Category Archives: Uncategorized

03.04.08
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Ideas > Design ?

Just a quick follow-up to my last post. Seems my response stirred up some attention, and in the meantime I’ve done some more thinking and discussing and learned a bit more about what Squidi‘s been up to.

Part of why I wrote up my thoughts was that I’m trying to sort them out. There’s a good chance I’ll be teaching some game design workshops in the fall (not because I’ve mastered it but because teaching is one of the best ways to learn more about something). I want to go into this with a decent perspective of what matters and what doesn’t, and be able to convey that to people who are new at this. I don’t want to stifle creative energy, but I also don’t want people setting themselves up to fail because of unrealistic expectations. Having already seen people come to me with a Great Idea which falls short of reality in horrible ways, I want to know how to help people get off of that train-wreck track as quickly as possible and get to making some awesome.

But this time I let myself get sucked into interweb drama, which is never a good idea. I was wrong in some ways, and more importantly I set myself up as The Voice Of Sanity when I’m still floundering through this process myself. Plus I started off with a wrong idea of where Squidi was coming from when he’s probably got more game industry experience than I do. Oops.

So, minus ten points to me for perpetuating internet angsts and misjudging people. Plus a few points for learning something in the process.

Squidi has posted some follow-up thoughts on the value of ideas, and I think he’s onto something:

The idea sets the boundaries. A bad idea with a good implementation may actually be worse than a great idea with a bad implementation. Everything that you can do, every implementation, every possibility, and every potential is embodied by the idea. In other words, the idea defines the range of quality that is possible.

I think I can agree with that, or at least move in that direction. Personally I would add that real-world experience in testing and building on ideas gives you a greater ability to sort out the good ideas from the bad. But that doesn’t change the fact that starting with a crap idea will probably never give you an awesome game. (Unless it’s B-Game Comp awesome, I guess, but now we’re trapped in an infinite loop of semantics.) I’m pretty sure you could also take an amazing idea and completely trash it with shoddy implementation, so maybe ideas are more like an upper bound, or a mean value of a set of possibilities with a long tail downwards into potential craptasticness. But now I’m drawing too many little graphs in my head and no good can come of that.

02.28.08
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Ideas vs Design

Ascii Dreams draws attention to a comment thread discussion following coverage of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at this year’s GDC. One of the games featured at the workshop, Lost in the Static, was based on an idea explicitly borrowed from a list of 300 game concepts released by indie developer writer Squidi as a creative exercise.

In the discussion, Squidi expresses frustration that a game based on his concept got attention at the GDC, while his proposal to discuss the 300 games list he created was rejected.

So, for example, by virtue of spending two days hacking together a generic platforming game, Lost in the Static is elevated above the original inspiration that spawned it? Is that why it is up there on the stage? Because of the code or because of the gimmick? It’s up there on behalf of sweat, not talent. What message does that send?

Two of the EGW organizers as well as Sean Barrett, the creator of Lost in the Static, respond to Squidi’s complaint. Sean gives very explicit credit to Squidi, as he did at the EGW, but he makes a good case against dismissing his contribution to the game’s design as trivial.

Despite the slightly flamewar-ish nature of the end of the thread, there’s a very foundational lesson to be learned here about game design. Squidi doesn’t seem to get it, but the other (very experienced) developers in discussion with him do their best to bring it to light. The way I’ve tried to explain it over the last few years goes something like this:

Ideas are cheap.

Now, I think I’ve probably undersold the creative process (including my own) by phrasing it that way; I’ve run short on brilliant design ideas in the past and it can take deliberate effort to push oneself creatively when working on a project. So sometimes ideas can be hard despite their cheapness.

But an idea is not a design. I’ve seen this misconception in game design, engineering, and I’m starting to see it in visual design as well. Someone (possibly myself) comes up with an idea which, in their mind, will be fantastic and revolutionize things and probably make them bucketloads of money. All they need is to find someone to implement the details, and success!

The problem is that in game design, as well as in almost any endeavor, the design is quite literally in the details. It’s possible to create both a well-designed fun game and a horribly boring game which both stay faithful to the same original concept. (Adding “It must be fun and awesome!” to the concept description is cheating, in the thought experiment as well as real life.) Like probably everyone else who’s ever played a game, I used to think, “Wouldn’t it be great to be the one who comes up with all the cool ideas, and everyone else can do the hard work? Being a game designer would be great!” The problem is, that doesn’t describe a game designer. (Maybe it describes the type of Executive Producer or Studio CEO who likes to drop by and periodically insist that Feature X be added to the game, but trust me, that doesn’t make you a hero.)

Now, many high-level concepts can sound great on paper but completely fall apart when you try to implement them. This is why engineers shake their heads when someone “invents” a revolutionary new energy storage mechanism which falls apart the moment you do any back-of-the-napkin calculations. Now, this does mean that there are “bad ideas”, so ideas aren’t completely without value. But there are two hurdles to overcome. You may not know an idea is bad until you look at the implementation details, or have enough experience to see them coming. Even if an idea isn’t bad at its core, it still requires good design work to take it from “interesting (or marketable) idea” to “great game design”.

Game design is, like any form of design work, about crafting the details into a coherent experience. The game concept or idea is a target, but there are many ways of getting there and not all of them will succeed. Good design work needs to address many different concerns such as complexity, accessibility, aesthetics, technical limitations, and more – and none of these concerns can be fully answered without specific, hard details.

02.05.08
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More presentation links

I spoke again at TWU for a game development project class. This is an info dump update of links to sites and games I mentioned.

Step one: my link-dump from last year’s presentation. Clicky here for a big long list.

Things that I learned about more recently that aren’t in that older post:

Dwarf Fortress is an extreme example of how indie games have the freedom to completely abandon the expectations of mainstream industry games. Text-based, cryptic controls, micromanagement sim & roguelike insanity.  (Of course, he also isn’t asking anyone to pay for the game.)

Cactus! This guy is nuts, often in a good way. Check out “Clean Asia!”, the IGF award nominee, to make your eyes bleed, or Psychonomium for a weird exercise in experimental and/or insane game-based storytelling.

Bit Blot are the makers of Aquaria, a game which despite being done in true indie fashion is also very polished and professionally made. Pick up the demo for a good taste of the more polished, commercial end of the indie spectrum.

Novel Concept’s new tower defense game, Flash Element Tower Defense 2, is a prime example of the Tower Defense genre that has sprung up in the Flash games scene. You may also want to check out Desktop Tower Defense, created by one of Novel Concept’s partners (and probably the most popular Flash game of 2007 – in fact one mainstream games blogger listed it as one of his Top 10 games of 2007 overall.) Also, hey, I just realized there’s now a Multiplayer DTD on Novel Concept’s Flash portal, The Casual Collective!

Something else I didn’t give much mention but which the class should probably look into: the IGF’s Student Showcase. I just gave the entrance rules a quick skim, and I think you should be eligible even though you’re selling the game afterwards. Take a look yourself at the submission site here. Your game needs to be at least at beta status (ie. feature-complete) before submission, but once it is this is a potential way to gain extra visibility above and beyond normal indie publishing / marketing routes.

And to close things off with a bang, the game which was described as possibly the most indie ever for being a game no publisher would ever touch: Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden. Be sure to click the links to see the DX9 / DX10 comparison. (Made using RPGMaker, which I really ought to have mentioned alongside AGS and GameMaker.)

10.17.07
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References for my TWU “Digital Games as Communication” Presentation

This post is a collection of links to stuff that I mentioned during my visit at Kevin Schut’s class on Digital Games as Communication. The talk was, roughly, on creative process in the mainstream game industry vs that in independent development, plus a look at what the indie game scene is shaping into today (or at least the parts I’ve found out about so far).  If there’s anything I mentioned that you can’t find here or via Google, or if you have any other questions, drop a comment here or email me at: josh at the domain thoughtlost dot org.  (Does that even fool spambots anymore? I have no idea.)

Linkfest begins after the break.

Continue reading →

05.16.07
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Vancouver IGS

Hey look, there’s a writeup on the game development conference I attended two weeks ago that I felt like blogging about but couldn’t figure out what to say! I missed the keynotes for the most part – work, commute, etc, whatever – but here are some of my highlights.

The session on agile development was pretty good, especially Relic’s success story. Also the final speaker from UBC was simply an amazing speaker, had the best use of PowerPoint I’ve ever seen, and dissected the bizarre pseudo-political spreading of the “agile” meme with such skill that I honestly wish I had that his presentation captured on video somewhere so that I could just point to it when people get confused by all the agile buzzwordology.

The pre-production tricks session was also pretty cool, mostly because it reminded me of a lot of good ideas I’d seen before and forgotten, plus hearing the story of Need for Speed: Carbon’s design team testing out a car customizing feature idea by having a “race” by pushing cardboard boxes around was hilarious. Also the NfS designer talked about how they used a board game prototype to test out their fairly risky feature of introducing a mild strategy element into their latest racing game. Not a new idea to me at least, but it was a great success story. They also used the technique of having one player be the “real” player and the rest use some general guidelines for how they make strategic choices to act out the part of computer opponents. I’d thought about trying this when I whipped up a board game prototype of a single player video game in the past, but wasn’t sure how fun it would be. I never had a group working with me to test it out on, so it was cool to hear that it worked out really well for the NfS team.

The MMO design session was another highlight, although mostly for the unusual reason that I hadn’t realized Sherwood Dungeon was made by an industry veteran living in North Vancouver. I had just heard of the game a couple weeks before the conference and was already impressed that it was the work of a single person. He shared how his games are already profitable and achieve a high amount of traffic simply by creating a linking policy that allows portals to place his game within a frame and keep their own ad and portal content around the game window as long as his own banner ads are kept intact below the game itself. Apparently he’s managed to get traffic equivalent to being on one of the top games portals by accumulating traffic from dozens of smaller portals instead, and all with little or no negotiation required. He’s also done a lot of work done to keep the game small and immediately accessible (no download, no credit card, just type in a player name and start) which had made it all come together into a working indie business model.

That pretty much sums up my favorite parts of the conference. Oh, and the burger buffet lunch on Friday was INFINITELY better than the pasta-on-saucers and (I kid you not) mashed potatoes in martini glasses they served up on Thursday. Thank goodness there’s a decent sushi restaurant within a block of any location in downtown Vancouver!

05.06.07
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Massively Multiplayer Online Vanity

Random brief thought after reading this Joel on Software blog post, specifically this story he quotes:

“A number of years ago a programmer friend of mine worked for a company that was brought in to optimize the elevators in a San Fran hotel. After doing their due diligence/study, they had the hotel install mirrors in the hallway where the elevators were. By the time the visitors were done preening, the elevator had arrived. Human engineering at its finest.”

I just attended a game dev conference in Vancouver which included a panel on MMO design, plus I’d just been skimming Terra Nova before catching this in my feeds. So naturally I read this great story and started wondering – how much of an MMOs success really depends on simply how cool you’re able to make your character look (and by extension, how cool and varied other characters around you look)? After all, good game design is all about “human engineering” of this sort, and MMOs in particular need to pull all kinds of attractors in to get people to stick around through the Long Grind.

06.01.06
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New Digital Games

quickie dump of something I rambled about on ifMUD earlier- if anyone wants links to anything I'm talking about, toss up a comment and I'll dig for them.

I'm reading through The New Games Book, which I picked up used last week or so. I'm glad I picked it up, for a few reasons. It's a good history lesson on where a whole bunch of group games that I've played growing up came from, for one. Plus there are a bunch of new ones in here that I hadn't heard of, which could be useful when doing kids stuff at church.

Also, it's interesting to get a better picture of what the New Games thing was about, compared to the idea you get when reading second-hand bits from Rules of Play and another paper I found online.

The second-hand things I'd seen were very keen on the cooperative and community aspects, as well as the idea that everyone can innovate and create new things. But the original movement seems to have been very focused on awareness of the physical self and physical environment. I think it'd be great to incorporate more of that in digital games, but it didn't seem to be emphasized by others who were looking at New Games for inspiration. eg. It seems to me that PacManhatten would be a closer analogy to a digital New Game than, say, Second Life.

So yeah, it would've been easy to miss a big part of the original idea, based on what I had seen as filtered through other people's take on the movement.

05.22.06
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Intro

Brief intro: I've begun a study of game design, beginning with the excellent Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Salen and Zimmerman. To augment the reading and thinking, I need a place to dump thoughts and ideas that come up as I'm processing all of this goodness. I already had this empty blog sitting here after setting up a named WordPress account for posting to my more specific blog, faithgames, so here goes.

I'll probably stick with categorizing posts using the pattern established in Rules of Play's schemas: Rules, Play, and Culture. The categories are expanding sets: Rules focuses on just the rules, Play expands the view to the player's experience, and Culture looks at how the game relates beyond the game.