GDC Responses

I want to catch up on a few articles that have been posted since the Game Developers Conference, all of them recapping and furthering the topics I talked about at the show:

Tim Stellmach, veteran game designer of many esteemed titles, weighs in on the topic of environmental storytelling. Using our GDC session as a starting point, he digs deeper into the idea of systemic environmental storytelling:

“See, for me, the interesting thing about this so-called ‘Systemic Environmental Storytelling’ is that it transfers authorship from the designer to the player. In fact, it has the potential to do so via emergent gameplay behavior, which gives it far more potential for player agency and self-expression than the scripted moments of ‘regular’ Environmental Storytelling.”

It’s a good article, I suggest you go read for yourself! On a different, yet very related tangent, Fantasy Heartbreaker (a blog dedicated to playing D&D “right”) published an article which applies concepts from our talk to the world of pen & paper roleplaying. It’s called Dangerous Archeology:

Smith and Worch are, of course, addressing video games, but their analysis has a lot to offer classic dungeoneering. [...] Environmental story isn’t just the communication of information, it’s another way in which the imaginations of the players and the GM interact. The process is, fundamentally, archaeological: the players unearth the world piece by piece and invest it with meaning from their own speculations and experiences.

It’s great to see both articles expand on the foundation that we tried to lay at GDC. One of the reasons that Harvey and I wanted to do this talk was a feeling that this is a topic many people deeply care about, yet that had been overlooked at previous GDCs.

Not to be outdone, our GDC level design tutorial receives comprehensive coverage on the WorldOfLevelDesign page. Sylvain Douce is covering the entire tutorial in a series of articles, the second of which is a detailed writeup of my session on my session on “Core Space Creation”:

The role of a level designer is to create gameplay through environments and systems. But the task is quite demanding since the gameplay implemented must be meaningful. If it’s not, the game is boring. The play must not feel arbitrary! Try to get all of the game systems connected together: the player can influence more than one of them with a single ability (e.g. the water in Bioshock which can be electrified with the corresponding plasmid).

It’s a good writeup for everybody who wasn’t able to make the tutorial. Admittedly, my session was superficial on a bunch of topics, because I tried to lay the groundwork on (too?) many topic for the rest of the day. But I think it’s a good introduction to 3D action level design.

Calvin & Hobbes

Amazing evocation of emotion in four simple panels. I’d love to attribute credit, but I don’t know where this fake strip originated from (I found out about via Harvey’s Twitter feed).

The Intelligent Design Movement

“If you really want to know what is at risk from the anti-evolution movement, look at Kansas. And the reason of that is, when the anti-evolution movement got control of the state board of education, what did they do? They rewrote the definition of Science itself. Not just Biology. Not just Evolution. Science.”

This is a great speech by Ken Miller about the dangers of the anti-evolution movement in America, and the very real danger that they pose to our education system. In the process, he presents conclusive proof of evolution (as if we needed any more) and rips apart the reasoning behind intelligent design. It’s almost two hours of video, but half of that is taken up by the QA session. Even that part is well worth watching all the way through.

Meaningful Button Mashing

When we were kids, my brother and I would steal my parents’ calculator to play a simple game: entering 1 + 1, we would then repeatedly press the = button, incrementing the counter by 1 with every press. The objective was to reach 100 in the shortest time possible, with the (non-digital) clock ticking – leading to many rounds of wild button mashing (and a dubiously timed leaderboard). What does this primitive game, invented by two boys below the age of 10, have to do with modern game design? Quite a bit, if you go by the state of current console games. Button-hammering gameplay is ubiquitous in today’s titles, usually in the form of “press X quickly to perform some act of strength”.

It would be easy to react cynically to this historical parallel, to the effect of “oh boy, look how far we’ve come as an industry!” If a couple of pre-teens could come up with the mechanic in the 80s, shouldn’t today’s multi-million dollar games do better? But, if framed correctly, there’s meaningful gameplay in these button mashing minigames. That is true for three reasons:

Investment
Button mashing sequences are often connected to high-stakes, high-reward situations, with the player very interested in the result. In God of War, the player mashes a button to kill off various enemies (often by ripping them apart.) In Dead Space, the player mashes A to escape from grappling Necromorphs. Both situations are high impact; in the first the enemy gets back up and continues to attach the player if he fails, in the latter the attacking enemy quickly drains the player’s health which, if not shaken off, results in his eventual death. The player is heavily invested in the outcome of each situation, and this investment adds meaning to the mechanically simple action.

[Read More]

Why High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Evil, Part 2

I don’t claim to understand the low-level science behind all of it, but if you watched Robert H Lustig’s lecture from a few weeks ago, this new study from Princeton University university shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: High-Fructose Corn Syrup Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain, Researchers Find. Several of the points from Lustig’s lecture return in this article, for example that

as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized.

The researchers go on to show that “rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same”, and conclude that even though

“some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, [...] our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests”. [...] “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

I’m not on a holy crusade against America’s corn industry, but that pokes conclusive holes into their propaganda and proves something that a lot of us have known intuitively for a while. I used to drink one Coke per day, thinking that by closely monitoring my sugar calorie intake and treating the soda for what it was, candy, I was still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Maybe I was, but HFCS is ubiquitous. With the evidence mounting, we’ll hopefully return to a life where consumer goods like simple bread aren’t “enriched” with sugars anymore.

GDC 2010: Level Design Tutorial

I cleaned up the slides from the lecture I gave during the GDC 2010 Level Design tutorial. This was an introductory look at the world of level design – what he does and how he does it. The material is entry level, but a good overview of the disciplines. You will find some overlap with the environmental definition that Harvey and I used in our “What Happened Here?” session.

(201) Level Design in a Day: Best Practices from the Best in the Business
Session Description:
In this intense day-long tutorial, attendees will gain deep insights from some of the most experienced level designers in the industry. The tutorial will cover every aspect of the level design process, from basic navigation and object manipulation tips and tricks to best practices for encounter design and level flow. As the development discipline responsible for crafting the vastly important moment-to-moment player experience, a deep understanding of core level design principles becomes essential for level designers, game designers and design managers alike. Likewise, an intimate familiarity with the level creation process can be a massive advantage to producers, testers or artists. This year’s session will focus on the Unreal Engine, while subsequent years will focus on Source, Quake, and other popular engines.

Intended Audience:
Level designers, mission designers, game designers and scripters will gain deep insights into the best practices and proven processes used by our industry’s leading teams. Additionally, writers, level artists and quality assurance professionals will come away from this talk  better prepared to collaborate and contribute to the level creation process. All attendees should have a solid understanding of the level design process, as well as a basic familiarity with the tools of the trade. Experience with the Unreal Editor will also be beneficial this year, but is not required to fully participate in the tutorial.

Takeaway:
Newcomers to the world of level design will gain a solid foundation in the art and science of level design while experienced level designers will come away from the talk with a bevy of tips, tricks, and best practices in use by some of the best level designers in the industry. Experienced producers, artists and testers will gain an intimate understanding of the level design process, and will be better equipped to manage and collaborate with this essential part of the game development process.

Speakers:
Coray Seifert, Game Designer, THQ – Kaos Studios
Matthias Worch, Senior Level Designer, Visceral Games
Neil Alphonso, Lead Level Designer, Splash Damage
Richard Carlson, Level Designer/game designer/musician/sfx dood, Digital Eel
Ed Byrne, Creative Director, Zipper Interactive
Forrest Dowling, Lead Multiplayer Level Designer, THQ – Kaos Studios
Joel Burgess, Lead Level Designer, Bethesda Softworks
Jim Brown, Lead Level Designer, Epic Games

Download the slides for this session below.

GDC 2010 LD Tutorial Downloads
Slides (PowerPoint 2007 .pptx, 4.5MB)