From Generalist to Specialist

We need a team...

Creating a game takes a lot of time, money and people depending on the size. Two years is about standard however some titles take longer for a variety of reasons, be it team size, sheer size of the undertaking or being put on hold. In order for a game to be seen from beginning to end, a team is required. A team of specialised craftsmen that have their own respective area to work under.

For game design, these roles might include:

Lead Designer

Art Director

Various artists such as environment and concept

3D modellers

Animators

Programmers

Sound such as Musicians, Composers and SFX.

This is not a full list instead just a brief one of the more art based areas. Of course for a game to get anywhere it needs more than just the ones who construct it; areas such as quality assurance, accounts and licensing and the all important publisher are all working in the background to make sure it even stands a chance.

This is speaking in general, naturally this is not the only way to make a game. Take Minecraft for example, started in a Scandinavian's bedroom went through a few years of a long and grueling (for the fans) beta until finally coming out for retail whereby the creator was already a millionaire and used the funds to open his own studio. Goes without saying he had help along the way however.

Blizzard Entertainment, or Activision Blizzard (not to my taste) is one of the largest and most successful gaming companies currently out there, largely due to the success of their reinventing of the MMORPG genre (accessible to a wider audience than just die-hard no-lifers) have quite an inspiring story, at least I thought so. You rarely think of how a company started, or how it was ten years before you knew them and every time it's often a surprise to me. Blizzard, the unstoppable behemoth of the game world started out as Silicon and Synapse. With just three people and one goal: Make good games. Simple yet the passion these three had was unwavering.

Now look at them! Raking it in. They went from just twenty people in their first two games (both won game of the year for their respective genre) to 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHz2ky-jng8

Left to right: Frank Pierce, Mike Morheim, Allen Adham

After watching the Blizzard Retrospective (above) I feel saddened that I may never have those experiences that those guys did. My idol, Samwise Didier, was their first artist. The thing that really gets me, for the reason that I'll never get that chance, is that he found the job... in a newspaper. God sake, a newspaper? As if the local cornershop needed a paperboy. A freaking newspaper stating 'artist needed.' So he rolls on down to their tiny office in nothing but his finest pair of cut-off jean-shorts, a portfolio thrown together in a box and then proceeds to get the job. I wonder how many people applied to that role? Makes me cry in my sleep at the thought that now you have to compete with artists by the hundreds now. Yet at the same time it's a bittersweet feeling. Sad because the odds of getting a job are extremely low yet good as it shows just where the games industry has gone. Twenty years ago, when Didier applied to Silicon and Synapse, games were a thing to be shunned; seen as time-wasting brain drains to the now colossal household entertainment that if you don't play them, especially given the vast variety, you're probably an emotionless void devoted solely to a life of consistent mediocrity.

The problem with gaming becoming hugely successful, or rather the problem it presents, is that everyone and their dog wants to work in the industry and there just aren't enough jobs going even more so due to the current economic climate. Bad times.

Could be worse, at least I have one year's grace before being shoved out into the rat race. I'm not holding my breath for a job when I leave the course but I'll keep going. At least I'm on the right course as well. I realised a while ago that the projects aren't arbitrarily devised. When I joined the course I thought I'd be drawing vikings and modeling elfen women however when I got here it was all about the wheelie bins and transit vans! Aaaawwww yeah buddy now we're talking! Bullshit aside, these projects were dull when I was doing them however in hindsight they made perfect sense. In my own time I can go and do whatever I like but it's these projects that are designed solely to get you up to speed that really improve your skills. In the first year, after the fundamentals, it goes House, Van, Gladiator, Weapon; which translates to environment(kinda), vehicle, character, prop.

Well how about that? In the first year we're given a taste of the different 3D artist roles within a company which also helps us decide what to specialise in. Visual design starts off at the basics (and I mean BASICS, colleges don't teach you shit) like perspective, rendering and life drawing whereas the critical studies aspect bolsters your knowledge of game theory, what really goes into making a game before you've even done your first concept.

Whether a job is waiting for me or not, I feel what I've been learning here is turning me into a keen game artist as well as, excuse any arrogance here, a game designer.

Come at me, life!

Interaction Design

Let's talk about how we play games and how that experience can have an (almost dire) affect on what we think of it. From consoles, controllers and keyboards to tutorials, menus and walls of text that can potentially destroy your motivation: Interaction design.

One of the main points of getting people to carry on playing is to keeping it as simple as possible; this goes from ingame, to menus to the actual console itself. If you were presented with a console that had twenty different buttons on it, you wouldnt know what to do save for reading the instruction manual instead they're very simple: There's an on/off switch. Similarly if you decided to make SHIFT reload instead of R then that'd just aggravate veteran players and new ones when they go off and play another similar game forcing them to remember various button layouts. Fortunately it seems there was a meeting one day where game designers got together and decided upon a general consensus towards what buttons do what. Yay.

CurrentGen consoles are all good, so let's talk about one that was bad:

Wannabe Transformer

A good example of how NOT to make a console is the SEGA Genesis, or more specifically the 32X. Consoles back then were about as intuitive as a Chinese keyboard, fiddly as hell causing you to spend the good part of an hour just plugging everything in. Plug and Play was not a term known back then. Plug, plug, plug, find an extension cable and plug some more then get pissed off and play would be more accurate. The reason why this one particularly gets a mention is due to how they upgraded the console. Every other company just created a brand new console entirely whereas SEGA thought it best to just add on heaps of shit turning it into some twisted orgy of plastic and wires.

I could go on but if you're interested in what a massive pile of ass this was its well worth watching this video review by the Angry Video Game Nerd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvR_3OTxs8A

When it comes to menus we've all been there, we all have a game that whenever we press the 'I' key our blood level rises just a little bit. The one that sticks out for me has to be The Witcher, they had a menu for EVERYTHING, there's nothing quite like bombarding me with a heap of lists to get me into a game, oh yeah! In fact its not just the menus that were aweful, but the entire gameplay; Swapping between sword fighting styles, pausing the game midfight, click-to-move and even click-to-fight by which I mean you had to click on the bastards just to attack! What era were they in when they designed this artifact? Seemless is not a word I'd use to describe The Witcher. I didn't so much enjoy the game but endure it, all because of how unnecessarily complicated it was.

Intimidating? Na, I love me a headache.

It is pivotal that you get the interaction right. The Witcher's story was great, it was engrossing, but did I enjoy the game? Fuck no! Eighty hours of my rockstar life went into struggling with that game because I can't quit on a game I've spent more than five hours on. God it was awful; handled like a walrus with ice-skates and that's the sad part; it would have been a great game if they had a simple-yet-modern 3^rd person/over the shoulder camera angle that when you clicked the mouse it swung the sword, none of that cursor nonsense. Star Wars: Jedi Outcast 2 had three different sword styles, just like The Witcher but because it was a 3^rd person click-to-slash game it was fun, easy, intuitive. It came out five years BEFORE The Witcher. Facepalm

Many game has made mistakes like this, early gaming was riddled with it but could you blame them? Noone had written a book on game design in fact the most common way to learn how to play would be for someone to teach you. Like card games, board games, chess; How intuitive is chess? I mean really? I still don't know all the rules. Whenever I played against my friend as a kid he always had to remind me what did what, the same with poker – I learn the rules, and then my brain farts them out the next day deeming it useless information.

So how do you actually play chess?

You cant pick up a deck of cards and go 'ah ok, so the queen of hearts does this' whereas, thanks to consoles largely being the same these days, you can pick up the controller and have a good idea of what you're doing based on the style of game. i.e. right trigger/R2 is fire, if it's not that then it's gona be right-back/R1. Nice and simple, if it's not one button it'll be the next. It's almost instinctive when playing a new game just to jam the controller to see what does what unlike ten years ago you always turned to your buddy to ask: 'So what are the controls?'

Failing that, the designers take it upon themselves to grab you by the scruff of your neck, throw you down and say 'HERE'S A TUTORIAL LEVEL!' Whereby you either skip and wing it through the next few levels or patiently experience what is usually a boring ass segment of the game where they often tell you the obvious: 'Yeah, so use the mouse to look around.' Yeah, no fucking shit. The fact that they deem it necessary to include that in a tutorial is either them being anal or a testament to the much speculated fuck-wittery of your average player.

Though I'm a skip kind of guy I don't mean to knock tutorials. Most games its a waste of time but sometimes you get something new, like haring across buildings in Assassin's Creed or how to survive in certain horror games and so I'd deem it worthy of my time.

Yeah, I will not remember any of that in 5 seconds time.

But does anyone enjoy a tutorial whereby they pause the game, tell you what to do or you have to read (heaven forbid) a wall of text? And then there are these bastards!(Right) Does ANYONE find these enjoyable? My mind looks at them, shits with woe and I'm left there jumping my eyes around the screen as if I'm on crack trying as hard as I can to remember the controls because these are ALWAYS on a fucking loading screen! Like, shit, I didn't know they'd be testing my memory.

The best tutorials are the ones when you don't even realise they're telling you how to play or where to go. They do this threw subtle yet cunning level design that when you find out how to do it you get a sense of satisfaction that YOU did and not the computer just spoon-feeding you.

That's not to say being told what button is what is necessarily a bad thing, its just a case of how they do it as an example a lot of games have whatever button you need to press on the screen when you need to press it like when you go to a door there's an 'E' hovering right there. It's not exactly creative but it's also not intrusive unlike Burnout: Paradise where they have DJ. Atomika pausing the game just to let you know you can do shit;

Got it, now on your bike I was having fun driving.

...pause my game you prick.

What made that particularly silly is that the guy is constantly on the radio anyway so why not just have him tell you it at those moments? Why take you out of the game?

A recent game that had a great tutorial level was Skyrim: (que rose-tinted goggles)

You're on a cart with three prisoners, you then find out one is the leader of a rebel group and is about to have his head cut off by the Imperial Legion. Bang! There's a rebellion against the empire and you're about to get the chop as well. This sets up the Stormcloaks (rebels) as the good guys and the Legion (empire) as the bad. That changes somewhat as you progress through the game but there's one part of the thesis. Next, as your head is on the block a dragon attacks. BOOM! Dragons are in this game too, and judging by how people around you act it's a big deal. Whalla, within the first five minutes of the game you're up to speed on current events.

...and then the game-play starts.

After the initial fleeing to a building you find yourself on the top floor of a building and need to jump across to another building. You now know you can jump in this game – it didn't just tell you in an oh yeah, you can do this too kind of way, instead it said you can do this... NOW DO IT BEFORE THE DRAGON GETS YOU FUCK!!!

Finally you escape the dragon's wrath into a stonewalled keep. Depending on who you chose to follow, the stormcloak or imperial (already letting you get a taste of choosing a side) the NPC will tell you to come over to them so they can undo the binds around your wrists; you go over, press E and there you go, you now know you can talk to people in this game. Moments later you come across the corpse of some poor bastard and are told to loot their gear and equip it; you now know that you can loot corpses and equip gear. Having just gotten some sweet loot you probably want to give it a test, handily, some enemies are coming your way; and now you know you can attack and block. 

Behind you! Yeah I'm not fooling for that one buddy...

 The rest of the sequence has you doing like things with magic, sneak (passed a sleeping bear, hinting that if you don't want to engage, there are ways to avoid it) and being told you have a map whereby the person you were with points you in the direction of the next area should you want to carry on OR he tells you if you'd rather do your own thing then that's fine. How good is that? Instead of wondering should I get on with the quest? Will it matter if I wait too long or can I even go wondering yet? He just flat out tells you that if you want to go walkies, then by all means go walkies but the dragon thing was a big deal, driving home that you've just began your epic journey.

Not once did they pause the game, make you read shit or do a boring ass tutorial level. They don't even tell you it's a tutorial level not that you'd realise as it's so action packed and engrossing you become completely immersed. Brilliant start to a brilliant game.

So we've looked at how games like The Witcher were bad solely because of unintuitve gameplay, whereas games like Skyrim started out on a strong leg due to an informative yet fun introduction and how generally being taken out of the game (breaking immersion) is not only dull in most cases, but really irritating and unrewarding. The point of rewarding players for being smart really needs to be driven home to game designers. There's really no sense of achievement when being told how to do something.

That last point brings me to consoles again, but this time the motion sensitive ones: Wii, Move and Kinect. I myself NEVER had an interest in this, I'm quite happy to continue sitting down while playing with a controller. Nevertheless in the spirit of talking about intuitive play, it really can't get simpler then one of these. You want to swing your sword? Swing the remote. Done. Well, that's what I thought anyway. You can't just make any old movement and it'll do it, you have to swing that sword in a particular way so don't go thinking your Obi-Wan Kenobi and start spinning around the place 'cus that ain't gona cut it. This really destroyed any hopes I already didn’t have with motion sensor play. Technology just isn't at that point yet where you really feel like you're in the game, instead you're left with what I can only describe as a step back for gaming.

For games like Wii Sports yeah of course it makes sense as the whole point is to be active yet for a game like Resident Evil 4 why would you play it with an awkward motion sensor and not a reliable controller? Surely it's just more frustrating and in the end you'll probably end up sitting down anyway. The irony is Nintendo brought out a controller for the Wii.

Went on a bit of a tangent there but the point remains, if not now then sometime in the future we'll have (I hope) games where you actually play the game as if you're in it, just think about that for a second! Like the Matrix or some shee-it as this current motion sensor stuff is for kids... or parties. Really.

As for 3D? When I can play it without having to wear glasses on my glasses or having to sit exactly perpendicular to the screen – then we'll talk.

Talk about irritating.

Sound

Sound is often overlooked by many gamers, baring down to merely that stuff in the background. However the sound within a game is an absolutely crucial component of creating that immersive environment. Would a horror game be as scary without an eerie soundtrack or the sudden bangs that make you jump? Would a fantasy game be that epic without a sympthony orchestra and choir? Even down to the small pieces like boss battles or that jaunty tune playing in the background of a tavern.

Music within games seems to fall into two categories to my understanding. There's the music that just fades into the background, nothing innately wrong with it, maybe helps set the scene yet ultimately forgotten as soon as you leave the game. Then there is the memorable music; not just in an 'Oh yeah, I remember that' sense but in a unanimous anyone who played that game will remember it kind of way.

For example, anyone who played morrowind would remember the title music. This was such a fan favourite among gaming that they redid it for Skyrim. The music of Oblivion was also so well liked that they included a lot of it (untouched as far as I could tell) within Skyrim as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk

Musical score however, is not the only sound within a game. Equipment sounds(guns, spells etc), ambience, voice acting and lets not forget the little things like menu browsing and footsteps are among the things all help to enrich the gaming experience. The best part for me is when sound plays a direct part in the game-play like the aforementioned footsteps in games like Thief and SplinterCell. I love me a stealth game.

Voice acting is a fervent interest of mine, I just love it when a character is brought to life with a well suited voice. I put a few of my favourite examples in the Characters blog several months back but I like voice acting so much I'm gona put some more up alongside my favourite voice actors.

Kel'Thuzad – Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos, voiced by Michael Mcconnohie

Excuse the dodgy fan art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6sHxA0Ftg

War never looked so terrifying...

War – Darksiders, voiced by Liam O'Brien

What I find great (and sometimes disturbing) is hearing a voice on a character and then seeing the guy who did it to then go 'Wait, what? This dude did that voice?' 'Cus they never look how you'd expect. Liam O'Brien is a perfect example of this, if you skip to 1:00 in this video you'll see him and more importantly, hear their normal everyday voice.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UObh0kTss_Q

I suppose it would be bad to bring the voices of Darksiders into this blog without mentioning Mark Hamill. Ever wonder where this guy went after Luke Skywalker? Fuck knows, but in the last few years he's done some pretty bad ass voices for some pretty evil characters, you'd never have known this was him unless someone told you.

The Watcher – Darksiders; Joker – Batman.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=kulDjf6e5vo

Nathan Drake – Uncharted, voiced by Nolan North

This guy also did the voice for Desmond Miles in Assassin's Creed among many others including the Penguin in Batman: Arkhum City. Although it's the same voice for both Desmond and Drake, I really feel like North was perfect for Nathan, he got the humour across without making me want to throttle the character (Hawk – Dragon Age 2) as well as making the more serious scenes believable proving to me he wasn't a one-dimensional character. On top of that he's a funny fucker and does an amazing Christopher Walken impression... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0ebPKXxXY 

Going back to the musical scores, or more specifically, the composers, I think it's fucking faboo that some big-time composers are taking an interest in the games industry. My favourite of all is Danny Elfman pretty much because he did the music for Fable which is, out of all the games I've ever played, my absolute favourite. The reason for that can wait for another time but about the music.

To sum up Fable in one sentence: A colourful and often times playful exterior with an interior of misery and sadness. Kind of like a 1960's household.

The visual for fable were all vibrantly coloured and highly saturated, the characters were somewhat out of proportion with funky movements and you often went around doing silly little things like kicking chickens or sneering at children. The game was so light-hearted and fairytale-like that when it got into the darker stuff, dealing with treachery, death and fear it in a weird way became quite serious. As if while playing this game you, yourself, started as a child and as it progressed you had to mature and realise life isn't all fun and games. From happy and easy to pain and hardship.

So Scott, what about the music?

Well, funny you should ask, voice-in-my-head. Danny Elfman does the music for many a Tim Burton movie, probably most renowned for A Nightmare Before Christmas. The relevance of this being that Tim Burton's movies are gothic fairytales, essentially. Boy meets girl, little adventure etc So this complimented Fable perfectly and, I gotta say, Elfman delivered. Maybe it's the rose-tinted goggles but I remember every tune from the different zones, they all just worked so perfectly to make the atmosphere while not being so varied it just seemed almost garish in an audible sense.

I'll leave you with the theme from Bowerstone South, the town you first arrive in. It's a standard little medieval town with wooden houses, merchant stools, a tavern where people drink and play games. Combined with the sunny day, green grass on the ground and chirpy townsfolk it was a really welcoming experience. For probably the first time ever in gaming, I felt like I could spend ages in a town whereas usually I cant wait to get out of those dreary quest-hubs and get on with the killin'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItGkArAXrlQ

Game Engines

Game engines are used to bring games to life via functions such as physics, rendering, collision and sound as well as animation. Other game engines require a little extra, for example an MMO-RPG would require networking.

Here are some examples of game engines and games they've been employed in the making of:

CryEngine - Crysis, Far Cry, Aion

Crystal Tools - Final Fantasy XIII

Gamebryo - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3

Source - Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 1 and 2, Left 4 Dead etc

Unreal - Mass Effect, Gears of War, Borderland

Types of Engines

According to Jeff Ward, a co-founder and lead programmer at Orbus Gameworks, there are three types of game engine, from lowest to highest level he describes them as: Roll-your-own, Mostly-ready and Point-and-click.

Roll-your-own: These are when companies make their own engine from the ground up however they can still use publicly available applications help by obtaining middleware (explained later) for such functions such as physics and sound. Havok, for example.

The good thing with this is that you can pick and choose what you want for your engine, so the programmer has a lot of control and flexibility. However, because outsourced libraries may not work together it is required to build the engine up from scratch meaning these often take the largest amount of time and are less attractive to a lot of game developers.

Mostly-ready game engines: Already pre-packed with most of the goodies you'd expect in an engine like renderers, GUI, physics etc and even tools so there's very little programming required (if any at all). However these are a tad more restrictive than Roll-your-own engines due to being optimized for general application. That said, these engines have been made professionally and long hours have been spent fine-tuning them.

Examples of Mostly-ready engines: OGRE, Unreal and id Tech.

Point-and-click engines: Designed to be as user friendly as possible these engines come equipped with a full array of tools and require very little coding. Unfortunately, they are severely limiting, allowing for only a couple genres or one or two graphics modes. To their credit they allow you to work quick and play quick so it's not all bad.

Unity3D, Torque and GameMaker are three examples of this style of engine.

Middleware

For many years game developers created their own engines and updated them when necessary, keeping them in house. However, the cost of creating your own engine has increased considerably and so companies have opted to make only specific parts of an engine, like physics for example, and then outsource the rest. These smaller packages are called middleware. These engines often do a particular job more convincingly than general purpose engines like Unreal.

For example: Speedtree was used in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for more realistic trees and vegetation whereas Havok provides a concentrated phsyics simulation system accompanied with a plethora of animation and behaviour solutions. Assassins Creed, Bioshock, Elder Scrolls and Fear are but a few of the big titles Havok has been used on.

Level Design

“Level Design is the data entry and layout portion of the game development cycle. A level is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a mission, stage, map or other venue of player interaction.” - Tim Ryan, Gamasutra

From the title screen onwards, nothing should remind them they are in the real world. The player must attain a level of escapism for immersion to take effect, which is only achieved by making sure nothing reminds them that they are sat at a computer, jamming with a keyboard.

Immersion can be broken by a variety of common mistakes: Graphical glitches, bugs.

In terms of design, something like a car going over a bridge in the background of a medieval setting. Things like being told to 'press R to reload' or 'right-click while pressing W' can break immersion as it reminds the consumer that they are playing a game.

Though some would not admit, we all love a challenge, and games deliver us these challenges frequently. Though there is indeed the overarching challenge of merely beating the game there are also mini, sub challenges throughout most games that constantly keep a player on their toes like; Do x in y amount of time, or get from a to b while y does z etc.

Challenges within levels can range from traversing a hedge to surviving a room full of elite soldiers complete with rocket launchers.

The tough part with making a game challenging is not making it too challenging so that the majority find it more frustrating than fun. Emphasis on 'majority' here, as that is your main audience thus you need to find that medium difficulty that does not neglect most player only leaving the most skilful satisfied. This can be seen as unfair towards people of higher (or indeed, lower) capability, however not all is lost as games frequently have extra content to challenge skilled players and those who perhaps have already completed the game, and maybe might like to try something a little harder.

To clarify somewhat; if your game is a FPS, you should challenge your players aiming skills, from how accurate to how fast they are. If a real-time strategy game, challenge the players ability to manage his or her defence and offence while maintaining a steady economy within their base.

Challenges are essentially training, so its a good idea to constantly challenge your player as to get them up to snuff as games generally get harder as they go on.

Games, as do films and books and any other medium within the entertainment industry need to be... entertaining. If a player gets bored they could well go do something else. As a game designer this is death, you want people to play this game so for one to just turn it off should feel like a knife in the heart, and for the most part (psychological issues aside) it is the designers fault.

This reminds me of a game called Mass Effect, you may have heard of it. I did, and I also heard all the hype behind it, about how it is such a great story, completely immersing etc. So I finally bought it and began playing. Didn't think it bad by any means, in fact, I'd go as far to say I was rather enjoying it. Then the Citadel part came. Just one hour earlier I was fighting robots with my laser gun, throwing grenades at some resurrected blue buggers and unravelling a tale of struggle, impending doom and treachery but now... I am running around for three fucking hours on this massive ass 'town' going through loading screen after loading screen and talking to people I really could not give a damn about who have this problem or that problem and could I perhaps find it in my heart to do this or that for them and... you know what? I quit.

Citadel

Assuredly I have a personal preference for combat unending over prolonged amounts of banter yet still this caused me to stop playing. Begrudgingly I picked the game back up a month or two later with the promise that it got better after the Citadel, and it did. Yet that doesn't forgive the game for it's massive flaw. Barely two hours into the game and I want to quit and let me tell you, I love narrative, I love story but do I give a shit about Joe Predicament? NO!

Robots are attacking human colonies and one of the Citadel's finest agents has betrayed us and I've had a vision of some evil big bastards coming to gobble up our galaxy so I'm now on my way to talk to the high council on what our next move will be, because it could well determine the fate of not just humans, but all other life in the cosmos... no, I'm not going to hand over your love letter.

Back on track.

We've talked about games needing to be immersive, challenging and entertaining. These are pretty much the building blocks a game is made from. A little further reading however.

Indeed

 

A game should invigorate a players senses; when they go into an area their mind should race with ooh's and aah's, they should WANT to progress through the level, if they see something interesting, they will go to it. A nice trick with this technique for a complete level is to show the player where they will end up later. For example: looking out a window to the street below and then ending up down there in a few minutes, or showing a massive radiant light emitting structure a mile away only to end up there soon enough. Another good one is showing something like this throughout the level so the player not only can see where they are headed, and await it with anticipation, but also to give the player a sort of triangulation point so they know where they are in relation to where they've been, or possible in relation to somewhere else they have seen.

Other ways to subtley lead players through a level include lighting, or something as simple as where your enemies are. Don't know where to go? Follow the gun shots. Simple, subtle, works every time.

Players also require freedom. This is their game, they've bought it, it is theirs to do with what they want. Telling them they must go down this alley, although a simple command to follow, is somewhat condescending. Like the big arrow in the old Streets of Rage games telling you to go forward... yeah no shit buddy.

Presenting the player with options is always a great idea. All you need to do is set the playing field and just let them work it out, kind of like a monkey with a children’s puzzle box. You don't tell them how to put the shapes in the holes, you leave them to it, trying to ram a circle into the triangle slot doesn't work so they try something else. Not only does this add a lot of variety to the areas, it also gives the player a quick sense of accomplishment, which is very powerful motivator.

Giving a player the option of two routes that end up at the same destination is another great piece of level design, the power is in their hands. Do they take the stealthy route through the vents or the balls to the wall front door approach? It's their decision to make and makes them feel like they're playing the game the way they want to, you're not penalising a stealthy player by making him go through the door. It all adds to the immersion.

With all this said, however, the main thing to keep in mind is that you must make the player care. Story plays a big part in that motivation however if the levels are poor (Citadel from Mass Effect) they will stop caring about the game. Make them exciting, make them want to progress, to explore and reward them for doing so and you'll find them squeezing in that extra level before bedtime.

Composition

The basic idea is to reduce the chance of achieving a low quality end result. This generally falls under composition.



Composition:The nature of something's ingredients or constituents; the way in which a whole or mixture is made up.



There's an old saying: Well begun is half done. This is quite apposite in the field of art as we've all been there at some point; looking at a painting we've been working on for a good few hours only to step back and realise... 'This is shit.'

Now there are a lot of reasons for this, lack of technical skill aside. Usually, if not most of the time it's due to a poor composition, that is, a poor choice of shape placement or the wrong colours etc. So many artists all around the world waste SO many hours on failed painting, paintings which they would believe they failed half way through when in fact, it's probable they failed it before they even put brush to canvas. What do I mean?



Bad PLANNING!



The difference between a compitent artist and an incompitent one is simply the ability to hold off on getting started on a piece to simply step back, look and study what you want to paint instead of rushing into it because you have this GREAT IDEA and want to get it down ASAP!



We've all done it - have an idea in our head, be it a creature concept or a super-kewl robot, and upon getting it down on paper we convince ourselves it's DA BESTEST EVAH! possibly taking it to a final piece there and then.

And with absolute conifdence I can say that it IS NOT the greatest it could be. The reason for this being that you can always push it further, add extras or take the crap away that doesn't make much sense. Even things like the characters expression or number of fingers can be changed out, the temperature of colour to set the mood and invoke certain emotion in the viewer and so on.

A famous illustrator and Sci-fi art legend, Syd Mead, really goes all out when it comes to planning. We're talking 30 hours or more before he even starts his final. Now, he works traditionally so this number would be cut down a lot nevertheless he refines his idea so much that by the time he comes to the final piece there isn't a doubt in his mind that it'll be successful. Pages upon pages of thumbnails, both environment and asset study from people to plants to his signature Hyper-Van. On top of that he also refines his colour pallette by doing colour thumbnails ending in a ~two hour blown up piece to see if it works well with an increased level of detail.

AND THEN he starts the final piece. Safe in the knowledge that he's pushed it as far as he can without wasting too much time on planning. As there comes a time when you have to say 'enough planning' and just get on with it due to deadlines approaching.

Really, nothing should be left to chance. I'm going to quote another artist here, again it's about composition though it's easily translated for game development as a whole:

Creating a good composition can be challenging but fixing a bad one can be frustrating – if not impossible. -Ian Roberts, Mastering Composition



Simply put, it's optimal to spend a lot of energy in the beginning getting it right as appose to jumping onto the production too soon only to hit a wall that's either really difficult, and time consuming (time is money) to get around. If it's even possible at all.

Elements of game design - Planning and Concepting

If you don't iron out the kinks in your designs or push them as far as you can, be it characters, environments, story or the way you progress through the level etc then your game is not going to be as good as it could be. If it's not at it's best when shelved (if shelved at all) then you're going to have problems. Not stating it would be unsuccessful, merely that it isn't doing as well as it could be.



This reminds me of an illustrator by the name of Iain Mccaig, best known for designing Darth Maul. While drawing he constantly takes an eraser to his work (another traditional artist), this is usually frowned upon as we're often taught to learn from our mistakes by leaving them in there and trying to adapt them (within reason), however he has a saying for this:

“If it's wrong, take it out.”

It's an obvious thought but Mccaig practices this statement with utmost zeal in his drawings. If it's even slightly off, say the arm is just so that it doesn't quite convey the exact feeling he's trying to achieve (despite being anatomically correct), then he'll chop it off without a seconds thought.

In his GNOMON DVD – Visual Storytelling he frequently quoted the literature saying:



“Murder your darlings”- Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch



Basically what it means is sometimes you create something that you're rather fond of however it might not fit in the grand scheme of things so in the end, to get the best result out of your painting/writing or whatever, there may come a time where you have to 'murder' it for the greater good.



In a previous post (I believe it was the one on environments) I described the different ways in which level designers go about creating environments using techniques such as silhouette, function and storytelling. These are all part of the planning process for a level, and as such, the entire game.



One of the most common parts of achieving a good or believable design are to use references, this goes from Google images to the real world. The use of Google images gets knocked a bit by artists because it’s apparently ‘shit’ or ‘cheating’ but that isn’t a reasonable argument, if the resources are there to use a reference from then why would you give yourself MORE work in finding something in person when it is right there in front of you? I’m not backing Google images I’m merely arguing why it’s seen as wrong to use it; probably a pride thing.



That’s not to say you shouldn’t go out and get real references, in fact I’d encourage it more than Google for the obvious reason that it’s better to see something up close and really get a feel for it. On top of that your photo references will be a lot more tailored to what you need instead of trudging through page after page of non-helpful images on Google. Still don’t think Google is wrong though, and you’d be an idiot to think it is.



Simply, using references will make your designs accurate as appose to bringing them out of your head which are likely hazy at best if not practiced regularly.



Process and planning is the part of design where you get it all right before you even begin the final piece because no one likes spending forty hours on something only to realise it failed right from the start due to poor planning and conception.