Game Design Party!
The Pitch Your Game Design panel had three industry professionals on stage. The interesting part that stood out for me was that Chris Erhardt, an industry veteran and a former professor of mine, was on the panel. As sort of an inside joke, we thought it would be fun to pitch games we ourselves had previously made for DigiPen.We took our seats and TONS of people stood up to explain their ideas. Some were good and had potential, and others were downright laughable. The good ones got chosen to move on to the next round where they were asked deeper questions about prospected development time, specific platform, etc. The ones that were bad were asked to sit down immediately.
The best were when games had complex rules or explanation, and the presenter started with the sentence, "This is a very simple concept". One that I thought was hilarious was the "What happens after highschool" where the jocks that played football bag groceries for a living. He got pretty far actually, due to the audience loving his proposal.
One that made me want to actually play the game was the winner of the contest (he walked away with a TON of prize redemption tickets for his idea). He based his game design on the Mayan belief that basket ball hoops were portals to Hell (that's what he said at least...). The gameplay consisted of going into hell through these portals and using the Wii controller to do combos with the basket ball to defeat hell demons.
My DigiPen friends pitched their respective game ideas, and were then forced to have a dance competition to decide the winner. One friend did the worm, while another moved his arms in the fashion of a moron and took his shirt off. It was amazing and I'm glad I went.
-Flying Maiden