Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 22 - Index

Declaring
Interactive
Independence
The year 1972 saw much
change in America.
The Watergate scandal
began the crumbling
of a presidency, Francis
Ford Coppola directed
“The Godfather,” known
as one of the greatest
films ever made, and man
stepped on the moon for the
last time with Apollo 17.
Back on earth, the world was introduced
to a strange electronic box called the Odyssey, a home video
game system that released an electronic table tennis game called
“Pong.” Twenty-six years later, video games have evolved from
two bars and a ball to a giant interactive world and a juggernaut of
entertainment making more money than movies. With technology,
innovation and a bustling community of advocates, interactive
entertainment continues to flourish and evolve.
In recent years, interactive entertainment evolved a bustling
new independent reign of video game development and design
featuring new and interesting games where smaller developers
can get some cash flow and capture a new audience. Powerhouse
Animation Studios Inc, an Austin, TX-based animation studio, is part
of this new and exciting movement with their new game “270.”
“270” is a casual tower strategy game with the theme of the
2008 election. The players have a choice between choosing the
to defend the White House from the democratic donkeys using
republican-based towers, such as George W. Bush launching
missiles or Dick Cheney with a shotgun, or the democratic towers
such as Bill Clinton throwing cigars or Hillary Clinton breathing
fire to fend off the elephants. If the player stops the enemy from
getting 270 electoral votes in 50 rounds, they win.
Brad Graeber, one of the directors of Powerhouse and former
political cartoonist, was the head designer for the game. The
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game pokes fun at both sides of the spectrum and, as Graeber
describes, “To represent our business properly, you have to be
politically neutral so as not to offend potential customers, but at
the same time we did want to beat the wind out of the sails of the
stress-causing elements of the election. We had to make fun of
both sides and have them realize that you can poke fun at each
other without being so serious.”
In discussing game design, Graeber describes the practice saying,
“Games are unique in the fact that not only are you creating good
composition [and] good color schemes to draw attention in the
right places for a print ad, but it’s even more important because
your trying to immerse a person into the interactive world. You’re
trying to make them a part of everything.
“When it comes to an interactive game, it’s even more important
to make sure you follow the rules of composition or to draw the
eyes in the right places,” adds Graeber. “Game design is a very
complicated medium and there are a lot of people trying to do
it. As an animation studio, we want to make the game properly
[into] a good strategy game, but we’re also very interested in
how something looks and how it moves while keeping it fun
and cartoony. We made the game for
our promotional purposes and made
sure that a fun spirit and cartoony
energy came out in the piece.”
A new genre of gaming that
all game companies are
exploring are the possibilities
of casual gaming – games
designed for a larger
audience with less complex
and sometimes addicting
designs.
“A casual gamer does not
read instructions and doesn’t
really think about game
By Mark Carr