Creating a game based on Star Wars

I chose making a game based on fandom my final task.

With this project, my goal is to demonstrate that it's possible to create a game that is fun with relatively low effort, as long as the audience knows something about it beforehand.

Here's a video of the finished game:

First I was thinking of picking a different topic but quickly realized that it's better for demonstration purposes to use a topic that (almost) everyone is already familiar with.

Since we are pretty limited on the time (especially on presenting these works) my goal was to create a short gameplay experience that offers replay value.

The core idea of Jedi Master came from the Star Wars movies. My goal is show the frustration that the Jedis face during their training and provide the players with means of getting better.

If you want to give this game a try, I made it available for download (for Windows)

Gambling in video games

Another good Jim Sterling video that addresses the topic of gambling in video games:

This is a topic that I feel people are slowly getting tired of hearing since it's everywhere (kind of like Trump) However, it's a fact that most games nowadays decide to include "optional" gambling features in their games since it means big profits for them.

It's becoming blatantly obvious that the video game industry is exploiting a loophole in laws since creating laws take so long compared to creating digital products. The sad thing is, when these business practices are cracked down eventually, the industry will just put more effort in finding new ways of getting around the laws.

Morally questionable game development

Found this video today:

I think it addresses the topic of game design becoming more and more about money very well. It also asks a interesting question: when will this f2p game bubble burst.

In my opinion it's pretty sad that the companies care more about how to design their games to suck most amount of money out of users as fast as possible instead of trying to create something that is actually a good gaming experience.

The fact is that there is a lot of money moving around in gaming business. However, games can still be profitable even if they aren't filled with micro transactions. It's just that the companies are greedy and prefer trying to maximize their profits.

I don't know how the development team can have any kind of passion with what they do if their end goal is to just create a masked casino over and over again.

Manse Games '18

I missed the last lesson so here's my excuse for that.

Manse Games '18 was hosted at Palatsi in center of Tampere. It's the first time it was made and the topic was free-to-play games so I thought it would be awesome experience to participate. And it was.

The event was free and they offered lunch, dinner and drinks. I'm surprised that nobody else (from our school) was interested in coming there.

The day started at 10am and ended at 8pm. There were 6 speakers about different game design, business and f2p topics.

Last 2 hours included 2 different panels. The first one had designers from Finnish game companies discussing their approach on F2P and mobile game designs.

The second panel had the heads of game companies in Tampere talking about the creation of their companies, the games that they have published and their future projects.

Overall, I really did like the event. It was nice to see what the Finnish game industry is up to and get some insight on what the people on the field do. Even if I hate doing "networking" it has to start somewhere I guess.

This event is also being hosted next year and I'm definitely going there.

AI making artists job easier

Yesterday there was a Reddit post about a website that uses AI to automatically color line art pictures.

The results that users posted were stunning. The site allows people to upload an image, press a button and 10 seconds later it is fully colored. It even allows the users to add different lightning sources, modify colors and download all kinds of variations of the process.

And it's open source project.

So, today I took a bit better look at it. After about 1 hour of poking around, I managed to get out quite a few good looking results. The middle one is the only thing I drew.

Careless and Careful mode comparisons

And here's a closer look at my favorite one. I had to give the programs a few hints on where the colors are supposed to be, it mainly had issues with parts of hair and the hand with glass.

Seeing something like this really makes me wonder what the future will bring us. Some artists are worried (for a reason) and call this method "cheating". In my opinion, if you can save hours of work by using AI, it's just being efficient.

What is a stereotypical Finnish game?

Korean games are grindy, Japanese games have over-the-top effects and USA makes AAA games.

But how would you defines a Finnish game?

If I had to use my own words, it's pretty simple: mobile.

Don't get me wrong, Finland does have some successful high quality PC and console games but there are so few of them compared to mobile that they are out of the question. Looking at lists like "Top 10 Finnish video games" or Wikipedia's list of games developed in Finland it's pretty obvious that the amount of games produces is small with the most successful ones being mobile.

It's important to understand that games are a very new media. What that means, is that there aren't that many well established companies and that there is a big reliance on investor money. On top of that, the cost of living is so high that the wages have to reflect that. This has a huge impact on what kind of scale we can pick for the projects.

These things in mind, it doesn't come as surprise that the mobile games were a huge success. They are possible to be developed even with a really small team and the investors feel much safer investing in them.


Speaking of Finnish games, here's the progress on my final task (Day 1). It's still very rough but making progress.

And here's what it looks after a little bit of tuning (Day 2):

Stalking a famous streamers social media usage

CohhCarnage is my choice for famous person. He has a very successful Twitch channel gaining over 20 thousand constant viewers every stream so he's usually in the top 5 most viewed streamers and this is a really big achievement for a variety streamer.

Links to different media channels he uses:

• Twitch
• YouTube
• Twitter

I will be focusing on his Twitter posting.

Looking back at his posts, it seems that he has a very regular posting schedule of when he goes live and what kind of content he is playing that day. One thing that stood out about this was that his posts are hand written and not automatically posted by Twitch. Seems like he also puts quite a bit effort on writing these and adds mentions of game companies that made the games he plays. His writing style is also very positive.

Another common topic for him (especially in early access / beta games) is to discuss the bugs / features the games offer and if the player should bother investing into the game at its current stage. This also ties to the developer communication that he tries to keep active.

I also noticed a few polls and posts that encouraged discussion. These were mostly related to things that people want to see in the future streams. Some gaming related news posts were also included.

Lastly there are for smaller part sponsored messages (he has a deal with GOG to post about discounts) but those are rare. Overall his Twitter look feels very professional instead of being personal. I could only find one personal message that was about his Halloween breakfast so it's quite understandable.

A quick look at his other media:
The YouTube channel is mainly used as a video archive where he uploads his gameplay. This is pretty much unedited stream footage cut into 30 minute episodes so they don't gain that many views. It's nice to have as an archive though.
The Twitch channel includes well highlighted and archived broadcasts. For me it was surprising to see since past broadcasts for the longest time has been a place where almost nobody in Twitch goes. Just putting the extra effort to keep it organized is a big plus.