Actual pictures?!

Daily drawings from the past week: golf, glove and antiquity

Prompts 6/2 to 6/5

Game On
6/2 prompt "What makes it a game anyway?"

There are a few things that make a game a game. Rules, a quantifiable outcome and negotiable consequences. Rules are the obvious part. Quantifiable outcome can be many things: how much money you win in poker, player set goals in The Sims, the point values for hitting people in the driving game, certain death in Russian Roulette. Negotiable consequence is the ability to bet your pants in poker instead of your last $100.

In this way, The Sims is only sometimes a game. There is no built in score. There is no clear goal or end to the game. There are rules, but not many. Russian Roulette is not a game. The consequences are non-negotiable by definition. The driving game (if you don't know what the driving game is...) is most certainly a game. It has rules, there is a quantifiable outcome in the points system and has negotiable consequences...mostly in whether or not you actually are going to play for the most points.

Not Quite There
6/3 prompt "Is it even possible? Write about someone who has no enemies."

From the minute she was born (she's still not exactly sure when), she's had at least one enemy.

Her first was her father. He refrains from killing her, though, because he's missed too many chances to kill her before. And Mark hates to admit his mistakes. She repays him by not killing him.

Next was her mother. Mark warns her that her mother is probably the one who made her in The Vat. Morganna never admits it and Arcane owes Mark so she kills her mother and takes her throne. Literally.

Mark gives her a list of her grandfather, half-siblings and cousins. She doesn't ask questions, just takes her ice cream and goes to work.

One day, Arcane will be able to say she has no enemies.

Grin and Bear It
6/4 prompt "What made your childhood bearable?"

Jordan's childhood is completely normal. To her. Most other people (those not raised by M.R.C.), would say she was abused as a child.

The teachers did nothing to end fights, even among the children. Jordan thinks they thought it was a good way to prepare them for what's to come later. She can't exactly say they were wrong. Jordan is more well prepared than most of the teens who come to M.R.C.

She beats one teen in a fight once, just to prove a point. She wins, of course.

It wasn't that fight that made it so the other children (even the new ones) didn't come after her constantly. It certainly didn't hurt, though.

Horror Movies
6/5 prompt "Who scared you and laughed?"

Jordan half stumbles and half sprints out of the greasy establishment. She barely keeps herself upright as she gasps for breath.

“Let me get this straight,” a deep voice from behind her makes her jump,

Jordan turns to see Lucien and Stefan there, barely containing their laughter. She glares at them, still trying to steady her legs.

“So, you can face down people who you know can, and will, kill you without so much as blushing...but you can't sit through a horror movie?” Stefan taunts Jordan,

“It was almost half-way through,” Jordan pants,

“Ooh man,” Lucien laughs, “You're saying that's the longest you've ever lasted in a scary movie?”

Jordan manages to actually stand up to fix her two older brothers with a half-assed glare. This sobers them a bit, but they continue to snicker. Jordan groans and drags a hand over her face. She's never going to live this one down...

The bright side is she's wearing really dark pants today.

---

Game On- This is what you get when you ask a game major about what makes a game a game. I'm pretty sure that's by Jesper Juul's definition of a game. I was too tired to go get my game design book.

ANYWAY. Hell week is over. Finals week next week.

Happier Times

Jacen learned long ago that the one thing that could get Pan out of a funk was the completion of a run.

The first job The Harlot and her crew had together was a simple smuggling run. Pan ended up being hired last, only a few days after Jacen. Jacen thought she must have been born angry from the way she glared at everyone. He saw a lot of her during the week they spent getting to the pickup location and Captain kept them all together for "bonding". So many people together all the time made Jacen nervous. It made Pan more aggressive and unapproachable. Once they got to the pickup, Pan disappeared into the cockpit with Riley, Captain and Roderick.

After that, Jacen didn't see Pan for the two weeks the run took.

She emerged from the crawl spaces of the ship just in time to return to the cockpit and generate docking authorizations for the ship. Riley had said that Pan was perfectly polite once Captain had given her a job to do. Jacen thought the pilot was just fucking with him.

But once their cargo was successfully sold, Jacen spotted Pan smiling and joking with Riley. He sat down with them under the pretense of needing coffee. That was when the three had become inseparable.

6/1 prompt "Write about one thing that generally makes you stop frowning." I am on a space pirate rampage over here. I blame ME2.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

It was never inconvenient for Jordan to be barely over 5 feet in height. In M.R.C., powers did the talking and the walking. And the rarer the power, the better. Jordan's power was nearly unheard of. Thus, no one ever picked on her for her height. Age was also not much of a factor here. The younger you came to M.R.C., the better off you were. The age your body recognized your power didn't particularly matter, but the length of time you stayed at M.R.C. did matter. The longer you had stayed the more allies you had. The longer you had stayed in M.R.C. the more training you got. So Jordan never wished that she was taller or older. Instead she wished she was faster and more flexible.

5/26 prompt "When did you wish you were bigger or older?"

Art project approach

The approach I would take to making these games would be to find certain games that people find entertaining but do not require save games/multiple revisits to really enjoy. For instance, color matching games like Bejeweled would be a good type of game to make into a banner game. Games like Farmville, where the user would have to return to their farm multiple times in order to get crops grown would not be a good banner game.

Banner games should be able to be played once and be enjoyable, but they should also draw the user in to play again if they see the game pop up as an ad again. The reason I think these games should not have "save files" is because I don't want the user to necessarily have an attachment to the character/game. I want them to see a game and say "Oh! I've played a game like this before!" or "Hey, I had fun playing this game the last time, and it only takes 5 minutes to play." Also, I'm not really sure how cookies work, so I'm not sure if a player's data could get erased if they clear their cookies. And there's nothing more alienating for a player than losing their save files.

After finding and programming several simple games, I would submit them to google ads or whatever company regularly publishes the flash banner games. Once the ads are up, all that's left to do is make more games or just sit back and hope other people are enjoying my games.

Soap Opera

She settles into the couch with her sister and brothers. Five of them are squished onto the three person couch. She picks up the remote and switches on the show. The Grey's Anatomy logo flashes on and off the screen. The girls feign interest and the boys feign disgust. They watch and pretend to be normal.

For the 5/18 prompt "Why do they watch soap operas?" Oof, I'm a day behind because I spent last night drawing *lame excuses* But! I'm totally drawing a comic tonight >_> I promise?

First sins

Her first sin was undoubtedly anger. Wrath, technically. It's not so much a part of her anymore. No, she needs to stay level-headed now.

But when she was a child and a teenager, she fed that sin (she didn't know it was a sin, in her defense) like it was her pet dog. She had always wanted a pet dog. She would have spoiled a dog. She did spoil Wrath.

To her, Wrath is red. It has many eyes, many mouths and many teeth. Its tongue laps at her belly, stoking the fire of rage there. It has only recently gained a leash (and some chains.)


For the prompt "What was your first sin?" for 5/17