December 13, 2005
532 Open Mic -- Herb Yang
Powerpoint for my 532 Open Mic...
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November 27, 2005
CTIN 488: "Acquire" (Board Game) Play Experiment -- Kellee Santiago & Herb Yang
Play Experiment #4 for 488...
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October 04, 2005
CTIN 534: Clusterfuck -- An Asshole Mod
Bluffing and hidden information are two game mechanics that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. Since bluffing is often employed as a desperation strategy, this mechanism seems especially appropriate in a game where players are trying to move beyond their existing social station by any means possible.
In my Asshole mod – Clusterfuck – players are assigned a social status that is kept secret from other players. Since no one knows what anyone’s position in the hierarchy is, they can pretend to be someone more important than they really are.
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Posted by hyang at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2005
CTIN 534 -- Pachisi Mod Review
For Bernie's class last week, we made our own mods of Pachisi and playtested the mods created by other groups. My thoughts...
Cops & Robbers
A classic chase theme that fits with the simple mechanics of Pachisi. However, our playtest group had a difficult time with this game because the board was not clearly marked, which made it difficult to determine the objectives, which in turn made it difficult to determine what strategy, if any, could be used. On first glance, it seems as if the game was stacked against the cops given that the robbers only need to have one piece escape in order to win. However, due to chance in our particular game, all the cops got out early while most of the robbers remained stuck at their starting point because of unlucky dice rolls, and the game balance quickly tipped in the other direction, becoming nearly impossible for the robbers to win. Additionally, the incentive for creating blockades or starting fires never seemed to present itself. The game would have benefited greatly from some preliminary playtesting.
On another note, I noticed that players for the first game of Cops & Robber filled up early because of the donut snack, and ensuing players were eager to play for the same reason. Goes to show what marketing and tie-ins can do.
Coattails
The action of getting ahead at the expense of your opponents quickly generated a lot of competitive spirit. However, without a mechanism for players to defend against this (other than your opponents getting crappy die rolls), our game degenerated into a cycle of players continually being sent back to the center, never really able to make much progress on the board.
The mechanics of this game seem to lend itself better to a "Backstabbing" rather than a "Coattails-Riding" theme (i.e., "you can get ahead by harming your opponents, but what comes around goes around"). Perhaps a better general mechanic that would fit in with this theme would be that, rather than allowing you to bowl through opponents before you, each die roll (and subsequently steps advanced) you make also advances everyone in your lane that's behind you.
Pachisi of Verona
The fiction for this game was quite creative and thought-provoking. On first glance, the idea of coupling pieces seemed quite cute and whimsical, but on further inspection, it became apparent that the theme was cynical, and even mildly disturbing when projected on certain game scenarios. Granted that pieces "in love" advance around the board faster than other pieces but here in this game world, once they are coupled, they are uncontrollable and all player strategy goes out the window (which in my mind, is a bad thing, especially when the only action available to the player to combat this loss of control is also predicated on a slim chance), and if they "elope" there is absolutely no benefit to the player, essentially disappearing from the game world.
In my game, I was doing everything I could to prevent my pieces from "falling in love" and running off like idiot children into the vortex of nothingness that awaited them (if another relative didn't intercept them and knock some sense into their heads in time). The only strategy I could think of that would take advantage of this couples mechanic was to send a piece far ahead, then have a lagging piece "fall in love," and hope that the advance piece could catch the couple as they raced by to their doom. So during the game, I did my best to avoid the dogged marriage attempts of the preceding player (Mihai, you bastard), while frantically racing one piece ahead. When I finally decided that the advance piece was far enough ahead to be in place to blockade the running couple, of course that's when he lands on another piece and has the misfortune of "falling in love" himself (I could imagine my piece screaming, "I am fortune's fool!" as, after all his efforts to save his siblings, he reluctantly begins his own race into oblivion). Ah, the foibles of love.
Posted by hyang at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
"Game Publishers Sweat Console Change"
This morning, a friend sent me this C|Net article, "Game Publishers Sweat Console Change", whose topic coincides with the discussion we were having yesterday in 511 (regarding the NY Times article "In Video Games, Sequels are Winners"). Whether this has significant bearing on the development of true "indy" games is not entirely clear, but it does seem to indicate that independent game developers who want to compete with the blockbusters on at least some level have their work cut out for them.
An interesting thing that they point out which I have also definitely been noticing is that more games are getting shorter (less entertainment value in terms of hours), and the article attributes this to the rising labor costs due to graphics. Their conclusion from this is that more and more developers will need to reuse code, rather than rebuilding each time; a conclusion they support citing EA's recent acquisition of Criterion Games (Renderware).
Posted by hyang at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2004
Console Numbers
Never really been into handheld games so I was blown away when I came across these stats in this month's issue of XBN magazine.
54 million GameBoy Advances?! Where have I been?
Now, I'm that much more intrigued by the PSP...
Posted by hyang at 04:32 PM | Comments (3)
September 13, 2004
First Post...
Finally decided that I should make a post since most of my classmates have something on their sites (and I didn’t want to be accused of not being “interactive” ). Blogging is a new thing for me so putting my thoughts out on the web is going to take some getting used to.
At the end of the first of Wednesday’s lecture series, Justin brought up how it'd be cool if we first-years would share what we submitted for admission to USC -- which seems like a great way for us to get to know each other better. I’ve decided to post some of the artwork I’ve done, some of which I submitted as my creative work sample. Before coming here to USC, I spent a few months taking classes at Gnomon, a visual effects school in Hollywood, learning Maya (what a frickin’ cool program!). I was considering finding a job as a character artist/modeler to make my entry into the game industry, but hey, you can’t beat three more years of not working, right? (oh wait…)
Below are a smattering of stills for character models I’ve built and some design sketches/drawings. Maybe sometime in the future, I’ll have these in a spiffy column of thumbnails like Jenova has on his site.
Avengeline: Gun Pose of 3D Model / Isometric View of 3D Model / 3 Views of 3D Model / Textures(512x512)
Soldier: Armor Design Sketch / 2 Views of 3D Model
Robot: Design Sketch / Front View of 3D Model / Back View of 3D Model
Gluttony: Front View of 3D Model / Side View of 3D Model
Demon: Drawing (Closeup) / Front View of 3D Model (Untextured) / Side View of 3D Model / In-Progress Render
Ninja: Design Sketch
Akasha: Drawing
And just to show that not all my work is freaky shit…
Woman: Drawing
Other things about me…
I’m a native northern Californian, grew up in the Bay Area just half an hour south of San Francisco, though I've strangely found LA to my liking. I did my undergrad at MIT in EECS, was seduced by the dark side and spent a few years in investment banking and corporate development. Since moving here to LA, I’ve worked in the lit department at a Hollywood talent agency and spent time writing screenplays. Although I love games, I’m still very much interested in traditional cinema, and am looking forward to the shorts we’re producing in our production class.
Posted by hyang at 02:33 PM | Comments (3)