The entire process of designing the game, playtesting, setting myself up on Itch, creating content for social media, and advertising the game is something that I want to revisit at some point. I plan on writing a full post-mortem about the entire process at a later date.
In the meantime here is the launch trailer for the game:
Teaching, running workshops, and giving guest lectures have become much more complicated given the ongoing pandemic but I was very happy to be invited to speak to the students of Dr. Mimi Okabe’s Japanese translation class at the University of Alberta.
Typically I like to give a more hands-on experience to the students but I think that I was able to put together a compelling and (somewhat) interactive experience for the students. For the lecture portion, I introduced my research and how it connects to game making before shifting to the workshop element where I screen-shared via Zoom and gave a brief tour of RPG Maker MV.
A Screenshot of the RPG Maker MV designer interface. My game, Nagasaki Kitty, is currently loaded as an example for the students.
Given that this was a translation class, my primary focus was to show the students how dialogue and text are inserted into a game and the particular issues that they would need to be mindful of when translating a video game. For example, video game translators need to be particularly mindful of their development tools when they engage in translation. In the case of RPG Maker MV, there are strict character limitations for text. If the translator ignores these, then the software will not be able to display the text correctly. This means that translators must make sure that they accurately translate the text while also limiting themselves to the strict character limit imposed by the design software.
A sample RPG Maker MV dialogue box from Nagasaki Kitty. If the game designer types any text to the right of the line it will not display correctly and the player will not be able to read the full text when they are playing the game.
My combination guest lecture and workshop concluded with a question/answer period. Dr. Okabe asked her students to prepare questions for me beforehand so that I could incorporate answers into my talk as best as possible. This was a wonderful idea that helped me to structure my talk and led to more in-depth questions from the students during the question/answer time. It is a strategy that I will implement in the future (both as a guest speaker or when I invite guest speakers myself).
Overall, I had a great time talking about video game tools and the intricacies of translation. I am planning some projects around these ideas for the near future. For now, I would like to thank Dr. Okabe for the invitation and the students of her class for their insightful questions.
I went to a workshop on making games in GB Studio, a game making tool for homebrew GameBoy games.
After playing around in the system I decided to make this prototype, Invisible Maze Space Feline. This is just a test of collision detection, adding dialogue, and inserting pixel art (I made the instructions screen and title screen in GIMP) but I thought it was worth sharing the video because I found it funny. I’m not sure if I will keep using this tool but it is intriguing to say the least.
The dialogue does not show very well on the video (the tool is optimized for GameBoy screens) but it reads: “You Beat Invisible Maze Space Feline!” “Good Work!” “You should value your time more!!” “Also, I am your Mother!” “I did not miss you!”
I was very excited to give my first game making workshop at the University of Waterloo’s Critical Media Lab.
The Event Poster
I gave a talk as the first part of the workshop that was designed to give the students a brief background on me, my work and its theoretical underpinnings. I was pleasantly surprised with the number of insightful questions that I received during this part of the workshop. If I had let the students keep asking questions it seems like they would have taken up the entire workshop without getting to the critical making part!
A slide from my talk used to help describe how I turn historiography into video games.
After all the questions we did a group play-through of two of my games, Nagumo’s Ruin: The Battle of Midway and Nagasaki Kitty with audience members assigned as voice actors. I was also able to show off some of my work within RPG Maker MV. From here, I had the students download Twine onto their devices and provided an introduction to the tool that allowed them to start making their own games.
The title slide of Nagasaki Kitty. This was the first time that I used audience members as voice actors in a play-test but I think I will keep doing it in the future. It was great.
Overall, I had an excellent time giving my first workshop. In retrospect, I probably would have cut out the talk at the beginning and jumped right into introducing the tools. But I feel like I learned a lot about the time management of a workshop and what to expect from the students. I was very happy to hear that at least one or two of the students had started making something that they wanted to move forward with in the limited amount of time that they had to experiment with the tool. I hope they keep making games.
I would like to thank the students of the Critical Media Lab for being enthusiastic and making my first workshop such a great experience and Dr. Marcel O’Gorman for taking the time to drop in. Finally, a special shout-out to Dr. Lai-Tze Fan for the invitation, organization and support of the workshop. I appreciate you all!
I am excited to announce that I will be showing a reworked version of the first game that I ever made at an event next week!
The game, made with Twine, places the player in the role of Vice Admiral Nagumo during the Battle of Midway (4-7 June 1942). There is a full artist’s statement included for those that are curious about the influences and design choices of the game.
This is a short lecture that I had filmed after one of my classes was cancelled. It is a short examination of how video games interact with the past.
Special thanks to Marc, Courtney, Patricia and Dan for helping me with the equipment and the editing of the lecture. Also, a quick shout-out to Mia and her mLab for providing the space, equipment, and opportunity.
This talk, given with my co-author Marilyn Sugiarto, was given at CGSA 2017 in Toronto. We explore how video games utilize collective memory systems through a case study of famous ninja Hattori Hanzo.
This is a pilot project from my 2017 Mass Communication course. I teamed up with an academic/ Twitch streamer, Marilyn Sugiarto, as we attempted to conduct an educational stream for my students.
