Game Design Expo 2007
Originally Published on KillaNet.net – January 19 2007
This past weekend, I attended the inaugural Game Design Expo hosted by the Vancouver Film School. The Expo offered two full days of seminars and hands-on activities, and as it was a sell-out, VFS has added an additional Open House event on February 25, which will again offer sample classes from the Video Game Design Programme. The Game Design Expo 2007 was very well run, and every Vancouver Film School representative was ready and willing to answer any questions about the game design industry, training programmes and of course about VFS itself. This was especially important to me personally, as it meant that I would have more information to pass on to the members of our community network who are planning on a variety of careers in the Motion Media industry.
Day one of the Expo was held at the new Vancouver International Film Centre on Seymour Street, and began with a welcome from Dave Warfield, head of the Game Design Programme at Vancouver Film School. Mr. Warfield gave a brief outline of the event, and what he hoped attendees would come away from the Expo with – a fuller understanding of the game design process and how to design better games for a better game industry. Every seminar garnered an opportunity to learn several key aspects of game design, and condensing all of that information for this article proven to be a real challenge.
The keynote address was delivered by Glenn Entis, Senior Vice-President, Chief Visual and Technology Officer for Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. Working with an adaptation of the Moore’s Law graph, Mr. Entis delved into the topic of Games Grow Up: The Next Generation of Entertainment. The primary focus of this topic was the ability of designers to create “emotionally believable, interactive characters.”
Beginning with Prehistoric Man’s urge to recreate their everyday life experiences on the walls of caves, Mr. Entis moved the audience forward toward the first renderings of video game graphics, which appeared in the 1962 game Spacewar. Spacewar wasn’t the sort of game which really had a character, as the gameplayers were challenged to manoeuvre a spaceship through a galaxy littered with targets, with the object being to destroy the targets without being destroyed yourself.
Fast-forward to 1979 and the introduction of PacMan, one of gaming’s most recognized creations. While still primarily a level-challenge game where the objective of the game was to eat little dots and not get caught by the ghosts while advancing through increasingly difficult levels, PacMan was a character the gamer could care about. While PacMan himself was not an overly “emotional” character, the ghosts began to show small signs of graphic development with the movement of their eyes. As game graphics improved, so too have the characters, and from the earliest arcade games to the newest of the Next-Gen games, we have been able to see the evolution of characters and avatars which players care about. Today’s gaming platforms and their technology allow game designers to create characters with incredibly high fidelity, which translates into almost humanoid characters with believable expressions and movement.
As game engines improved, game designers found themselves having to deal with balancing Motion Fidelity with Modelling Fidelity in their characters. Mr. Entis introduced a pitfall for designers called “Uncanny Valley” which is an area many designers have trudged through. Uncanny Valley is that dark area where high fidelity characters fall when their responses to game play and control do not match their modelling fidelity. As designs and methods improve, game characters will beging to take on a highly believable humanoid interactivity, and safely bypass what Mr. Entis referred to as “The Zombie Line.” He stated that if designers could not develop their characters into a state which takes them beyond the Zombie Line, they will end up with “simply pretty graphics” and they should consider making animated films.
Avoiding The Zombie Line means that designers and engineers need to get more aggressive about motion fidelity, and the bio-mechanics of game design must enable characters to look and move with real-life correctness. Mr. Entis also pointed out the challenges of creating believable characters which will play correctly on the many different gaming platforms available to gamers. I would like to expand on this by adding it’s not just a challenge designing for different platforms, but also for different game genres. After watching the examples of character action and interaction in EA’s NBA Street, as a Guild Wars player I have to acknowledge that I am somewhat envious of the motion and modelling fidelity differences between the two games. While I care about my Guild Wars avatars, I would care about them alot more if they had the interactive abilities given to the characters in a game such as NBA Street.
Mr. Entis went on to demonstrate the process EA uses to achieve the high fidelity motions for their characters, such as U-Cap, which uses three camera angles to record real-time play, motion and interaction of human players. These film captures are then translated into computer generated high-poly models which are then applied as textures onto low poly characters. With these capabilities and the advancement of animation software, game designers are now able to apply appropriate artificial intelligence to characters, allowing them to anticipate actions in the game play. With this ability of engineering a game’s artificial intelligence, game characters are able to execute different responses to different targets, as well as respond in a more human way to different situations. The use of both U-Cap and Motion Capture are rapidly paving the way to characters whose behaviour is consistent and appropriate, and who can attain some type of tactical awareness through programmed memory.
Being able to develop believable game characters will inevitably trigger emotional responses in the game player. The importance of these responses can be narrowed down to the question “do these characters and elicited gamer responses make the game more fun?” Naturally, a higher level of character interactivity can make a game more fun, but there must also be a balance between character development and game playability. Mr. Entis reiterated that everything a game designer adds to a game must relate to the game being fun. Does the gameplay reward the player with new skills or abilities? Are the controls complicated? Is the gameplay confusing? A game can have the greatest graphics in the industry, but if it’s not fun, it won’t be popular with the gamer market.
The balancing of game mechanics and fun introduced by Mr. Entis in his keynote address was expanded on in the seminar Designing For Meaningful Play, given by Eric Zimmerman, co-founder and CEO of Gamelab. Mr. Zimmerman is the author of two books with co-writer Katie Salen, Rules of Play : Game Design Fundamentals and The Game Design Reader : A Rules of Play Anthology, and he is also the co-author of Replay: Game Design and Game Culture with Amy Scholder.
Mr. Zimmerman began his seminar by pointing out three areas of the game design industry which are in need of improvement. First on his list was the creative crisis which seems to be gripping several areas of the design industry, particularly casual games. Next on his list was the fact that while video gaming is a part of our culture, it is not an area which is taken seriously by the greater part of today’s society. This is possibly because the industry is not taken seriously in the way film is, because game play is still associated with childhood, even though there is a massive adult gamer audience out in the market. His third point was the challenges faced by today’s designers to continually keep the industry fresh and meet the growing expectations of the gaming public.
Mr. Zimmerman went on to explain that the principle factors of game design are not programming, visual design, project management or writing. The principle factor, as determined by the game’s design, is the structure of the player’s experience within the game. These experiences fall within the sets of rules which are generally logical, fixed, closed and scientific, which in and of themselves does not sound like fun. However, the fun comes from the spontaniety and state changes throughout the game which the rules allow. There are many types of play such as competitive, narrative, social and strategic manoeuvres which still allow for creative spontaneity and the forward movement of the player through the game to its conclusion.
Games are systems of meaning; they are an activity, and these activities have a variety of outcomes which occur through the player’s interaction with the game’s rules. In order to determine the fun factor, Mr. Zimmerman pointed out that the game’s system must be able to show in its structure what the player is actually doing or expected to do, that there must be a meaning and an outcome to the system such as positioning and scoring. This outcome is made of up a game’s anatomy, or how its different parts inter-relate to form a whole experience. Every choice the player makes must serve to move the player further along in the game; these choices then introduce a new game state, which the player knows how to work through because these states are written within the structure of the rules.
Mr. Zimmerman demonstrated the above points with an audience participation game, which he called Massive Multi-Player Rock Paper Scissors, or MMPRPS. Members of the audience challenged their neighbours to a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors, with the winner of the final round being presented with an autographed copy of his Rules of Play book, donated by VFS. This small demonstration drew out several points of game play. Everyone knew the rules which structured the game – the logic of the game system; the social play of the game called for the interaction of the participants to move the game forward, to an expected but unknown outcome. These factors all added up to make the game fun.
The player’s experience within the game needs to be the primary focus of the game’s design and structure. If the player does not understand the significance of actions and decisions within the game, then the player will not consider the game to be fun. The rules need to be able to lead the player through process of each game state change. Mr. Zimmerman concluded his very entertaining seminar by summing up that as game designers, we need to have a rigourous understanding of game design structures; we need to motivate and innovate, and make sure that we give maximum meaning from moment to moment in the overall state of the game.
After a brief lunchbreak, the afternoon’s seminars were kicked off by Mike Swanson, Studio Art Production Manager for Gas Powered Games. The topic of Mr. Swanson’s presentation was Artist for the Future Generation of Games, which covered the important points of Art Tool Progression and Art Skills Progression. Throughout his twenty years’ experience as a game design artist, Mr. Swanson stated that one of the most important aspects of the industry for the artist is staying current with the available technology. Reiterating the theme of the day, fun, Mr. Swanson also stated that while it may be great that technology has given designers the ability to build bigger worlds, artists must learn to populate them in a way which adds to the player’s experience of fun, interactive gameplay.
As game design technology advances, Mr. Swanson believes we will see more and more software which is capable of bridging across both the game design and film industries, making it possible for artists to work in either industry – something we are already seeing in the two industries. One of the newest and most important skills an artist needs to learn is setting moods through lighting in games. One way to learn this skill would be to study and get training for lighting in film. Also of importance is the ability to create high-poly characters and then maintain their quality as a texture on a low-poly character. Mr. Swanson also noted that artists need to include high-poly work on their demo reels, as low-poly work is not paid as much attention in the current state of the industry. He said that while production time has increased on a per game basis due to the need for high-poly modelling, today’s market has come to expect high fidelity graphics within the game environment. While he doesn’t expect to see game art match film quality for another seven years, the artist must continually develop his or her skills in creating the visually stunning graphics gamers are coming to expect.
The greatest advancements have been in the graphics capabilities of the gaming platforms; the speed of processors and graphics cards have opened up a world of huge possibilities for designers, but this has also opened up huge challenges for the software tools used to create the games. While the ability is there to create and populate huge worlds, commercial software is struggling to keep up with the technology. Mr. Swanson said that while artists will still need to be able to create textures in PhotoShop, they will be expected to shader art skills and become mini-art directors with the ability to script procedural techniques for ease of populating these huge worlds. He predicted a greater reliance on middleware which will be used to create propietary art tools as studios push the envelope of game creation, particularly complex lighting, high fidelity modelling, more human simulations such as muscle and hair movement, and the proliferation of more world objects with real world quality.
The next lecture was presented by Jim Sink, Business Development Manager for Backbone Entertainment, whose topic was The Future of Downloadable Games. He opened his talk with the statement that “this is the beginning of a revolution of how games are created and dispersed.” I believe this is a very true statement. Not just for the cost factor of games and game production, but because our society has become one which desires instant gratification. While Mr. Sink’s primary focus was on the three main console platforms, the PC gaming market is also a huge part of online consumer purchases. Each of the console manufacturers has its own online purchase outlets: XBox Marketplace, PlayStation Online, and Wii Virtual Console.
XBox Marketplace is probably the most popular and widely used of the console online stores. One reason is because it offers retooled classic games with enhanced graphics. These games have proven to be a hit among the adult market, those who have the buying power to support the online stores. While each of the console marketplaces have their own formats and limits, XBox and PlayStation are undoubtedly far ahead of Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console. Both XBox and PlayStation offer managed portfolios, which sees the maintenance of a wide variety of game titles and genres, without an excessive repeat of “clone” style games. While XBox offers enhanced classic games, PlayStation offers PSOne downloads which will run on the PlayStation Portable. Wii Virtual Console does offer classic games, but without enhancements, and there are no demos available, something both XBox and PlayStation do offer. These online stores and downloadable games are also a boon for the handheld and cellphone markets, adding to the opportunities developers will have to get their games out to the buying public.
It is the technologically savvy, buying public that developers are hoping to attract with easily accessible, affordable games. Online game markets are not only convenient to the impulsive buyer, they are able to offer a more constant selection of games. The convenience of easily accessible game demos will only add to the “instant sale” factor by drawing gamers in with the opportunity to instantly unlock games and features, satisfying the instant gratification factor of today’s market. These avenues will also lower the barriers to market entry, as well as help reduce the cost of getting a product to market. A developer will be able to save many of their hard-earned dollars which are currently spent on printing, packaging and distribution, enabling them to instead spend those dollars on development. This new online market could also be an aid in cutting down on software piracy, as online activity is getting easier to monitor for many types of software. This connectivity also offers two more possibilities: keeping in touch with your audience and giving them a sense of community within the game, which can serve two purposes; first it will keep them engaged in your product, and the information you garner from such interaction can be used as marketing research .
Mr. Sink also pointed out that as the capacity of hard drives and flash drives is increasing exponentially, so too the price of storage will drop, furthering the ability of gamers to download and store game products. With the advent of virtual pre-orders, it will be easier for developers to deliver not only new games, but also the added-value expansions and bonuses for their customers. I experienced this firsthand with the recent Guild Wars: Nightfall release. While I did purchase a hard copy of the Collector’s Edition, most of the game content which came on the CD’s had already been downloaded to my game files during regular gameplay, and all that was required was the CE key to unlock the content. While I could have purchased the entire new chapter online, I wanted all of the extras which come with the Collector’s Edition – the books, music, and the “behind the scenes” DVD. This is one area which will have to be considered in the future of the downloadable market, which as Mr. Sink pointed out, the delivery of content is still an area which needs improvement, along with customer security.
In closing, Mr. Sink encouraged developers to ride this new wave of market accessibility, as the winners in these advancements would be the developers, publishers, console manufacturers, and ultimately the gamers. Naturally an increased online market could ultimately hurt the physical retail outlets, in the end, if the industry is delivering what the customer wants in gaming products, then as producers, they have a winning combination. He also took the opportunity to introduce a new site that will be going live towards the end of January 2007, Global Game Dev which many of you may want to check out.
Next up on the lecture list was Kevin Barrett, Director of Design for Bioware Corporation, who delivered one of the most entertaining lectures I have ever attended. Mr. Barrett endeavoured to cover two main points in his lecture: why do we play and what are the principles to guide us in game design. Mr. Barrett put a new twist on the caveman theory introduced during the morning session by Glenn Entis. However instead of looking at the drawings in the cave, we took a look at the caveman who put them there, and how his initial concept of fun has passed down through the ages to current day.
Mr. Barrett introduced the audience to Chuck the Caveman, who re-enacted his success at antelope hunting through physical and visual story-telling to the rest of his tribe, discovered Fun. He went on to relate the release of the chemical Dopamine in the human brain to fun. Dopamine is released in our brains when we reach a certain level of achievement; as this is a pleasing chemical reaction in our brains, we tend to repeat the activities which create this feeling of fun. This enables us to predict fun activities based on what we as humans like to do to achieve our dose of Dopamine. Fun activities, for the purpose of gaming, can be divided into three areas:
First is Physical Fun, which consists of combat, movement, manoeuvres and exploration. These situations can be mastered through game controller manipulation. Games such as Doom fall into this category. The next type of activity is Social Fun, which consists of teamwork, story and communication, trading and sharing, competition or dominance assertion. Games such as World of Warcraft, Sims, and Guild Wars would fall into this category. The third type of activity is Mental Fun. This involves tactical and strategic planning, pattern recognition, goal choice and achievement. The archetypical Mental Fun game would be Tetris. Mr. Barrett recommended that every student of game design should become familiar with The 400 Project, which endeavours to bring together many of the design rules pertinent to today’s industry.
A highly successful game would be able to incorporate all three types of fun into one game, and as game designers we need to fully understand the nature of fun, and then implement it into our games using the same pragmatic structure. To do this, we must recognize the three primary principles of game play:
*Frequency and importance of player decision making
*Accessibility and intuitiveness of the design and gameplay mechanics to the game player
*Advancement of player skill over time
Every game has one common principle, no matter its genre, and that is the player. Successful gameplay, while being fun, must not be a static experience to the gamer. There needs to be a learning curve and reward system within the game environment. The game must be interesting to the player in order to hold his or her attention, and designers must keep in mind that they are not designing games for themselves, they are designing for the end consumer who, like Chuck the Caveman, is looking for that rush of Dopamine at every level of advancement. Designers who can incorporate the nature of fun in a visually stimulating game, will have a successful end product.
The final presentation of the day was a very spirited panel discussion covering a variety of topics such as the future of gaming, cinematics and storytelling in games, and designing for play. The panel was moderated by Eric Zimmerman (Co-Founder and CEO of GameLab), panels members were , Kelly Zmak (President of Radical Entertainment), Steve Bocska (Joint CEO and Co-Founder of Hothead Games), Rory Armes (Senior Vice-President and Group General Manager for EA Canada), Douglas Alan Tronsgard (CED of Next Level Games), Jay Balakrishnan (CEO and Co-Founder of Beyond Virtual, Inc) and Jim Sink (Business Development Manager for Backbone Entertainment).
There were as many different opinions as panel members during this discussion, with some mutual concurrence in a few areas. All panelists agreed that there is a need for innovation in the game design industry. The industry is currently in a rut, and it was discussed that this rut could well have been caused by the decisions being made by studio financial managers. With the high end of technology pushing the bar of development and the diversification of console platforms, it was felt that there needs to be some true innovation in every aspect of the industry from the tools used to create the games to the scale of the end products. It was also pointed out that while we were discussing primarily the future of gameplay, it is inherently tied in to the business end of the industry. This leads to a big circle of development decisions made by financial advisors, which in turn leads to the rut mentioned earlier.
As has been pointed out during every lecture throughout the day, studios need to know and recognize who they are designing for, and the state of the actual end user experience within those designs. Studios need to listen more to those who play the games and try to incorporate this input into their design philosophies. Rory Armes pointed out that designers need to stay true to what they have a passion for, and to minimize the input of “the money guys”. This led into a discussion regarding the future of Indie studios, with a comparison to the indie film industry.
Steve Bocska pointed out that now is a perfect time to be an artist in the game design industry, especially with the advent of the long-tail market and the new technologies which will only grow the downloadable side of the industry. This makes it much easier to find a market for your development visions. Mr. Zimmerman pointed out that this could breathe some fresh air into the Casual Game market, which he defined as the “most creatively deadest corner of the industry”. He noted that many online game portals are too conservative, they are afraid to offend the end users, and that many of the online purchase sites for casual games are gouging the developers by keeping large portions of the game revenues for themselves. This of course does nothing to encourage distribution of new products through those portals. Douglas Tronsgard felt that while there are many fundamental problems within the industry, the market would correct itself in regards to the portal gouging. The overcoming of these fundamental problems will foster creativity and increase competition within the industry, with the gaming community as a whole coming out the winner.
This panel managed to tie in all of the different aspects which had been covered throughout the day, from outside investment in development to the development of new tools and marketing methods. Every panel participant offered advice and suggestions to the audience which I know I will be passing on the members of the KillaNet Community, and I hope to be able to incorporate those views, suggestions and philosophies into future articles. The amount of knowledge and experience that was shared by these industry leaders is invaluable to anyone who is involved in the game design industry, and I feel that VFS made excellent choices for topics and speakers for their first Expo event. Vancouver Film School has shown over the course of this event that it is serious in taking part in the development and growth of a true game industry development community in Vancouver, and I feel that these first steps will go a very long way to seeing that community come to life.