Media Mogul
In Fall 2009 I participated in a course entitled "Video Games For Social Change", offered as a collaboration between the Tufts Child Development graduate program and the MIT Education Arcade. As a final project, my group designed and prototyped a game entitled "Media Mogul" using PHP and the Facebook API.
Designed to explore issues of media monopoly and content bias, Media Mogul puts users in charge of their own news outlet, selecting which news stories to run and with what point of view. Points are rewarded for selecting the story and spin that is most popular with viewers, appealing to advertisers, and selecting the same story as the friends you are allied with.
Media Mogul features long-term casual gameplay similar to other Facebook social games. The "pick one story per day" gameplay mechanic encourages users to log in daily to pick new stories, see how their selections fared the past news cycle, and spend points upgrading their office and expanding their media empire.
Although Media Mogul shares many common gameplay mechanics with other social games, the combination of the advertiser and ally point bonuses encourages a type of social interaction more involved than is frequently seen in the genre. High-level gameplay is based on negotiating story choices between friends despite having different advertiser motives. It is intended that an organic power structure would develop amongst active players, roughly mirroring those found in real-life media partnerships.
Besides being the overall project lead of the six-person team, I was one of two team members tasked with fine-tuning design and game balance. Additionally, I was in charge of implementing the backend game logic that powered the prototype, from database design to integration with the Facebook API.
Video Game Journalism
For roughly six years I was employed as a staff writer at GameWorld Network. I wrote game reviews/previews, opinion pieces, and coverage of industry events such as E3. I also served as their Internal Distribution Manager for a three-year period, facilitating the process of getting review copies from publishers to reviewers. GWN unfortunately closed up shop in October 2008. Selected articles from my time at GWN are posted here:
Plaque Attack: Battle for the Bicuspids
Made in one week as a solo project at a DigiPen Institute of Technology workshop, Plaque Attack is a real-time competitive strategy game set inside a person's mouth. Two players, one controlling an evil plaque army and the other a righteous flouride rinse, combat each other as they wage a war on multiple fronts: three oversized teeth. Plaque Attack was featured as a Best of Show title in the end-of-session showcase.
Rock Band Roadie
A few years ago I wrote a program to allow Guitar Hero and Rock Band guitar and drum controllers to be used as standard MIDI inputs within OS X. Although groups like the Guitar Zeroes have managed to use Guitar Hero controllers for musical performance, my goal was to design an instrument that wouldn't be limited to a specific use or piece of software.
The default guitar interface is inspired by the chromatic harmonica. Each fret triggers two different notes: one for an up strum and one for a down strum. The first four frets make up a one-octave major scale. The fifth fret is a modifier, sharping all other notes by a half-step.
Since guitar soloing is heavily scale-based, however, the fret chart is completely customizable to accomodate for different musical scales. The user can define any number of custom scales and can switch between them on-the-fly using the keyboard, a point-and-click interface, or the Rock Band Stratocaster's 5-way selector switch. This also goes for the drum kit.
Features include:- Functioning whammy bar
- Volume (velocity) control using the tilt axis
- Optional hammer-on/pull-off mode
- Notes played on the solo frets are one octave higher and may be finger-tapped (RB Strat only)
- Change octave or key (via circle-of-fifths movement) with the press of a button on the guitar
Multiple instruments may be plugged in at the same time, each with a unique set of defined scales. Each input transmits over a different MIDI channel, allowing for simultaneous use of different instruments and sound patches.
Rock Band Roadie is currently feature-complete, but the user interface is far from polished. I plan on releasing it for free at some point, but at this point it's low on the totem pole.