Friday Games: Hokra
This Friday, the MIT Game Lab will be hosting our most important annual sporting event plus casual end-of-term study break, the International Hokra Association Northeast Regional Championships! Starting on May 17th at 5pm, we will be in a much larger room in the MIT Sloan Laboratory, 35-225. Pizza. Prizes. Stadium seating.
Some of you may have caught the preview of the updated “Alpha” build of Hokra last week, which was made available to backers of Sportsfriends on Kickstarter. We noted some changes to the game that should have a visible effect on competitive play, particularly the no-dash tackle, which often results in both aggressive and defensive “dancing” on the field and makes it much harder for the ball-carryer to juke in the scoring zone. The speed of the players and ball also seem zippier, and the lower default game resolution of 720p should feel familiar to players from the 2011 No Quarter exhibition.
Since there aren’t any classes on Friday, feel free to swing by 35-225 at 4pm to get in a little warm-up practice. You can still register your team if you want in! Join us in person or watch our semiprofessional live broadcast and score ticker via Twitch.
Philip Tan is the creative director for the MIT Game Lab. He teaches CMS.608 Game Design and CMS.611J/6.073J Creating Video Games at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the past 6 years, he was the executive director for the US operations of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a game research initiative. He complements a Master's degree in Comparative Media Studies with work in Boston's School of Museum of Fine Arts, the MIT Media Lab, WMBR 88.1FM and the MIT Assassins' Guild, the latter awarding him the title of "Master Assassin" for his live-action roleplaying game designs. He also founded a DJ crew at MIT.