52 games in 52 weeks - madness or awesomeness?

This year at GDC, I attended a talk by Patrick Curry (lead designer of Stubbs the Zombie) who did an interesting project in 2006 on his own blog - he created a new game design idea a week using these rules:

Only new ideas. This will force me to keep the creative juices flowing, which is the primary goal. But it will also prevent me from posting a game concept belonging to a long-lost friend, co-worker, or company.

No work-related ideas. I will steer clear of all game concepts that are directly related to any professional game projects that I have previously worked on or am currently working on. Of course I can’t predict which projects I might work on in the future…

Only good ideas. This will be the hardest rule to follow. But I’m really going to work hard to filter the ideas down to the gems, and then go into as much detail as possible about why I believe it’s a good idea, and would make for fun gameplay.

I haven't read all of his ideas yet but I really like the idea of this challenge and I'm thinking of taking on myself. Am I crazed? More to come...

How to create the greatest Boss Battle (and why not to do it!)

Here is my 2008 GDC talk (sans humorous animations) - "How to create the greatest Boss Battle (and why not to do it!) This will make more sense with the audio from the talk - which will presumably be posted at gdcradio. I'll post a direct link when and if it shows up.

Someone sees my talk!

Darryl Vassar from 1up.com (actually a good news site) posted a review of my talk here:

GDC08 Scott Rogers on awesome boss battles

Despite a few errors such as crediting me with work on God of War II (I only worked on the first one) and completely missing my Tony Danza reference during the talk, it was a pretty fair review.

I guess I better get cracking and post this talk and explain my reasoning behind "why not to do it" for boss battles.

Didn't anyone see my talk?

So, I get back from GDC looking forward to seeing what people thought. Here is a sampling of the e-mails I recieved:

Hello Scott,

I hope your talk went well at GDC. Unfortunately, I had meetings thus could not attend.

Hrm. Not off to the best start. But there was hope on the horizon... another e-mail...

Hey Scott,

Sorry I didn’t get to see your talk. I got there around 2:35 and the room was full and I was 30-40th in line for getting in.

I hope it was good. I’ll check out the powerpoints online for sure

Drat. OK, maybe this third one will be better...

Hi Scott!

I just wanted to say I tried attending your boss battle session, and I don't know if you know this, but it was PACKED full! There was a line of 50+ people outside. I was able to stand around outside and see for a few seconds, but unfortunately there was no way I was getting in. Would you have the slides up anywhere? The bit I got to see had me really curious!Anyway, it was great to meet you and congrats on the successful talk! Hope to see you next year!

As I was already inside, I had no idea there was such a big line! Thanks for trying to get in, everyone. Sorry if you couldn't! (I guess I better post that talk...)

YES! I got first post!

If you are actually reading this post, then Hello! and thanks for stopping by. I freely admit that I am not the best blogger in the world but I hope to change that. Here is a proof of my last blogging attempt:

But, thanks to the overwhelming responses (at least eight people) I received at GDC about my talk "How to create the greatest Boss Battle (and why not to do it!)" (post to come) I created mr boss' design lair as a home for the talk as well as in the hopes that it will motivate me to share my thoughts with the world and start some fun and interesting discussions about video game design.

So, welcome to the lair!