Archive for the 'game industry' Category

Video games should be more like albums.

Published at January 14, 2008 in game design, game industry, music and video games. 3 Comments

At least, that’s how we should perceive them. The comparison to films is tired and no longer relevant. Portal signals a break from long-and-laborious gameplay. Now, the solid gameplay experience should be likened to a well-composed music album.

This isn’t just a new perspective for consumers and critics; developers should reconsider how they approach the process of game design. Games should become, in a word, digestable. Short, succinct, sweet.

Everyday Shooter is perhaps the most literal interpretation of this new perspective. Because it’s based around the game-as-album concept, it’s short, with its length dictated by the music. However, like an album, the game is replayable, and players are able — and willing — to re-live the experience again and again.

Of course, unlike a music album, the experience changes each time, as the game’s intrinsic interactivity — and elementary chaos theory — dictate that no two playthroughs will ever be the same. It’s this guarantee that should draw players in, and justifies short length over epic storytelling.

In short, playing a good game is tantamount to listening to a good album. And good albums don’t last 30 hours. They usually don’t even max out the space on a CD. They don’t have to.

I’ve felt that there’s a strong connection between music and video games for some time, which might be what draws me so strongly to game design. I’ll never be a musician (despite those ever-present yearnings), but creating a game that plays like an album seems like a good compromise. So I’m going to start reviewing my favorite albums on this site. I’m no John Cusack in High Fidelity, but there is something compelling about a well-structured album, and I think games can tap into that. I think they’ve already begun to.

I like Cheapass Games.

Published at May 17, 2007 in game design, game industry and joystiq. 0 Comments

Proper noun, mind you. I’m talking about game designer James Ernest and his Seattle-based crew of non-digital developers. I fell in love with Kill Doctor Lucky last year, and I’m just now starting to review more Cheapass Games for Off the Grid starting with three of the company’s Hip Pocket Games, which are lovingly distributed in ziploc bags like so many drugs. It’s a valid comparison.

I’m a big fan of Ernest’s approach to game design. Zimmerman and Salen commissioned him to design a game for Rules of Play, and he came up with a playing-card game about magicians called Caribbean Star. Here’s what he had to say about his process:

Whereas some game designers prefer to create a game mechanic first and then adapt that mechanic to an appropriate theme, I prefer to start with a theme whenever possible. This gives me more creative ideas when trying to invent game mechanics, and it makes for a game whose mechanics seem better suited to the theme. When a storyline gets added after the game is designed, you can really tell, especially when a play that seems reasonable in the storyline is not allowed in the game.

How awesome is that? What’s more awesome is that the inverse is also true: design a game whose storyline supports the mechanics, and you can create definite “aha!” moments for players, as well as assist in the understanding of the rules. Ernest’s games have been very influential for me, as have his instructions for those games. It goes without saying that I would love to work at a place like Cheapass. If I was planning on being in Seattle for the summer, you’d better believe I’d be knocking on his door (in a friendly way, not in a stalker-y way).

More Cheapass games are enroute to me now. I’m looking forward to playing them.

On the rest of GDC.

Published at March 28, 2007 in game design, game industry and general. 0 Comments

I’m conflating the Thursday and Friday of GDC because I’ve been doing this for what feels like forever.

What rocked:
Exploration: From Systems to Spaces to Self – Clint Hocking talked about notions of exploration, and how they pertain to game design. Not only was his talk exhaustively researched, but it was also incredibly well-constructed, funny, and invaluable to my work. The exploration and discovery of a system by a player is one of my favorite aspects of digital game design, and hearing Clint focus on it with such enthusiasm really made me feel confident in my approach. Clint even posted the slides and transcript from his talk! What a guy!

Writing Great Design Documents – It was the last session of the conference, but that didn’t stop Damion Schubert from giving a great talk to a FULL audience (they were actually turning people away at the door!). Possibly the most practical talk I attended all week, Damion emphasized the importance of design documents, and reminded all the designers who they were writing their docs for (hint: the coders), and to keep that in mind when deciding which details to include. And he posted his slides, too! How awesome’s that?

What was really great:
The Metagame: A Battle of Videogame Smarts – I already talked about this, but it was a great session with a lot of my favorite people in the industry.

Small Changes, Big Results: Redefining a PC Franchise for Nintendo Wii – Probably the hardest choice I made during the conference, as this talk was held at the same time as Goichi Suda’s “Punk’s Not Dead,” Chaim Gingold’s “SPORE’s Magic Crayons,” and the “Pitch your Game Idea” session. Nevertheless, Robin Hunicke‘s breakdown of how to properly adapt a franchise for a new console was fantastic. Robin all but ignores the Wii Remote as she discusses how best to fit a familiar franchise to a new console and a new market, keeping a keen eye on the smallest details while never losing sight of the big picture.
Sadly, no slides from Robin. :(

The Game Design Challenge: The Needle and Thread Interface – I’ve wanted to go to one of Eric‘s game design challenges for years, and was happy to finally make it to one. It would’ve been worth it for Alexey Pajitnov alone, but Harvey Smith and David Jaffe both gave great presentations as well.

What was so-so:
GameBoss: Simplified Online Game Creator – I caught an early-morning session on GameBrix, a collaborative online platform for designing and developing small digital games. Unfortunately, the company didn’t seem sure of the target demographic for the program; its relative simplicity was certainly accessible by any age, but the bright colors and cute games developed seemed skewed toward a pre-teen age group. Still, I’d be grateful for any program that allowed me to build simple games or prototypes, and the open-platform, flash-based approach of GameBrix was a definite sell for me. I’m looking forward to trying out the closed beta whenever they get around to it.

Gangs of GDC was quite enjoyable, even though I got owned every time

Reflections of Zelda – Eiji Aonuma’s talk on the development of the last several Zelda games didn’t really wow me. I was expecting more details of the design process, rather than developmental issues like whether players like the “toon-shaded” look. He also seemed to be contradicting himself, blaming the poor reception of Wind Waker on its cutesy style, yet then creating Phantom Hourglass which shares the same look. He also asserted that Four Swords Adventures did poorly because it was too difficult to understand, and yet is now integrating a multiplayer mode of Phantom Hourglass so disconnected from traditional Zelda gameplay that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to do. Still, Aonuma’s slides were cute, and his presentation was very clean.

What disappointed me:
The Nintendo Keynote: A Creative Vision – Yes, it’s true. Miyamoto’s keynote was nothing special, at least in my opinion. I understand that the man couldn’t reveal anything new, but he could’ve at least talked more about his creative process, and maybe revealed some non-stock-threatening insights into his design process and his experiences at Nintendo over the years. Instead, he talked about gaging successful gameplay on whether or not his wife likes it, and about how he tried for years to implement some form of Mii’s into Nintendo products.

On top of that, his presentation was sloppy. All the slides were loaded onto a Wii’s photo channel, but the system wasn’t meant for that kind of presentation. Miyamoto had to constantly resize images to make them fit on the projector, and the flashing cameras from the crowd caused his Wii remote cursor to go crazy (he actually had to hold a finger over the remote sensor while talking). Contrast this with Phil Harrison’s presentation, which was loaded into the photo gallery of a PS3. He simply walked around the stage with a sixaxis, depressing one of the shoulder buttons to advance the slides. Every slide fit perfectly, and there was practically no way of knowing it was being run off a PS3 (except for the controller in Phil’s hand). He even had the PS3 review the “photos” at the end of his presentation, going into a unique autoplay mode with each slide falling onto a table as a polaroid. It just looked great.

And that was GDC. Back to game design, I promise.

On the Wednesday of GDC.

Published at March 18, 2007 in game design and game industry. 0 Comments

I started with this brilliant idea to get a full week’s worth of blogging out of the events that transpired during GDC, and all the smart things I was thinking when I attended the best sessions… but it’s been a full week and only two posts, so obviously that’s not happening. To reiterate an earlier sentiment, there are simply not enough hours in a day.

Here’s a condensed and somewhat typical recap of the Wednesday of GDC 07:

9:00am – Eric Zimmerman led the Game Publishers Rant, which has become somewhat infamous for Chris Hecker’s harsh words for fan-favorite Wii (short version: it’s underpowered and that affects what developers can do with it). Less widely mentioned is Nicole Bradford’s passionate tirade about the important role the game industry can play in education in America, and Lee Jacobson’s horror stories about the shit that studios pull, and urging developers to not “pull that shit.”

10:30am – Phil Harrison’s keynote revealed the Second Life-esque Playstation Home, and the cooperative physics-based platformer LittleBigPlanet. Home seems a bit too much for me. It’s essentially a user-interface melted into an attractive virtual world, and I don’t know how people are going to feel about walking x meters to their “achievements” instead of just drilling down in a menu for them. As for LittleBigPlanet, it looks fun, but I’m not buying a system for it.

2:30pm – I caught about half of the Experimental Gameplay Sessions, since I had to leave to check out Lasse’s talk. It’s a shame the timing didn’t work out better, because everything shown was incredible. Particularly great was Petri Purho‘s work. Petri’s been developing short-cycle games, and showed off several of the games he’s developed so far. There was a definite increase in the quality of each game, both graphic-wise and design-wise, and it was evident that his process was definitely paying off. As always, I’m envious of people with code and design flexibility. That’s why I’m going to try and learn Flash for the umpteenth time. At least it’s something (and platform-independent, no less!).

6:30pm – I enjoyed attending the International Game Festival / Game Developers Choice Awards, in part because it felt a bit like the Oscars of games. Tim Schaefer was a great host, and the whole show had a sort of “looseness in rigidity feel” that gave you the impression that someone wanted to take it seriously, they just weren’t present. In a way, the IGF awards were far more important than the Game Developers Choice Awards, and I’d love to be a part of them someday.

9:00pm – Tacos and Margaritas. Damn it was a long day. More later. Soon later, not late later.

On the student scholarship and my experience.

Published at March 15, 2007 in game design, game industry and general. 2 Comments

At GDC this year, I was one of 25 individuals accepted to attend the conference as IGDA student scholars, an honor which included a free pass to the event, pairing with an industry mentor, and a full day of orientation and studio tours. This was last Tuesday.

The student scholars were a mixture of various backgrounds and disciplines. Some of them were undergrads (like me), but others were graduate students, and the group ranged widely in age. The disciplines and interests of the students varied widely as well, with artists, designers, coders, and audiophiles all equally represented.

Darius Kazemi met up with us before lunch and went over some networking basics. I asked him if it was creepy to introduce myself to people, having recognized them from Flickr photos or their blog. Other people inquired about business card etiquette, asking for jobs (Darius says: “you don’t”), and other minutiae of the networking scene that we’re all just now starting to learn. I’ve been reading Darius’s site for some time now, so it was great to meet him in person.

My time with my industry mentor was somewhat limited due to our busy schedules, which was unfortunate. I was paired with Lasse Seppänen, a production lead at Remedy Entertainment. At the moment, Lasse is hard at work heading the team for Alan Wake, a psychological thriller with an unannounced launch date for Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. The best talk we had was by far the most straightforward, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Moscone West, eating lunch while Lasse explained the steps he took to end up at Remedy, and his transition from designer to production lead. What’s still amazing to me is that he spent years in mobile game development, and yet was able to make a quick and easy transition over to production lead on a major console and computer title.

Lasse was incredibly nice, and eager introduce me to his friends and colleagues. In a way, it was also comforting to learn that someone who has achieved so much success in the industry could have started out the same way as I — with the realization that no other profession could bring them as much pleasure as developing games. Lasse threw caution to the wind and dedicated his time and energy solely to games, early on in his career. I can see myself making a similar leap of faith sometime in the near future, and it was a point I felt we could both relate to.

Of course, one of the benefits to being a student scholar was having an opportunity to attend the conference. I’ll continue posting throughout the next week or so, covering highlights from GDC, as well as some of the smaller things that got my gears turning. This is taking longer than expected. So much for short posts.

On the IGDA curriculum workshop.

Published at March 12, 2007 in education, game design and game industry. 0 Comments

I’ll start off my week of late-bloggingTM GDC at the very beginning. Last Monday and Tuesday, the IGDA’s Education special interest group held a workshop based around the development of game curricula at academic institutions. The two-day event was completely booked. I got in with a press pass on Monday, but had to miss out on Tuesday’s festivities due to a conflict with my student scholar orientation.

The workshop? Invaluable. Considering it’s the topic of my senior project, it was nice having a room-full of people talking the talk. The most notable problem with the workshop was the attitude of some of the academics I found myself sitting near. Nick Fortugno led an excellent session on teaching game design essentials, which included a design exercise for the attendees to participate in. I was grouped with several academics, and we were told to augment the rules of an analog game to change the message.

Perhaps because I was the youngest, I felt essentially stepped upon by my “peers” in the group, and none of the ideas I offered were even considered. To make matters worse, I felt that the design of my team grew unwieldy in terms of its complexity and limited formal structure. The group felt content to suggest how the game “should” work, rather than actually design the mechanics accordingly. When I suggested playtesting, they ignored me. The whole experience felt very counter-productive. It concerns me that this is the current state of game design in education.

Aside from this minor setback, the sessions held were extremely worthwhile, and gave me pages of notes to work with for my thesis. As mentioned above, Nick Fortugno’s talk gave me a much stronger insight into how to develop in-class exercises for design, and served as a nice refresh on some design fundamentals. Tracy Fullerton also talked about the application of game design exercises in the classroom, focusing more on examples from various institutions. I also had the pleasure of meeting Ian Schreiber, a professor at Ohio University who’s been integrating game elements into his education process. All in all, a good first day to the conference experience.

Wow, this turned out to be a longer post than anticipated. I’ll continue late-bloggingTM, but with more commentary, less specificity next time.

The Game Developers Conference is over.

Published at March 9, 2007 in game design, game industry, general and travel. 0 Comments

Yes, it seems like it just began… except that it doesn’t, because this was an incredibly long week, and I’m tired and ready to return to the East coast and begin processing everything that happened.

Obviously, I didn’t keep up numberless while I was GDC’ing, so I plan on late-bloggingTM my highlights of the conference over the next week or so, including favorite sessions and cool things that occurred to me (like the fact that Clint Hocking is amazing).

By the way, I attended The Metagame session, run by Frank Lantz and Eric Zimmerman. I mean, sure I attended lots of sessions, but The Metagame was the only one I wrote up for Joystiq, as part of my Off the Grid column.

Okay, that’s it for now. More later.

I'm off to GDC.

Published at March 4, 2007 in game industry, general and travel. 0 Comments

Leaving for San Francisco today. Should be a busy, busy week. I’m looking forward to it.

What I’m not looking forward to: five-hour flight spent writing my Gothic Lit essay.

I’ll post if I find the time.

On Peggle and how it's awesome.

Published at February 28, 2007 in bite-sized, game design and game industry. 1 Comment

Popcap’s Peggle is so awesome. It’s like pachinko meets candy meets crack meets that-episode-of-Evangelion-where-Kaoru-almost-ends-the-world.

For all of its awesomeness, however, Peggle would be even more awesome if there was a version for Mac OS X.

First Bookworm Adventures and now this? C’mon, Popcap. I’m dying, here.

On Settlers of Catan and Xbox Live Arcade.

Published at February 22, 2007 in game design, game industry, joystiq and video games. 0 Comments

Klaus Teuber’s Settlers of Catan is hitting Xbox Live Arcade in mid-March. There’s been a lot of buzz recently about the title, specifically surrounding the news that Big Huge Games, developers of the Rise of Nations RTS series, are the ones bringing Settlers to the console.

I had a chance to interview Brian Reynolds, current chairman of the IGDA, as well as CEO and creative director of Big Huge Games. In the interview, Brian talks about the upcoming adaptation of Settlers of Catan for Xbox Live Arcade, and goes in-depth on some of the finer points of porting an analog idea to a digital platform. I have yet to play the game, but from everything I’ve heard and seen Catan Live will make a smooth transition from tabletop classic to online addiction. If only I had a 360 to play it on.

» Off the Grid interviews Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games.