Enhancing sense of life

By Bobbi

Yesterday we were discussing Alternate Reality Games during lunch break. We always find that kind of game seems to appeal to a lot of people.
The case discussed was getting some information about a person you don't know, and your task would be to find and kill them (not for real; just by targeting them, and then performing some kind of action).
A person round the table said: "If you're in this game, and someone suddenly phones you at work, and then just hangs up... you know you are in trouble! I would probably just throw everything at hand and try to get out the back door!"

My thoughts wandered off to how some experiences make you think you're part of a movie (like this, for example) - and that those experiences trigger a stronger sense of life. As if the sensation of watching yourself from the outside in itself adds an extra dimension to life.

Sometimes that happens just by incidence, but obviously it's also possible to create events that trigger this feeling. Examples of that are flash mobs, zombie crawls etc.
The Alternate Reality Game is a more complex form, but in the end they're all about the same thing: Adding an extra layer on top of reality, a layer that brings the possibility of enhancing sense of life.
And I think that's one of the important tasks of games, to give us that possibility!


Bobbi enhancing sense of life at the Copenhagen Zombie Crawl

It's been far too long...

...but here's the update, anyways! :)

We have a new part time employee - Anna, who started working with us last week. Anna will focus on sales and communication, and we wish her welcome to Ozma!

Ozma and Damanco has closed a partnership agreement regarding a project we are working on in joint effort. We are also teaming up with Sustainable Studio for branding and graphic identity.

In May we visited the Nordic Game conference and got blown away by sessions by designers from titles such as Guitar Hero, Ico and Silent Hill, as well as by the panel on social gaming led by Dallas Snell from NCSoft. I went from that session with a strange glow in my eyes, and an enlightened smile on my face, (even though Dallas hadn't even time to finish his session!).

Every time we attend this conference we get filled up with new ideas and energy - it's so rewarding to listen to all this gathered experience. That got us to think about how rare it is for us to meet with game designers from other companies, and we started dreaming about a swedish game design forum where we could meet up (yes, irl) with other designers and discuss design issues! How does that sound?