JMoe: The Mastermind

While browsing around the C&C community for interesting news, I happened across an article which includes a design for the “perfect” C&C game mode for Tiberium. For those who many not know, Tiberium is a first person shooter set in the Tiberium universe (created by the original Command and Conquer, along with Tiberian Sun, and Tiberium Wars). It’s not part of the C&C franchise, it instead shares the same universe setting-wise, but is a separate branch. This allows a lot more freedom.

While the game mode in the article is interesting, it has two major flaws.
1. It doesn’t fit with what the apparent design goals of Tiberium are.
2. It sounds an awful lot like Renegade.
For some people, #2 isn’t really so much a problem as a great thing, but Tiberium isn’t Renegade. Renegade was an attempt to create an FPS that was a C&C game. Tiberium is an FPS that happens to be in the same universe as the C&C games. They’re not really the same at all.

My own design for a team based multiplayer mode for Tiberium comes after the cut.
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During my work at the GAMBIT Games Lab, the topic of educational games came up. The question was whether or not educational games were a valid genre. That got me thinking, which led to this. My conclusion is that in fact, all games are educational. Some have a more explicit purpose, teaching concepts which are applicable outside the game realm (whether this be games like Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing), but any time you are playing a game, you’re learning.
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This past summer, I had the opportunity of a lifetime (at least for me). I was working as an intern on an unannounced RTS at EALA. Suffice it to say, due to NDA, I can’t say much about what I did. I can say that I was doing multiplayer gameplay design. An example of the sort of thing I was doing can be seen in the various multiplayer modes for C&C 3 on Xbox 360. They have things like capture the flag, conquer and hold, and a few others. I was designing modes like that for the project I was working on.

The real reason for finally coming out about this is that I had the opportunity to do an interview with Aaron Kaufman, the C&C Community Manager at EALA about my experience. I think it makes a good read (despite my rather obvious bias), and even has a photo of me at the end, for those of you interested in seeing what this mastermind looks like.

I suggest you check it out if you happen to be interested in working in games, or even just what it is like behind the scenes of a major studio. I know that I really wanted to work in the games industry going in to my internship, and I came out knowing that I’d found what I wanted to do. I loved every day of it, and was terribly sad to leave. The guys at EALA were amazing, and I just had an amazing time. Peace through power!

It often happens that the early morning just before I go to sleep can yield some interesting thoughts, and as such, I’ve decided to create a section for such musings. The first such musing is on the idea that spirtuality could actually be an evolutionary advantage. This idea originated with the idea that religion could be an evolutionary advantage, but through reading “Is God in Our Genes?” from Time Magazine lead to the refinement to spirituality as the advantage rather than religion. First, my original reason for considering religion as an evolutionary advantage, then we’ll get into the reasons in the Time article (which I will summarize and quote as appropriate).
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