Since april 2010 I’m designing serious games at IJsfontein.
IJsfontein is a specialist in interactive communication and media productions. The company consists of three divisions:
- Kids and Youth: specialized in marketing and communication aimed at the target group kids en youth. (6-25)
- Gamewise: Serious gaming. Serious games are digital games aimed at the development of knowledge, skills, notion and behaviour.
- Interactive Spaces: IJsfontein Interactive Spaces is a team inside IJsfontein, which is specialized in the development of interactive, narrative experiences in and around museums, visitor areas and experience centers.
IJsfontein helps organizations like broadcasting and film companies, museums, (consumer) brands to reach their communication objectives.
I am mostly working for the ‘Gamewise’ devision, described above. Some of their clients are: ‘Games Factory Online’, ‘Haven Amsterdam’, ‘Schiphol’ and ‘Waterschappen’.
Until now I’ve been working on some interesting projects. I have learned a great deal about how a professional company like IJsfontein designs and creates interactive applications and serious games.
At first it took a while to fit in and get used to their approach. For example everyone at IJsfontein was using a FO (functional design) in stead of a game design document. A FO was a description of different screens and their functionality. This was great, but I was missing space to include all possible events and interactions (storyboard images) in the game.
To solve this problem we have now integrated the FO into the design document as a different paragraph.
Overall IJsfontein is a great company to work and I am very happy to gain my first experience here.
I ran into a smartboard a few days ago and tried to play Pixy on it. Since Pixy is only using mouse input it performed great and was a lot of fun to play. You can even use the speed-up function by pressing the button on the side of the pen (equals the right-click function of the mouse).
The only flaw in this way of playing it is that you can ‘teleport’ instantly to another place when you lift the pen and place it where you want to go.
It was awesome to experience one of our creations on such a huge screen!
The video:
