Xemu's Long-Winded Game Industry Ramblings

Wow.... Just... Wow.

Xemu — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:09:23 -0500

April NPD numbers are in. As I'd kind of expected, the 360 version of GTA IV outsold the PS3 version, to the tune of 1.85 : 1. Honestly, a year ago I would have expected it to be 3:1, so that represents some increased momentum for the PS3 in my opinion.

But I could barely believe my eyes when I saw the console numbers. 711k for the Wii, against a dead heat between 360 and PS3 (188k / 187k). 711k.

711k.

That's just astoundingly good for Nintendo. I was a major skeptic a year or two ago, and I still find that there is very little overlap between the kinds of games I play on the Wii vs those on the 360 & PS3. But hey, I've got to admit that Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Boom Blox have been seeing their share of time around our house. There is no question that the Wii hits a kind of fundamental chord that resonates with non-gamers in a powerful way. It will be very interesting to see what ramifications that has on the rest of the industry... it's still quite rare for a non-Nintendo Wii game to break into the console charts.

Why are the Monkeys the Bad Guys?

Xemu — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:10:46 -0500

Boom Blox completely took over the Fermier household this weekend. Physics-y goodness, great multiplayer, and lots of explosions. A hit with all members of the family, including my Mom, wife, and sister, none of whom are exactly hardcore gamers. Wonderful use of the Wii controller to be both unique and in harmony with the gameplay.

Alas, the next to last level in the fairly-short "Adventure" mode is tuned ridiculously poorly. It is literally about 100x harder than any other level in the game up to that point. Fortunately, there are tons of other puzzles to play instead. That kind of failure is really shoddy work in an other wise very nicely put together game.

As a bonus, Robin Hunicke and Doug Church, both friends of mine, worked on the game! Hooray and congrats!

In totally unrelated news, I decided to try out this "Twitter" thing... http://twitter.com/xemu . You can "follow" it if you want a lot of pointless and cryptic (but more frequent!) updates about stuff going on at any given moment in time. Will I keep updating it? Who knows? But I'm having fun with it so far.

BlogHarbor doesn't seem to be cool enough to use the Twitter widgets that they provide for blog integration (or I failed my skill check). Another reason I keep thinking of switching my blog over to one of the more common blogging services, but I haven't quite worked up the energy. Inertia is a powerful force.

Would You Kindly Buy Some Popcorn?

Xemu — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:39:46 -0500

Looks like it: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985365.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Man, I'm so happy for the success that Bioshock has had. And a tiny bit jealous, I'll admit -- though I've no regrets about the course my life has taken since leaving Boston, particularly in the form of my 2 little boys (we didn't really want to raise kids in Boston).

But a movie? How cool is that? I don't know if Gore Verbinski will do a good job with it, but that's a darned sight better than Uwe Boll. Relatively few games have the kind of narrative depth to really support a movie, and I certainly consider Bioshock in that category. Hmm, maybe after I come down off my GTA addiction I'll do a second playthrough of Bioshock on Hard to get all the Achievements....

Ignorance is Bliss

Xemu — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:00:37 -0500

I have to admit I'm enjoying the multiplayer mode in GTA IV a lot more than I expected to. But I find myself in a dilemma -- I haven't finished the main storyline game yet. I like using voice comms in multiplayer games, but all it takes is one jerk in a ranked game spouting off about the game's ending to ruin it for me. Fortunately that's much less of a risk just playing friendly games with people I know.

I've become a person really good at acquiring and processing information. Being in a mode where there is information I am actively avoiding is very odd, but you just can't un-learn knowledge. I'm running into this problem with my other current obsession, which is downloading episodes of Survivor from Amazon's Unbox. Elise and I have become quite addicted to the show, which I somehow completely wrote off when it first aired. Now we're catching up, but Amazon makes it quite difficult for those wanting to avoid spoilers -- the very pages where you go to download the episodes list the winners of the game! So now I'm becoming strangely adept at navigating their web pages with my hand strategically placed to block out information.

Postcards from Liberty City

Xemu — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:15:54 -0500

My vacation in Liberty City is almost over - at least the immersive, stay-home-from-work-and-clear-the-schedule part of it anyways. I am continually grateful for how understanding my wife is of my odd obsessions. :)

I hope to write up some more detailed thoughts once I've finished the game and it has all settled in on me. I'm about 35 hours of playtime in on it (plus some assorted multiplayer), not rushing through the missions but just enjoying the experience. I had very very high expectations of the game, and despite a few warts I'm pleased that it has met (and sometimes exceeded) those expectations. I'm not quite convinced it will displace San Andreas as my favorite of the entire series, but the two are apples and oranges in some ways...

Speaking of rushing through the game... apparently there is an Achievement for beating the main storyline in < 30 hours. I sure hope no one tries to do that on their first time through. This is a game to be savored, and just played for what it is rather than trying to beat the clock. Personally, I'm saving that one for my inevitable second playthrough...

7 Days

Xemu — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:30:29 -0500

One week from now I expect to be headed home with a copy of GTA IV. Man, I'm not sure I have ever been as excited about a game as I am for this one.

Sorry for the lack of updates -- been busy with things at work and home. I imagine my upcoming extended vacation in Liberty City will not help matters in the short term...

1000 / 1000

Xemu — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:07:02 -0500

I finished the "100%" achievement in Bully over the weekend. It's not a particularly hard one to get 100% at compared to some other games out there (like GH3 with it's abysmal achievement design). But it was a first for me. A few other games I thought I would come close -- I'm still plugging away at Orange Box and Oblivion. Most games I have put perfect completion simply out of reach, either by having a multiplayer component that just doesn't fit with my time availability, or by having ridiculous difficulty requirements.

Much like game difficulty itself, I think that there is a general bias towards making these things too hard. The "currency", as it were, is already devalued heavily by sports games or games like Avatar that give you 1000 /1000 trivially. So what's the harm in letting a dedicated, but not insanely awesome, player of your game achieve full completion?

I admit I'm constantly battling between my feeding my Achivement addiction and trying not to let it steer me into just plain un-fun territory. So I'm plinking away at 5-starring more songs on Guitar Hero 2 and 3 because that's a happy middle ground for me -- I like playing the game even though I know realistically I'll never 5-star Raining Blood or Psychobilly Freakout on Hard for either game. But playing the game without sound, or not using the guitar controller? What's the point of that.

Rock Band's "World Tour" mode was an excellent case in point on that. When the game shipped, my wife and I played a lot of it, and pretty quickly hit the limit of the # of fans we could get at the "Medium" difficulty level. If I encouraged her to play at Hard, it just wasn't any fun. So our progress was stymied. Fortunately, Harmonix recently patched it so that you can get more fans (and thus access more venues) at Medium. I still hope we'll move up to hard eventually, but now at least we can move forward. It's all illusory of course -- nothing prevented us from playing those same songs in Quick Play mode. But context is important...

Fatal Condemnation

Xemu — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:39:30 -0500

Ugh. Game backlog overflow, which I never really cleared out from Holiday '07, is starting to ramp up on me again. Now I'm feeling it most seriously in my "games to play after the boys are asleep"... My rediscovery of Fatal Frame 3 and my 360 re-play of Bully: SE are vying back and forth for that precious spot. But just today it got even worse, as I've just acquired a copy of Condemned 2.

The original Condemned was a pleasant surprise -- a bit unpolished, but with some of the scariest moments in gaming for me since the original Silent Hill. Most notably that department store... (shudder). C2 looks pretty good and apparently has more of the CSI-style investigation work, which I quite enjoyed in C1.

Much to my surprise there is also quite a backlog overflow filling up for my on portable gaming... Advance Wars and Professor Layton were quite demanding of my DS time, before Phoenix Wright put them both on notice. I've barely even booted up Patapon, and now Wild Arms XF is sitting there teasing me with it's hex-based goodness.

To top it all off, I only have 45-ish days to clear through anything I'm really going to play until midsummer, since when GTA IV hits on April 29, that's all that I'll be playing for a while...

Boo Radley vs Professor Hattrick

Xemu — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:30:07 -0500

Clint Hocking is my hero.

Now, I have no idea whether anyone from the Canadian Teacher's Foundation will actually take him up on his offer to play Bully to have a more informed discussion about it. But his approach is 100% dead on, in my opinion. We need to take every opportunity to engage those who are uninformed about games and let them form their opinions on the actual merits of our work.

I developed a lot of my love for games out of a love for literature, so the comparisons that Clint makes in his challenge ring true for me. My 12th grade AP English teacher recommended the book "Godel, Escher, Bach" to me -- which forever changed my worldview and philosophy and guided me directly towards computer science (and eventually, game development). I think there are a lot of really good opportunities for us to use games as educational tools not in the way that Reader Rabbit works but in the way that traditional literature works -- by causing us to ask questions about ourselves and the world we live in.

It is true that many games don't hold up particularly well along that lens -- Pac-Man isn't trying to make a statement about world hunger. Maybe even our best isn't yet up to what we can learn about the human condition from reading Victor Hugo or Jane Austen. But I think games are getting there in their own way -- Bioshock's commentary on idealism and the veneer of civilization, or Silent Hill 2 posing questions about marital fidelity and abandonment in the face of a terminal illness.

As for Bully itself, I think it holds up better than most under this kind of scrutiny. I'm deep in the middle of my second playthrough on the Scholarship Edition and finding it just as enjoyably immersive as ever. I won't claim it holds some deep meditation on humanity, but underneath the wry sarcasm it covers some territory not often ventured into by games: social cliques, school dropouts, and standing up to bullies. It may not be Lord of the Flies but it does harken back to my own school days in a way very few games even try, much less succeed at.

So hooray for a great response, Clint. I'm doubtful that the CTF will actually take you up on your offer but it's the right response regardless. I wish more of our official representation in the industry were as eloquent or as bold.

A Smashing Coincidence

Xemu — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:50:54 -0600

I have to admit I don't understand quite all the fuss about the Smash Bros. line of games. Don't get me wrong, I have fun with them, but for many people it seems like the new Smash Bros game is on par with my fervor for GTA IV (which has two awesome radio track samplers now, BTW: IF99 and Vladivostok FM). Maybe it's a function of how I tend to play -- I can see how in a dorm-like setting the constant pick-up-and-play multiplayer chaos would be a lot more appealing.

However, I know that my older son, Xavier, will absolutely flip out over the game. He is excited about anything with Mario, Peach, Starfox, Link, Pokemon, and Samus, much less all of them. As it turns out, his birthday is this Tuesday, and we're having a swim party on Sunday -- just in time for me to pick up the new iteration of Smash Bros Sunday morning for him as a present. Who am I to turn down such an obvious sign?

Return to Bullworth

Xemu — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:45:43 -0600

In what is turning out to already be a surprisingly active Spring for game releases, this week Bully: Scholarship Edition came out. I was a huge fan of the original Bully so I've been quite looking forward to returning to this game in hi-def with a smidgeon of extra content and of course, Achievements.

Overall, I would say it doesn't disappoint. What was good about Bully PS2 is still good about Bully: SE. I'm not sure the new additions are all that worthwhile unless you're a huge fan of the game, but hey, I'm a huge fan of the game. Unfortunately the technical quality of the port is substandard -- random lockups and some choppy stutter playing back the intro cutscene don't set a good tone. But then I get back in the swing of going to classes, throwing firecrackers, collecting rubber bands, and generally exploring the school / town, and those problems are quickly forgotten.

Camera Obscura

Xemu — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:32:18 -0600

So someone did a little thread necromancy on this 2-yr old thread over at QT3 about the Fatal Frame series. Much to my surprise, I found there was a Fatal Frame 3 that I'd totally forgotten about -- at the time I think I hadn't played Fatal Frame 2 yet so I just skipped over it mentally. I really love the Fatal Frame series (sometimes more in concept than in execution) so after reading the positive impressions of the third one there I resolved to find a copy. While apparently now they've just done another print run on it and Fatal Frame 2, I was not so lucky and paid the going (high) rate for an original copy.

It seems to play fine on my PS3 so far, though I guess it has issues on the other, less-compatible PS3 models. Sure, it is a bit dated but nothing that keeps it from being the same ultra-creepy Fatal Frame experience. That dev team (Project Zero at Tecmo?) are the masters of understanding a particular kind of creepiness that comes from playing with your perceptions and knowing what psychological buttons to push. Sure, they aren't afraid of a "cat scare" every now and then but the real power in Fatal Frame comes from this sense of the real world and the spirit world colliding in a disturbing way. Pacing is key for this kind of experience, and they totally get that. The actual combat & exploration mechanics aren't necessarily anything to write home about, but it delivers exactly what it needs to for the game -- tension. Seeing the world through that tiny camera viewfinder is an intense mechanic, and it is one of the few games that can reliably creep me out.

Fatal Frame 3 has a different vibe so far that the first two, and actually feels a lot more polished. I hear rumors of a Fatal Frame game for the Wii, which would be pretty cool to see. The prerendered cutscenes are great and they do a LOT with the post-processing effects the good old PS2 can crank out, but it would be nice to bring some of the tech a little up to the modern era. I'd much rather see it on the 360 of course, but I'll take what I can get...

On a totally different note, if you live in one of the primary states make sure you vote! I'm thrilled to finally have a chance to actually vote in a primary, since usually the states beyond Iowa, NH, and SC rarely matter. Texas has a pretty messed-up primary system involving both a vote and a caucus, so we'll be dragging the kids out to join us in some caucus action this evening...

Triple Helix

Xemu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:23:42 -0600

I've had the opportunity to fool around with some XNA Studio 2.0 stuff at work recently -- mostly using it as a quick 2D prototyping engine for showing people some system dynamic or another in motion. I have to say, it is pretty slick. Combined with the joyousness of C# programming, I've been quite pleasantly surprised how quickly I can turn something around from a discussion of a concept to a running app illustrating it. Of course some of the cool things it can do (like all the Xbox 360 stuff and the potentially-disruptive distribution model announced at GDC) are not really relevant, but they do add to the package for most people.

When I have a little spare time I plan on making a little weekend project of getting a game up and running at home and on my 360, so I can start to talk to my kids about what programming is. Heck, maybe I'll make a little educational game out of while I'm at it...

GDC 08: Portal Post-Mortem

Xemu — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:30:12 -0600

Another highlight of the show for me. Both the speakers were funny and charming, much in the way Portal itself was...

Integrating Narrative and Design: A Portal Post-Mortem

Kim Swift & Erik Wolpaw, Valve

Warning, Spoilers!!!

Why should you care about Portal? Small team, no more than 10 people at once. Been a commercial and critical success for Valve. After all is said and done, no regrets. Unlike the guy with the portal tattoos…

By itself, story wouldn’t make much of a novel. Gameplay on its own would be dry. Tight integration of story and gameplay resonated. Team size imposed constraints on our design choices. Creatively sidestep constraints – Glados as disembodies voice might not have occurred to them if they had the resources to do otherwise.

Games tell two stories: story story, gameplay story. Lowering the delta between the two will make your story more satisfying. Games with a high story delta: Clive Barker’s Undying. Good shooter, talented writer who cares about story. Shooting lots of monsters but the game stops you to play one of these cutscenes where you calmly interrogate a member of the staff. At no point do you freak out and tell them about the monsters. The two stories make no sense when you smush them together. Good game being undermined by a disconnect between story story and gameplay story.

“story” story must never intrude on the gameplay story. Less is more. Ruthless about trimming the narrative fat. Lean storytelling machine.

Process:

Playtesting – really important! To both narrative and gameplay. Most important thing ever done on Portal. Watch people play your game. Find out what your players actually want, adjust gameplay to what players look like they need. Adjust story to enhance what players are already feeling. Playtest keeps you objective – expose what isn’t working. If a player can’t recall the story, it isn’t working. Fix was almost always to cut more exposition. Playtest early and often! First room iterated on from the very first week. Forcefield that playtesters just didn’t know what it was, traced the edge of the cage and got confused. Helped us refine our art direction – a lot cleaner and simpler.

Advice: writing a funny game? God help you. Tough guy dialog is endlessly macho. Funny dialog is funny once. Maybe. Trust your instincts, don’t despair. Playtest! Remember initial reactions. More playtesting = more hearing people react to your dialog for the very first time.

Embed exposition in the environment. Unless it is in emails or voice recorders. Reading email = not actually that fun. Be creative! Easy to say… Apply a rule set, and be ruthless about the rules. Choice between embed or cut, makes you really creative! In portal == wall scribbling behind the scenes. Put yourself in the position of your characters. “The Ratman”, a fellow escaped test subject. Originally wanted you to meet him but had two artists, so not feasible…

Evolve narrative out of gameplay. Write to enhance what playtesters are feeling. Keep the story “wet”. Don’t get too attached to anything. Could disappear at any time. Don’t get too attached, you might need to cut it and that is probably for the best!

Weighted Companion Cube. Box Marathon level – long level with the box, in the end put the box on a button. Take one: moving list obstacle over a good pit. Players would destroy the box and had to go back, frustrating and annoying. Back to the drawing board – remove the lifts and goo pits, added more where having the box was necessary to solve the puzzle. Cube as stairs, cube as weight. Take Two: Gameplay events so you can always see the button. Still needed something else. Erik to the rescue! Hint using the environment – lighting, geometry. When all else fails, great dialogue is an excellent hint. Was reading declassified govt manuals, isolation causes association with inanimate objects. Maybe if Glados needles you a little bit and it worked. Sometimes goofy ideas tend out to be really good ones. Incineration station = boss battle training. Perfect training location, more satisfying level ending. Players learn better when not stressed (no ticking clock). Forcing you to euthanize it was great! Revenge, incinerate Glados the way she makes you incinerate your best friend. Gameplay > story > gameplay.

Sometimes gameplay isn’t enough. Original ending of portal. What does a boss battle look like? Complex puzzle? Results: pain. Attempt one: James Bond lasers that followed the player around. Lasers = bad. Boring to dodge, difficult to aim. Hard to tell if you’re hit. Abandoned in favor of rockets. Attempt two: Portal Kombat. Lots of testers were hardcore shooter gamers. Didn’t work out very well. High intensity = bad. No one paid attention to Glados, and alienated players who like the slower-paced cerebral nature of Portal. Attempt three: chase sequence. Pacing was horrible, players didn’t see where she would go and then only slowly realize how to follow her. Chase = action packed, instead players were confused. Failed in many ways. Complex boss battle = nope. More complexity = slower pacing, not a good match for the climactic sequence. So what now? We’re screwed. Playtesting to the rescue! One thing worked well for players – the fire pit.

What made it climactic? Time pressure. Makes people think something is more complicated than it is. Good visual impact – pit of fire! High drama, for the first time Glados is openly trying to kill you and you first assert control over your environment to escape. Those things combined made an easy puzzle like a much more complicated puzzle. Holding on to this idea of a complex puzzle at the end, simply wasn’t true. Applied all of these things to the time pressure. Just had a countdown! Neurotoxin = green particles cheap! Drama meant we had to write six minutes of decent dialog, previous ones required infinity worth of dialog = sad. Easy puzzle important. Wanted people to see / hear the end! Wanted players to be genuinely happy and leave with a smile on their face.

What makes people happy? Catchy song… Ultimately a lot of this all came out of constraints. Couldn’t make a big FMV. Cost to happiness ratio of a great song was really high!

Embrace your constraints! Have faith in yourself and in the skills of your team. Playtest, playtest, playtest!

Q: Why are audio recordings / emails a bad choice? Just from playtesting? None of these are prescriptive. Just a personal choice they made. Don’t like to read in games that much. How often do you use a voice recorder to leave secret messages for your friends and family?

Q: Why does Glados have an incinterator in her room? Kind of fun… backstory that they weren’t sure if she was going to go out of control or not. So made this room so that they could incinerate her and get rid of her. Red phone in there, supposed to be his job to call somebody if the AI goes rogue… didn’t work too well.

Q: Playtesting critical, not outsourcing it. How do you go about getting new players through that process? Easy to go to the nearest Gamestop “we’ve got this game, wanna play it”? Friends and family, Gabe’s kids… lots of people working at Valve on their own other projects. Q: People come back for additional tests? Usually playtest only once but a few at Valve would repeat play.

Q: In the dev commentary, more portal games? How do you overcome the challenge of not having as many constraints? Dunno, just want to bask in the moment now without people bugging him about the next one!

Q: Portals shooting through portals? Not a tech restriction but design one – didn’t want to bypass training, shooting ourselves in the foot.

Q: Why change the look and color of Portals? Just iteration. We liked Orange better than Red…

Really like the way turrets screamed…

Q: Suggestions for students breaking in? Try and make a lot of games and fail. So many times failed at Digipen…one worked out but the others didn’t. Practice makes perfect. Shows commitment to the project. Make games!

Q: Fire pit –shock and confusion of getting past what you thought was the game’s end. Defying of game narrative intentional? Some intentionality there, one of the things that never changed in the story. Vault > Fire Pit > Glados was the most basic structure. Worked better than they thought.

Q: Why the humor? Something inherently funny about portals… In Erik’s comfort zone.

Q: Why kill off the Companion Cube? I think we explained that… thank the United States Secret Service.

Q: Lots of trial and error in the game, did that have to be smoothed over with management? Management at Valve is different than other companies, no producers really. People on the game make those decisions. Makes for a more satisfied group of people making games. Commitment to playtesting is the Valve philosophy.

Q: Dev background, how did you score your spot working with Valve? Students at Digipen, made Narbacular Drop, predecessor to Portal. Expo for graduating seniors, saw it and took them to Valve to show to Gabe. Asked them what they were doing after graduating… offered them a job on the spot. Erik did a lot of writing, was hired at Double Fine, freelanced, and then got email from Gabe one day.

Q: Why not submit to IGF? Narbacular Drop was in the student showcase.

Q: Where did the cake come from? Was something in there from the beginning… comedy tool to obsess over something unexpected. Just having fun.

Q: All characters (main character + glados) female? Working to define that, used to be a balding dude (citizen model from HL2). Gabe suggested making it a girl. Just sort of what if… Post feminist, didn’t occur to us not to make it a girl… For Glados we knew we needed a great actress / actor who was good and wouldn’t be offended when a lot of the stuff was just recording text-to-speech stuff.

Q: Is Chell a cyborg? No, another failure of writing. Got these crazy cyber future shoes…

Q: Portal is a short game with a lot of success, might make a movement back towards shorter games on the market? Common complaint is that people don’t finish games anymore, don’t have time…. Plus 40 hours a week playing WoW. Practical constraints but really wanted to make a game that everyone who plays it can finish it! Most games just peter out, never finish them.

Q: Dialog cut from the game, any of it fairly final? If so, going to release it? Not a lot of final stuff. Everything went through text to speech as temp audio, mostly got cut at that point. Other stuff wouldn’t want to give to anyone, or if it’s good keep it for later…

Q: Considerations for making it multiplayer or co-op? Thought about it… technically possible, just didn’t have the time to think through the gameplay. Tried it a little, was less fun than you think it is…

Q: Experience balancing keeping it wet and needing to get it done, or having momentum? Playtesting! You’ll know right away whether your idea is good or bad. If you can’t see how to fix it, cut it!

Q: Dev process as a style of painting, what would it be? Cubist…

Q: Chell and Gordon gonna hook up? Dunno…

Q: Can make exposition and narrative fun for playtesters? Less is more… just don’t like it that much in games. As concise as possible. Game writer, but games aren’t necessarily the best medium for stories. Like providing a film score. Films aren’t about music but they are a useful tool for enhancing, same for writing in games. Also a lot to be said for leaving mystery in games, people are smart, give them credit!

Q: Black Mesa references in Portal… when did you decide to be in the HL universe? Middle of development… when Erik joined just one of the constraints for the game because they weren’t sure of positioning and were reusing a lot of assets. Eased up at the end, didn’t need the G-Man to show up or anything…

Q: Best games teach us something, what do we have to learn from Portal? “The cake is a lie.” Explore the idea of manipulating space and thinking about 3d space in a different way, look at situations in a different way.

Q. Companion cube kind of silent, any dialog in the sequel? What is this “Sequel”…

Q: When did you figure out how to market and sell Portal? At first was supposed to be a 15 minute tech demo. Further on constraints changed… middle of development started talking about doing the Orange Box and seemed like a reasonable conclusion to package it with these other games that have a lot of clout. Honored to be packaged with TF2 and Ep2.

Q: Playtesting as method to test whether players got storyline. Compartmentalized testing, how did you get feedback if only playing 1-2 levels? Portal was short through most of its lifetime, never 8 hours… so if someone didn’t finish weren’t super worried.

Q: Storyline, less is more… applies to other genres? Don’t have a surefire solution for every game but in Erik’s opinion, in general, less is more.

Q: Portal and HL2 have very different tone and themes. If they tie together more, how will you resolve that? Honestly not a big problem, Aperture tone is mostly just from Glados. Experiencing the world through Glados’ eyes, so if Chell is in HL universe nothing is in contradiction there. Inside the Aperture Funhouse different tonal rules apply. Same physics and art style already apply.

Q: Chance of an artbook? Dunno… talking about doing an Orange Box artbook. Most of our concept was for the Glados battle. Compared to TF or HL not a lot of concepts there. Thumbnails of stuff… but not really great pictures.

Q: Why portals ovals? They look better than rectangles… Wanted to fit the bounds of where you’d actually pass through, so filled an oval through the rectangle of where it technically is.

Q; Game alludes to a backstory (test subject), how much actually written vs just use your imagination? A fair amount, 15-page document about Aperture science, some of which is hidden on the Aperture website. Sent it to Jonathan which helped for the song.

Q: Portal was a triumph of creativity, awards and acclaim and so different. How does that affect the community of games as a whole? Approach to making games as a creative medium? Too early to tell… I hope more people make games like this since we like them! Independent games are really getting awesome, higher profile and production quality. Maybe people take more risks on more oddball games…

Q: From a film background… as writers, what are your influences? Kim Swift: Miyamoto, Nintendo games… knew she wanted to be a game designer from an early age. Katamari Damacy. Wolpaw: Direct inspiration was a book, “Destination Void”, clones that go into space and tasked to build the AI, failsafe mechanisms to deal with AIs that go rogue. Doesn’t read a lot of science fiction now… Roger Scheckley, funny sci-fi.

Q: Portal design process was an animal, what would it be? Joke question…

Q: What the hell is on those slides!? Friendship…. And fire…. Just pictures we couldn’t fit into the talk in any meaningful ways.

Q: Dev team, female lead is unusual. How many girls on the Portal team? 2, Kim and one of the artists. Q: Does that help in the creativity process? Dunno… honestly, no matter what your gender you make a game you want to enjoy yourself. So maybe by extension but should be fun for everybody… Erik: makes the room smell better….

Duelin’ Firemen!!!!

GDC 08: Rant Session

Xemu — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:27:45 -0600

GDC Rant Session 2008

Goal: to make these underground conversations public. Do these rants direct the work that we do? Keep a finger on the vibe of issues that are concerning developers. Last year’s rant helped IGDA create a speaker’s bureau to help our presence in the community.

This year: game designers ranting. 2008 is the year of game design. Great lineup at the awards: Portal winning GOTY. Indy games being recognized was strange but now it has come home. Not easy being a game designer. Often they are listed below the people making the code and graphics. Other disciplines come from other places, art, business, code. But game designers are ONLY in our industry. They are the heart of what we are doing so they have a particular animus about being kicked around and wanting to make our industry better.

Clint Hocking:

First idea, ranting about creative stagnation. But such a tired and generic topic, and not even sure there really is one. Pound for pound the most creative industry in the world. “Dude, it’s code… we can do anything”. Being creative is fairly easy. Having the courage to create something that challenges people – that’s hard. Why don’t we make games that challenge people, that matters? Art and books do this all the time.

Here’s a game that made me cry, heres a game that means something (Marriage). Effective budget zero. Meanwhile, we made a bunch of versions of Duck Hunt in the mainstream. Why don’t we take those techniques and use them in our blockbusters. What if the things you did in the game supported those relationships in a systemic way, not a cutscene? What if the goal was to comfort my spouse and the monster was just a metaphor? Why can’t CoD actually be about Duty? Or MoH about Honor? What would it be worth to you if you could put honor in a box and sell it?! Not Tom Cruise on the front, but package the experience of knowing what it is to be honorable? Most people in the world have never felt that but they would love to – and they would have to practice it a ton to get a 5-star honor rating. What if you could get the Medal of Honor in a game that demanded you be honorable to get it. How terrible it would be to have people who are honorable because of our games?

Meanwhile Passage and Marriage are free. Sad that these two guys have advanced the industry more than all of us making AAA games. It’s great that we have little games but I like making big games with 200 people in it. Not talking about taking action from Halo, but using proven techniques for making emotional investment so that Halo will reach a real audience. Halo 3 reaching 1/10 the audience of LOTR movies. The things that move people in LOTR are the dagger that glows and a +5 rope? People care about the fact that Frodo has to trust Sam. Mechanics of trust are not harder to model and simulate than the mechanics of rope! Yet our games are full of rings and ropes and armor and we have this object fetish. So the most meaningful relationship developed this year is with a CUBE!

Maybe it’s nothing and creative. Not creativity that is holding us back from being the dominant media. We lack the courage to make games to challenge something in us besides reflexes. Lack the courage to be seen crying in the movie theater when he thanks Sam. That’s the only thing separating us from the mature medium we will become and the juvenile media we are today. We have the money and the creativity, and the demand. Dude – it’s code. We can do anything.

John Mack(?), Indy game designer (Everyday Shooter?)

(Everyone stands up and bounces balloons around)

Another Person, Kim ??:

Some sort of rant? Nothing to be angry about now.

Thus ends John Mack’s rant.

Jane McGonigal

Avant Game

We’ve invented a medium that kicks every other medium’s ass. We occupy more brain cycles and make more content than anyone else in the world. People are waking up and pouring effort into these games. Games have already won.

Industry spent last 30 years optimizing human experience. In the past, our brains for playing games and recently our bodies for playing games. We know our hearts can play games too. Our experiences better designed for engaging humans than anyone else. We basically rule the world.

The bad news: we rule the virtual world. Reality is too messy and broken, and we don’t want to fix reality, we want alternatives to reality. For now all of our games work better than the reality. All our effort into optimizing virtual experience. We need to change that.

Reality is broken. Our responsibility as the smartest people on the planet to fix it. How to make people superheroes in real life? Make the real life more like a game. Graffiti – “I’m not good at life.” I don’t wake up every day with missions and purpose. Can’t be good at reality the same way. In the games I have all the information I need and skills and people to count on. Just better than real life. New field of “positive psychology” – what gives us a good experience?

Satisfying work to do

Being good at something

Time spent with people we like

Chance to be a part of something bigger.

We are making the ultimate happiness engine. “Soap Kills Germs”. Figured that out in 1932. 20% of people in hospitals killed by germs on doctors hands. Maybe people not on their deathbed but their lives suck – people playing and buying our games, games are their highest quality of life.

“Why should we care about games?” Because life is crap, makes it worth living is art and play.

“Games kill boredom”. “games kill alienation” “games kill anxiety” “games kill depression”.

Games are the ultimate happiness engine. Like we invented the written word and decided only to write books, not exit signs.

5 things to fix today

Running, being on a plane, playing fetch. Running == leveling up? Flying = going to die. Virgin has chat system, why isn’t there a game to play on the plane so that you win when you land? Social network for dogs? Play games with our dogs, fetch for an hour every day. If I could play an MMO for my dog. Trackstick – records where you go and see on googlemaps. Virtual environments on commute. Neurosky thing, knows if you are relaxed. Zap people who are lighting up my brain.

Can make games that interface with reality. Yes we should fix it. Will we? I have no idea.

Alter your reality.

Chris Hecker:

“take a civil tone next time you speak, and even if you make the same points maybe more people will listen and find that they agree”

“Maybe the art that games could be isn’t some sick mishmash of what has gone before?”

Computation power is not orthogonal to game design – last year’s rant.

Still into ranting… complacency = death. Games could be the preeminent art form of the 21^st century. But on our current trajectory, will we get there?

Take our boat and sail it between Scylla of thinking we are all that, and the Charybdis of being too scared to talk to the human condition. Sextant for this journey is harsh and honest criticism.

Ranting has to be followed by acting. Constructive criticism is the best thing. But just criticism by itself is valuable.

Speak your mind and tell the truth.

Genova Chen(?)

Job is not to start fires, but to make fun stuff. 2008 hard to rant about, great year of games and innovations. Current talk about input device is just no longer true. Games are innovative, are art, can engage gamers with emotions. Digital Distribution, barrier to entrance quite low. Lots of indy games moving to the console!

How to come up with better game designs? Not just a designer to rant. But can rant as a gamer, just a guy playing games. Less games in the past 18 years. Interest dropping. Excited to play first racing game , but no feeling at all in new racing game. Excited to kill nazi’s, but now not exciting.

Learn. Brain engineered for sucking information. Games can teach. But more than toys? Never say too old for you to read books or play sports, why too old to play games? Intellectual, emotional, social.

Grown-up gamers? Don’t want to be abandon game because too old. Need more mature content for people who still want to play games. Not talking about manhunt or DOA. That’s really for 18 yr olds. Average game age is 33. What do you need – intellectual, emotion, social content. WoW == social doing OK. Last year, feeling. This year == intellectual. Can games make you learn something? Make you think? We don’t need Three Little Pigs, we need Little Prince. Make you think about your life.

What knowledge do we have beyond making weapons or level design. Other great art comes from author’s own experience in their lives. Passage is awesome == gameplay makes you think. Think of gameplay, not story.

What do you want to share with the mature gamers?

Daniel James, Three Rings

GDC is inspirational. That’s nice.

Played with Lego as a kid. Now they are making Lego MMO on the internet. Brilliant! After Lego, played Elite. Used to dream of playing that with other people – now we have Eve. Fantastic! After that played a Mud. “go north”. Chat with people – now there is 10 million people playing WoW! WTF Amazing! “The Tomorrow People” – we are in the future.

20 million people using this Facebook app! Totally awesome! People given money by investor types – that’s incredible. Sea change in how we bring games to the world. If US econ fails, hey there is always China!

Grandma saying now she plays PP with her grandkids instead of watching TV alone. Kill TV is a mission we can all appreciate. Virtual environments set off the same mind patterns as those things to in the real. Line between the two is very thin. Puts us in an incredible place. People do things and then justify reasons afterwards. How does that apply to you? Observer is the pivotal point in shaping the real.

Q: game design touching real world already in a bad way – frequent flier miles. Now everyone has it and it’s a leech on the system, you get the money back that you never should have paid in the first place. What if I just want to run and enjoy the simplicity of things? People who want to run can run anyways – but a lot of people would be happier if it were less painful or embarrassing. Making things difficult for people better. Example of flier miles is great – gamelike isn’t just points or rewards. Promotion people aren’t game designers. Beauty of play, those who understand it should be teaching others how to be more engaging.

Q: Reviews of Flow give bad score because not enough boss battles. Failure of discourse? Role of game criticism? Game review community needs to grow as fast as the developers. As designers we are a bit head. Majority of review can be bought? How do teach game reviews? Movies have classes, degrees for this but reviewing games has no education. Needs to catch up.

Q: Growing rift between hardcore gamers and everyone else? What happens as we age? Hardcore gamers are fighting a losing battle. Want to play games with increasing convolution and that’s cool, but that isn’t where growth is. Don’t have time to play those games anymore. Only going to reward XP for time, rather play Passage. If maker of Far Cry 2 is saying the same thing as the guy who makes Flow, there is something there. Retaining people when they get to be 35, you need to make it something they care about. Can get XP in a hundred games, can’t get honor in any of them. Want to explore that in games, whether we would really stand up in a tough situation.

Q: What is stopping us? What’s the barrier? Biggest one is what we think about as a “sexy” game, how big and how much graphics it has to have. Think of other things as being sexy that would be a good start. Barrier is thinking that there is a barrier. That there is something you have to do, to do it right. Figure out what makes you happy and do that. Tweaking numbers, or complex rulesets – just do it. Don’t worry about this rift, who cares? This is your art, your expression – own it! Make it your own!