Times they are a changing

Man I'm rubbish at this blogging malarkey. However, I thought I'd try to resurrect it and attempt to post as regularly as possible.

So a little bit of news for anyone who does actually read this - I moved countries. I am now living in the United States of America - wahoo! Best of all, my new job is as a game designer at Naughty Dog. Can't say how excited I am to be working for what I consider to be the best games company in the business.

A new life, with new possibilities and a hell of a lot of hard work ahead. Still, I wouldn't want to do anything else!

Gamasutra Article

I've just noticed that I never posted a link to my Gamasutra Article up here on the blog...

So a little late, here's a link...


http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4024/examining_game_pace_how_.php

Can you do Tragedy in Games?

We had a rather protracted debate about whether you could do a proper tragedy in game stories - i.e. Romeo and Juliet.

My opinion is that you can do elements of tragedy, perhaps a bittersweet ending or tragedy that affects NPCs, but you just cannot do a tragic story for the main character successfully. Why?

It is my firm belief that you will set the player up for failure if you do this. They "win" the game, but the outcome is a negative one - effectively they lose. I've seen this in a couple of games - situations where you lose no matter what you do - the result is usually extreme player frustration and an overwhelming sense of having no real impact in the game world (and in turn pulling you out of any sense if immersion).

The response from nearly everyone I spoke to is that games have to overcome the childish notion of winning if narrative is to progress. I don't see any real logic in this. Tragedy does not instantly make narrative better than a story with a positive outcome. You can also still deal with tragic elements, loss of a loved one, pain & suffering, etc - just make sure that the player still feels like they have had an impact on the world and that it hasn't all been for nothing.

I think there is still plenty of scope for game narrative to satisfy more highbrow tastes, but we have to still serve the parts of a game that make it a game - the element of the player character making a difference is key to that.

Long Time no E & Unity vs UDK

So I forgot about my Blog. There's a surprise. Very few people probably read it anyway.

So I kind of stumbled across it again from a link on another site. It reminded me that the blog was a great way to get my thoughts out in a (semi) coherent manner. So I thought I'd start trying to blog again, even if it is only for my own benefit.

So the big development in a personal project regard is that I have ditched XNA as the development method for my own project for a couple of reasons:

1. The Community Games on XBox has been a fail in terms of sales potential.
2. Unity and Unreal decided to go free.

So I had spent a long time creating an engine and an editor for use in XNA and I really learnt a lot from it. But the prospect of a complete engine available to use for free was just too tempting.

So I started with UDK. I use Unreal at work daily and absolutely love it. The editor and Kismet are so well formed that it makes design implementation a joy. However, my experience with the scripting side of things when I downloaded UDK were a nightmare. For a start - no IDE as standard - and the nFringe mod licence means no commercial release - I refuse to pay the prices they expect for a commercial version for something that should be standard. Then there is the sheer overcomplication of getting a project started. I managed to get something running, but it took an age, and a lot of frustration.

So I took a quick look at Unity, and almost immediately I was hooked. The component model is a really powerful way of doing things. It is simple enough to make something really quickly and setting up a new blank project was an absolute breeze. However, I would never want to do anything bigger than a three or four man project in Unity, it would become chaos.

So - for big projects you really cant beat unreal, but if you're doing something small then I really recommend using Unity.

Bye Jack!

This is sad news...

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/09/25/disbarred

...well actually it made my day. Good ridance you lunatic f**k!

The Mod Community Needs to Wake Up

Interesting survey:
http://www.hourences.com/book/surveyresults.htm

It's very skewed by the nature of the places where the survey originated, from the mod community. The interesting aspect for me is the disparity between what the mod community considers level design to be and what the actual job entails.

There is still the firm belief within the mod community that the level designer does the visuals as well as the gameplay. This is just not true anymore. Artists in the vast majorty of cases are responsible for environment art. The designers concentrate on gameplay only.

This belief led me to a rather dismal experience when trying to hire from the mod community not long ago. I'm from the mod community myself - the 1997 - 2000 era of mapping when BSP was king and the level designer was responsible for visuals. The attitude I came up against in the mod community was disbelief and even anger that we would not consider that part of the role.

Worse still however was the expectation of being able to work from home in their native country on a console project. It's just not a feasible proposition - for a start there is the sensitivity of the material being produced, procuring dev kits - but most of all modern development teams are just that - teams. The design role especially really relies on them being together in one place and having quick and easy lines of commincation. Notably most mod projects fall to pieces within months when they find it difficult to comminicate at the right times, or fall out because they misunderstand each other.

When this was pointed out to them the reaction was indignant anger. Why should they have to move? How dare I ask that they come over to the UK and be paid for a job they love to do?!

The mod community needs to wake up and smell the coffee a little bit. If you want to turn your hobby into a professional vocation then you have to understand that there are certain ways that things are done in the professional world.

Maybe the truth (as the survey suggests) is that the mod community is mostly made up of teenagers. They need to do a little growing up if this is something they want to pursue as a career.

Google Map based games

Having seen The Last Guy - a rather nice zombie game that appears to be based around google maps (well satellite photos at least), I got started thinking about other ideas you could play around with using google maps as a basis. I came up with the following ideas:

1. Fire Fighter

Fires may outbreak in cities or forest based areas. Make use of water resources, fire stations and various equipment to fight fires across the globe. May have a competitive aspect, where competing players fight to defeat as many fires as possible. Could be played at a local level within a city, or on a much larger scale to fight forest fires, etc.

2. Sim City

Recreate a similar feel to Sim City using real world locations and terrain.

3. Nuclear War

Already been done with Defcon, but might have a more pronounced effect with satellite imagery.

4. Racing

Drive cars across various cities or other routes in some form of race (create set course or find the fastest way from A -> B).

5. Treasure Hunt

Bury treasure at various point and leave a trail of clues and puzzles for players to solve.

6. "Real Life" RPG

Quest across the length and breadth of the world using the real world maps as the basis for a fictional story.

7. Recon

Mirror use of satellite immagery to recreate a recon scenario - bombing targets from a detached view, track targets to find locations, etc.

8. World Based Civilization

Similar style of game to civ - build and improve cities and take over other countries, form treaties, trade, etc.

9. Cops / Criminals

Act as a police commisoner deploying resources to track organised crime - or run a criminal organisation and avoid cops!

10. Pacman

Pacman using real city streets (thanks to Peter Field for that one!).