Category Archives: Game Design
I have a game design…
It is fairly common for developers and publishers to receive emails from individuals outside the industry asking how they should go about submitting game designs. The short answer to that question is that you just email us a copy or stick it in the post.
Unfortunately the answer is not only simple it is also worthless, because the question is worthless. A far a more useful question is “why would you want to submit your design”. What is it you expect to achieve by doing so?
1. Do you want a job? If so then the correct path would be to apply to to the company by sending a resume, cover letter and portfolio – for useful advise on this check out the Breaking In forums of the IGDA http://www.igda.org/Forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=44
2. Do you want some feedback on your game idea? If so then posting it in a game development related forum such as http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/ would get you way more feedback. Developers and Publishers are almost always working their socks off to get their current game(s) finished so don’t really have the time to offer feedback on every design that comes through the post.
3. Do you want to hire the developer to make your game? Many developers are willing to talk to potential clients. If you have the necessary finances in place to fund a game development project (anything from tens of thousands for a small iPhone game up to $30 million+ for a Triple A game) then please feel free to email them more details of the proposed deal. Only if the deal is appealing will they want to see a design doc.
4. Are you hoping to sell your idea (or give it away in the hope that someone will make it)? – in that case I would direct you to this article http://www.obscure.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/selling-game-design-ideas/ which explains why publishers and developers don’t accept game design submissions. Every developer out there is the same – more ideas than they will ever be able to make. – If you want to get your game made you will need to hire a development studio or make the game yourself (either as a hobby project or by getting a job in the industry, working your way up the ladder and eventually getting to a position where you get to decide what game gets made). More details on how to achieve either of those aims can be found at the web sites I mentioned above.
So, if you have a design doc just looking for a home (but have no industry experience) I hope the above helps you to better decide your next course of action.
The level designers were right…
Game reviewers are always complaining about unrealistic level design in First Person Shooter games set in military bases. How can it be, they ask, that these military installations are littered with crates, barrels and gas tanks that a games hero can climb on, throw, stack up or blow up. Do these level designers think we are stupid? Don’t they do any research at all? Shouldn’t they make just a little effort to create believable game levels?
Well it seems that the level designers were right all along – as shown by this photograph (click for a larger version). It was taken on a recent trip to a UK military base and sure enough the place was littered with barrels (conveniently close to larger containers), crates, pallets and, yes, even gas tanks.
I can assure you that, had I thought to take along my gravity gun, I would have had no trouble at all stacking up an assortment of containers in order to gain entry to any window or ventilation shaft and from there make my way to the secret research labs that I’m sure existed somewhere on the base. Not only that but the level designers are spot on with their architecture too. The buildings do all look like ugly square blocks with doors and windows cut into them and they are all bump mapped too.
Opinion: F.E.A.R.
Craig Hubbard sold his soul to Satan for the chance to make the perfect Sci-Fi FPS (First Person Shooter). The result was F.E.A.R – First Encounter Assault Recon. Of course the Devil never plays fair (and he has always wanted to be a computer game designer), so while the team at Monolith worked to create their Sci-Fi shooter masterpiece Satan was secretly encoding a second, much darker, game onto the disk. The result is that as you play through Monolith’s creation horror starts to bleed through the fabric of the game, until you find yourself trapped in a finely crafted Sci-Fi Horror game. A game in which you won’t ever know if what awaits you around the next corner will be a squad of dangerous clone soldiers or the bloody remains of those soldiers and the knowledge that you may have to fight what just ripped them limb from limb. I haven’t encountered Horror and Sci-Fi so finely blended since the original Alien movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/) from 1979.
A cursory glance at the game’s feature list doesn’t reveal the true quality within…
- Lone soldier fighting against a host of enemies? – check.
- An array of impressive weapons with which to kill said enemies? – check.
- Advanced visual effects for an intense “action movie” experience? – check.
- The now ubiquitous “bullet time”? – check.
- Enemies with adaptive AI? – check.
- Slaughter your friends in online multi-player (up to 16 players)? – check
However, just as many movies today aren’t original but still manage to be great, F.E.A.R. is far, far better than the sum of its parts. The first person action is impeccable. The weapons feel deadly, the enemy are dangerous and when the two come together the results are explosive. Teams of enemy soldiers work together to take you out using flanking tactics, suppressing fire, grenades and a lot of expletive laden team talk. When your bullets hit home the rag doll physics are a little OTT but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless. Likewise, when your aim is off target, the environment suffers in a similarly impressive way with large calibre bullets ripping large calibre holes out of walls, pillars and boxes. The game is filled with numerous set piece battles, in which the weight of enemy fire will have you cowering behind a flimsy desk, franticly reloading your weapons before tossing out a grenade (for suppression) and calling on your time distortion abilities for a slowmo break from cover, in which the final few enemy are reduced to bullet riddled corpses.
As for the story it is both gripping and thought provoking focusing on issues of family, revenge, greed, evil and even child abuse. The tension remains high throughout the game. In the main because the mix of horror and Sci-Fi means that you are never sure what awaits you through the next doorway. However, when I reached the end of the game, it wasn’t the action that impressed me most but the fact that what I really wanted to do was put down my guns and try talking.
F.E.A.R. isn’t perfect. The level design is linear (as with many story driven FPSs) and you soon get to recognise when a set piece battle is looming – because the level opens up into an area ideal for a battle. In addition the few NPCs you meet are simple script driven automata that you long to shoot 1.2 second after first meeting them. But in truth F.E.A.R.’s only real failing is that it was created 15 years too soon. One day we will have the ability to create games which allow you to put down your gun and engage NPCs in meaningful discussion. When that day comes I hope they will remake F.E.A.R. because I would love to talk to the NPC I am supposed to kill. I know it won’t help. I know they are too badly damaged after everything that was done to them. I know that they would almost certainly kill me but I would like to try. I own them that not just because of what they have suffered but also because of the relationship. (You’ll have to play it to find out).
Conclusion
Everyone knows that Quake and Doom are rubbish and that for a long time Half-Life has been the king of FPS games with Half-Life 2 an honourable second. So it is with heavy heart that I must announce that F.E.A.R has pushed its way rudely through the crowds and supplanted Gordon Freeman’s second outing as #2 in my chart. If you have any affection at all for FPS games you need to play F.E.A.R.
Design Objectives
In a recent blog post (Pag on Games » Designer’s Intent) Pierre-Alexandre Garneau talks about something he calls Design Intent, which I have always referred to as design objectives. In essence the designer sets objectives for the project and for each section/module of the project that the team can clearly understand.
When setting objectives I find it is best to be clear and concise about what you want to achieve. For example, if you have a specific performance target such as a minimum frame rate it can be set in your objectives (at a time when cool heads are making calm decisions). These can then be used as a reference during the heat of battle – do you really need the graphics programmer to rework the renderer to implement a cool new feature? If it already does what is needed and the new features will reduce frame rate below your target level then the answer is no.
Of course there is one problem with setting objectives. As in the movie Memento, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/) where a man wakes up every morning to find that he can’t remember what happened the day before, there is a risk that you will find yourself deep in the heat of battle, with programmers and artist disagreeing about what needs to be done and, when you look at your objectives, you don’t remember the reasons why you set them – in fact you don’t believe you even wrote them. Now I’m not talking about those times when a game feature doesn’t work and needs to be redesigned. I am talking about the times when deadlines are short, pressure is on and tempers are frayed. That is the time when good designers prove themselves by holding firm to their original intent – doing so can often be helped by having your own copy of the design with one special addition. Each of the objectives has an explanation of why you made the decision, which you can refer to during development.
Design objectives are also useful not just for technical objectives but also for maintaining an overall creative flow throughout a project. In a story based first person shooter the lead designer may need to control the pacing for each level as part of the overall game, even when the levels are being created by several separate designers. Setting objectives for the pacing helps the level designers to understand if they should be creating a fast paced level (lots of open areas and multiple easy to kill enemies) or a slow grinding slog (minimal ammo pick-ups with fewer but tougher enemies) while still leaving them to make the creative choice of how to actually achieve the objective.
Do you speak sixaxis?
London’s Science Museum is currently (21 October 2006 – 25 February 2007) hosting the Game On exhibition which explores the history, technology and culture of computer games all the way from the PDP-1 of the 1960s to the latest consoles. The exhibition covers a wide range of video game related topics including Early Arcade Games, Game Audio, Games Culture, Multiplayer Gaming and much more. Best of all visitors can play on a whole alphabet of games all the way from Asteroids to Zelda. (There are over a hundred playable games at the exhibition).
If you live/work in London or are planning a visit the exhibition is well worth a visit but while you are there spare a thought for all those unfortunates who don’t speak our language. Many of the visitors to the exhibition aren’t gamers. This is obvious from the way they struggle to get to grips with the controls of many of the games. Some of these people might well be tempted to become gamers (after all they were interested enough to come to the exhibition), if only they could actually play the games. The problem is that they don’t understand the language of games that many gamers take for granted. They don’t understand O X Δ D-Pad Left and so they miss out on many great games, just because they don’t speak our language…. or to be more precise, because we don’t speak their language.
If we really want to sell games to the mass-market we need to make games that they can understand. That means simpler controllers (Wiimote ftw) and easier control systems. The mass market will never learn our language so we are going to have to work a lot harder at learning theirs.
More info on the expo: [Link deleted as content now removed]
Sacred
I really wanted to enjoy Sacred (http://www.sacred-game.com/) the RPG from Ascaron – all those big swords, chain-mail bikinis and Orcs smelling of sweat. Sadly after many hours of play I realised that the game design wasn’t going to let me. Specifically the Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) which rendered the game’s non-player characters (NPCs) more artificial than intelligent. Imagine if you will the scene….
My brave Wood Elf is wandering the countryside in search of the sort of treasures one always finds in shrubs or behind small boulders, when I see a woman standing around by some rocks. I wander closer, checking the nearby shrubbery for gold or jewels (as you do). The woman does nothing. I check to see if I am wearing my cloak of invisibility – I’m not – and then wander a bit closer “Hmmmm another bag of gold just laying behind a rock”. The woman does nothing. I’m sure that her view isn’t obscured (the shrubs and rocks are all very small) and she doesn’t appear to be reading the latest Swords r Us catalogue, so wander closer still. She does nothing. Finally I wander within just a few pixels of her and she suddenly bursts into “life”, pleading with me to save her child who has been kidnapped and taking into a nearby cave.
It wasn’t the first example of an unrealistic NPC in the game but it was the worst so far. To think that a distraught mother would stand around idly, while a nearby hero (clearly visible to her) rummages in the undergrowth isn’t even close to believable and it destroyed any suspension of disbelief I had. That’s no mean feat by the way. Having played games since the ZX Spectrum era, a flickering, badly animated blob is an acceptable representation of a human being for me. Maybe it is phenomenon of the Uncanny Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley), with better and better looking characters seeming to be even less realistic as a result of their poor AI. Whatever the reason I can’t see many non-gamers being converted to playing games when they have such utterly unbelievable characters.