BIG APPLE, 3 AM

Week 1 - October 8th to 10th

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:07:04 -0500

Wednesday, October 8th

Morning: Introduction to Lua Scripting
I will examine various Lua scripts already created for MetaPlace in an attempt to familiarize myself with how they're structured and how basic functions are scripted. I will also study the MetaPlace wiki articles written on Lua, and catch up on all posts made on the MetaPlace scripting forum. Both of these places will soon become invaluable resources that I will have to learn to take full advantage of.
Homework: Read Programming in Lua - Chapters 1-3

Afternoon: Non-Digital Game Design
Field trip! I will be spending the rest of the day with The Oxford History of Board Games in the main reading room of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. I hope to by inspired by the vast varieties of board games that have been created and played throughout the centuries, and also develop a starting point for understanding their cultural and historical significance.
Homework: Read Challenges for Game Designers - Chapters 1-4

Thursday, October 9th

Morning: ARG Participation, Design, and Production
This acronym laden session will begin with a 9am IRC chat with members of the IGDA ARG SIG. I will then explore the Superstruct game website.
Homework: Plan and complete a basic entry for the Superstruct mission.

Afternoon: Warren Spector Master Class Video
A little bit of a break for absorption and contemplation before Friday's intense practical and creative sessions. When Warren Spector taught a class in game design last year, the three hour auditorium interviews he conducted with game industry luminaries were briefly put online. I've chosen Harvey Smith's interview for this week's viewing.
Friday, October 10th

Morning: Introduction to Lua Scripting
Modify selected MetaPlace Lua scripts and observe in game world.
Homework: Read PIL Ch. 4-6

Afternoon: Non-Digital Game Design
Complete selected excercises from Chapters 1-4 of Challenges for Game Designers.
Homework: Read Challenges Ch. 5-8

Curriculum Ludi

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:06:30 -0500

When I graduated high school and needed to decide on a program and university, I took the advice of numerous "how to get a job in the game industry" articles and went for a BA in the humanities. I studied what interested me -- History, Classics, English, Film. At the time, in 2003, I didn't really have any game design school options anyway. The programs that did exist were for programming or art. I was never a programmer or an artist, I was a designer.

Now I've graduated with my BA. I took a year off to work, spending 3 months actually in the game industry as a QA tester at EA Mobile. In September I moved to New York, with the intention of building my skillset and portfolio, and hopefully eventually being offered an internship or job. I had other options: Vancouver Film School (Expensive! Intensive! ie. huge debt and no life for length of the program), or stay in Montreal working part-time at EA and going to school at Campus Ubisoft. But the appeal of living in New York and teaching myself only what I wanted to learn made it a non-decision. NYC is where I have to be.

Something I realized, however, is that I need the direction and focus that a school provides. I can't just work randomly on projects and mods that interest me. My portfolio would consist of nothing but half-finished and unrealized concepts (it kind of aleady does -- take a look at the sidebar pages). My solution was to create a curriculum complete with "courses" and a weekly schedule that I will force myself to adhere to. Over the following weeks and months I will be teaching myself the skills necessary to get a design job in the game industry, and come away with a portfolio hopefully as developed as one created by a student who pays $30,000 in tuition. The list of courses I have developed, with my intended goals for each of them, are described below.

Some notes on my home-schooling curriculum:
-The reading list may seem incomplete, but I excluded those books and papers I have already read. The notable ones include A Theory of Fun, the MDA Thesis, Jehova Chen's Flow in Games, A Pattern Language. But please suggest any others that I may have missed that should be required reading. My Amazon Wishlist might also have some other books that I neglected here.
-My weekly schedule will be made up and posted every Sunday. This allows flexible scheduling, so I can adjust the next week's work according to upcoming events and the progress I made in the previous week.
-The "homework" that sometimes appears in the weekly schedule is assumed to be completed by the next session of the "course" for which it was assigned.
-That's it! Here's my curriculum ludi, subject to change and improvement:

Non-Digital Game Design
Board Games, RPGs, Card Games, CCGs -- There exists an enormous variety of games that can not be played on a TV or computer. A combination of reading and hands-on experience will provide me with a history and understanding of the types of non-digital games that I'm not intimiately familiar with. Practical design excercises will complement my research. The final project will involve creating a playable non-digital game prototype and ruleset.
Oxford History of Board Games. David Parlett. (1999)
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. (2003)
Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams. (2003)
Challenges for Game Designers. Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber. (2008)

Advanced Virtual World Design
I will begin with a brief history of online worlds encompassing MUDs, Casual Virtual Worlds, and MMORPGs. Once the breadth and nature of the genre has been established, a practical phase will begin during which I will design a game to be created on the MetaPlace platform. I will finish this course with an industry-quality Vision Document and Game Design Document.
Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games as Social Worlds. Gary Alan Fine. (2002)
Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle. (2003)
Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. T.L. Taylor. (2006)
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Edward Castronova. (2006)

Introduction to Lua Scripting
Using the MetaPlace platform, I will develop a working knowledge of Lua that will be used for the creation of unique game interfaces and assorted game systems.
Programming in Lua, 2nd Edition. Roberto Ierusalimschy. (2006)
Lua 5.1 Reference Manual. R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, and W. Celes. (2006)

Writing for Games
This course is divided into 3 parts: Dialogue, Plot, and Story. The first segment will consist of writing excercises focused around dialogue trees and barks for a variety of genres, from Interactive Fiction to Sports. The second will involve an examination and illustration of the role of writing and narrative in game design (Quests/Missions) and flow (Level Design). In the third part, I will write a complete Story Bible for an IP to be developed into an MMOG, but potentially any other medium as well.
Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Nick Montfort. (2005)
Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Jeff Howard. (2008)
Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon. (2004)
Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative. Mark Stephen Meadows. (2002)
Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Chris Crawford. (2004)

Game Blogging 101
I will be using this blog to publish podcasts, game reviews, interviews, and commentary.
The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual. David Thomas, Kyle Orland, and Scott Steinberg. (2007)
Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Ian Bogost. (2006)

ARG Participation, Design, and Production
This primarily practical course will begin with a very brief history of ARGs that focuses on their gameplay and delivery methods. Excercises will include designing theoretical games for a variety of platforms (Akoha, Web, Real World) and on scales that range from a single room to worldwide. I will also be participating in and contributing to the soon-to-launch forecasting game Superstruct. By the end of the course I will have designed, created, and launched a fully functioning ARG based out of New York City.
Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Drew Davidson, et al. (2007)

Additional Reading List:
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (1990)
The Design of Everyday Things. Donald A. Norman. (1988)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell. (1949)
Game Design Workshop, Second Edition: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. Tracy Fullerton. (2008)
Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Jesper Juul. (2005)
Game Design: Theory and Practice, 2nd Edition. Richard Rouse. (2001)
Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. (2007)
Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Ian Bogost. (2007)
Various Journals (Loading, Cerise, etc.)

Making Games in Aspiring Places

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:56:52 -0500

New York City draws the creative class into it because it inspires. For those with a passion for fashion, architecture, or graphic design, the sources of inspiration are immediate and obvious. But ask a game designer where they draw their inspiration from -- especially a video game designer -- and they'll likely respond with a vague but honest "everything".

I've recently been planning what you might call an augmented reality game installation. It's part game, part puzzle, set in a single location, within a short span of time. Imagine a room full of newspaper clippings, monitors, a computer, etc. A narrative unfolds as the participant explores the room: the newspapers are all about the activities a VIP, the monitors display CCTV feeds of various locations, today's date is circled on a calendar with a time noted, a drawer is locked, there's a flashing light on the answering machine, the computer is password locked but has a reminder question -- could the answer to it be somewhere in the room? You get the idea. That was just an example of the kind of stuff that was bouncing around my head this summer. And then Eric Clough came out of nowhere and blew us all away. Is 24 years old too old to still be having role models? Because I want to be him when I grow up. Scratch that -- I don't have time to grow up, need to start now.

I don't have a giant architecture firm at my disposal, but starting October 1st I will have an incredible apartment with hardwood floors, fireplace, and french doors that occupies the top two floors of a "limestone" (basically a brownstone without the outdoor stairs). Coinciding with my Clough fanaticism, I can't imagine a more inspiring space to call home. What this apartment did was allow my thoughts to move beyond the single room "game installation" format into something that more closely resembles a participatory mystery dinner theatre. The small rooms I've previously lived in never let my imagination conceive of anything on a wider local scale. What I mean is, the city/country/world-wide scale of ARGs was always achievable for me, possible through gratuitous exploitation of the web and social networks, but turning an entire home into a game as Clough did was beyond my capabilities.

The first augmented reality game I plan to create for this apartment is set during a dinner party. When the previous tenants departed unexpectedly, a lot of their stuff was left behind. The most visible item is an old wine bottle stuck in an odd puzzle contraption that the current residents use as a conversation piece. One of the game participants frees the bottle, and the discovery of a note contained within it launches a scavenger hunt throughout the apartment, interspersed with puzzles and revelations about the mysterious tenants who used to live there.

I have no idea if or when I'll be able to find an audience receptive to this sort of game, but as soon as I hammer out the details, I'll post a full "walkthrough" with photos. Meanwhile, the search continues for old monitors that I can use as part of my CCTV set-up...

The Security Camera

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:08:33 -0500

See if you can match the following manual excerpts with the games they belong to!

1. "Standard off-the-shelf surveillance cameras that detect movement and have the ability to directly trigger alarms. This type of camera is fragile and can be destroyed."

2. "There are cameras placed everywhere, constantly looking for intruders. If a camera spots you, it will sound a warning tone. If you stay in its sight long enough for it to identify you, it will sound the alarm, summoning one or more [enemies]. Alarms will time out (a counter will show you how much time remains) but the security system will keep sending [enemies] as long as the alarm is active."

3. "If [player character] is seen by a security camera, [player character] will only have a few seconds to get out of sight before an alarm goes off. Guards will arrive to search the area. If they find nothing, the alarm will stop and the guards will return to their normal routines. Keep in mind the alarm will go off instantly if the camera is destroyed. Fortunately, the [equipment] is available with camera disabler ammunition that can render cameras useless without creating a commotion."

a) Metal Gear Solid
b) No One Lives Forever 2
c) Deus Ex
d) Bioshock
e) Splinter Cell

Don't spend too much time thinking about it. Any one of those descriptions could apply to any one of those games. The security camera is as regular a fixture of the action game as the power-up or crate, and has historically been just as copied and abused by uncreative designers. I like how they're referred to in the first description; 'off-the-shelf' is exactly what they are.

The games in that list represent a pretty wide variety of genres that exist under the "action" umbrella. And the security camera is the exact same in every single one of them. Oh sure, sometimes you might be able to hack the camera, or otherwise disable it, but they fundamentally remain the same. They have a single purpose - to slow the player down. Players not fully aware of their environmental surroundings are penalized, discouraging a play style of "running and gunning." The psychological effect of the security camera on the player, however, is not proportional to the actual threat it poses or the penalties it dispenses. When a player is noticed by a camera and sets off an alarm, they feel like they have somehow failed. Like dying in a firefight, setting off a security camera alarm is not seen as part of the intended game narrative. The player may quickload, even though the actual penalty associated with setting off an alarm is usually no different than walking into a planned firefight -- various enemies are encountered and the player must kill them. There is no depth or variation beyond this. If you don't slow down to look for hidden security cameras (and as a result notice the environmental details that the game developers put a lot of effort into), then alarms will blare. You will be forced to stop for a minute or two, and remain in the area until the alarm and threat has ended. Security cameras are not used to challenge the player or create atmosphere. If anything, they detract form the believability of the game world.

The security cameras in every game I've played seem to be operated from some remote location by assholes who just don't give a damn about human life. You'd think after setting off my third alarm and slaughtering the third wave of guards sent to my location, they might devise a new strategy -- maybe start using those security cameras to track me so they can evacuate areas I seem to be heading towards. Imagine after being discovered on a security camera for the third time the level suddenly becomes empty instead of forcing you to restart. Where guards were once patrolling, there are now just empty corridors. The only life you encounter are the security cameras tracking your movements. If you're quick, you might enter a room and hear a voice over the PA system warning of your approach, and catch a glimpse of the backs of NPCs running in the opposite direction. But no alarm sounds and no guards emerge from secret rooms to stop your advance. After several minutes you start to relax your guard, maybe become a little frustrated. Then you burst into a room, expecting it to be empty like the previous four, but there's an ambush waiting for you. You have to flee, regroup, but suddenly those passive security cameras you had begun to ignore are now actively coordinating the hunt for you.

Unfortunately this has never happened in a game. Most designers can only imagine the security camera existing for the single purpose of slowing the player down. God forbid the security system actually have some AI of its own...

The function of the security camera wasn't always so rigidly defined, however. In 1991, Duke Nukem featured security cameras that served no purpose other than to be blown up. This "game feature" was prominently displayed on the back of the game box and in advertisements. Five years later, Duke Nukem 3D allowed players to use the cameras for surveillance purposes, through monitors that could be accessed at various points in the level. But now you were no longer allowed to destroy the camera. In an effort to showcase their latest technology, 3D Realms changed the nature of the player's interactions with the security camera. It wasn't a philisophical change of heart that made Duke go from a violent protector of privacy rights to a willing voyeur, it was just really cool technology that let you see unexplored parts of the level in real-time.

And then around 1998 the security camera evolved into its current form. That's 10 years of predictable panning, blaring alarms, and field of vision avoidance. Can all those game designers really think that this is the pinnacle of what the security camera can achieve? That they can only serve as an obstacle, requiring about the same amount of thought and puzzle solving effort as opening an unlocked door? Because let's face it, if you know how to not press a key to move forward you know how to successfully wait 4 seconds for it to be safe to move past a panning security camera. And if for some reason you do fall into its line of sight, well, thank god for the 3 second grace period that gives you enough time to find a wall to hide behind!

Thankfully, there are two games that challenge -- or perhaps simply ignore -- this presumed role of the security camera in video games. The Experiment uses security cameras as a way for the player to view, and interact with, the game world. The omnipresent and invisible "camera" that the player views every 3D game world through is made physical and diegetic. But it's an adventure game, which is perhaps a genre better suited to exploring the boundaries of player viewpoint and world interaction.

Half-Life 2, on the other hand, is an action game. It could easily have contained a paragraph in its manual just like one of the ones you just read. Nobody would fault the designers for it. Half-Life 2 is, after all, a game that contains crates, power-ups, and exploding barrels. But for some inexplicable reason, Valve did choose to explore and reinvent the form, function, and meaning of the security camera in their game. The result is a brilliant innovation and one of the main reasons HL2's narrative is leagues beyond anything else in the medium.

A bold claim, perhaps, but let's take a look at the "security camera" as it exists in HL2.

It's mobile, able to follow and seek out the player in a far more sophisticated way than a panning camera on a wall-mount.
It finds the player, the player does not find it.
It invades personal space. The flash it uses when taking a photo is blinding and annoying - especially in a firefight.
It's integrated faithfully with -- and is an important contributer to -- the Orwellian themes of the narrative and story.

Its mobility means that its movements are not predictable, and more can appear to take the place of those that are destroyed. In fact, the camera cannot be avoided. Players can either attempt to destroy them in a futile rebellious act, or resign themselves to the constant hovering and periodic flashes. Compare these thoughts and actions on the part of the player to those invoked by the security camera in other games. Knowingly futile defiance and reluctant resignation vs. accidentally setting off alarm through inattention and trading alarm penalty for speed through level and successfully bypassing camera because it's there and is supposed to be bypassed.

Granted, there is some satisfaction to be gained from successfully hacking a security camera so it is on your side. Converting, not simply neutralizing, a threat is one of the most awesome things that can happen in an action game. Watching a battle unfold with health and ammo preserved, knowing the bad guys are killing themselves -- yeah, it's really cool. It's the reason people liked enraging Big Daddies so they would fight Splicers more than fighting them themselves. Converting enemies is cool, and the security camera can sometimes be converted, but that does not necessarily make the security camera cool. What HL2 accomplishes so wonderfully is instilling a sense of satisfaction, relief, rebellion, in the player for destroying something that does nothing except fly around the player and take photos. It cannot be converted onto the player's side (though that would be awesome). It does not sound any alarms that are not scripted. Being seen by it does not mean you'll have to fight any more enemies then you normally would.

What it comes down to is the feelings the player experiences when encountering a flying camera are the same ones that Gordon Freeman would feel. Someone playing HL2 for the first time might destroy the camera in an effort to remain unnoticed, so they can move around the level without being harrassed by additional enemies. However, the way these flying cameras are presented makes it obvious to the player that by the time you see one, they've seen you. Destroying them therefore becomes not an act of self-preservation and gameplay expectation, but of desperation and frustration.

Which brings us to the Orwellian themes of HL2. The security camera is the first hostile entity the player encounters in the game. When you step off that train, without any weapons, unfamiliar with the world you've entered, a camera flies in front of your face and blinds you with a flash. The screen turns white, your vision is obscured for a few moments. Surveillance, invasion of privacy and space, helplessness (the player has no weapons with which to fight back against the camera) -- these are the very first things experienced by the player. The entire first chapter, in fact, is the opposite of what is found in most action games. Adrenaline is created through flight, not killing. Your first encounter with a security camera is not a lesson in how to circumvent them in the future, but a demonstration of how powerless you are to avoid their lens.

The rest of the dystopic elements that make up City 17 are revealed only after the camera has taken your photo. Indeed, they are less immediate and relevant as far as the player is concerned (infertility is probably the most terrible aspect of this future, but the game is (un?)fortunately about Gordon on the run from an occupying army, not impregnating the female population of an Eastern European city. Thus the camera outside the train is unavoidable, while the announcement that details the infertility crisis can be missed by the inattentive player).

The brilliance of this first hostile act against the player is that no health is lost and quick loading won't let you avoid it. It has a single averse effect on the player, which is turning the screen white for an instant after its flash goes off. When the alarm is sounded, and thousands of cameras and manhacks emerge from the Citadel, no countdown appears on the screen telling the player the exact number of seconds they have to remain hidden until they can move freely. The camera does not have a ludic purpose that would necessitate such a feature. By not burdening the player with game mechanic considerations (Destroy? Avoid? Hack? Ignore?), the imagination is left to make its own conclusions and stories. The camera that is powerless to do anything but flash a light in your eyes is thus more threatening on an emotional level than the ones with the ability to cause damage or force a level restart.

Tools of my Trade

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:10:48 -0500

A fantasy of mine is to start my own game studio. Aside from having total creative freedom and control, part of the appeal is being able to design the office space and hire the best possible people. But a more realistic and short-term goal is to create a small team of 3 or 4 -- maybe in a local office or maybe virtual -- working on a small but rewarding project -- maybe for Metaplace or maybe PC/XBLA.

My first real experience managing a team was for a mod back around 2002. I was 17 or 18 and making it up as I went along. The only reason any work got done at all was because I was lucky enough to be able to work with a brilliant young artist/programmer who was as dedicated as I was. Of course, our dedication waned after a while as we became occupied with University and moved on to different things. It was a fun learning experience but nothing that was going to get us a job, thus not worth our time.

Five years later now, and I feel like I'm ready.

The number of mods or indie projects that never reach completion is tremendous. There's a reason almost every single indie game that has been released in the past few years has been made by a single person (Braid, Audiosurf, Everyday Shooter, etc). Coordinating a team over the internet is hard. The only indie games made by more than one person seem to come out of game development classes, where there is structure imposed by the professors, and the team members not only see each other every day, but are more devoted than a hobbyist with a day job and social life.

But I don't want to spend over $40,000 and give up a full year of my life to enroll in the game design program at the Vancouver Film School. I would rather invest that money in my own company.

When I'm not fantasizing about how to design a workspace that encourages creativity or the kind of qualities would be most important in a potential employee, I think about the tools that would be used on a daily basis.

Personal Design Tools
OmniOutliner Professional ($69.95)
OmniGraffle Professional ($199.95)
Gimp (free)
TextMate ($64) - Scripting
OpenOffice (free)

Project Management (Intranet)
TWiki (free) - Internal Wiki
activCollab ($399, $199 a year; first year free) - Milestone Tracking, Task Assignment, etc.
??? - Bug Tracking

Community (Internet)
Wordpress (free) - Company Blog
phpBB (free) - Forums

This list doesn't even include tools for the Artist, Programmer, Audio Guy, Producer. Would the artist be able to work with Gimp and Blender, or would a few thousand dollars have to be spent on Photoshop and XSI? activCollab is easily the most expensive piece of software there, but probably the most crucial. If the project can't be coordinated and managed properly then it really doesn't matter what assets end up being created. The web is littered with websites featuring gun models and character skins, with the project they belonged to long forgotten.

The Omni tools also add up to quite a bit, but are indispensable. OmniOutliner is something I use every single day. I currently have Outliner files that include a grocery list, bicycle touring item checklist, game design vision document, board game rules, and Wolfmother song lyrics, among others. It's incredibly versatile and probably the best piece of software currently on my computer. OmniGraffle would come in when it's time to actually visually map out elements of the game design. It's cheaper than Visio and other similar products, and if it even comes close to the quality of Outliner then it's probaby a hundred times better than the competition too.

This was an interesting excercise that has shown it's definitely possible to set up a professional computer work environment for relatively little money. It's still a lot for me at the moment, however, but the more expenses I eliminate, the closer I get to making my own company a reality. But finding software is easy and something I could do on my lunch break -- finding talent that won't bail is a whole other story.

Brainstorming with Pre-Schoolers

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:59:18 -0500

The activities that occupy us as young children was the focus of a recent brainstorming session. I'm fascinated with the idea of a playground simulator complete with literal sandbox, a yard full of other children that could be used to spontaneously create games like tag, the visual blurring of imagination and reality, tree-climbing, fort building, etc. The game would be called Recess.

But what happens after recess ends? The kids go inside, but their imaginations are no less active. They turn to more artistic activities like Connect-the-Dots and Paint by Numbers. I wondered how these two specific activities could be translated into a video game.

These are incredibly basic activities that become boring after preschool age, so the challenge was in updating them for a more mature audience. I wasn't even sure if it was possible. For Connect-the-Dots, I imagined connecting stars to form constellations. I would later learn that Okami and Stars Over Half-Moon Bay both use this idea in compeletely different but effective ways. I'm not sure it's an interesting enough mechanic to base an entire game around. It's more suited for a mini-game, like the one in Okami. In fact, it would be perfect for the sim/RTS game about creating a civilization's mythology that has been bouncing around my head for the past few years.

Paint by Numbers, however, is a mechanic I haven't seen used anywhere yet. Like Connect-the-Dots, it probably couldn't stand on its own, and would be best used in a mini-game. My immediate association was with stained glass. Perhaps a crafting focused MMO, like A Tale in the desert, has a glassblower profession, and stained glass is one of the items they can create. Each window design could be given unique colours in this Paint by Section mini-game. The player commissioning the stained glass would be able to influence the atmosphere of the building not only through the window's design and imagery, but through the colour it casts on the floor as well. Imagine how different the mood created from a light blue and yellow stained glass window would be compared to one composed of dark reds. The kind of freedom of expression that a Paint by Numbers/Section mini-game allows is ideally suited for a virtual world.

How Designers Turn Heads

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:53:45 -0500

Getting a player to look where you want or need them to look is a challenge faced by all game designers. The easiest and most common solution is to simply temporarily remove camera control from the player and send it off somewhere with a script. Cutscenes aren't always the most elegant solutions, however. The video game medium is an interactive medium, and removing the player's ability to interact with the game should be avoided whenever possible.

Someone playing a 3rd Person Shooter or FPS doesn't have the same level of peripheral vision and environmental awareness that they would have in the real world. Special events therefore may go unnoticed, simply because the player was looking in the wrong direction at the time. In Gears of War, the camera can be focused on a special event at the press of a button. The first indication that something special is happening and worth seeing is therefore often a giant blinking controller button prompt. It's functional to be sure, but requires the player remove themselves from the action of the game for a moment in order to view the event from another perspective.

In a game like Half-Life 2, the player is not even allowed to relinquish camera control voluntarily. Maintaining the first person perspective and player interaction at all times means "Press X to look at cool shit!" is not a viable way to get the player's attention. The player's attention has to be grabbed without "external" interference, such as a GUI prompt or camera movement not tied directly to the mouse. One of Valve's favourite ways to do this is with birds. When they want the player to look in a certain direction, they have a flock of birds scripted to be startled and fly off, drawing the eye. Though subtle and brilliant, it loses its effectiveness when used too much. The problem is that birds always fly towards something the player is obviously meant to look at. A trick using the natural ambient life of a game world to attract the player's attention then just becomes a tool to attract the player's attention. Birds are never just birds in HL2. Their function as beacons completely overwhelms and replaces their value as ambient life. Like Neo seeing code instead of his artificial reality, a player enlightened by the developer commentaries won't see birds at all, just a script indicating that the player is supposed to look over there now. And once you've figured out the purpose of the birds, it becomes glaringly obvious when some other object in the game world exists only to attract your attention.

Sometimes the architecture of the level can be used to draw the eye. The best example of this has to be when you exit the train station at the beginning of HL2. They wanted every player to notice the giant Citadel in the distance, but it wasn't noticeable at eye level - the CItadel is a few kilometers off in the distance, and 4-5 story tall buildings across the plaza obscure it at eye level. The player would have to look up into the sky to see it, and there was no reason to do so with so much activity occuring on ground level. To get players to look up they placed an obelisk in the centre of the plaza with some screens displaying propoganda fixed to the top of it. Upon exiting the train station, the player will hear the propoganda announcements and look up to better view the source. At this point the massive Citadel comes into full view, dwarfing the obelisk in a brilliant juxtaposition. The player feels like they "found" the Citadel on their own when in fact the entire plaza had been designed in such a way as to present the best possible reveal of the game's literal centrepiece and the player's ultimate destination. And yes, there's even a flock of birds that flies off towards the Citadel.

Whether it's architecture, NPCs reacting to something "off-screen," or objects included for the express purpose of attracting the player's attention, using things that exist in the game world is the best way to make players turn their heads of their own presumed free will. Not only does it maintain immersion, it's more true to the interactive nature of the medium. Sure, a designer can cross and jump-cut as he rips control from the player's hands in order to display his cinematic prowess, but that's ignoring the fundamental potential of the medium. Video games require new techniques and a new language for setting the player's viewpoint. With the player in control of the camera, it's the designer's job to create circumstances that encourage and suggest, not force, ways to view the game world.

The Museum Board Game

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:26:08 -0500

I've recently finished the design and prototype of a board game. An HTML version of the rules can be found on the GAMEPORTFOLIO page. All the game needs now is a decent name and many more hours of playtesting.

A game based around a museum is something I've been thinking about since the summer of 2005. Back then I was interested in designing an edutainment computer game that could be summed up as "Museum Tycoon." Instead of a Zoo or Amusement Park or Hospital, it was a Museum that the player, in the role of Curator, would build and manage. The edutainment aspect would come naturally as each exhibit the player put in their museum would have accompanying descriptive text, just like in a real museum. In order to progress and reach the next level of unlockable exhibits, the player would have to lead tour groups through the museum, answering their questions about encountered exhibits correctly. I'm still convinced of its potential for being really fun, informative, and profitable, but it was placed on the back burner so I could focus on more interesting ideas and projects.

In November 2007 I became slightly obsessed with German-style board games, and decided to design one. My first ideas revolved around reversing the typical resource collection and empire expansion mechanics that most board games employ. It would not be about accumulation and expansion, but deprivation and downsizing. I still love the idea, and might return to it for my next game, but at the time I had to drop it in favour of the museum setting.

And it was the museum setting that came first. My way of designing board games is probably not a very common one. The fiction of the game is the first thing I decide upon. The above resource deprivation/downsizing idea was born out of the question "What if Settlers of Catan was about surviving the Black Death?" The Museum Board Game came about because I thought a museum setting would lend itself natually to a variety of board game rules and mechanics. Once I had decided on the setting, everthing else stumbled into place. Like the computer edutainment version, it would be about building and managing your very own museum by efficiently arranging exhibits in order to attract more visitors. The scoring system was somewhat consciously stolen from the card game Set. The different coloured die each corresponding to a different wing of the museum was something that occured to me when playing Settlers of Catan with a red and yellow die, and wondering why the different colours had no ludic purpose. I struggled with the mechanics of exhibit arrangement and placement for a while, before finally noticing the similarities between my museum game board and a gem-swapping game. The exhibits were just like gems, and you swap them with an adjacent exhibit in order to match up perfect combinations.

When you break it down like that, you can say I borrowed and stole a lot of different elements from different games, but I'm nonetheless still proud of my ability to implement them into a cohesive whole. No, I never would have settled on that scoring system if I had never played Set, or the core exhibit swapping mechanic if I wasn't familiar with gem-swapping games, but being a good designer is about making seemingly disparate mechanics work well together, not necessarily creating new ones from scratch all the time.

Le Muet et le Pied-de-Biche

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:18:22 -0500

It seems the video games as art debate has settled on the consensus that they have greater potential than any other medium, but are at a developmental stage about equal to an infant reaching helplessly for the spinning objects on a mobile.

This was never more apparent to me than while watching Le Scaphandre et le Papillon. The first part of the film is almost entirely shot in the first person, from the point of view of a man who has just suffered a stroke and is almost completely paralyzed. I've been playing first person games for over 15 years now and none of them have even approached the sophistication and emotion of the beginning of this film. Why is that? I can guarantee you more video games have been created in the first person perspective than films. The first person perspective is one of the few things game designers should have mastered by now, right?

Perhaps designers are simply used to immersing players into the game world rather than the character. This creates contradictions, especially in the FPS genre. Why does Gordon Freeman have a name and identity, but no voice? Well, the answer according to Valve is to better immerse the player in the world of Black Mesa or City 17. But in practice this almost has the opposite effect. I want to be immersed in the character of Gordon Freeman. I don't care if his words are chosen by me or everything is carefully scripted, I just want him to say something - anything - to flesh out the character into something real. How can I understand why Alyx loves him when I don't even know the guy myself? When I start thinking about the ways Valve makes the NPCs interact with a mute I'm drawn out of the world. It's unbelievable and distracting.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon was such an incredibly intense and absorbing first person experience because I was in Jean-Do's head. I shared his vision and internal monologue. It wasn't about allowing the audience to experience paralysis for themselves, it was about showing what it might have been like for him. The contradiction in Half-Life is that Valve is trying to tell a story about Gordon Freeman while doing their best to pretend he doesn't actually exist. Bioshock, on the other hand, used the first person perspective to create a single interesting moment which reaffirmed my belief in the potential of the medium. But the character I played was a mute in 99% of the game. He literally had no identity. However, during that brief scene, it felt like the medium had the strength and will to actually grasp one of those objects on the dangling mobile.