Try the latest Sifteo games at Maker Faire Bay Area, May 18th & 19th

Posted May 13th, 2013 by under News

Cuddly Cube Buddy says Hello at a past Sifteo event

Cuddly Cube Buddy says hello at a past Sifteo event



Sifteo will be in booth 452 in the Expo hall at Maker Faire this weekend.
Maker Faire is the the world’s most diverse showcase of creativity and innovation in technology, craft, science, fashion, art, food and more! And it’s located near the Sifteo headquarters, in the Bay Area. Join us!

Special events at our booth:

SATURDAY, May 18th
10am-12pm: Ice Palace Unveil. Be the first to play our Sandwich Kingdom sequel.
12pm-2pm: Design Your Own Game Level. Featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
2pm-4pm: Photos with our Cuddly Cube Buddy.
5pm-7pm: Developer Tools Q&A.

SUNDAY, May 19th
10am-12pm: Developer Tools Q&A.
12pm-2pm: Build a Paper Pirate Ship. And sail the oceans in our game Pesky Pirates.
2pm-4pm: Photos with Our Cuddly Cube Buddy.

Come play with us!

Click on this map for help finding out booth (#452 in the Expo hall):
Expo Hall Map

Leave a comment »


Supporting Women in Game Development

Posted May 7th, 2013 by under News

Sifteo is running a 48-hour game jam to support women in game development May 10th to 12th in the San Francisco Bay Area that we call home. We’d like to share a bit about what we’re doing and why. If you’re interested in joining us, even if its just to pop-in, check out the eventbrite! Both the Friday kickoff and Sunday showoff are great times for interested folk to come see what everyone is up to. If you can’t come, please help us share the event with others so we can reach as many people as possible.

Sifteo Women in Games Jam
2475 3rd Street
#252
San Francisco, CA 94107
Friday, May 10, 2013 at 6:00 PM – Sunday, May 12, 2013 at 8:00 PM (PDT)

The team members that have built and continue to build Sifteo come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Artists, designers, engineers, producers, marketers, managers, and more. Some come from hobbyist hacking, others have been making commercial games for years. Some of us are self taught, some have PhDs. Some of us build puzzles, others are FPS-action lovers. Some have been making games and hardware their whole lives, for others this is their first job in the industry. We’d like to think ourselves a pretty diverse group with a lot of perspectives, if only by our backgrounds and the paths that led us here. But as our producer Robin Yang (@robinyang) reminded us all recently, we can always do better, especially in an industry that sorely needs to improve in diversity, acceptance, and accessibility.

At a recent team roundtable, Robin gave us a great presentation on how we can become better advocates for gender diversity right now. So often it is easy to say you support diversity and simply never do anything, having checked off that box and moved on. She challenged us to take action to support others and to be more cognizant of how our actions might be influenced by unnoticed biases or simply by ignorance of others needs. Here’s a link to a slightly abridged version of her deck

Gender Diversity and Advocacy at Sifteo in 2013 from Robin Yang

In an effort to be more active in the community we decided to pivot our next major public event, a local community game jam, to focus it on supporting women in game development. There’s a lot of people at Sifteo passionate about making games a more inviting industry for women so it seemed a natural fit. We’ve put a lot of thought into how to best pull this off and I think we’re all pretty excited to see it happen this weekend. Inspired by the recent conference in New York, the theme of the jam will be Different Games. Getting away from the status quo and creating new kinds of experiences is something that what always been important at Sifteo, and its something that happens naturally in a more diverse industry.

We’ll be hosting a #1ReasonToBe open mic at the Friday kickoff, a chance for women and their supporters in the industry to share their #1ReasonToBe in the technology/games industry. If you haven’t seen it, the magnificent #1ReasonToBe panel from this year’s GDC is free in the vault. It is our hope this will lead to some great connections and discussions throughout the weekend. Both women and men from Sifteo will also be presenting on how to design and build games on the cubes and will be around throughout the weekend to work alongside jammers and to help them build their games. Sunday evening we’ll have a show-off where jammers can present and celebrate what they’ve built.

But we know we can’t just run a single event and call it a day. We’ve started helping out with the Girl Scouts “When I Grow Up” program, where a few Sifteons got to go out and teach Girl Scouts to build and deploy levels in a game. In an effort to improve our workplace, we’ve made sure to be explicit that if someone is uncomfortable about actions here, even if they’re ostensibly benign, that they will be supported if they speak up. We’ve even starting looking at how things like the size/shapes of team t-shirts we order may address unconscious biases about our team. We’re also looking at how we can rework our future events to make them more accessible to all comers (stay tuned, I’m very excited about some news coming up in June), planning other diversity focused events, and are a member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Entrepreneurial Alliance.

There are a lot of ways to improve our industry. Industry-wide change is hard and takes time, but there is good momentum these days. We hope that with events like this, along with changing the day-to-day expectations in our small part of the world, we can help make things better. As people spread from workplaces and communities where diversity is the expectation and not the exception they’ll spread their expectations along with them. That has the power to change our industry at a grassroots level for the better.

Leave a comment »


“When I grow up…”

Posted April 25th, 2013 by under Events, Game development, Interviews, News, Sifteo Life

Robin Yang, Games Producer

Robin Yang, Games Producer at Sifteo

Robin Yang, Games Producer at Sifteo, gave a career talk at the Girl Scouts “When I Grow Up” career exploration we attended a couple weekends ago. We were blown away by how she inspired a whole room of girls to get psyched about STEM subjects, technology, and game development, so we wanted to share her thoughts on the experience with others: 

“Getting to know the Girl Scouts at the “When I Grow Up” event was inspiring to me — it baffles me that people still assume that girls aren’t interested in technology when in a single day I met dozens of curious young women excited to learn more about what we do as game developers. Seeing them understand the games, and then start to understand how they could become game developers themselves, reminded me how important it is for our industry to keep pushing and dedicating time to this issue. We have to continue to tell our #1reasontobe to aspiring generations as well as to each other — the only way we’ll create a more diverse (and therefore more creative, inclusive, profitable, innovative) industry is if we actively prioritize doing so. Sharing our stories and helping young girls visualize their path into technology/games is an important first step.”

Want to help Sifteo and Robin inspire girls to become game developers? Share this post on Facebook and Twitter to spread the word and encouragement!

Sifteo's honorary Girl Scout badge

Tagged , , , , , ,

Leave a comment »


Flirtation, enemies, and revenge: talking about games with developer Josh Lee

Posted April 23rd, 2013 by under Game development, Games, Interviews, News

Flirtation, enemies, and revenge–sound like themes from your favorite Shakespearean drama? Sure, but they’re also major players in the plot of social games!

Meet Josh Lee, game developer of Floor Is Lava and creator of Low Rollr, Sifteo’s new (semi-)massive mulitplayer* game. See what he has to say about bluffing, flirting, and the psychology of competition in Low Rollr and many other games with related mechanics.

Josh Lee of Floor Is Lava

What games inspired you while making Low Rollr? What about them sparked your interest?

I was initially inspired by dice games like Yahtzee and Farkle. I particularly like the game Pass the Pigs and the way it builds its rules around the pig-shaped dice.

An example of a roll in the game Pass the Pigs, which influenced the development of Low Rollr.

Mostly, though, I was inspired by the thought of people chucking their cubes in a blatantly unsafe manner. I was really excited about that. Eventually, though, I calmed down and made a game that you could play just by shaking, with less risk of permanent damage to your cubes.

What did you learn about group and social dynamics while making (and playing!) Low Rollr? Have you noticed any trends in how people negotiate their relationships to luck and other players?

When I was designing Low Rollr, I had a very game-designery idea of how it would be played: players would keep track of low rolls, see who’s been getting hit with actions, try to guess what their opponents’ scores were, and use their Low Rollr actions to go after whoever they thought had the high score. All very tidy, logical, and strategic.

In reality, people target their actions based on revenge, not logic. You tag me with a Lose Points action, I tag you back with a Halve Score. Never mind that we’re both driving down each others’ scores while everyone else’s scores keep going up. For some reason, people don’t play Low Rollr to win — they play to take their enemies down with them. I had no idea this game would end up as an example of man’s inhumanity to man, but there you go.

Also, if a group of players includes a couple, the couple will always go after each other. I have no idea why–in-game flirting, maybe?

 

Kaleidoscopic triangles, oh my! Tell us about the art style for the game.

Low Rollr’s visual style came out of an experiment in trying to make cube-friendly graphics with as few elements as possible. Most of the game’s graphics — the animated text, the background textures, etc. — are made out of little right triangles (or two right triangles stuck together to make a square).

While messing around with different ways of animating things, I discovered that with a little bit of bad math, you could create some pretty psychedelic patterns, which led to the demo that graces the main menu in the game.

 Low Rollr, multiplayer game for on Sifteo Cubes

Do you have any tips on best bluffing practices or keeping a straight face when you have the high score? What works best?

The most effective strategy is to be very quiet and not draw any attention to yourself. Let the other players antagonize each other and fall into a vicious cycle of Steal actions while you quietly rack up points.

But what fun is it to play a game like this silently? The actual most awesome strategy is to actively sow seeds of doubt and paranoia in your opponents’ minds. Insinuate that a player *may* be rolling a lot of 7s. Suggest that another player doesn’t *seem* to have been the Low Rollr in a while, and must have a lot of points by now. Just don’t be too obvious, or you’ll draw attention to yourself. A few simple nudges is all it takes to turn the table into a pile of halved scores, with you at the top of the heap.

 

Are there any Easter eggs in your game? What is it and how can we find it?

There is, actually! In the main menu screen, hold the crazy pattern cube upside down and press its screen. I won’t say what it is–you’ll have to find out for yourself!

*Play Low Rollr with up to 12 players!

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment »


Tamagotchi pets, playground games, and Tower No Tumble: an interview with Die Gute Fabrik

Posted April 22nd, 2013 by under Games, Intelligent Play, Interviews

We sat down with the Doug Wilson and  Nils Deneken, the creators of Tower No Tumble, to learn a bit more about the game. Below, they share some thoughts on design, social play, and some personal insights into the much loved Dot characters.

doug and nils

Doug Wilson and Nils Deneken of game design studio Die Gute Fabrik.

Can you talk about your inspiration for the game?

I knew I wanted to do something properly “physical” with the cubes, as well as something that would be fun for spectators as well as players. Around the time I was brainstorming game ideas, I was just getting into a classic tabletop game called Crokinole. Crokinole is kind of like darts meets shuffleboard. You and your opponent take turns flicking small wooden discs, trying to get them to land as close as possible to the center of a circular board. Not only is the game satisfyingly tactile, but it’s also something that you can get “better” at over time. At some point, it occurred to me that I could do something similar with Sifteo Cubes!

 

What is the origin of the Dots? Where do they come from and what’s their story?

The Dots are creatures from the world of our upcoming adventure game, Mutazione. They’re the creation of Die Gute Fabrik founder and illustrator Nils Deneken. I don’t want to reveal too much yet, but they’re adorable forest creatures that don’t speak a human language.

 

Is Tower No Tumble a game about conflict? Or is Tower No Tumble a national pastime (something like baseball?) in the world of the Dots? Why do they knock each other down?

In my mind, the Dots are playing cooperatively. That’s why all of them cry when the tower gets knocked down! And all them celebrate a good hit. Not unlike sports like mountain climbing, I feel like the Dots are trying to “test” themselves – and have a little fun while doing so!

The Dots of Tower No Tumble

How do you imagine the Dots’ personalities?

You’d have to ask Nils (the illustrator), who’s the authority on the Dots. But as I see it, they’re simple and agreeable creatures – a bit goofy, in an adorable way.

 

By now, you must have watched hundreds of people play Tower No Tumble. What’s the most creative, fun, or funniest rule you’ve seen someone make in Silly Mode?

I especially enjoy rules that force the player to incorporate household objects – like, “flick the cube from atop this ramp I just built out of books.” But keep in mind you don’t even need to be playing Silly Mode to experiment with your own house rules! In the spirit of kids games and playground games, we hope players will be inspired to invent their own constraints, physical arrangements, game rules, and so forth.

 

What’s your favorite thing about Tower No Tumble? Learn anything new in the process of its development?

I really enjoyed “bringing to life” the cubes by pairing each one with a particular Dot (creature). It’s kind of like those old Tamagotchi pets, but simpler and tied into a concrete game activity. It was especially fun working with our sound designer Alessandro Coronas, whose Dot sounds are just adorable!

And yeah, you always learn a lot designing games for new technologies. One of the challenges was, how do you teach people to do stuff in the physical world? (e.g. construct a tower in a particular configuration, or flick a cube from a certain distance) Often, it helps to keep the game pretty simple.

Tamagotchi pets!
Anything else players may like to know about the game?

Well, there are certain bonuses and penalties you get sometimes (for example, three successful hits in a row). One of the rarer penalties is, you get docked if two or more cubes fall facedown. That feels like a particular bad spill, so we wanted to penalize accordingly :)

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment »


Sifteo out and about in the Bay Area!

Posted April 19th, 2013 by under Events, Neighbor Initiative, News, Sifteo Life

GS pic with cubes

Teaching Girl Scouts how to design levels and use the Sifteo SDK.

We’ve been very busy here in the Bay Area this Spring. Last Wednesday, we were at the Stanford Cool Product Expo showing off what Sifteo can do. It’s true–the products were super cool, and we were psyched to get hands on with so many other neat innovations.

Just last weekend, we had the Sifteo team out in full force at 4 other awesome events going on. We demoed at the Children’s Creativity Museum and the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, where we met tons of nice families and even brought our own!

We also did some work to further the aims of the our Corporate Social Responsibility program, the Neighbor Initiative. We demoed at and donated 3 packs of Sifteo Cubes to the Claire Lilienthal Silent Auction last Saturday night, proceeds  from which will benefit underfunded programs at Claire Lilienthal Alternative school.  What a great time! The theme was Roaring 20s and everyone looked flapper fantastic!

Claire Lilienthal Silent Auction

And last but not least, we taught girls how to design levels and use the Sifteo SDK at the Girl Scouts Girls Go Tech Career Exploration event at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. This was probably our favorite event because we were able to see Girl Scouts of all ages learning how to do the work we do each day–teaching technology is something we’re all super passionate about, and really loved this opportunity. 2 of our employees, Sarah Romoslawski (Game Designer) and Robin Yang (Producer), also gave career talks to provide the Girl Scouts some insight into their jobs at Sifteo and inspire them to think about fun, exciting career paths in technology.

We love spending the weekends participating in community events and making new friends who share our passions for technology, games, learning, and social & tactile play. Meet us at any of the events? Drop us a line! Find us on Facebook or Twitter, we’d love to hear from you :) .

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment »


Now Recruiting for the Sifteo PlayLab!

Posted April 15th, 2013 by under Game development, Intelligent Play, Sifteo Life

We put a lot of care into making sure that all of our games on Sifteo Cubes are fun. But that care doesn’t just come from the developers! While we do our best to design a great experience all the way through a Sifteo game, a lot of the work is shaped by the feedback we get from you, our players.

playtest_worksheet

Like any project, a game goes through a lot of changes as it’s being developed. Sometimes the very first step is prototyping the game in paper to better model what the experience is going to be like. It can get pretty elaborate!

But once we start fleshing out what the game experience is going to be like, we have to test it to make sure it’s fun for everyone, not just us.

That’s where you come in. We do our user research right here in the Sifteo office, and we bring in real humans to test our products. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to be a part of the Sifteo Playlab, just fill out the form below. We’re mainly looking for kids ages 6-12 right now, but if you’re an adult interested in playtesting, sign up anyway and we’ll let you know when we need you.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Tagged , ,

Leave a comment »


After school crafts: an invitation to creature making!

Posted April 11th, 2013 by under Games, Intelligent Play, News, Sifteo Life

Who: Anyone who likes making stuff! Especially kids with a little parental supervision :) . Below, Stephen and Lila will be showing you how to make Dots.

What: Dot making with pompoms.

Huh?: Meet the Dots! 5-legged critters who are all about being silly and causing a kerfuffle:

Meet the Dots of Tower No Tumble!

Meet the Dots of Tower No Tumble!

Where: a tabletop or other flat surface.

When: Whenever you have about a half hour of time for creative crafting. Makes a great project for after school hours, a rainy weekend afternoon, a sick day, a holiday, or a play date with other parents and kids.

Why: Because getting creative is fun! And because kids love creatures, as most parents can confirm. The real and the imaginative, the big and the small, the furry, the 4-eyed, the several-pawed, the toothy, the goofy, and the cute: kids love them! At Sifteo, we noticed this especially when we launched the game Tower No Tumble–a game that combines building and bowling in the quirky world of the Dots.

What you’ll need:

  • Multicolored pompoms
  • crafting wire
  • pipe cleaners
  • seed beads
  • scissors (or wire cutter)
  • Elmer’s glue
  • hot glue gun (optional – with parent supervision only)
Dot craft project supplies

Crafting supplies: hot glue gun (parents only!), Elmer’s glue, pompoms, craft wire, seed beads, pipe cleaners, a scissor.

 

How:

1.) Make the limbs: cut 5 pieces of craft wire (or pipe cleaner) to give your Dot some legs to stand on. Cut 2 more shorter pieces to make arms.

Making the legs

Cut some craft wire to make the arms and legs.

2.) Pick a pompom: choose the color you want your Dot to be.

3.) Attach the limbs: if you’re helping a child or children make Dots, do this step for them by using the hot glue gun to attach the arms and legs. If children are crafting alone, Elmer’s glue can be used.

Attaching the arms and legs of your Dot

Stephen uses the hot glue gun to help Lila attach the arms and legs on her Dot.

4.) Make a face! Use Elmer’s glue to add seed beads for eyes and another piece of craft wire to make a mouth.

Make a face.

Make a face.

Lila finished making her Dot!

Lila’s finished making her Dot!

5.) Repeat on “Silly Mode.” The Dots of Tower No Tumble are known for their silly antics, so it’s no surprise that Tower No Tumble is especially fun on Silly Mode, where players cross their eyes, spin in circles, and even use their noses to play! That’s why we highly recommend crafting in Silly Mode, as well, so you can make all kinds of goofy, funny Dots come to life. Here are some made by Lila and her friends:

DSC_0002

Lila gets creative with Dot making.

A whole slew of silly Dots!

A whole slew of silly Dots!

lila's new favorite Dot creature

Lila’s new favorite Dot creature :) .

6.) Get everyone involved! Invite friends, siblings, and other toys to join. Lila had fun playing with the Dots and some of her other favorite creatures:

Dots ride horseback!

 

Suggestions on Dot making or other helpful hints? Leave your comments below!

Happy Crafting!

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment »


MTV Movie Awards: guess what’s inside the goodie bag!

Posted April 10th, 2013 by under Events, News, Press

Sifteo Cubes included in gift bags at MTV Movie Awards!

Sifteo Cubes to be included in gift bags for presenters and winners at the MTV Movie Awards!

Best kiss, best fight scene, best villain, best shirtless performance–what’s YOUR favorite MTV Movie Award? We love this annual event for its quirky categories, humorous approach, and democratic process (vote now for the winners!).

And this year, we have something else to be excited about: Sifteo Cubes were on the short list of “coolest stuff” requested by MTV to include in gift bags for all award presenters and winners! We love the idea of our favorite stars (Batman?!) giving them a try, so of course we sent some cubes for the occasion.

In just a few days, a hundred of the coolest celebrities of 2013 will be rocking the same fun gear as all current Sifteo Cube players!

This Sunday, April 14th, tune in to the MTV Movie Awards to say what’s up to pop culture and get a glimpse of the stars receiving their cubes.

Booyah to goodie bags! Get the full story here and check out the loot below: 

Sifteo Cubes in MTV gift bag

A sneak peak at what’s inside the MTV Movie Award gift bag!

MTV Movie Awards bag shot at press junket

MTV Movie Awards gift bag items at press junket, the cast of MTV’s Awkward interviewing in the background.

Tagged , , , ,

Leave a comment »


Sifteo at GDC: get all the details here!

Posted March 26th, 2013 by under Events, Game development, Games, News, Sifteo Life

 

Sifteo booth #238, GDC 2013

Sifteo is doing big things and awesome things at GDC this year and we want you to get involved! Here’s what we’re up to this week, we hope to see you there!

  1. Come hang out and play games! Sifteo is set up at booth #238 in the Expo area near the Independent Games Festival. We’ll be launching the Indie Game Pack, including titles F.R.E.S.H., Low Rollr, and Tower No Tumble. Be the first to play the new games with us at GDC. WHEN: all day, everyday March 25 – March 29, 2013. 
  2. Party with us! Tonight Sifteo will be at the DNA Lounge with the game development team for the Indie Game Pack title F.R.E.S.H.! Developer/DJ minusbaby will be spinning and showing off his new game for the first time ever. This is going to be an awesome gig. WHEN: 7pm – 2am, Tuesday, March 26, 2013.
  3. Catch Sifteo President, Dave Merrill, speak at the GDC panel, Games and Toys: Creating the Perfect UnionAt Dave’s talk at the Moscone Center’s West Hall room 3018, you’ll “learn lessons from veteran industry executives on how to successfully execute, create and market games that include interactive and physical elements. Our panel will discuss all that’s involved: from product design and development, to distribution, marketing and monetization strategies. They’ll share important pitfalls to avoid and “must have” elements to your strategy.” WHEN: 2pm – 3pm, Wednesday, March 27, 2013.

Sifteo at the DNA lounge

Tagged , , ,

Leave a comment »


by Sifteo