systems that take power away from the player won't cut it), Customizability (women like to rearrange things to suit their own tastes) and Creativity (user-created content is going to rule the world).