At a conference in Toronto, I was sitting with Neil Randall, director of the researched-based Games Institute at the University of Waterloo, watching a talk given by Jane McGonigal about a project that she spearheaded with the New York Public Library. It brought kids into the library overnight to have them all write a book together. It was amazing. I turned to Neil after the talk and told him that the Games Institute needed to start making games to really be legitimate in the eyes of gamers and his response was simply: “so make one.”

I stayed up the entire night thinking about what kind of game I would make. By morning, I had sketched out an idea for for a game of duelling wizards where your cell phone was your wand. In my sleep deprivation, I thought that having a duel on an imaginary plane would be more exciting if I knew that my opponent was close to me, so I emphasized geolocation heavily in that first concept. Rival Books of Aster in its finished state could not be any farther from that original idea, but it sparked something in Neil the next day and he told me that I would have his support if I could put together a team to build it.

As luck would have it, Evan Jones of Stitch Media was giving a talk at that same conference. Evan and I had done our undergraduate degrees at the same university and lived in the same residence ten years earlier. While we caught up, Evan serendipitously told me that he wanted to pivot his team into games. After showing him my idea, I introduced him to Neil and they immediately began to talk about a partnership between The Games Institute and Stitch Media that could help make Rival Books of Aster a reality.

Looking back, it still seems absurd. Less than 24 hours after Neil telling me in what felt like a dare “so make a game”, I found myself in the middle of the conversation that set the next two and a half years in motion.

The first obstacle our team faced may sound like more of a mountain than a molehill: none of us had ever made a game before. We all played games; most of us could even be labeled as hard-core gamers, but loving games is a long way from being a game designer.

A ‘big’ meeting with various team members

We began to sit down for long brainstorming sessions using that first concept of “cellphone as wand” as a starting point. These were particularly heated discussions about what direction we would take, and sometimes these directions were wild. We were meeting in the Transmedia Zone at Ryerson University in Toronto. The zone was designed for collaborative work and we would get together in a room we called the fishbowl. The walls on one side were all made of glass and anyone coming in or out of the centre could see us arguing through the windows as we pointed at one diagram or another on the flip chart paper that we had lining the walls. It was a stressful and fun time. The outcome of these meetings left us with this list:

1. Our game must involve complex strategy and decision-making across multiple axes 2. Our game must allow us to make and break combinations in a meaningful way 3. Our game must be set in an interesting world with a dynamic story 4. The player must have the opportunity to be someone in that story

An early paper prototype in action

It wasn’t until Wayne Shipley, one of our eventual game designers who played with a weekly group of dedicated Magic, The Gathering players suggested a Collectible Card Game that we all knew that we had found our genre. Combinations in collectible cards games are not new at all. In fact, “combo” is a standard deck archetype in many games. What I was interested in was taking the idea of the combo and making it the centre of the game design. What if the powers of your cards can be turned on and off? What if the combos were the game? The first paper and then digital prototypes of Rival Books of Aster came quickly after this moment.

The obvious barrier to creating projects like Rival Books of Aster is money. A lot of indie games are developed in people’s basements simply out of necessity. But, we had assembled a team that included a major research institution from a world class university, and an award winning creative studio known for innovative storytelling and Alternate Reality Game design. We were excited to apply for development support that both the federal and provincial governments provide to help job creation in the digital media sector. After months of preparing very large application packets, including initial game designs and prototypes, we were awarded money from both the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Canada Media Fund to build Rival Books of Aster.

It took a lot of time and paperwork, but we had the money. Now it was time to make good on our designs…

Check out part two here