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Logitech video game lets players become designers

Sep 18,2014 - Last updated at Sep 18,2014

Electronics company Logitech is best known for creating accessories to bolster a personal computer or tablet. Now, the company wants to collaborate on a video game project with players assisting in the development.

Logitech launched “Together We Game”, a crowdsourced video game project where players contribute to the development of a video game launching next January on the Steam marketplace for PCs and Apple’s App Store.

The process will start with a thread on Reddit, where players can share their ideas on the game’s overall theme and other features. After going through a voting process on Reddit, features will be open to a second vote hosted by Logitech over the course of the next five months before the game launches in January.

Ehtisham Rabbani, Logitech’s chief marketing officer, says the company wanted to give its consumers a chance to share their creativity.

“Games are increasingly how we express ourselves, and they act as that space we retreat to to challenge ourselves, connect with friends and to just get some ‘me time’,” said Rabbani. “This is going to be such a fun and inspiring development process.”

Frank Lantz, director of the New York University Game Lab, will join members of the studio Tiny Mantis in developing the game based on approved elements.

The project will result in a tower-defence game, where players must eliminate waves of enemies by placing objects such as turrets or other gear to slow their progress. Lantz says accessibility and a specific focus on one genre helped make a tower-defence title the proper fit for this project.

“Given our limited time-frame, we don’t want to spend time and resources on complex 3-D environments, cut-scenes, and other forms of linear content,” said Lantz. “The scope of a tower defence type game will allow us to focus on gameplay and create a solid, finished, polished game within our schedule.

“Tower defence gameplay was invented by people making and sharing maps and mods of StarCraft and WarCraft on Blizzard’s Battle.net. Now we are bringing that tradition full circle.”

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