Tech Tantra Thursday - Bill Eberle

a simple site for sharing ideas

tech tantra thursday
- behind the cosmic curtain with Bill Eberle

for thursday september 1 & 8, 2011

Cosmic Encounter® Online at Facebook fb thread

game design and psychologically significant moments

In my mind, one of the key breakthrough ideas in our original “talking about what we wanted to do and how we could do it” that Peter, Jack, and I made as we were defining the game that became Cosmic Encounter® was our decision

. . . to focus on a key, psychologically important, moment – the one we imagined might occur when humans and very different, sentient alien entities, or when any two groups of very different, sentient alien entities, first encountered each other.

We decided that, at that moment, the moment of the “first encounter” between two very different groups of alien entities, each group of alien entities would have to decide whether to try to attack the other group or to try to communicate with the other group. And we made that “first encounter” decision and the interaction which followed the centerpiece of our game Cosmic Encounter®.

first encounter moments in science fiction

Recently, I had a “that's a Cosmic moment” revelation when I was reading a short science fiction novella, The Frozen Sky, by Jeff Carlson.

Here's the excerpt from Jeff's Frozen Sky first encounter drama that grabbed me:

—Here they come. In an instant her chance to kill them cleanly would be gone, and Vonnie had learned not to hesitate. But she had also remembered who she was and why she’d ever come here. “Lam, talk to them! You have to try to talk to them!” she yelled, and the suit bent down even as the amphibians swept into the cavern, a crisscrossing wave of bodies high and low. At the same time Lam emitted sonar bursts in exactly the same tone as theirs, greeting them, ducking one shoulder as he drew on everything he’d learned. It was the right decision. She believed that. This was a new population altogether and there was every reason to hope that they would answer her.

When I read that, I immediately recognized it as exactly the kind of Cosmic moment we had identified to be the center piece for Cosmic Encounter®.

for thursday september 1 & 8, 2011

Cosmic Encounter® Online at Facebook fb thread The Frozen Sky

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