Posts Tagged ‘School for Heroes’
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
It’s Halloween – A night of ghosts and shadows, of goblins, witches, and demons, of things that go bump in the night. The wind howls through the trees as the nights begin to turn cold, and the trees shed their Autumn leaves. Little children brave the darkness and scary monsters to go door to door in masks and costumes. In trembling voices, they call out, “Trick or Treat!” and hope they won’t be tricked.
One of our favorite stories comes from a Halloween special episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show. The main villain of the show is a rich old man who has always hated Halloween and comes up with a scheme to end it forever. To do this, he needs a piece of the Ghostbusters’ equipment to power his device. They refuse to give it to him because they believe in Halloween. As the villain ponders this setback, he thinks, “I need that part. I could steal it, but stealing is wrong. But I need it… Oh well, so much for that moral dilemma!” Seconds later, the part is in his hand.
A Time for Heroes
Is it a coincidence that we opened The School for Heroes at midnight on Halloween, October 31? Perhaps it was. It is also probably a coincidence that the United States is holding a critical Presidential election just a few days after Halloween. Or are they both a sign of the times we live in?
Why is this such an important time? The last ten years have shown us some results of non-heroic, “somebody else’s business” attitudes. Within a single decade, we’ve seen the Enron scandal, a stock market collapse, and a real estate market collapse. We’ve seen terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and torture and other atrocities in the name of “national security.” The common thread between these events is that people acted out of irrational fear and short-term greed. They ignored the terrible consequences of their actions. They lost sight of the Greater Good. These people are villains. “Oh well, so much for those moral dilemmas!”
Heroes are very important in dark times and when ghosts and ghouls threaten to rule the land. Someone needs to stand in front of the gates of Hell, silver cross and holy water in hand, to face whatever might come forth. We have a lot of real monsters in our world – war, famine, poverty, pollution and the people who profit from them. We need to stand up and confront the monsters and their minions. We need to be Heroes.
The Call to Action
It is never easy to be a Hero, but the world needs us. It needs us now. Will you step up to that challenge? One way is to take the What Kind of Hero Are You? test and join our hero’s quest. No matter what path you choose, it is time to make a difference. Vote in your next election. Speak out against tyranny, terror, and war. Help clean up your neighborhood. Stand up against the darkness and the scary monsters. Hey, if little children can do it, so can we!
Tags: Halloween, Heroism, School for Heroes
Posted in Books, Game Design, Heroism | 12 Comments »
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!” – Rudyard Kipling, “In the Neolithic Age”
We recently read a book called “Tribes,” by Seth Godin. Seth is a bestselling author of books on marketing and copy-writing. His latest book is all about leadership and forming what he calls “tribes” of people with a common interest. “Tribes” has some great ideas and is well worth reading. It is also very relevant to The School for Heroes.
A Brave New World
What is a tribe? It is any group of people with a common interest who get together to do something about it. It could be a company, a club, or a Web site. It’s the whole “If you build it, they will come.” idea from the film “Field of Dreams.” Successful tribes are those where people care about that common interest (let’s call it “the vision”) and work towards goals that support the vision. Tribes are about communication and cooperation between the members, not about orders handed down as commandments from on high nor about directionless chaos. Directed chaos is fine.
The thing is, for a tribe to be successful, it needs a leader (or leaders). A leader holds the vision and finds ways to share it and to bring the tribe together. A leader does not need to be the “person in charge.” He or she is a facilitator and a communicator. Great leaders are often rebels who buck the system to come up with innovative solutions to problems.
In “old school” organizations, position matters. The rank and file members do not innovate; they do what they’re told. From personal experience we can tell you that computer games created under the leadership principle come out much better than those dictated by management. We’ve worked on both kinds.
The Tribe for Heroes
The School for Heroes is a tribe. There will eventually be an adventure game with the same title, and we hope you’ll enjoy it, but the game is secondary. What matters is the tribe – Empowering people like you to live your lives as heroes. Of course, you’ve always had the power, but the school web site will give you more. It will make you part of a community of other people who care. It will give you a support network to keep you on track and it will give you an opportunity to support and lead others with the same goals.
We can’t make the world a better place by waving a magic wand and saying, “Let’s make the world a better place!” Heroism takes work. It takes commitment. It takes caring and sharing the glory and the pain. We aren’t going to try to pass down the wisdom of Solomon and tell you how to accomplish great things; it wouldn’t stick and we’d probably get it wrong as often as we got it right.
What we will do instead will be to plant the seeds of a few ideas and set up an environment where you can work with them, provide your own, and share the results with others. Together we can build the Tribe of Student Heroes, and if we get it right, then others will find us. We are using the metaphor of the school, but this is one in which the teachers will learn from the students just as much as the other way around.
Intentsive Hero Training
On October 31st, The School for Heroes will open its doors to a few select seekers. The School will feature the “What Kind of Hero Are You?” test, a page about each of the “classes” – Warrior, Wizard, Paladin, Rogue, and Bard – a personal page for each student, and discussion forums. There might even be a few class assignments – this is a school, after all.
However, this won’t be a school like any you’ve ever attended. Nobody will force you to do your homework. You get to choose the assigments you are passionate about. But each one you complete will help you to understand yourself and discover your personal path to heroism.
The School forums will be set up for everyone to share what they learn and do. Small step by small step, we will make the world a better place… by leading, by doing things that matter, and by making ourselves into better people. Most importantly, we’ll all have a lot of fun doing it.
Chief Beliefs
“The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.” – Seth Godin, “Tribes”
That is what we are trying to do with The School for Heroes. We hope you will choose to follow us and then become leaders for those who are to come. We challenge you to take the “What Kind of Hero Are You?” test, sign up for the school, complete your first “mission,” and share the site with others. With your help, The School for Heroes can become a tribe that matters.
Tags: Books, School for Heroes, Seth Godin, Tribes
Posted in Books | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 10th, 2008
I suppose that it’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this the “Class of the Titans,” but the Golden School is that “he who has the gold runs the school.” So we’ll class-ify ourselves as above average, and school ourselves to get back to the subject at hand – the Making of the “School for Heroes.”
Over the past few weeks, Lori has been working feverishly on creating www.TheSchoolForHeroes.com web site. She’s using the “grunge look” so that there is a lot of background detail behind everything on the page. Besides looking cool, this will give us the opportunity to sneak some hidden puzzles into the site. Meanwhile, Corey is creating an interactive “What kind of hero are you?” quiz to help our players/members decide on the character classes that best fit them for the school.
“Character class” is an old role-playing term, but it has a double-meaning when we’re talking about a school for heroes. The game characters will be assigned to a “class” such as Warrior, Wizard, or Paladin, then will take classes in that subject. Instead of just puzzles, we’ll have class assignments. Of course, the classes and assignments are all about fun, not busy-work!
Did you ever have one special teacher who really made you enjoy a class in school? That teacher probably gave you unusual assignments that really made you think about the subject material. One of Corey’s favorite teachers was Mr. Cross, an 8th grade math teacher. One day, when he saw that Corey was a little bored with the standard material, Mr. Cross asked him to stay a few minutes after class. Pulling out a College workbook on probability theory, he told Corey, “You might find this interesting.” A lifelong fascination with probability and chance began that day. By the way, Corey highly recommends “Lady Luck” by Warren Weaver if you’re interested in the subject.
Lori had a great high school English teacher, Mrs. Eades. This was the first time Lori really felt special in a class. Mrs. Eades went out of her way to encourage the talented students and make the class fun for them. Lori was inspired to continue studies in creative writing in College and to become a schoolteacher. Without Mrs. Eades’s encouragement, Lori might never have become a professional game writer.
The School for Heroes is full of special teachers for exceptional students. Everyone has the chance to show that they are heroes inside, and the teachers recognize and encourage this. They will go out of their way to make all of the classes fun, to create unique and challenging assignments, and to mold their students into true heroes. Have you done your Wizard homework lately? One of your assignments might be to search the school for hidden messages that can only be revealed by use of the Sense Magic spell you learned in the last class session. Of course it gets even more fun when you discover that not all of the secret messages out there were placed by your teacher. There are many secrets to discover in the School for Heroes.
So that’s what The School for Heroes is all about – a place where the true heroes live, laugh, love, and learn in an exciting, challenging, and above all fun environment. We hope to see you there with the other great heroes! We’ll be sure to send you to the head of the class.
Tags: Game Design, Humor, School for Heroes
Posted in Featured, Game Design | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
We’re all students in life. I once said that the most important thing about my job was that I learned something new every day. When I stopped learning new things, it would be time to move on to something new. Well, here we are doing something new!
School for Heroes is a unique learning opportunity for both the players and ourselves. Every time we start developing a game for a different company, it’s like going back to school. Each game developer has its own standards, style, and library of useful source code. Many use unique proprietary languages (as did Sierra On-Line) and the others use a Babel of languages and libraries. Corey is building School for Heroes with the Inform language, one of a dozen or more computer languages that specializes in Interactive Fiction projects.
We’re learning a lot of other things as well. We started the School for Heroes design process by talking about what worked best in the Quest for Glory series and which story lines we should continue from the online How To Be A Hero school. We also talked about what we like and dislike about other works of Interactive Fiction. (Here’s a hint – For us, it’s all about the characters. Arbitrary puzzles and frustrating mazes are so Last Century.)
To Perpetuate the plethora of P’s that plague this series of paragraphs, we will pontificate further…
Play
Playing games has been an essential part of our lives, whether it is the old fashioned AD&D style of role-playing where you create and develop your character’s personality, or World of Warcraft, where the game play is mostly all goal-driven rather than role-playing. What we want to do is take what we enjoy most of other genres of games, and then push the boundaries of game play for Interactive Fiction. After all, the Play’s the thing….
Prose
One thing that we will be doing more of than most Interactive Fiction games is writing. We’re taking the concept that this is Fiction literally. The School for Heroes is just that… a school. You get to play a student and go to classes. The teachers try to teach you things. Unlike lessons in the mundane schools we were forced to go to, the lessons from School for Heroes have practical application (at least in terms of the game… but who knows, you might learn a few things that work for you in real life.) All this means is that there will be a fair amount of reading and writing to this game. You do the reading, Lori’ll do the writing, and we can stick Corey with the ‘rithematic. Somebody’s got to do the math.
Phun
Okay, so we have a school… and there’s going to be learning… and reading and writing… so where’s the phun? I mean, if a game isn’t enjoyable to play, what’s the point?
This is the tricky part. This is what game design is really about – creating a game that is enjoyable to play. We’ve given entire lectures at game design conferences on the Phun Phactor (only we spelled better then). Part of what we will be discussing in this blog over the next few months is what makes a game phun, and how we will create a game that will be challenging, thought-provoking, phunny, and phun.
So, thank you for your interest in our game and our writing. We’re opening up the doors to this School for Game Design, and you are officially a part of it now. While we are developing the School for Heroes, we will take a few moments each week to let you know how things are going and to share our Philosophies and ideas about games and game design. Find yourself a seat in this classroom – School is now in session.
Tags: Game Design, Interactive Fiction, School for Heroes
Posted in School for Heroes | No Comments »
