By Ronald Gordon 

The NYC Video Game Festival, an expansion of the Minecraft Battle of the Boroughs, proved to be a big step in the direction of melding education with New York City’s gaming culture. When it came to this idea, I was too curious to not ask around and see just what people thought about this event and its potential. Here are a few testimonies I got from some of the convention’s many participants, three developers, two exhibitors, and one very important figure in the arts!

As I walked the floors, I eventually found something compelling. A lot of the games featured shared a common theme: Connection through gaming. Whether they encouraged cooperative online play or taught new skills to use in the real world, here are three games I felt that embodied the theme of Connection the most. 

Helen from Pahdo Labs Starlight Re:Volver 

Pahdo Labs showcased their upcoming release, Starlight Re:Volver, which is meant to be a multiplayer co-op RPG with roguelite aspects to it, and I had a blast playing it. There was something about the colorful art style that drew me in as a Diver with access to various dream world. But sitting down and playing the game with a random person made my enjoyment skyrocket. I found myself working really well despite not really communicating with my teammate, prioritizing my role as an aggressive dive-in character to benefit my teammate at range. Afterwards, I got to ask one of the team at Pahdo Labs some questions about their process, and why Starlight Re:Volver was so important to them. 

Helen: “My name is Helen, I’m on the product team here at Pahdo Labs, we’re the team developing Starlight Re:Volver which is set to release later this year. We are making an online social multiplayer world and we’re very excited about it because the team’s history for this game is that we ourselves grew up with the online social chat room games of the early 2000s. We feel like in the current space there’s really a lack of that, a lot of things currently are either hyper competitive or hyper casual and not necessarily engaging which is shown in playtime and retention. So we’re essentially creating the game of our dreams; we love social gaming and we love just having a place and engaging fun to shoot the shit with our friends, you know? I would describe our game as Club Penguin meets Co-op Hades with a magical girl Power Ranger take.”

Ronald: “I really enjoyed the Roguelite aspects of Starlight Re:Volver. How many choices are there in the game?”

Helen: “It’s a lot. Each character has right now, we might expand their ability kits, but right now each character has about 15 abilities to choose from. On top of that we have a ton of charms that augment your abilities in ways. Basically the idea of most roguelites, also us, is that it’s infinitely replayable. What’s unique is that each character can build in different ways. Your character is not limited to being a support character or damage character, for example, on each run you may have the mechanics of their weapons but you can actually choose to support your team in whichever way that makes sense. I think what really sets us apart as a co-op roguelite player, a lot of co-op games I find are really encouraging of parallel play, where you’re kind of just doing individual things next to each other. We are very specifically in our design trying to target coordinated play; we want what you do to have an impact on your team more than just the speed of doing something. How we imagine people would want to play our game is ‘It’s better with friends’ as our pillar and that’s baked into our design in many ways.”

Michael from Planetary Games LLC

Thumb War is a competitive 1v1 mobile game made by Planetary Games LLC, and is an ambitious project to say the least. While it may be a simple game of blasting your opponent before they blast you, Planetary Games has ambitious goals of making Thumb War an AR based experience rather than just a game. I got to talk with Michael Shumaker, who is the head of the company, about how Thumb War could connect people from all over the city. 

Michael: “My name is Michael Shumaker, I’m the Founder of Planetary Games, we’re right in Greenwich Village. We’ve got about 9 devs, a bunch of artists, my friend Lucas here made all the music. Thumb War is our prototype, it’s our first game available on Android & IOS right now, it’s a two player battling game on one device. We wanted to make a game that focused on bringing people together face-to-face. Instead of getting lost in your screen you’re now having a real life connection with someone while you play. We’ve done some after school programs before, we’ve done little tournaments, we partnered with John’s Pizza and winner’s usually get a pizza and one of our hoodies or something.”

Ronald: “How long has this been in development?”

Michael: “We did a really quick build to make this prototype, took us about three months and we did that about a year ago. We’re now pretty deep into development of the full version which is gonna have eight more playable characters, a full adventure mode for single player stuff, some online matchmaking PvP. This is a demo mode we have this two player experience that you’re seeing here at the Expo today.”

Ronald: “Since you’ve already been doing events in the city, where do you go with Thumb War after this?”

Michael: “Thumb War is a proof of concept for a bigger game that we’re raising money now for called Urban Arcade, everyone will have their own customizable character, you’ll meet up with people and do battles similar to Thumb War. But then there are these other mechanics that are inspired by Pokémon Go!, where you go to the park and you play an arcade game on your phone, in Washington Square, you get a high score there which gives you currency to customize your character more so their character is stronger in a Thumb War battle. Meanwhile if you’re there in the park and you look next to you and some other guy is playing an Urban Arcade game, you’re like ‘Oh! I challenge you to a battle!’ Kind of like location-based challenging everyone in the city. We’re looking to soft launch that in New York in about 2 years time while we finish the Thumb War full version.”

So To Speak

Learning Japanese is hard enough as is, but luckily there seems to be a game meant to make that endeavor all the more easy for people through real world examples. So To Speak is a puzzle game made by one man, Erik Anderson, with the hopes of giving people enough knowledge to navigate Japan by knowing what their different signs mean. By using real world examples like Subway signage and the like, So To Speak teaches you to match Japanese kanji to their spoken counterparts with ease. As I spoke with Erik Anderson, I learned a lot about why So To Speak came about, and what teaching Japanese to others really meant to him. 

Erik: “My name is Erik Anderson, I made this game So To Speak, it’s a Japanese puzzle game that launched two months ago on Steam.”

Ronald: “What was the groundwork for the game?”

Erik: “I have been learning Japanese for a long time, almost 20 years. There’s too many words to learn and it’s so hard and I hate memorizing things. I really wanted to make something more like travelling in Japan. Sometimes I would sit there in train stations and wonder what I’m looking at and what all these advertisements mean and then I thought ‘That’s kind of fun. I wonder if you could make a game where that’s the whole thing you do. Figure things out rather than just being told what it means.’ So I started working on it, spent a long time in development, and now here we are. ”

Ronald: “How big is your team as an Indie Dev?” 

Erik: “Almost entirely just me. I did all the programming, art, and design for the game. My wife is a native Japanese speaker and she helped a lot with the writing because whatever I come up with is often not grammatically correct. She fixed things and came up with examples, and the voices in the game are family and friends who helped, my brother wrote the music.”

Ronald: “How has it been as a solo Dev?”

Erik: “It’s a really rewarding experience, it’s also ups and downs and daunting. It’s really hard. You have to put in a tremendous amount of time and effort, sometimes things work and don’t work. People are amazingly unique, everyone who sits down and plays the game does something different. Trying to make an experience that’s fun for everyone or as many people as possible is super challenging.”

Cosplay Hollow

One of the main attractions of the NYC Video Game Festival was its attention to local creators and their crafts – like Cosplayers, who were not only featured as exhibitors but also celebrated in a cosplay contest. My friends over at Cosplay Hollow, Jin, Destiny/Des, Leveon, and Hunter, hosted a table at the event where I spoke with them about their time at the Festival and how it shapes up to other conventions. (Note: I have also been part of their other events.). 

Ronald: “In comparison to other Conventions, how does the NYC Video Game Festival compare?”

Jin: “It’s definitely a lot more homey. It feels like there’s a much tighter knit community here. Going to the Cosplay Contest I really felt the love and support from everyone, even people who don’t cosplay. Everyone is just being so nice and kind and supportive, the vendors are so passionate about what they do. Obviously, you can see the love and care that poured into this event. Definitely a lot more community-based than I would say compared to AnimeNYC.” 

Leveon: “I will say, we came in with a blind first time view. We came in with no expectations, ‘This will probably be a small event, you know?’ We weren’t prepared for the sheer volume of people that were coming in the morning of when we were getting prepared. The moment we walked into this building we kept joking about how this felt like a mini-con, this was essentially a mini-convention where you could go even to the different sections and floors, different areas doing different things. There’s definitely potential for expansion with that, and it definitely gives off a small start con vibe.” 

Destiny: “I did a march here for cosplay, I was one of the finalists. It was my first time doing something like that, I’ve never done a masquerade or anything like that. It was nerve wracking. But I’m happy I pushed through, happy I made it to the finals, I don’t really know. The experience was very different than what I would expect. I would expect a lot more of having a performance and little scenes. This small little walk around, people cheering you on, it’s very encouraging I would say. It’s very happy.” 

Hunter: “I think it’s very chill vibes which I really enjoy. I have a tendency to enjoy conventions that have more of a for-fans-by-fans feel and I feel like this kind of has that. We’re sitting in the area where the gaming is happening and we’re able to feel the love from the audience when one of the teams wins, it radiates. ‘I don’t know what’s happening but oh my god that’s so cool!’ Maybe Cosplay Hollow hosts some sort of ESports tournament next? Who knows?”

Ronald: “Does it help that it’s By NY, In NY, For NY?”

Hunter: Yes! We’re based out of the Bronx, so I try to do a lot of events that are in the Bronx and of course we go everywhere but I’m Bronx born and raised. Seeing that same love for the entirety of New York City I think is very important. Especially those that are a little bit younger and don’t know what it means to be born and raised, they don’t understand that yet. But they’re starting to get that love when they come here, they feel the energy from everybody else.”

Joseph Sanfilippo from Lego 

LEGO took up a big part of the second lower floor for a whole display of art made from their pieces, recent sets they’ve sold in collaboration with Minecraft, and even a whole arena displaying creations from the First LEGO League here in NYC. Despite LEGO Education existing for over 40 years, this was my first time ever seeing or interacting with anything outside of their sets and games. Getting to talk with Joseph Sanfilippo from LEGO Education, I learned a lot about what the company hopes to teach through their efforts. 

Joseph: “I’m Joseph Sanfilippo, I’m with Lego Education. I’m an account manager that works at NYC public schools on implementing purposeful play through Lego bricks.”

Ronald: “Purposeful play is something we at the Critics Circle try to do with Playing with Purpose, where we encourage students to get into gaming and not only learn but to adapt and use their environment in a different way. How does LEGO go about this strategy?”

Joseph: “We want to champion purposeful play. We believe that fosters a love of learning for students. We want to have that seamless integration of ways to play, through hands-on experience with LEGO bricks, gaining the experience of LEGO properties, as well as just inspiring students to be engineers and builders of tomorrow.”

Ronald: “How long has LEGO education been a thing?”

Joseph: “LEGO Education has been around for just over 40 years, 42 years I believe. We’ve always done things like computer science, engineering, robotics, hands on science application, things that align play to State standards. Learning life science, physical science, computer science and design, and that obviously fits into game design. It builds a lot of skills for problem solvers, critical thinkers, that are all sorts of aspects needed in careers. ”

Ronald: “How have you felt LEGO Education has helped kids get into computer science?”

Joseph: “It’s lowering those barriers with something they’re familiar with, LEGO and that idea of play, and helps build those skills. But it’s not just about the ideas of computer science. It’s building those soft skills; those critical thinking problem solvers. Doing things with computer science and LEGO programs throughout the school year is great for other jobs that might not be computer science focused. But we all need those types of things. Collaboration, trying to fail, succeeding through failure and things like that. For events like this, we work closely with NYCDOE, providing hands-on experience of an engineering design process, which is a lot of what NYC is doing with that Battle of the Boroughs competition that’s going on today. It’s giving students another ulterior pathway to experience an engineering design pathway, of course with real world applications through the RFE’s and prompts that are provided.”

Closing remarks from MOME’s Alia Jones Harvey

Whenever I find myself at an event made to benefit NYC, I know that Alia Jones-Harvey from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment is somewhere nearby. Being a pillar of education and innovation isn’t an easy job, but Ms. Jones-Harvey knows how to do it well. At the end of the day when the tournaments were reaching into their penultimate rounds, I had the chance to ask her a few questions about potential next steps, and the moments that motivate her hard work. 

Ronald: “How much bigger is this event going to get?”

Alia: “Bigger. Bigger, bigger. I think that there’s the potential to make it a multi-day event. I think that we turned a lot of people away this year because we were afraid we’d be over capacity for the space, so we told the venue that we generally took in waves but they were unsure, now they’ve seen it so maybe it makes it a little bit easier for us next year.”

Ronald: “This is all a part of MOME’s Multi-year plan to incorporate Education & Gaming together. How have you felt that’s been going?”

Alia: “I think that we’ve had some success stories, we’ve had some students graduate and go into Urban Planning nonetheless because of the game. We’ve had some students that really wanted to build NPCs of their teachers, it’s interesting to see how it’s being used now. “ 

Ronald: “Whenever you come to these events, what is your biggest ‘This is why I do this work, this is why I’m here.’ Moment?”

Alia: “There’s so many! When a student says ‘This is like a dream!’. When I hear from students who know more about civic engagement than their parents do, because they’re playing a game that’s teaching them how they want to improve their community and how to make that happen. They know who to call, more than their parents do, which I think is a huge benefit playing Minecraft in the first place.” 

Ronald Gordon is a New York Videogame Critics Circle Member & Mentor. He was the first of our writers – or any intern anywhere – to complete an internship at Rockstar Games.

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