The purpose of doing game design is not to hone your skills as a game designer, or to advance your career as a game designer. That is a byproduct of it, but that is not the purpose of it.
The purpose of doing game design is to design games. Everything else is secondary.
Repeat after me:
The purpose of doing game design is to design games. Everything else is secondary.
Therefore when we see companies ask game designer candidates on the various job boards "What kind of ideas do you have? How would you improve Game X?", they are doing things precisely backwards!
The job of a game company is not, primarily, to look for new game designers. (They do have to get them, but that is a supplemental job.) Rather the job of a game company is to look for new game designs. If, in finding new game designs, they also find talented game designers, so much the better. (And, yes, they need to hire supporting staff.) But finding the designers is a secondary concern (even if, admittedly, it is a necessary one).
Thus companies should seek new designs - internally or externally. In other words, in seeking a new design the proper question a company should be asking the author of said design that comes through their door is this: "What do you have for me? Surprise me. Tell me something new." In other words, they shouldn't be looking to the person so much as to the design that is to be tabled. If a company doesn't like the tabled design, their next statement should be, "Don't like it. What else do you got?"
If the company does like it, they should buy it, for a fee, and hire the designer to do all the changes and additional work that is going to be necessary to turn the raw design into a piece of workable software - and, unless the design candidate has a name, the company should also control the final outcome of the design, and the design should be affected by the creative input of the other designers who come together to make it.
This company that buys a game design can be a developer or a publisher, but more than likely it will be a publisher who sets up a temporary company whose express purpose is to make the one game (or franchise) being looked at.
This means, then, that if YOU want to be a game designer, your job is to design games. It is not to get a wage and a stable job at one company for the next 10 years. (If you think that way then you are mediocre.) You may work for a developer, but it is your duty to yourself, your passion and your talent, to write and then propose your game designs. You may write them in code form; you may write them in design document form. And, here's the clincher: if your employer refuses to produce your game design, it is your duty to seek a party that will produce them. If that means leaving your current employer or separating from your current team then that is your duty.
A corollary to this is that the purpose of a game company (developer or publisher) is not to make money from games. That is a byproduct of it - and if said games do make money YAY!, we are all better off - but that is not the purpose of a game company. Rather, the purpose of a game company is to produce games. Games are not to be made solely for the purpose of making money. They are to be made merely to be what they are: to contribute to our culture, to entertain, in some cases to teach, and also to make money.
A further corollary is that the purpose of game design is not to make game development companies. Making a development company is a formality that usually needs to be done - should be done as every team should be uniquely built to the needs of the game design (not the other way around) - but if you talk as if your ultimate ambition is to make a game company instead of a game design (or designs), then you are talking backwards.
So, let's be clear:
The purpose of doing game design is to design games. Everything else is secondary.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Zeitgeist & I, Sept 2007
Noticed a couple interesting stories on industry portals where insiders are talking a talk parallel to my own.
Epic's New Solution
In a recent Gamasutra article, Epic China CEO Paul Meegan was talking about Epic's latest practises a few months ago. The reporter conveys the following...
Epic's solution that can be leveraged elsewhere? Use a small, tightly-focused core team focused on creating value - using middleware and investing carefully in differentiating projects. In addition, practice targeted hiring, purpose-built for the project, and with exactly the right skills and passion for that game.
I believe I wrote that was the way things should be done in my first posts in February this year. If nothing else, at least I'm in touch with the way the industry is moving.
Specifically I wrote "Alfred Hitchcock knew that 75% of his work as a director wasn't in the work he did on the set: it was in casting. Same here. It amazes me that game companies actually think that the art director who worked out so well on their horror game will have the same feel for their upcoming military game. Hey! Pay attention to casting! A technology or art person or solution that was good for a horror shooter is not necessarily good for a military RTS or what have you. It might be a tiny little difference, but professionals focus on tiny little differences (as they all add up)."
I also wrote, "Take in the individual designs at the early level with the fewest number of people attached to them. The fewer the better. Stripped down small teams, like special forces units advancing far into hostile and dangerous territory. Let someone or a few people come to you with a design. Like they say in the film biz, focus on the script first. You can make a bad film from a good script, but you can't make a good film from a bad script. Same with design. Then develop the design with that tiny two or three person team, until it works. Let him/her/them make a tiny little prototype for you - even if its just a small flash game, or a pen-and-paper/board game you can play out on a table in your boardroom; just to test out core ideas - and work on the design design design!"
Glad to see that Epic is pursuing a similar solution. Still looking forward to the day the creators get their names on the front title screen (e.g. "Epic presents... A game designed by X..."). (I would say on the box, but that is getting less relevant.)
(Of course, I'm guilty of using colorful description instead of nice bland business talk - but the basic message is the same.)
Naturally I do not claim those were my solutions either - indeed they are the solution of many industries, notably the film industry. I just can't understand why the game industry so resolutely refuses to learn from anything that goes on outside its little bubble.
However, I do claim I've been hammering on these things for years.
Teaching Game Design
Next up is this more recent reply to a letter in GameCareerGuide.com. In it, the expert responder says...
If the only thing you've done is gone to game school, chances are small game developers will see your experience as being too limited for their line of work. Small game development studios need employees who can do a little bit of everything and whose experiences will bring new information and ideas to the table. They fear that game graduates -- especially those who went directly from high school to game school -- have little to no life experience and work experience, and are in essence a bit parochial.
This is a very recent idea in the game industry. Like, very recent. So recent it is probably a buzzword now. In fact, if you look on job postings on Gamasutra, say, you'll rarely see that attitude reflected. I can tell you when I've worked on indie projects, they almost always drill down to what tools do you know how to use, but only later, when they're up to their eyeballs in confusion that has been generated in trying to take apart basic design devices (I'm not talking about technology here) do they realize how important fundamental general intellectual knowledge and skill is.
Anyway, I put forth this idea in my "arch post" (as Gamasutra called it) on what they don't tell you on the design job ad. Specifically:
Epic's New Solution
In a recent Gamasutra article, Epic China CEO Paul Meegan was talking about Epic's latest practises a few months ago. The reporter conveys the following...
Epic's solution that can be leveraged elsewhere? Use a small, tightly-focused core team focused on creating value - using middleware and investing carefully in differentiating projects. In addition, practice targeted hiring, purpose-built for the project, and with exactly the right skills and passion for that game.
I believe I wrote that was the way things should be done in my first posts in February this year. If nothing else, at least I'm in touch with the way the industry is moving.
Specifically I wrote "Alfred Hitchcock knew that 75% of his work as a director wasn't in the work he did on the set: it was in casting. Same here. It amazes me that game companies actually think that the art director who worked out so well on their horror game will have the same feel for their upcoming military game. Hey! Pay attention to casting! A technology or art person or solution that was good for a horror shooter is not necessarily good for a military RTS or what have you. It might be a tiny little difference, but professionals focus on tiny little differences (as they all add up)."
I also wrote, "Take in the individual designs at the early level with the fewest number of people attached to them. The fewer the better. Stripped down small teams, like special forces units advancing far into hostile and dangerous territory. Let someone or a few people come to you with a design. Like they say in the film biz, focus on the script first. You can make a bad film from a good script, but you can't make a good film from a bad script. Same with design. Then develop the design with that tiny two or three person team, until it works. Let him/her/them make a tiny little prototype for you - even if its just a small flash game, or a pen-and-paper/board game you can play out on a table in your boardroom; just to test out core ideas - and work on the design design design!"
Glad to see that Epic is pursuing a similar solution. Still looking forward to the day the creators get their names on the front title screen (e.g. "Epic presents... A game designed by X..."). (I would say on the box, but that is getting less relevant.)
(Of course, I'm guilty of using colorful description instead of nice bland business talk - but the basic message is the same.)
Naturally I do not claim those were my solutions either - indeed they are the solution of many industries, notably the film industry. I just can't understand why the game industry so resolutely refuses to learn from anything that goes on outside its little bubble.
However, I do claim I've been hammering on these things for years.
Teaching Game Design
Next up is this more recent reply to a letter in GameCareerGuide.com. In it, the expert responder says...
If the only thing you've done is gone to game school, chances are small game developers will see your experience as being too limited for their line of work. Small game development studios need employees who can do a little bit of everything and whose experiences will bring new information and ideas to the table. They fear that game graduates -- especially those who went directly from high school to game school -- have little to no life experience and work experience, and are in essence a bit parochial.
This is a very recent idea in the game industry. Like, very recent. So recent it is probably a buzzword now. In fact, if you look on job postings on Gamasutra, say, you'll rarely see that attitude reflected. I can tell you when I've worked on indie projects, they almost always drill down to what tools do you know how to use, but only later, when they're up to their eyeballs in confusion that has been generated in trying to take apart basic design devices (I'm not talking about technology here) do they realize how important fundamental general intellectual knowledge and skill is.
Anyway, I put forth this idea in my "arch post" (as Gamasutra called it) on what they don't tell you on the design job ad. Specifically:
- Significant experience in another game development role; preferably art or engineering. [Okay, this is helpful. Helps if you know what the other guys go through. Frank, you were smart on this one. Gotta recommend you for a raise. What's that Frank? You say that for a game designer maybe it would help if he had work experience in a field outside game development? To try to break out of the self-insulated, derivative nature of game development? Jeezus Frank! Stop making this harder than it already is, all right!...]
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Game Design: Organic vs Machine-Like
Currently in a flame-war on the IGDA boards (as usual).
A latest posting that I thought I'd repeat here - a response to an opponent in a debate...
What I talk about is giving individual creators freedom - not the freedom to create as something like a hand-out, but the freedom to merely approach funders in the centuries-old manner of artist-meets-patron. What you talk about is indoctrinating them. (You say they aren't "taking responsibility" if they fail to respond in the correct manner to their assigned indoctrination.)
This is an entertainment industry at its bottom. It isn't an engineering industry - though there is a lot of engineering in it. As an entertainment industry its job is not to indoctrinate and program its "personnel" into the right way of thinking and being, to toe its corporate line. What it really is about is finding experiences that resonate with human beings. The only way to do that is to speak in human terms; and human terms are messy, organic and alive - not efficient, machine-like and dead.
A latest posting that I thought I'd repeat here - a response to an opponent in a debate...
What I talk about is giving individual creators freedom - not the freedom to create as something like a hand-out, but the freedom to merely approach funders in the centuries-old manner of artist-meets-patron. What you talk about is indoctrinating them. (You say they aren't "taking responsibility" if they fail to respond in the correct manner to their assigned indoctrination.)
This is an entertainment industry at its bottom. It isn't an engineering industry - though there is a lot of engineering in it. As an entertainment industry its job is not to indoctrinate and program its "personnel" into the right way of thinking and being, to toe its corporate line. What it really is about is finding experiences that resonate with human beings. The only way to do that is to speak in human terms; and human terms are messy, organic and alive - not efficient, machine-like and dead.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Game Idea Submission
I just wrote something in one of those typical IGDA forum entries where a passionate newbie asks how to get a game idea made and the veteran gives the typical "go away" response. I think I'll repeat it here...
The reason why the game industry is so devoid of original ideas is that even if you have gone to the trouble of getting a job in the industry and then working to build other peoples' games for awhile there still is no clear system for submitting a game idea. Also, the pace that you are moving at is the system's, not the passion's. In other words, someone on high has said that what is *really* significant isn't the idea or the passion, but your power-status within the system. That's a view that commoditizes creative output, and basically sucks the life out of it.
Say you did have an idea for a truly original game. By going through steps 1 and 2 whatever passion or originality you had will be long gone by the time you get around to submitting it.
The game industry needs a true submission process, with the ability to actually sell design documents outright. It needs a scouting process which says if you have a passionate idea we want to see it now, but we will realistically weed out all the chaff that is going to come through this channel.
The reason why the game industry is so devoid of original ideas is that even if you have gone to the trouble of getting a job in the industry and then working to build other peoples' games for awhile there still is no clear system for submitting a game idea. Also, the pace that you are moving at is the system's, not the passion's. In other words, someone on high has said that what is *really* significant isn't the idea or the passion, but your power-status within the system. That's a view that commoditizes creative output, and basically sucks the life out of it.
Say you did have an idea for a truly original game. By going through steps 1 and 2 whatever passion or originality you had will be long gone by the time you get around to submitting it.
The game industry needs a true submission process, with the ability to actually sell design documents outright. It needs a scouting process which says if you have a passionate idea we want to see it now, but we will realistically weed out all the chaff that is going to come through this channel.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Quality Assurance 2084
QA was the path to stardom.
That's what they told him.
Well... at least it was the door in if you had airy dreams to be a game designer.
Airy dreams, indeed. Now he was doing his work.
They were in an alpha test. Had some gamers in on the local area net, playtesting. His job was to test the latest suite of assets.
They looked good. There was a multiplayer game on and he checked the play stats. Nice n-scores all around.
But not here... This player was crashed on his n-score.
Which one was that? He looked over at the bank of gaming stations? Station M7. Let's text him.
QA3031: M7 - what's up?
M7: i can't do this
QA3031: you don't find the game fun?
M7: it's not that
QA3031: is this level not up to par?
M7: i can't do this! I WANT OUT!!!!!!!!!
QA3031: want out? where you gonna go to?
M7: i don't know - it's lost its meaning
Oh Christ. He had heard about this, but never actually seen it.
M7: GET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!
He called the lead QA.
QA3031: Lead QA, gotta situation at playtest.
LQA92: What's up?
QA3031: Player "wants out"?
LQA92: Be right there.
***
"Well, this is your problem right here," Lead QA 92 said. He brought up the alpha, beta and gamma n-scores on the timescale. "They flatlined just moments prior to him 'wanting out'."
"So it's a good test still?"
"Absolutely. The n-scores on those latest assets are all good. In fact, this map rocks. The n-score on that latest boss encounter alone are well into green. We have a best-seller here. Corporate is going to love that. Well, but it's too bad about the poor guy at M7. He must've just suffered a crash on his n-module. We've had problems with that station."
Well, that was good to hear.
He looked over at the gaming stations. Body disposal was washing out the M7 pod. The other pods were good. He could see the gamers floating in the polyfluid vats, the sens-wires hooked into their brain stems. In a couple hours they'd be back on the worknet and none would be needed here for close observation so they'd rotate them out.
He checked out, his shift over. He walked over to his own pod. For a moment he wondered if he would ever become one of the vaunted game designers he heard of. He wondered about the guy in M7, why he talked about meaning just before the pain levels screamed into red - bringing him to such a final end. It was a bad feeling. He didn't like bad feelings. He hurried into the warm fluid, hooking the sens-wire up to his brain stem. The rush came as he felt his n-score go into high green through all the way to white - and the bad thoughts faded into nothing.
Ahhh... what a good feeling...
That's what they told him.
Well... at least it was the door in if you had airy dreams to be a game designer.
Airy dreams, indeed. Now he was doing his work.
They were in an alpha test. Had some gamers in on the local area net, playtesting. His job was to test the latest suite of assets.
They looked good. There was a multiplayer game on and he checked the play stats. Nice n-scores all around.
But not here... This player was crashed on his n-score.
Which one was that? He looked over at the bank of gaming stations? Station M7. Let's text him.
QA3031: M7 - what's up?
M7: i can't do this
QA3031: you don't find the game fun?
M7: it's not that
QA3031: is this level not up to par?
M7: i can't do this! I WANT OUT!!!!!!!!!
QA3031: want out? where you gonna go to?
M7: i don't know - it's lost its meaning
Oh Christ. He had heard about this, but never actually seen it.
M7: GET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!
He called the lead QA.
QA3031: Lead QA, gotta situation at playtest.
LQA92: What's up?
QA3031: Player "wants out"?
LQA92: Be right there.
***
"Well, this is your problem right here," Lead QA 92 said. He brought up the alpha, beta and gamma n-scores on the timescale. "They flatlined just moments prior to him 'wanting out'."
"So it's a good test still?"
"Absolutely. The n-scores on those latest assets are all good. In fact, this map rocks. The n-score on that latest boss encounter alone are well into green. We have a best-seller here. Corporate is going to love that. Well, but it's too bad about the poor guy at M7. He must've just suffered a crash on his n-module. We've had problems with that station."
Well, that was good to hear.
He looked over at the gaming stations. Body disposal was washing out the M7 pod. The other pods were good. He could see the gamers floating in the polyfluid vats, the sens-wires hooked into their brain stems. In a couple hours they'd be back on the worknet and none would be needed here for close observation so they'd rotate them out.
He checked out, his shift over. He walked over to his own pod. For a moment he wondered if he would ever become one of the vaunted game designers he heard of. He wondered about the guy in M7, why he talked about meaning just before the pain levels screamed into red - bringing him to such a final end. It was a bad feeling. He didn't like bad feelings. He hurried into the warm fluid, hooking the sens-wire up to his brain stem. The rush came as he felt his n-score go into high green through all the way to white - and the bad thoughts faded into nothing.
Ahhh... what a good feeling...
Friday, April 13, 2007
The Trooper
The trooper was pissing him off. The workhorse of the game. The plasma trooper.
The cubicle was a pool of lamplight in the darkness, amidst a small labyrinth of other "cubes". Don was the last one there. In "design-crunch", cranking in extra hours on the design to deliver to the team, so it could get to work Monday without confusion or delays. He was tired. The others had gone to see the new movie that was the buzz there, but he had opted out. He was sucking it up, as he had done before. That's what it took.
He had defined the unit properties days ago. Starting with the "workhorse" - the plasma infantry. Now he was on the advanced units - anti-grav tanks, heavy walkers, psion floaters. Giving special attacks, special powers. Making them unique to their factions. Now coming back to the plasma troopers he realized he had defined the properties in a way that wouldn't work.
They were trying a new combat feature, one mainly relevant to the advanced units. But he built the unit properties starting from this workhorse unit the plasma infantry, and working out to where he was now - adding the desired features to the advanced units one at a time. He realized this now made plasma infantry untenable. It wasn't just a data balancing issue - the key combat ability depended on how they deployed, but they weren't supposed to deploy this way. Anyway it now looked like he had to rip them apart and rebuild, but in so doing he was going to have to rip apart all the units and start over. Now he was trying to figure out if there was a cheat, some way he could use to utilized the existing unit data structure and just append a new property so he didn't have to go back and rebuild it all. He tried one, but he knew it would have this weird effect that the plasma infantry would be more powerful than some of the advanced units, throwing everything off.
Whose idea was this goddamn new feature anyway? Oh, that's right: it was his. Well, it was, originally... in a different form, based on an idea he got from a story he read. But it somehow got changed when he talked to the producer. Got really changed to something... unrecognizable now, really. But they were there committed to doing it. So here he was... Ah, shit. That's right. Get it done. Suck it up.
He was hashing things in his mind. He pushed the chair back from his workstation. Closed his eyes and rubbed them. Turned his brain off for a moment.
This sort of thing was par for the course in design.
What's the time? God, it's past midnight.
He hadn't slept much the prior night either. Lately, sometimes when he stood the ground would spin. He thought it might go away, it was just fatigue, but maybe he should see a doctor.
"Hey, Don."
He recognized the voice of Chris, the receptionist. He looked up, but didn't see her. What was she doing here? He knew they had given her a task, but the receptionists never crunched like the rest of them. (They were sane.) Maybe she was playing solitaire and lost track of time.
"What's up?" he asking, standing up. She must be in the front room.
Chris was nice. Had a warm smile, and a good sense of humour though stuck admist a crew of mostly male geeks who lived in odd sand castle worlds. Sometimes when he passed by her in the morning and said hello he got this vague feeling she was looking around the place in a kind of disbelief - like it was some kind of a trick being played on her. That she was an ordinary person who went to work in a strange Neverworld Disneyland. Her eyes seemed to betray a feeling that at any moment someone would point out the hidden camera trained on her, but that she was going along with it anyway, staying in on the joke, even though no one would admit to it. After all, it was a good job.
He remembered one time, working on a title similar to this, Chris walked by his cube and saw a grunt unit on the screen like the one Don was working on now. The walking animation attracted her it seemed, and she looked down and started to ask about the little trooper, who he was, what he was doing, what his name was, what his dreams and ambitions were. It seemed an odd thing to ask, Don thought.
"There's someone here for you," Chris said.
What? At this time?
"Who is it?"
"I really think you need to come here."
Don got up, walked toward the reception. As he turned the corner something struck him as odd. From here, across the cube farm, he could always see clear through to reception at the other end of the studio. But it was empty.
"He's waiting."
Chris again. From somewhere else. Maybe she went to get this person a soda.
He shrugged. "Okay." Walked to reception.
He looked at the floor, the carpet sliding by, as he walked. Rubbed his forehead. It was probably someone back from the movie; maybe they left something. But why would they...?
Into reception and-
Dead stop.
He stared, and the breath rushed out of his lungs.
"Reporting in," it said.
What the fuck? "Ummm... What are you?"
"Five Delta, reporting in."
This must be some joke. The guys were back, yah... But that costume! My god, it looked real! They must've had it custom built. It looked just like-
"Wow, that's good, guys," Don said as he looked around to see where the others were hiding. He walked over to get a closeup look, to touch the battle armor.
The trooper stood rock still.
Don touched the costume and stopped dead. He was expecting to feel vacuum-formed plastic or styrofoam or something. That's not what it felt like.
It was metal. He looked closely at the details on the equipment belt. Holy shit that looks real. The trooper's... plasma rifle: it was radiating heat! The visor covering his helmet: pocked and scratched from shrapnel. He looked at the visor, could not see the face, the eyes behind it. But vaguely he sensed it... looking at him.
"No fucking joke, sir," the trooper said.
What the hell was this?, Don wondered. This is impossible.
"Who are you?"
The trooper slung the plasma rifle over his shoulder. "I already told you, sir. Five Delta reporting in."
Don didn't know what to say.
"The situation is this," said the trooper. "Our platoon is holed up in an outpost waiting for reinforcements. They are going to get overrun if they don't get help. The commander sent me because all the guys in my squad are dead anyway..."
Don rubbed his heys. The room started to spin slightly.
"I don't want to lose those men, sir. The commander told me you would know what to do."
Don looked away, then at the trooper. This wasn't happening.
The trooper walked up to him. "You know who I am right?"
Don stared at him.
The trooper took his mask off. A face emerged from behind, looking at Don in the eyes. It scared the game designer.
"You know who I am don't you."
Don was freaking. "Fuck! Yah, I know who you are. I made you!"
The trooper's eyes narrowed. "You telling me you've got nothing for me? No orders? No reinforcements? Nothing to bring my men?"
"Your men! What men? Hell, I spawned your men! If they all die I'll just respawn them again. They're just a class. A type. An entity declaration. A property set, nothing more."
The trooper looked steadily at Don. Don didn't like the feeling the look gave him.
"What the fuck do you want with me?," he yelled at the trooper.
The trooper took a step back and looked up at the ceiling toward nothing in particular. Don saw his whole expression change for a moment. For the barest moment. As if a stone cracking into softness, if that could happen - he saw it in his eyes.
Then the hardness swept back over his face. The trooper dropped the plasma gun. He dropped his helmet. He took off his equipment belt. Next his chest armor. The rest of it. All clattering off, lying in a big heap on the ground. Stripping down to basic fatigues. He stood over it, looking at Don now.
"This is yours," the trooper said. "This pile of junk."
Don said nothing.
"It's useless without me, but it's what you know."
Suddenly the trooper turned, sharply, with honed reflexes. Slid out the door.
"Wait," Don said, running after him. Running out, he caught a glimpse of the trooper, flying silently down the stairwell. Moving fast, as if on some secret mission. Don ran after him. The trooper went past the ground floor. He went down into the basement. Don found himself underground somehow, the plasma trooper ahead moving as a shadow through the chambers and tunnels. But he couldn't keep up. The trooper slipped away, disappeared from view.
* * * * *
Don sat in his cube. The spinning had faded.
What happened? God, he needed rest.
He looked again at the spreadsheet. At the logic sequence for the current cell. He knew he had a long way to go. Needed to soldier on to get it done - brute force, power his way through this design.
The numbers looked back at him. The mechanism and matrix he made. Something about it seemed confused. He thought again about soldiering through. And he felt confused.
He didn't like that feeling.
He thought of the trooper.
He thought of the game. What were they trying to do with it?
He thought long and hard, but it seemed the more he thought the less he could see.
What time was it? My God it's late. He needed to sleep.
Still he couldn't shake this. What happened? What did he see?
Somehow, this didn't bode well.
He looked at the calender on his cube wall. He saw the days til the next milestone. But then he flipped through the months. And in his mind he flipped through the years. The years ahead. They looked grey.
He thought of the trooper, the real one he met for a moment - slipping out, away from his life. Suddenly he longed to speak to the trooper. Questions came, flooding, but knew he couldn't ask them. Because he was gone. Because he missed the chance.
And for a moment, for a second, it scared him. Something about the years ahead of him. It scared him. Just for a second...
It didn't bode well, and he knew it.
It did not bode well.
The cubicle was a pool of lamplight in the darkness, amidst a small labyrinth of other "cubes". Don was the last one there. In "design-crunch", cranking in extra hours on the design to deliver to the team, so it could get to work Monday without confusion or delays. He was tired. The others had gone to see the new movie that was the buzz there, but he had opted out. He was sucking it up, as he had done before. That's what it took.
He had defined the unit properties days ago. Starting with the "workhorse" - the plasma infantry. Now he was on the advanced units - anti-grav tanks, heavy walkers, psion floaters. Giving special attacks, special powers. Making them unique to their factions. Now coming back to the plasma troopers he realized he had defined the properties in a way that wouldn't work.
They were trying a new combat feature, one mainly relevant to the advanced units. But he built the unit properties starting from this workhorse unit the plasma infantry, and working out to where he was now - adding the desired features to the advanced units one at a time. He realized this now made plasma infantry untenable. It wasn't just a data balancing issue - the key combat ability depended on how they deployed, but they weren't supposed to deploy this way. Anyway it now looked like he had to rip them apart and rebuild, but in so doing he was going to have to rip apart all the units and start over. Now he was trying to figure out if there was a cheat, some way he could use to utilized the existing unit data structure and just append a new property so he didn't have to go back and rebuild it all. He tried one, but he knew it would have this weird effect that the plasma infantry would be more powerful than some of the advanced units, throwing everything off.
Whose idea was this goddamn new feature anyway? Oh, that's right: it was his. Well, it was, originally... in a different form, based on an idea he got from a story he read. But it somehow got changed when he talked to the producer. Got really changed to something... unrecognizable now, really. But they were there committed to doing it. So here he was... Ah, shit. That's right. Get it done. Suck it up.
He was hashing things in his mind. He pushed the chair back from his workstation. Closed his eyes and rubbed them. Turned his brain off for a moment.
This sort of thing was par for the course in design.
What's the time? God, it's past midnight.
He hadn't slept much the prior night either. Lately, sometimes when he stood the ground would spin. He thought it might go away, it was just fatigue, but maybe he should see a doctor.
"Hey, Don."
He recognized the voice of Chris, the receptionist. He looked up, but didn't see her. What was she doing here? He knew they had given her a task, but the receptionists never crunched like the rest of them. (They were sane.) Maybe she was playing solitaire and lost track of time.
"What's up?" he asking, standing up. She must be in the front room.
Chris was nice. Had a warm smile, and a good sense of humour though stuck admist a crew of mostly male geeks who lived in odd sand castle worlds. Sometimes when he passed by her in the morning and said hello he got this vague feeling she was looking around the place in a kind of disbelief - like it was some kind of a trick being played on her. That she was an ordinary person who went to work in a strange Neverworld Disneyland. Her eyes seemed to betray a feeling that at any moment someone would point out the hidden camera trained on her, but that she was going along with it anyway, staying in on the joke, even though no one would admit to it. After all, it was a good job.
He remembered one time, working on a title similar to this, Chris walked by his cube and saw a grunt unit on the screen like the one Don was working on now. The walking animation attracted her it seemed, and she looked down and started to ask about the little trooper, who he was, what he was doing, what his name was, what his dreams and ambitions were. It seemed an odd thing to ask, Don thought.
"There's someone here for you," Chris said.
What? At this time?
"Who is it?"
"I really think you need to come here."
Don got up, walked toward the reception. As he turned the corner something struck him as odd. From here, across the cube farm, he could always see clear through to reception at the other end of the studio. But it was empty.
"He's waiting."
Chris again. From somewhere else. Maybe she went to get this person a soda.
He shrugged. "Okay." Walked to reception.
He looked at the floor, the carpet sliding by, as he walked. Rubbed his forehead. It was probably someone back from the movie; maybe they left something. But why would they...?
Into reception and-
Dead stop.
He stared, and the breath rushed out of his lungs.
"Reporting in," it said.
What the fuck? "Ummm... What are you?"
"Five Delta, reporting in."
This must be some joke. The guys were back, yah... But that costume! My god, it looked real! They must've had it custom built. It looked just like-
"Wow, that's good, guys," Don said as he looked around to see where the others were hiding. He walked over to get a closeup look, to touch the battle armor.
The trooper stood rock still.
Don touched the costume and stopped dead. He was expecting to feel vacuum-formed plastic or styrofoam or something. That's not what it felt like.
It was metal. He looked closely at the details on the equipment belt. Holy shit that looks real. The trooper's... plasma rifle: it was radiating heat! The visor covering his helmet: pocked and scratched from shrapnel. He looked at the visor, could not see the face, the eyes behind it. But vaguely he sensed it... looking at him.
"No fucking joke, sir," the trooper said.
What the hell was this?, Don wondered. This is impossible.
"Who are you?"
The trooper slung the plasma rifle over his shoulder. "I already told you, sir. Five Delta reporting in."
Don didn't know what to say.
"The situation is this," said the trooper. "Our platoon is holed up in an outpost waiting for reinforcements. They are going to get overrun if they don't get help. The commander sent me because all the guys in my squad are dead anyway..."
Don rubbed his heys. The room started to spin slightly.
"I don't want to lose those men, sir. The commander told me you would know what to do."
Don looked away, then at the trooper. This wasn't happening.
The trooper walked up to him. "You know who I am right?"
Don stared at him.
The trooper took his mask off. A face emerged from behind, looking at Don in the eyes. It scared the game designer.
"You know who I am don't you."
Don was freaking. "Fuck! Yah, I know who you are. I made you!"
The trooper's eyes narrowed. "You telling me you've got nothing for me? No orders? No reinforcements? Nothing to bring my men?"
"Your men! What men? Hell, I spawned your men! If they all die I'll just respawn them again. They're just a class. A type. An entity declaration. A property set, nothing more."
The trooper looked steadily at Don. Don didn't like the feeling the look gave him.
"What the fuck do you want with me?," he yelled at the trooper.
The trooper took a step back and looked up at the ceiling toward nothing in particular. Don saw his whole expression change for a moment. For the barest moment. As if a stone cracking into softness, if that could happen - he saw it in his eyes.
Then the hardness swept back over his face. The trooper dropped the plasma gun. He dropped his helmet. He took off his equipment belt. Next his chest armor. The rest of it. All clattering off, lying in a big heap on the ground. Stripping down to basic fatigues. He stood over it, looking at Don now.
"This is yours," the trooper said. "This pile of junk."
Don said nothing.
"It's useless without me, but it's what you know."
Suddenly the trooper turned, sharply, with honed reflexes. Slid out the door.
"Wait," Don said, running after him. Running out, he caught a glimpse of the trooper, flying silently down the stairwell. Moving fast, as if on some secret mission. Don ran after him. The trooper went past the ground floor. He went down into the basement. Don found himself underground somehow, the plasma trooper ahead moving as a shadow through the chambers and tunnels. But he couldn't keep up. The trooper slipped away, disappeared from view.
* * * * *
Don sat in his cube. The spinning had faded.
What happened? God, he needed rest.
He looked again at the spreadsheet. At the logic sequence for the current cell. He knew he had a long way to go. Needed to soldier on to get it done - brute force, power his way through this design.
The numbers looked back at him. The mechanism and matrix he made. Something about it seemed confused. He thought again about soldiering through. And he felt confused.
He didn't like that feeling.
He thought of the trooper.
He thought of the game. What were they trying to do with it?
He thought long and hard, but it seemed the more he thought the less he could see.
What time was it? My God it's late. He needed to sleep.
Still he couldn't shake this. What happened? What did he see?
Somehow, this didn't bode well.
He looked at the calender on his cube wall. He saw the days til the next milestone. But then he flipped through the months. And in his mind he flipped through the years. The years ahead. They looked grey.
He thought of the trooper, the real one he met for a moment - slipping out, away from his life. Suddenly he longed to speak to the trooper. Questions came, flooding, but knew he couldn't ask them. Because he was gone. Because he missed the chance.
And for a moment, for a second, it scared him. Something about the years ahead of him. It scared him. Just for a second...
It didn't bode well, and he knew it.
It did not bode well.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Dead Game Designers Society
A classroom. The first day of school. Sam, Mike and several other young students, all uniformly dressed uniquely, file in.
Teacher: Hello. Have a seat. Welcome to Game Design 101. No time to waste - open your assigned textbook.
The class sit at the evenly-spaced desks then dutifully retrieve and open their thick textbooks.
Teacher: Sam, is it?
Sam: Yes.
Teacher: Please read. Page one.
Sam flips to the correct page.
Sam: (reading) Central to the issue of game design is the notion of fun. It goes without saying that you, as a prospective game designer, wish to create a game that is fun. What is fun? How do we achieve it in our game designs? (pause) A methodical analysis of the problem of fun points us to techniques we may use to ensure our products deliver this core commodity. Examine, if you will, figure one.
The teacher walks to the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. Mike retrieves his laptop, flipping it into tablet mode. Sam continues.
Sam: Assuming for a moment we take the setting or genre of our game as a constant - say, a routine science-fiction or military shooter, it doesn't matter which - we may then isolate its quantity of fun in the form of a chart. Across the bottom is the axis of playing time, which can also signify the progression of levels. The height of our table forms the axis of playing action, which is a measure of the number of significant interactions the player must execute via the interface in order to progress through the game (a value we can easily isolate through keystroke recording).
The teacher draws a corresponding chart on the whiteboard. Mike duplicates the chart framework on his tablet. Sam reads on.
Sam: We can then shape the volume and density of significant interactions in a rising manner over the game's time axis so as to assure our game is easy at the beginning and then difficult at the end.
The teacher plots a line on the chart, moving in a wiggling manner across it in a gradually upward motion. Mike mimicks the line with his stylus.
Sam: This analytical methodology has been proven to yield the optimal output of fun per unit of time. If we then multiply this quantum by the graphic quality factor (which will be addressed in chapter three) we can go on to interpolate a total appeal quantum for the game. We must however define certain-
Teacher: Okay, Sam.
Sam stops reading. The teacher examines the whiteboard for a moment.
Teacher: Excrement.
The teacher turns to the class. The class looks at him in silence. Mike stops drawing.
Teacher: Excrement! Rubbish. Horse-hockey. Can you think of any other words?
Mike deletes the chart he just drew.
Student: (surprised) You mean, garbage?
Teacher: (points) Exactly!
The teacher moves in among the class and crouches.
Teacher: Students, gather in. Huddle up, huddle up.
The students crowd in around the teacher.
Teacher: (low voice, almost a whisper) I'm gonna tell you a secret. Anyone who knows basic math and can use a calculator can analyze a game design to figure this shit out. This will tell you how much activity the design generates - how well your game will distract the player until he is distracted by the next game with loud graphics and marketing. But it can't tell you one key thing...
Mike: Which is...?
Teacher: Why? Why make the game? And therefore, why play it? Why playing it will make you feel alive! Unless you ask why - and ask that not within the confined context of gaming, but out in the open context of human experience; of a living breathing human being who chooses to devote his time to playing your game as opposed to reading a good book, starting a new business, visiting his relatives, travelling to the Himalayas... or any other healthy thing that contributes to the human race! Unless you ask why, and speak on those terms, you won't have a goddamn clue how to make anything fun. How to make it really compelling.
Silence.
The teacher stands and walks to the front.
Teacher: Now I want you to rip that page out of your book.
Mike: What?
Teacher: You heard me. Rip it out. In fact, rip out the whole first chapter.
The students meekly begin to tear pages out of their textbooks.
Sam: But I paid fifty dollars for this book!?!
Teacher: How ironic, Sam.
The tearing of pages slowly picks up its pace.
Teacher: Come on, I'm not hearing enough ripping!
Sam starts to tear the pages. He looks at Mike. They smile.
(To be continued...)
Teacher: Hello. Have a seat. Welcome to Game Design 101. No time to waste - open your assigned textbook.
The class sit at the evenly-spaced desks then dutifully retrieve and open their thick textbooks.
Teacher: Sam, is it?
Sam: Yes.
Teacher: Please read. Page one.
Sam flips to the correct page.
Sam: (reading) Central to the issue of game design is the notion of fun. It goes without saying that you, as a prospective game designer, wish to create a game that is fun. What is fun? How do we achieve it in our game designs? (pause) A methodical analysis of the problem of fun points us to techniques we may use to ensure our products deliver this core commodity. Examine, if you will, figure one.
The teacher walks to the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. Mike retrieves his laptop, flipping it into tablet mode. Sam continues.
Sam: Assuming for a moment we take the setting or genre of our game as a constant - say, a routine science-fiction or military shooter, it doesn't matter which - we may then isolate its quantity of fun in the form of a chart. Across the bottom is the axis of playing time, which can also signify the progression of levels. The height of our table forms the axis of playing action, which is a measure of the number of significant interactions the player must execute via the interface in order to progress through the game (a value we can easily isolate through keystroke recording).
The teacher draws a corresponding chart on the whiteboard. Mike duplicates the chart framework on his tablet. Sam reads on.
Sam: We can then shape the volume and density of significant interactions in a rising manner over the game's time axis so as to assure our game is easy at the beginning and then difficult at the end.
The teacher plots a line on the chart, moving in a wiggling manner across it in a gradually upward motion. Mike mimicks the line with his stylus.
Sam: This analytical methodology has been proven to yield the optimal output of fun per unit of time. If we then multiply this quantum by the graphic quality factor (which will be addressed in chapter three) we can go on to interpolate a total appeal quantum for the game. We must however define certain-
Teacher: Okay, Sam.
Sam stops reading. The teacher examines the whiteboard for a moment.
Teacher: Excrement.
The teacher turns to the class. The class looks at him in silence. Mike stops drawing.
Teacher: Excrement! Rubbish. Horse-hockey. Can you think of any other words?
Mike deletes the chart he just drew.
Student: (surprised) You mean, garbage?
Teacher: (points) Exactly!
The teacher moves in among the class and crouches.
Teacher: Students, gather in. Huddle up, huddle up.
The students crowd in around the teacher.
Teacher: (low voice, almost a whisper) I'm gonna tell you a secret. Anyone who knows basic math and can use a calculator can analyze a game design to figure this shit out. This will tell you how much activity the design generates - how well your game will distract the player until he is distracted by the next game with loud graphics and marketing. But it can't tell you one key thing...
Mike: Which is...?
Teacher: Why? Why make the game? And therefore, why play it? Why playing it will make you feel alive! Unless you ask why - and ask that not within the confined context of gaming, but out in the open context of human experience; of a living breathing human being who chooses to devote his time to playing your game as opposed to reading a good book, starting a new business, visiting his relatives, travelling to the Himalayas... or any other healthy thing that contributes to the human race! Unless you ask why, and speak on those terms, you won't have a goddamn clue how to make anything fun. How to make it really compelling.
Silence.
The teacher stands and walks to the front.
Teacher: Now I want you to rip that page out of your book.
Mike: What?
Teacher: You heard me. Rip it out. In fact, rip out the whole first chapter.
The students meekly begin to tear pages out of their textbooks.
Sam: But I paid fifty dollars for this book!?!
Teacher: How ironic, Sam.
The tearing of pages slowly picks up its pace.
Teacher: Come on, I'm not hearing enough ripping!
Sam starts to tear the pages. He looks at Mike. They smile.
(To be continued...)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)