My Eight Bits - Max Szlagor's Blog

Something lost, something gained

2011-08-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

After several years of hard work on The Agency, my designs on that game will probably never see the light of day. I was one of the many SOE employees at Seattle who now finds myself working a new job. I feel fortunate to have landed at Gas Powered Games, where I am now working on Age of Empires Online. I started in June, but it seems prudent to wait a couple of months to post thoughts and impressions. Gas Powered Games represents a new experience for me as it is one of the few independently owned AAA game studios left. I've been a fan of Gas Powered ever since the original Dungeon Siege came out and the stars aligned in such a way that an opening was available just as I was looking. While I once looked at independent studios as risky from an employment perspective, Gas Powered has been in business longer than the branches of THQ and Sony that I used to work at. Staying at Nintendo would have probably been the most stable, but I've definitely had more opportunities as a result of exploring other companies. I've also learned the harsh lesson that working at a first or third party publisher can put unrealistic goals on the development of games developed there, and investors on Wall Street can play a significant role in what type of resources (or lack thereof) projects might get. I think that downside has more to do with the machinations of corporate America than 1st and 3rd party publishing, but it plays a serious role in how games are developed at those companies.

As previously mentioned, I've been waiting to post my impressions of Gas Powered Games for a couple of months, mostly because I'm still in awe of how efficient the company is run with barely a lick of overtime. My colleagues are passionate, professional, experienced, mature, and fun to work with. Age of Empires Online is an awesome game to work on and I'm excited about the areas I am working on. I'm also enjoying a break from games with guns. Now that I'm not hidden behind a corporate veil, I'm hoping I can speak about my work more openly, both my professional projects at Gas Powered Games and my personal part time projects. My family has grown by one in the past month which has kept me both super busy and sleep deprived, but it has also given me time to reflect on life goals and reignited some of my lost passion. Getting back to writing is one of those passions I want to get back to on a more regular basis. On that note, I finally put together a comprehensive portfolio of my work here. I expect my updates to be a bit irregular as I adjust to my new home and work life, but they will be coming.

The GDC 2011 Summary: 3 Takeaways From Each IGS Talk

2011-03-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

By this point, there will be many summaries of the content of the Game Developers Conference on the internet. As a result, I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to highlight 3 takeaways I personally found important from each talk. This year I mixed things up and only attended talks for the first 2 days of GDC - specifically, the Independent Games Summit. While each of these talks featured more than 3 interesting takeaways, presenting my notes in this format allows readers to efficiently combine my top talking points with the ones they find at other sites, hopefully reducing the total number of summaries that need to be read without having direct access to the speaker. For each talk, the 3 points are not presented in any specific order. I apologize to speakers that I may have omitted in sessions that featured more than 3 presenters as I wanted to keep the "3 highlights per talk" rule consistent across all summaries.

The Humble Indie Bundle - John Graham and Jeffrey Rosen (Wolfire Games)

Mac and Linux sales of Humble Bundle made up 50 percent of sales.
Open sourcing the games led to higher developer revenues.
After Steam keys were issued for the bundle, one person bought 1500 bundles at 0.01 cents a piece.

Care and Feeding of Your Independent Game Studio - Arthur Humphrey (Last Day of Work)

Within the casual portal distribution space, costs have tripled, revenue shares have gone down by 2-3x, and it takes 5x as many sales to become profitable.
Get your games everywhere and see what sticks, then move to other platforms.
Plant Tycoon is their 2nd highest revenue generator, and it's an iPhone freemium game.

Game Design by Accidents - Steph Thirion (Independent)

Working in an environment where you can iterate as rapidly as possible leads to interesting new game ideas.
With expressive tools, even non-programmers can make intriguing games.
Scripting languages such as Lua provide a quick iteration environment conducive to generating ideas.

Team Meat Presents: Super Meat Boy, A Team Meat Meatmortem- Edmund McMillen & Tommy Refenes (Team Meat)

Tommy spent the first 2 months of XBLA development working primarily on nailing the controls.
Game Feast promotion fell apart by the time Meat Boy was released, which meant it got pushed down to the 4th slot on the dash ads (behind car ads) and was released the same week as Costume Quest.
Steam release has generated more sales and revenue than XBLA, even though it is a platformer.

Leave Enough Room: Design That Supports Player Expression - Randy Smith (Tiger Style)

The problem with leaderboards is that they leave little room for player choice and expression. Specific words in Scrabble are worth way more points than more interesting words and players tend to optimize Mario Kart races for the 2-3 characters that dominate all tracks.
One way to allow player expression is to create agnostic units - things that inhabit the world can either be friends or enemies depending on what the player does.
The key to creating more player expression is allowing the player to generate lots of data that you listen and respond to.

Turning Depression Into Inspiration - Michael Todd (Spyeart.com)

Work on highly rewarding projects and get to the gameplay as soon as possible.
Build progressive gameplay - VVVVVV had the gravity mechanic in early and Terry made a bunch of level variants to take the gameplay further.
Get other people to play your game. It reminds you what is fun.

From AAA to Indie: Three Start-Up Stories - Daniel Cook (Spry Fox), Ichiro Lambe (Dejobaan Games), Jake Kazdal (Haunted Temple Studios)

Haunted Temple Studios founder Jake Kazdal worked on Rez and Space Channel 5. He learned a lot about the value of art style guides, references, and why you shouldn't design games in a vacuum.
Spry Fox founder Daniel Cook believes a portfolio approach is important and games should be iterated on daily based on a feedback loop.
Dejobaan founder Ichiro Lambe believes in looking for opportunities to stand out and to create loyal customers - his game included the largest number of A's possible, he responded to support emails in goofy ways to create a lasting impression, and he created a YouTube video to respond to forum posts.

The Journey To Creating Shank - Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment)

Don't sign bad deals because they might make it harder for all developers to get good deals in the future.
Developers need more ways to promote games other than king-making specials such as Summer of XBLA.
Publishers for digital download titles can have a number of advantages including true support, multi-platform release assistance, marketing, reduced risk, and less platform requirements.

The Full Spelunky on Spelunky XBLA - Derek Yu (Mossmouth) & Andy Hull (Story Fort)

The idea for Spelunky came out of a mix of ideas from different prototypes, which Derek treats as doodles.
Creating a game with a robust procedural level generation system allows small teams to create lots of content.
Derek prefers a development cycle that allows him to test out ideas, refresh himself, work on something big...and then starts the cycle over.

Indie Fund: Lessons from the First Year - Nathan Vella, Kellee Santiago (Capybara Games), Ron Carmel (2D Boy), Andy Schatz (Pocketwatch Games), Steve Swink (Enemy Airship), Daniel Da Rocha (Q.U.B.E.)

Indie fund has received over 200 applications so far. Of those, it has funded 3.
Part of the purpose of Indie Fund is to demonstrate to publishers what fair terms are and how funding for games should work.
One of the main challenges for the fund is determining how much feedback to offer sponsored games and what their place is. The fund consists of developers who are not the creators of the games they fund, which makes things complicated sometimes.

The Next Steps of Indie: Four Perspectives - Luke Schneider (Radiangames), Brian Provinciano (vBlank Entertainment), Dajana Dimovska (Copenhagen Game Productions), Jeff Hull (Nonchalance)

Radian Games founder says his most productive days have zero internet usage all day.
Retro City Rampage creator built an incredible amount of tools meant to automate content creation which allowed him to build a GTA style game with a minimal number of people. Tools and techniques used include a voxel editor and exporter, automatic building generator, animation reuse, tile generators, and tile snap tools.
Copenhagen Games Collective, creators of B.U.T.T.O.N, are trying to explore what an open-ended physical party game is. They have succeeded in creating a game where the players' body expressions and social context become the center of attention, rather than the screen.

How to Win the IGF in 15 Weeks or Less - Andy Schatz (Pocketwatch Games)

Monaco was developed after a failed project (Venture Dinosauria) was mostly abandoned due to lack of funding. It was meant to be a quick project to refresh Andy.
Andy never left the game broken on any day and he made sure to work on 1 cool feature per day.
If you are making a game for fun rather than money, at least if it fails you can win awards and leverage your awareness. The other method can only lead to disaster if it fails.

Rapid Fire Indies - Chris Hecker (Definition Six, inc.), Petri Purho (Kloonigames), David Hellman (The Hellman Studio LLC), Eddy Boxerman (Hemisphere Games), Anna Anthropy (Auntie Pixelante), Chris DeLeon (HobbyGameDev.com), Scott Anderson (Enemy Airship), Andre Clark (Peanut Gallery), Markus Persson (Mojang), Kyle Pulver (Indie)

Game jams are an amazing way to create new projects, work out game development muscles, build a framework, and to build up skills in new technologies. Creativity + constraints = awesome.
Good gameplay arises when a player has to manipulate and understand systems that are already interesting in new ways. Use technology in ways it wasn't made to be used.
Building awareness of an indie game is a long and slow process, but it's important and there are many ways to build it including style, aesthetic goals, controversy, community, and fans.

Games as a service, and why I want companies to stop giving me inferior products

2010-03-12T21:08:00.000-08:00

Ubisoft DRM. Much has been said about this topic recently, and I can't help but express my own frustration with the bumbling attempts by publishers to dissuade honest paying customers from picking up their products. For the two people that aren't familiar with the DRM scheme that Ubisoft implemented in recent games, it works like this: To play one of their PC games, you must be connected to the internet at all times. If you are ever disconnected, you cannot play and when the connection goes back up, play resumes from a predefined check point. Let's say it's a stormy day in your neighborhood and the internet is a little flaky. You might pop into the game for 30 minutes, lose your connection, be dropped from the game, then be reset who knows how far by the time your connection resumes. This scenario sounds somewhat familiar, as it is how many MMOs operate. The problem is that Assassin's Creed 2 is a single player game, the kind meant to be enjoyed by a person on their own time, without requiring a connection to the internet. Got a laptop but no wi-fi hotspot to play? Better find a different game.

The problem with the DRM schemes being implemented by these publishers is that they are eroding the value of not only their own games, but of all PC games. At which point do I, as a customer, give up on PC games entirely because I can't trust that the game will work. If you want me to rent your game, stop trying to charge 50-60 dollars for it. I honestly think that someone with a stonger will and a copy of these games should consider a lawsuit, as I think this type of scheme violates fundamental use rights that consumers should have. Microsoft, which charges more for their products and stands to lose a lot more from rampant piracy has figured out a way to authenticate software in a non-obtrusive manner. As many people have pointed out, pirates inevitably figure out a way around whatever scheme is put into place and they enjoy the game no matter what. I feel confident that their ranks swell every time they run into one of these DRM schemes. It's hard enough trying to figure out whether or not your computer can run a PC game, let alone having to jump through the additional hoop of having limited access to the game. What makes the entire situation even worse is the complete inability to return PC games. In essence, publishers are saying "Here is a game you might want. Buy it and play it when we tell you to, and if you have any problems, we are keeping your money anyway." That's terrible customer service, and a surefire way to turn away people that may otherwise be interested in a well made game. The development team suffers as well, because they are either unwittingly convinced that the DRM will somehow sell more copies or they are forced to implement the system because a producer or executive was afraid of the entire world stealing their game.

I feel strongly that DRM is a generational issue. Once the teenagers of today become executives, I think a lot of the misunderstandings about why people pirate things will be made clear as the digital age grows up. The editor of Wired magazine wrote an entire book on the concept of digital goods wanting to be free, and while I found myself to have a more conservative view of this topic than I expected, I am gradually coming to terms with what a free future will mean. One important point he makes is that kids growing up today believe digital goods should be free, and we reinforce this idea with websites like YouTube, free to play games, and "pay what you want" music albums. While this whole topic makes me grit my teeth now, I take solace in the fact that, at least for this part of the world, it will be a better place in the future. Either that, or I'll stop playing PC games.

Still alive, collecting thoughts

2010-02-19T00:02:00.000-08:00

Ahh..the beginning of a new year. I had a number of blog topics lined up for the remainder of 2009, but, with a young child at home, I find time to be in short supply these days. I came out slightly ahead in post counts for 2009 compared to 2008, but nowhere near the amount of posts I would like to make, and nowhere near enough to keep anyone looking for new content coming back. Other goals I had set for 2009 didn't pan out either: I submitted a talk for GDC that did not get selected, I partially finished a couple of books on game design, and my completed game count didn't quite total up to where I wanted it be. One the upside, I know for a fact that I finished and played more games in 2009 than in most years prior.

With all that in the past, it is time once again to set some new goals. I will once again increase the frequency of my writing, but I don't think it necessarily makes sense for all of it to take place on the blog. I have another idea cooking up that would probably make more sense as a format for the type of work I want to produce. Speaking somewhere this year about game design, even if only locally, is also on the agenda. I also plan to plug myself into at least one new game development community in order to increase the dialog I have with other developers. Furthermore, I want to produce more of my own personal, original work this year, in the form of game levels or small games. The Experimental Gameplay Workshop and Gamma 4 will be my starting points. On the game playing front, I want to diversify. While I would like to finish at least as many or more games in 2010 than 2009, I also want to try out more indie and experimental games.

In order to achieve these goals, I will set some milestones throughout the year to record how I'm doing. While all of this sounds a bit like a mundane laundry list of personal objectives, I believe in the power of writing things down in order to enhance accountability. That goes double for goals put out into a public forum. 2009 was an excellent year overall, both personally and professionally, but I'm thinking 2010 will be even better. And I'm excited about meeting these goals. Do any other developers out there come up with these kinds of lists at the beginning of the year?

Changing my game consumption habits

2009-09-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

The way that I acquire games evolves over time, and more recently I switched to an almost exclusively online model of ordering. For a long time, I picked everything up at retail. Then I went through a phase where I ordered games online until I was put off by an incorrectly shipped game that missed my birthday. Picking games up at the store is now becoming unattractive for several reasons. For one, retailers aren't stocking many copies of games. I have left empty handed on several occasions where a shipment was either late or undersupplied. In addition, the price of gas continues to climb. Besides the money wasted on gas and the time spent tracking down games, I am trying to be more environmentally conscious across all of my life activities. My last main gripe with stores is that retailers don't discount games much anymore. I remember buying PS2 games the week they came out for over 20 percent off. These days, it seems like I am lucky to pay 5 bucks less than MSRP, which has also increased over last gen.

So what has changed? For one, I started ordering more games through Amazon, which solves a lot of the problems I have with local stores. Amazon generally marks games down a few percent, and I have been able to apply discounts on top of the reduced price. I don't have to worry about whether or not something is in stock before I order and I only need to spend the time it takes to place the order in order to receive the goods. While I don't get the game on the day it comes out, in most cases I don't have the time to start it anyway. Ordering from Amazon means that there is no driving involved and it's also fun to receive and open packages, which is a nice side benefit.

Because I go through a fair amount of games, I also needed to find a way to pack new purchases into less space. In addition to Amazon, I am migrating more of my collection over to digitally distributed games. At the moment, I buy about 95 percent of my PC games through this method and I have no complaints or regrets about the lack of bulky boxes with flimsy manuals. On consoles, I have been enjoying XBLA and PSN games for years, but I have yet to make the leap to things like "Games on Demand". While I considered it more recently, I'm still not convinced that I will have the access I want to those games if another Xbox dies or if the next console doesn't have backwards compatibility and license transfers.

None of this is probably all that interesting of a shift to most people, as I'm sure many out there have been embracing digital for years. For me it marks a big change because I actually enjoy the process of browsing a store and I like holding that physical product in my hands, especially if it is in a box with a lot of goodies. In spite of that, I am putting a higher premium these days on my time and space as well as rethinking the impact of my consumption habits. I'm hoping that this trend continues and that nothing pushes me back to the brick and mortar method of shopping. I'd also like to see more digital games incorporate some of the things I like about special edition boxed products (manuals, soundtracks, maps, artbooks, etc.), but I'm sure it will get there. It's funny how many areas of life fatherhood makes you rethink.

A game with exceptional achievements and progression

2009-09-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

At the start of the holiday game pre-season, I find myself most hooked on a portable game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy. While I also recently started the excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum, I continuously fire up the PSP to get battles on Dissidia in. The Final Fantasy name in the title might have roped me in enough to give the game a try but the multiple layers of interesting game systems and rewards are what keep me coming back.

In a nutshell, Dissidia rewards you for almost every minute you spend playing it. Win or lose, you gain experience and one of the multiple forms of currency. You gain items for destroying parts of the stage, experience is awarded depending on how much damage you do per hit, and additional items are dropped for performing specific types of actions. There are also scheduled rewards for turning the game on each day and checking the calendar. Some days confer additional bonuses in the form of shopping currency multipliers, unlockable currency, experience boosts, or skill boosts. In addition, you can increase your chances of earning rewards even further by putting on specific pieces of equipment. Finally, there are multiple game modes that behave very differently but each add additional layers of rewards for completing battles in specific ways or minimizing the number of moves it takes you to reach the end of a map.

There are a total of 151 accomplishments similar in nature to achievements in an Xbox 360 game. One interesting thing about these accomplishments is the fact that almost all of them remain secret until you meet certain criteria. Once the accomplishment is revealed, you are usually only about halfway there but you can see your progress towards the goal down to fractional percentage increases. In addition, when new accomplishments open up, the post battle summary lets you know to check on your progress.

Add to all of this the fact that you have 12 characters with unique storylines along with 10 villains that do not, but which can be powered up and used in other forms of battle, unlockable art, music, movie, and Final Fantasy museum galleries, and a highly polished presentation and you have the formula for a game that will keep me busy for a long time to come. Normally in a situation like this I will go deep before I finish the game for the first time, but this year I am trying to increase the number of games I play to completion, so I wil be doing a lot of the bonus content after my first full playthrough.

While it might be easy to dismiss all of the rewards as the equivalent of a spigot of neverending candy that keeps you from focusing on the weaker aspects of the game including its somewhat ridiculous story, the unoptimized controls, or the lack of tactical depth in moment to moment combat, this game is very forward thinking in terms of how it keeps player engagement high enough to incentivize at least a single full playthrough. If you go though achievment completion statistics, even for high quality games like Half-Life 2, what you notice is that the number of people who finish a game is a small fraction of the total people who start it. One of the challenges we all face as developers is keeping players interested in our games, and I find it encouraging to discover a game that attempts to tackle this challenge head on in an interesting way.

Max at PAX '09

2009-09-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending PAX all 3 days. I waited a bit too long to get my pass, so I had to buy 3 individual passes rather than a full weekend ticket. I almost missed Saturday completely because it sold out a week ahead of time but I lucked out Friday night and scooped one up when more passes became available at the last minute online. My wife was out of town with the baby during the week and the convention provided a much needed way to keep my mind focused on something fun.

My activities focused primarily on cruising the expo and catching a number of panels. I took a bit of time out on Friday and Saturday night to watch the concerts as well, which were fun and more varied than the last time I caught the concerts at PAX. I didn't participate in any tournaments or gaming outside of the expo this year, but I did take some time out one evening to play Magic with a friend.

The panel quality was impressive, with at least one session ranking as good or better than many panels given at GDC. It was about storytelling in games. Adam Sessler moderated a group consisting of Tim Schafer, Denis Dyack, Dr. Greg Zeshuck, and Joseph Staten. A number of thoughtful questions were asked and the QA afterwards was excellent as well. One of the other quality panels I attended was focused on issues surrounding independent games with prominent indie folks Derek Yu and James Silva in the panel. The last educational panel that stuck out to me was the Klei Games company update. One of the founders outlined the history of the small company and talked about the challenges of building a game studio. For fun, I also attended my first live viewing of the 1Up Yours podcast with some of the old staff in attendance. That was a treat.

The expo floor reminded me of a smaller scale version of the E3 booths, with the exception of ridiculously long lines for Left 4 Dead 2 and Dragon Age Origins. I was pleased to get hands on time with Diablo 3, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, Mass Effect 2, and Dante's Inferno. Outside the main expo floor I found myself hanging out with my former Nintendo colleague Nick Trahan, who was demonstrating his upcoming WiiWare title Liight in the PAX 10 Indie games spotlight. I also got to check out Klei's upcoming game Shank, which took me back to the days of arcade beat 'em ups. Klei has also added on an extra layer of awesome character design, animation, stylized effects, and modern design aesthetics that makes this a game to watch.

In addition to playing a number of games on the expo floor, I took a bit of time to observe people playing each of the games on demo from multiple angles. While there were no games on display that I worked on, I find it valuable to see how people respond to the games they play. New Super Mario Brothers Wii clearly elicited the smiles that Miyamoto is on the look out for. Diablo 3 invoked intense concentration from players as they perused the skills and loot being constantly updated in front of them. Several other demos caused players to put down the controller from boredom or mild frustration. I walked away from this "gaming people watching" with a few notes in my head about demos as well as a rough idea of how I want to see players of my own games look when I present them in the future.

Unfortunately, reports of a swine flu breakout dampened the post convention mood a bit, but I seem to have escaped unscathed. I had a great time overall and found the show to be both highly entertaining and educational. It's fun to observe what people want to play, what they talk about, and what they want to know about the industry. It's also great to have a show where there is no set agenda. Usually I am scrutinizing my time at conventions to reach important talks, networking, demoing a game, attending parties or dinner events, or a variety of other mostly work related activities. This year PAX was all about having a good time, catching up with friends, and going with the flow of whatever sounded most interesting at any given time. I look forward to another fun show next year, whether or not I am participating as an attendee or presenter.

Writing about writing

2009-09-02T23:57:00.001-07:00

My present workload involves finalizing a sizable amount of design docs. During my time in the industry, I've found that some companies skew towards the "iterate as soon as possible with basic design direction" philosophy while others insist on having a stack of documents and a game plan well ahead of time. Once upon a time, I think a design bible was meant to be a blueprint for where the game would end up, but nowadays even companies that are design doc heavy tend to use them as springboards rather than destinations. At times, it's a bit of a downer to spend hours upon hours working on docs because, for the most part, relatively few people read them and you may find yourself writing up a bunch of great ideas that never see the light of day.

In spite of the potential for disappointment, I find that there are several benefits to writing design docs. First and foremost, it requires a designer to narrow the focus of their ideas into something that can easily be explained. When it comes down to it, most games can be broken down into a small number of pages with a few supporting diagrams for complex concepts. I find that when you put ideas down on paper, you begin to question the pillars that support that idea as well as the potential consequences for other parts of the game. One thing that has been very helpful to me lately is the encouragement of my lead to continuously evaluate how many words each document needs. He is a fan of being concise, and I can obviously trail off into more words than needed to explain something otherwise. Going through the documents to trim off those words inevitably leads to substituting mock up images instead. By doing this, I get to thinking about the user interface for a feature sooner than I would otherwise. If the UI needed to support an idea starts to become massive, then the original system gets more revision to bring the complexity of the feature set down. This documentation iteration cycle creates confidence and clarity within the person writing the doc and helps to get the brain going about questions that peers may ask. Clarity is good.

Design docs also build team investment into the vision of the game. This happens on several levels. In order to improve the quality of the documents, many design departments have a peer review process. This review process sometimes produces a flurry of tangential ideas, but there is almost always valuable feedback that improves the original drafts. By taking the feedback and integrating comments back into the doc, team members feel more inclined to give the idea a chance even if they disagree with aspects of the premise. Once the peer review process is finished and the doc goes out to the rest of the team, there is additional confidence and trust earned from those who see a polished product that better defines what is generally a nebulous vision. I find that engineers especially appreciate the additional thought a designer put into their system and like to have a reference to check up on when they are building out underlying infrastructure.

The last major benefit I see to documentation is that studio managers and executives generally like to see robust paper plans because it builds confidence that preproduction has yielded a direction that will result in a well executed product. While many game developers groan about "needing to please the executives who don't get games anyway", I think they sometimes undervalue who supports their game and why. Anything that can build more advocates, including those who make funding and resource allocation decisions about the project, is only a good thing in my mind.

I guess I talked my way through this post into being an advocate of documentation. I'm still conflicted about the process of writing them, but in the end I see design documents as a brainstorming, refining, and planning exercise that sets the tone for early iteration on a piece of the game. I don't feel strongly that documents need to be updated, unless they involve details of a process or unless they contain tuning data that needs to be referenced by others down the road. After putting the finishing touches on several documents recently, I'm feeling more confident in the pillars that prop up the game systems that have been a little less defined up until this point. I'm looking forward to taking the next steps into building out these systems in game, and hopefully the fruits of these seeds can alleviate some of my reluctance to write these documents in the first place.

The E3 Wrap Up

2009-06-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

Kris McMahan (designer) and I, ready to demo at the SOE booth.

This marks the first year I have attended the E3 Expo in about 5 years. During my last trip to the convention center, E3 was massive, loud, and I was attending strictly as an interested visitor. This year, I was involved with actively doing walkthroughs of The Agency, and the experience was entirely different. Overall, the show floor seemed to be about the right size and noise level for an industry event targeted at press and retailers. Sony Online Entertainment had a very sizable booth, checking in at about half the size of the Playstation and Nintendo booths. Games on display included Everquest, Free Realms, DC Universe Online, Kung Fu Hustle, The Agency, and a number of PSN titles.

I arrived as part of The Agency E3 entourage on Monday night. As is typical when bringing your game to a new environment, there were a number of setup challenges involved. Fortunately for myself and a few of my colleagues, I was one of the team members that was able to get a good night's rest for the first day of the show. We were up and ready to go early Tuesday in order to do prep work and test runs before the show floor opened. Everything was humming along and working fairly well by the time we arrived. The Nintendo and Sony press conferences ran until about 1PM so we didn't have much foot traffic until then. Once 1PM rolled around, there was a steady flow of press coming through the booth until the show closed. During this time, a few of my colleagues performed demonstrations to the foreign press in the private SCEE booth upstairs. The upstairs area was smaller and more intimate, with demonstrations being done on couches rather than standing up like we did in the SOE booth. Once we finished our runthroughs, we headed back to the hotel to change and then out for a nice dinner at a local Italian restaurant.

On Wednesday, I spent most of my time in the upstairs area with fellow designer Clancy Powell and producer Jose Araiza. Jose is fluent in Spanish and his help upstairs was much appreciated by the team as well as the Spanish speaking press. At a few points during the day, I went back downstairs and helped out with the increased flow of traffic coming through the booth. After the show was done for the day, we took a cab down to The Stinking Rose for some amazing garlic inspired dishes.

On Thursday I split my time between downstairs and upstairs. Upstairs proved to be regularly quiet while the downstairs area remained busy up until we had to leave for our flight out. We were happy with the response to The Agency and walked away with Best of Show nominations from both 1Up and GamingExcellence.

I was able to spend a brief amount of time checking out the show floor and got a chance to get hands on with Dark Void, Lost Planet 2, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Gran Turismo PSP, the new PSP Go, and DC Universe Online. While I would have liked to see more, my breaks were largely spent waiting in line for food at the convention center, where I watched about a hundred pepperoni pizzas being made before a cheese or veggie became available.

Overall I enjoyed my time at E3 quite a bit. Working a convention feels very different from being an attendee, but it's fun to be part of the team that brings the show to life. I've attended other shows where a game I worked on was being played or demoed before, but this was the first time I was fully hands on doing demonstrations and interviews live. Overall I think I'd prefer to do a mix of attending conventions on both sides of the show, but the satisfaction of having a game that people respond to at a major event like E3 while you are presenting is definitely an experience worth seeing first hand.

As I mature, Final Fantasy will not

2009-05-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy is one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time. I first started playing the series with the original release on the NES, back in 1990, and I have picked up every major release since. Nostalgia is definitely a strong component of my love for the series. The other major reason for my continued interest is SquareEnix's drive to innovate a long running series while concurrently amping up their production values, world density, and storytelling prowess with each release. The short reason for why I love this series is that Final Fantasy and "high quality role playing game" are almost interchangeable terms to me. I'm eagerly looking forward to the next major console release of the series, but I am concerned by recent comments made from the series director.

In a recent piece on Edge Online, Final Fantasy 13 Director Yoshinori Kitase says "'I actually think that it’s a very natural thing for players to grow out of the Final Fantasy series...In terms of the age group we target with each new game, it remains the teens to 20-somethings." He goes on to mention that while members of the team grow older, they feel that it is important to create games for their core demographic. One of their nods to the aging creators and the long running fans is the increasing prevalence with which older characters find their way into new entries in the series.

While adding older characters is a nice gesture, I feel that the series will lose its appeal with both older and younger generations if it does not grow up with its fans. In years past, technology moved so fast that players young and old put up with narratives that didn't resonate because they were excited about the ever increasing fidelity of worlds they were able to explore. As computing and graphics technology in games begins to plateau, players will be looking for a richer palette of characters and stories to define the role playing games they play. Fortunately, with the growing number of formerly PC-centric companies such as Bethesda and Bioware building mature console games now, players will have more options. Nevertheless, I don't want to leave the unique style of SquareEnix behind. I hope that the storytellers in our industry can look to the storytelling techniques of places like Pixar to bridge the gap between young and old. Each Pixar movie amazes me with its rich worlds, interesting characters, and almost universal appeal across gender and age groups. Please, Mr. Kitase, don't leave me behind.

Non competitive multiplayer gaming

2009-05-02T17:08:00.001-07:00

Over the last couple of days, I had some interesting experiences while playing with others over Xbox Live. Normally when I play against others online, the competition is tough, the only cooperation occurs between team members, and I usually walk away with several additional losses on my record. My gaming experience recently proved to be almost the exact opposite of that scenario.

While playing Outrun Arcade Online the other night, I decided to engage in a one on one race with a stranger. Outrun has a few different modes of online play, but they are all basically a race to the finish. I played a lot of Outrun single player while trying to earn my achievements the previous week but I was out of practice. My opponent, on the other hand, was experienced and careened through the course with minimal effort. To my surprise, he had stopped just short of the finish line and I ended up winning 1st place. He left after that race and I found myself staring at the screen, pondering what just happened. There are only 3 reasons I can think of that this player may have done this. Outrun doesn't have any ranked leaderboards, so wins don't matter with the exception of 2 achievements - one where you have to win 5 races in a row and one where you have to be in the lead at each race checkpoint. My first theory goes something like this - perhaps this player knew they outskilled me and didn't want me to feel bad after the race. My second theory goes something like this - perhaps I was the player that helped them unlock the lead each checkpoint achievement and they were trying to help me get the win 5 races in a row achievement. My third theory is simply that the player was looking for a tough competitor. Since I didn't prove to be an even match for them, they just didn't care, and perhaps they thought it would be funny to be waiting at the line. In any of those scenarios, the lack on an online leaderboard led to a situation that might not have occurred otherwise, and it kept me playing because I felt that my opponent was being friendly.

Another game I played online recently is Beautiful Katamari. I don't think this game has multiplayer leaderboards either, and it only has 3 online achievements - play 10 games online, play 50 games online, and earn 1,000 cookies. Cookies are always awarded for each match, scaled to your final position, with bonus cookies given out for special awards. When I recently played a match online, the host sent a message to each player telling them not to pick up items so we could all tie in 1st, which meant that the maximum number of cookies was given to each player. In this way, we all earned a substantial number of cookies and someone had a chance to get extras if they could perform more "boost" special moves than the others. While this seemed like an interesting non-competitive way to march toward the achievements, charging into a wall got a bit boring, and I started hosting my own games. Having earned the other awards, I eventually only needed the 50 games played achievement, and I reflected on my situation. It seemed that when I won several games in a row, opponents would drop out and I had to wait a while before another one was available. Eventually, one player noticed I already had 1,000 cookies and asked me to help them get their achievement. I had nothing to gain by winning the matches, so I rolled up goodies for a while then sat back for several matches. We played several games and I received my 50 games played achievement. It was getting late so I intended to go to bed, but I wanted to help this player get their achievement as well, so I stayed online for several more games until they had reached their 1,000 cookie goal.

While some people could construe this behavior as cheating, without a win-loss record and rankings, the consequences for winning and losing are meaningless. I also found it fascinating to engage in what I considered emergent multiplayer rule modification. By simply changing the achievements offered and culling out rankings, a game can change the focus of an online community from competition to socialization and cooperation. As someone who played games professionally for several years, I certainly value the competitive nature of gaming. On the other hand, I also think that one of the failures of online multiplayer in most games is that it can encourage antisocial behavior and scare away players that don't have time to practice for hours a day. I look forward to trying out more games that create a competitive environment without overvaluing the concept of winning.

GDC 2009 Thoughts

2009-04-13T22:43:00.001-07:00

Due to the fortunate aligning of several circumstances, I was able to once again attend GDC this year. In a previous post I already expressed my excitement about conferences in general. This year's GDC proved to be solid, and I even got to spend a couple of days exploring San Francisco to boot. I've been telling people that about 70-80 percent of the sessions I attended were either interesting or valuable and I'm pretty happy with that ratio. Either the conference organizers are doing a better job of selecting content or I am getting better at picking my sessions. In either case, it's a win. While I was originally thinking of breaking this post down into 3-4 digestible chunks, the conference has come and gone. Along with it has gone most peoples interest in the details. So here it is in one big batch.

Here's a brief rundown of the sessions I attended:
Keynote - Discovering New Development Opportunities Satoru Iwata
I've always been impressed with Mr. Iwata and once had the pleasure of meeting him during my days at Nintendo. For someone that manages one of the biggest companies in the world, he strikes me as being grounded and down to earth. He clearly understands the challenges developers face and likes to help teams succeed. This keynote was focused on his own journey in turning HAL around as well as a brief overview of Miyamoto's design process. The main takeaway here is that small prototypes are highly valuable, even if they don't turn into games for a long time. Several companies outside of Nintendo see R&D as a valuable process and a few manage to follow this prototyping process. I think this is probably the exception rather than the norm, however, and many companies either find themselves in full production too early or spend too much money figuring out the core mechanics of a game.

Fault Tolerance: From Intentionality to Improvisation - Clint Hocking
An excellent postmortem on Far Cry 2 that detailed the design philosophy behind improvisational gameplay. Sandbox games demand improvisational gameplay, and as a result, are one of the most demanding genres to work in. Clint broke down Far Cry 2 into its core systems and highlighted which ones encouraged the improvisational style of play and presented alternatives to the ones that didn't. I like how thoughtfully dense this talk was as well as the fact that it builds on design ideas that Harvey Smith presented at a prior GDC. On a side note, I think Clint beats himself up too much about Far Cry 2, which, while flawed, is still one of the best games of 2008. I look forward to seeing how he takes these ideas forward into his next game.

Ups, Downs, Mistakes, Successes in the Making of LittleBigPlanet - Alex Evans/Mark Healy
I think the main thing I took away from this talk is the fact that Media Molecule truly is a collection of amazingly talented mad scientists. With a group of 31 people this studio managed to ship an amazing game in line with each of their publisher milestones while being incredibly flexible in changing their game when things weren't working.

Level-5's Techniques to Producing a Hit Game - Akihiro Hino/Usuke Kumagai
I enjoy many of Level-5's games. Unfortunately, this talk didn't really go into much detail about their production or design process. This talk was labeled as a production talk, but I really think it should have been called a marketing session instead. The takeaway is that design hooks can be used to market the game via press and trailers which can grow the buzz for your game. Their approach is largely focused on the Japanese market where they produce very high quality anime trailers that clearly appeal to their target audience. The closest thing I can think of in the western market is the GTA trailers, which are excellent but tend to focus on the characters and world rather than the design hooks.

Halo in the Laboratory - John Hopson
Usability testing is an area that I find incredibly fascinating. The scope of the usability testing for Halo constituted a large part of the pre-release Halo 3 article that Wired wrote and I was curious for even more details. As I thought, the session reinforced my idea that big games need a lot more user research to get the details right and companies like Bungie and Valve are already using this data to constantly improve their games. Some of the interesting takeaways from this session included low cost ways to do usability testing via a webcam or simple UI mockups that mimic the semantics and flow of your UI.

Keynote - Solid Game Design: Making the 'Impossible' Possible - Hideo Kojima
This was essentially a talk focused on the origin and evolution of the Metal Gear franchise. One of the things I find most interesting about this series is that you can trace most of the elements of pre-MGS4 to the original Metal Gear Solid 2 for MSX, included in the Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence discs. What made this talk interesting was learning the origin of the original Metal Gear/Metal Gear 2 game mechanics. One of the finer points that I think must have gotten lost in translation is the idea that Kojima believes western developers use software technology to overcome game design challenges. While I believe he is referring to middleware, I am not convinced that middleware has improved western game quality on the whole.

10 Things Great Designers Exhibit - Gordon Walton
Like any top 10 list, the content of this one will probably be debated by many people in the industry. The short version is: passion for games, breadth and depth of knowledge, problem solving and analytical skills, flexibility, KISS, player empathy, continuous learning, team work, a positive mental attitude, and clear communication. I agree with the bulk of this list as well as the general order of priorities, but there are a couple of "things" that I feel were not on the list. Chief among these are sufficient technical knowledge and persuasive abilities. I find the first to be valuable because of how well my programming background is serving me in my design experience as well as my belief that our work will continue to get more technical as game engines mature. The second seems like a no-brainer to me because designers that can't convince others why an idea might work well will have a hard time with their self-confidence as well as their ability to push an idea to the point of awesomeness. While one could lump this skill under clear communication, I have met plenty of people that can communicate ideas clearly but cannot convince others why they are worth pursuing.

Experimental Gameplay Sessions - Jonathan Blow, moderator
Inspirational and excellent. The EGS panel did a fantastic job selecting interesting indie games that all explored different ways to shake up what we think of tradionally as our game "play space".

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band - Dan Teasdale
Harmonix is a company that has come to truly understand cutting edge design by iterating over several games that continuously improve their understanding of the music game genre. One of my favorite talks of GDC 2007 was the Harmonix session on building games from Frequency to Guitar Hero where they shared lessons learned along the way. The 2009 talk was largely focused on the evolution of Rock Band and once again, many valuable lessons were shared. The takeaway is that we really need to understand what it is we are trying design within the constraints of what our audience wants and how much enjoyment they will get out of it. While this may seem obvious, it still seems like a number of features creep into games solely for the purpose of tacking another bullet point onto the back of the box.

Dead Space: How We Launched the Scariest New IP - Chuck Beaver
An excellent post mortem on the development of Dead Space. I salute the team for making it through an 18 month greenlight process. The Dead Space team did a good job of breaking the mechanics down into buckets of conventional, evolutionary, and experimental categories and knowing where to put the right amount of resources behind each of these areas. A number of my colleagues feel that Dead Space is the evolution of the survival horror genre and based on the reviews of Resident Evil 5, I suspect that many others feel this way too. The presentation touched on things like the outdated control scheme behind Resident Evil and how EA did their own usability testing to push the controls into a more modern direction. In addition, the session also did a great job outlining elements that effectively create a believably scary atmosphere and where the best bang for the buck is within this type of game.

Lionhead Experiments Revealed - Peter Molyneux
I thought I had an idea of what to expect for this talk - an series of Lionhead prototypes. I wasn't that excited about it initially but it turned out to be more engaging than expected, primarily because it outlined a way of structuring an ongoing prototyping process within a larger company. One of the most interesting things that Lionhead is trying to do is to create a tool that makes game content and assets easily shareable for prototyping purposes. I think this would be a huge win for many companies because often times team members have a hard time visualising how gameplay might work with placeholder graphics and executives certainly don't like to look at boxes.

The Iterative Level Design Process of Bioware's Mass Effect 2 - Corey Andruko/Dusty Everman
Rigorous, thorough, and highly focused on constant improvement. Those are the main thoughts that came to mind as I listened to the speakers outline the level design process that Bioware uses. I'm not sure how many companies have such a well defined development process, but I think it must help the team understand gameplay objectives and where things are headed. One of the most interesting facts they mentioned is that the game was fully playable in some form as of Christmas break 2008, over a year away from ship. I find this to be mind boggling because the projects I worked on were largely focused on getting a single piece of the game highly polished and then cranking through the rest of the game based on that polished slice. While this approach definitely works and generates a lot of excitement throughout the team, I imagine that having the whole game playable so early tends to get a lot more eyeballs across the entire spectrum of content.

What's Old is New

2009-02-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

18 years later, the sequel to one of the most influential games of all time has been released to an enthusiastic audience. Street Fighter 2 witnessed many updates and Street Fighter 3 has been a staple on the tournament circuit for years, but Street Fighter 4 has awoken gamers in a way that has taken me somewhat by surprise. 2 Million copies were shipped to stores, but several local retailers are out of both versions. Arcade joysticks and gamepads tailored for use with the game are selling for 2-4 times their MSRP on Amazon and Ebay. Gamers lined up in droves to play in the GameStop Street Fighter 4 tournament on stock Xbox 360 game controllers with no bonus characters unlocked. Street Fighter 4 is a phenomenon that clearly defies the current economy.

I've gotten to spend a bit of time playing the game recently. Having missed its brief US appearance at arcades, I'm a relative newcomer to this entry in the series. I was an avid Street Fighter player up until Super Street Fighter 2 non-turbo edition, and I managed to win a few tournaments. Over time, I got tired of the constant incremental updates to the series. When Street Fighter 3 came out, arcades had diminished in both scale and foot traffic, along with my enthusiasm for them. I tried getting into other fighting games that have come out since then but without a steady regular group of friends or a place to meet interesting new challengers such as an arcade, my interest has never been lit up. Street Fighter 4 is going to solve those problems by the sheer amount of interest it has sparked in dormant fans who have moved on from fighting games as well as what will hopefully become a vibrant online community. The game has also done a superb job of taking the aesthetics into a modern generation while preserving the best elements of the fighting system and adding interesting new tactical choices, along with a massive cast of characters.

I'm also excited to see a newer, younger generation of gamers becoming interested in Street Fighter. It's hard for me to describe just how influential this game is on many modern game developers. Several members of the God of War team, including combat designers Derek Daniels and Eric Williams, are avid members of the Street Fighter community who have leveraged their deep knowledge of the Street Fighter mechanics into their own work. When people ask me about my favorite games of all time, Street Fighter 2 is frequently mentioned. When I am asked about what makes a robust combat system for a game, I usually will cite the relationships present in Street Fighter 2. This game is the console/arcade equivalent of the Ultima Underworld, System Shock, M.U.L.E., et al that many of the current directors of the game development community frequently attribute as inspirations and influences.

Unlike many gaming icons that are re imagined, I don't think this entry in the series will be a passing fad or a niche product either. The game markets itself. Interactive store displays sitting on the versus mode selection screen with 2 controllers invite people to challenge each other to impromptu matches, much in the way we did many years ago in the local arcades. I'm both excited to see how this new game will hold up in the years to come and eager to observe what sort of influence it will create on the many games that are yet to be made. While I used to be of the opinion that genres such as 2d scrolling shooters and 2d fighters went out of fashion with the main stream, this game reminds me of the retro revival trends that you see in other industries such as movies or clothes. Street Fighter is back in a big way, and I couldn't be happier about it.

2008 Professional Year In Review

2008-12-27T18:21:00.000-08:00

With the end of the year fast approaching, one of the many givens is the amount of "year in review" and "upcoming year forecasts" that will be published for every possible area of interest. For the end of this year, I thought I would spend some time going over events of note in my professional life.

At the beginning of the year I was wrapping up work on Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon at Sandblast. The project turned a corner and I was looking forward to the final push where everyone comes together. Towards the end of summer, production was just about done and so was my role on the project.

At the end of July, I attended the Microsoft focused GameFest for the first time. While this conference has been going on for quite a while, as a long time Nintendo developer I didn't have a reason to attend in years past. Having missed the Game Developer's Conference this year, I thought it would be a good way to scratch the conference itch. The best sessions were applicable to general game development outside of Microsoft platforms. There was at least a talk or two that got me to reflect on user interface design practices for games.

Shortly after GameFest, I started working at Sony Online Entertainment Seattle on The Agency. Making the switch was a somewhat daunting experience due to my lack of contacts at the company and the larger team that awaited me. Towards the end of the year, I made several important contributions that helped me get to know people better. It felt good to come together as a team to deliver an important milestone that occurred just before the holiday break.

Meanwhile, Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon was released for Xbox 360. While the reviews are much lower than I had hoped, I am still proud of this title and what the team was able to accomplish given the challenges we faced. In addition, as a designer I learned a lot about creating compelling sandbox gameplay, taking enemies and bosses from concept to completion, balancing a large pool of skills and weapons, and being a better team member in a design capacity.

From the research and recreation perspective, I was able to play through several incredible games this year, including Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, Mirror's Edge, Gears of War 2, God of War: Chains of Olympus, and Braid. I've still got several games in the backlog to finish in the coming year including the fantastic Persona 4, which hooked me for most of December. Overall, I thought it was a steady, solid year of high quality releases and I felt inspired by what these games achieved on their respective platforms.

Finally, from an extracurricular development perspective, I was able to increase the posting rate on the blog, attend several local industry gatherings, dabble in LittleBigPlanet level design, write up some conference proposals, and increase my knowledge on all things FPS, spy, and cool game mechanics related to work.

Overall, it was a productive year and I want to make 2009 an even better one. On the agenda: reading several books on design, attending at least one more conference, writing about game development more often, finishing several games, getting to know a larger piece of the game design community, and building awesome creative experiences that I can share.

DAH!: Path of the Furon, here at last!

2008-12-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

The day that a game you worked on is available for sale is always an exciting one. Today I went to Best Buy to pick up my copy of DAH!: Path of the Furon. It wasn't on store shelves at the time I arrived, but the weekly ad guaranteed it would be in by 2 PM today. After speaking with one of the sales reps and having him hunt it down, I walked out with a shiny new copy. I'm excited to finally play the game from start to finish without interruption or fires to put out. So far I have managed to clear the first invasion site and I've been pleasantly surprised by how well some things worked out. There are the occasional audio issues and miscellaneous bugs present, but I'm mostly happy with what we were able to accomplish given our tumultuous develpment cycle. I'm looking forward to getting back into the game, and I'll post my thoughts on the rest of the finished product and address the reviews in the near future. For any of the Destroy All Humans! fans out there, I hope we delivered an experience that surpasses your expectations of the series. That was one of our goals, and so far I feel like the gameplay has definitely delivered in that area. More to come...

The Indie Scene

2008-10-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

While I can't say I follow the independent scene as much as I should, it is always enjoyable to see games that push the boundaries of the medium. Once upon a time, one of my student projects was featured in the IGF Student Showcase and I have been following the festival at GDC ever since. Over the last weekend, I attended IndieCade, which was held at the Bellevue Open Satellite Art Exhibition Hall. This venue was a good choice because it reinforced the idea of games as art. I went during a reception that reminded me of traditional art gallery showings, only with games in place of paintings or sculptures. Each station had a PC with one or two games set up along with a written artist statement and interview. In addition, every 30 minutes or so an artist representing one of the exhibits on display would stand up and discuss the motivation for creating their project. True to my experience at traditional art showings, there were some games I didn't entirely "get", but I had a great time regardless and enjoyed the unique experiences on display.

The thing I find odd is that we work in a primarily digital medium and there are a very limited number of ways to discover creative non-commercial and independent work. While I hope that initiatives such as Xbox Community Games begin to open the floodgates, I feel like there is a lot more work to be done. The delivery platform is part of the problem. I applaud game portals such as Manifesto Games for providing a hub to indie content, but I consume the majority of my games on consoles these days. The PC has been almost wiped out as a gaming platform to me because of my perception that most software tends to degrade the quality of my computer, sometimes in ways I don't even know about at install time.

Another piece of the problem is the lack of a larger organization to promote games on a more regular basis. Because games have a lot of usability issues that are not present in other mediums, I feel that the presentation needs to be polished more to ensure that the experience an artist had in mind is represented properly. A good example of when this issue arises happened to one of the games at IndieCade that required the use of a controller. The analog sticks on the controllers at that specific computer did not function well and the experience of the game was significantly diminished as a result. I do not blame this on the IndieCade organizers, but there is a part of me that feels a disconnect between what the exhibitioner and exhibitionist expected to be shown, which is where a unifying organizer would be beneficial.

Perhaps the other important piece of the indie scene problem originates from the content itself. It isn't getting people interested enough to set aside the comfortable mainstream games that make up the bulk of our time consumption. Some of this is a result of being trained over many years into an understanding of games that is too narrow while another part seems like a failed attempt to understand the potential of games as a medium.

Whatever the problems may be, it was certainly encouraging to see our medium promoted from another angle that doesn't get nearly enough exposure. I'll certainly keep my out for more of these events and do my best to get people to attend in the hopes that we can see the fruits of further experimentation.

The summer update

2008-08-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

As with all things in life, change is inevitable. Now that my work on Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon has wrapped up, I have moved on to Sony Online Entertainment Seattle, where I am working on systems and content for The Agency as a Senior Game Designer. While I can't say much about the game, I can say I am excited to be working on such a unique and interesting project. There is preview coverage from e3 over at GameZone and I expect upcoming coverage from the Sony Fan Faire to hopefully come out soon. The two main things that excite me about The Agency is that it is original IP and most people are fairly intrigued by the premise of the game. I feel a lot of good momentum going forward and hope that the team can deliver on all the things people are looking forward to.

In Destroy All Humans! news, IGN now features a developer blog written by Creative Director Jon Knoles that outlines some of the decisions that went behind the weapons, destruction, and conversation system. I did a lot of tuning on the weapons and upgrade system. It was fun trying to balance the AI, alert system, and bosses against what almost always seems like an overpowered (on purpose) set of player abilities and weapons without making the game too hard. A detailed description of the weapons can be found in one of these IGN blog entries.

As a follow up to one of my earlier posts, this summer has definitely defied my long held sense of summer drought. Metal Gear Solid 4 kicked things off nicely and the 5 weeks of Xbox Live Arcade is keeping me busy these days as I try and climb the leaderboards on Geometry Wars 2, finish off the achievements in Braid, and try to squeeze in time for Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Galaga Legions, and Castle Crashers. I've also found myself absorbed in Olympic fever, and consequently took up Beijing 2008 on Xbox 360. It's been a great summer so far and the holiday flood is going to flare up in September.

As per every belated blog post, I'll make an effort to increase the update frequency here. There are a number of things on my mind these days that I'd like to share.

Creature of the Night

2008-06-16T23:28:00.001-07:00

My love for games forms a large part of the passion that drives my work. In the last couple of months, I have partaken in not just one, but two midnight game launches. In April it was for Grand Theft Auto 4, and more recently for Metal Gear Solid 4. In both cases, I admit to feeling genuinely excited prior to the release of each game. The funny thing of it is, I don't stay up that late anymore, so I only get an hour or two of playtime before going to bed (well, I suppose some people might consider 2:30AM to be a little late..). The reason I do it is for the satisfaction I have the next day, which is palatable, and it leaves me with enough longing to make me giddy until I can return home. Calling myself a superfan isn't really the right word, because I don't buy anything and everything that is associated with my favorite things. However, I definitely feel a strong excitement at times when I sense that something I want will live up to my expectations. I want to say more about both of these games, but I will reserve that for a later time. The great thing is, in both these cases the excitement I feel about each still hasn't worn off.

At this point in life, many of my friends and colleagues no longer wait out in the late hours of the night to pick up a game. Chances are, most of us won't get much time to dive into the game for potentially weeks. That said, I think there is another important reason for continuing to partake in this process. To understand the enthusiasm and disappointment of a fan, I think you need to continuously experience being one yourself. Having waited years for something to come out only to be disappointed is something everyone can relate to. On the other hand, having the final product meet and exceed expectations can add value to peoples lives, sometimes for many years after release. I enjoy going on this emotional journey from reading initial press reactions, to discussing game trailers, to being in the pre launch line at midnight, and all the way through the conversations that ensue once people have gotten to try the final result. And then there is the inevitable sadness. Sadness that you experienced a game that was clearly hyped up to be something it wasn't, or so completely exceeded your expectations in a way you know will perhaps never be replicated in quite the same way. The ups and downs are what make me feel alive, and I hope I can continually exceed the expectations others have for the things I create.

Destroying All Humans in the Press

2008-04-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

For most of the game development process, a lot of what we work on is kept under wraps. Consequently, it's refreshing when you get a chance to show your work and get feedback from fellow gamers. THQ held a Gamer's Day earlier in the month where Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon was demonstrated by fellow designers Jon Knoles and Matt Cox. While industry veterans believe that previews tend to skew positive for various reasons, it was exciting to hear that people also had a blast playing the game during the event.

Preview articles and media from Gamer's Day can be found at Gamespot, IGN, Gamespy, TeamXBox, and WorthPlaying. Path of the Furon was also mentioned on the EGM Live podcast of April 7th, 2008. As a fan of the 1UP podcasts, this was a particularly exciting place to be mentioned. Additionally, to coincide with the event, a snazzy new trailer can also be found at GameTrailers.

Finally, the Sandblast Games website went live recently. There are unique trailers and screenshots available on the website as well as images from our studio and a biography of the company. It's great to have a company home on the internet and a lot of people worked hard to make the website both user friendly and slick.

All of these recent announcements and updates make the finish line feel more real than ever. Final polish is being done and the severity of issues is declining at a rapid rate. I hope to see more news and impressions in the near future and look forward to sharing the final vision to the rest of the world.

Game Difficulty: Front loading the pain

2007-11-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

In recent months, my work focus has been tuning player weapons and abilities, enemy AI, and game systems. I spend a lot of my time thinking about the "feel" of how each of these systems interact and how they affect the play experience. As a developer, systems are tough to balance because everyone has a different play style and preferences. After a fair amount of internal and external playtesting, two conflicting opinions come up regularly - some want more challenge while others feel like they aren't powerful enough. While these two opinions seem at odds with each other, they reference different areas to improve. I address the first issue by crunching numbers on permutations of different combat outcomes and poking around for where the numbers break down. To address the second, I look for ways to improve presentation, because the perception of power is equally important to balance when crafting player weapons and abilities. Because it relates to my current work, I feel extra sensitive to difficulty curves in games I play these days. Three memorable examples come to mind.

First off is Blue Dragon, the RPG brainchild of former Final Fantasy series director Hironobu Sakaguchi and developer Artoon. RPGs are an interesting difficulty case study because by and large, they give players the ability to determine their personal difficulty curve. Your characters become stronger gradually via combat and equipment upgrades, and you can tweak the difficulty down by spending more time fighting enemies to collect experience and money. Blue Dragon presented an interesting conundrum because I found myself dying a total of 5 times in the first 2 hours of the game. The first time this happened was when I stumbled upon the first boss of the game. While I should have been wary once I had received a 'checkpoint' notification, I had gotten lost when wandering around the map. A short cutscene ensued and I found myself in the midst of combat. The first boss requires a relatively simple but specific strategy to defeat. Unfortunately, that strategy rendered one of my three characters almost totally useless and forced another one to heal every turn. If the character that could effectively damage to the enemy was knocked out, I fell into a vicious cycle of reviving that character, then healing them, only to have a different character die. After about 3 tries I had the strategy down and won the fight.

Shortly after this encounter, I walked into the nearby wilderness. Having just defeated a powerful enemy, I felt confident in my abilities. Unfortunately for me, this victory was a ruse to boost my ego. In a battle with one of the 'normal' enemies, I was on the receiving end of a spell that did enough damage to kill my entire party in one round even though they were all nearly at full health. Lesson learned - don't mess with that monster. Then I found a path that looked like it might be the next area I should explore. That path was blocked by a sleeping bear. Once again I decided to tempt fate and bypass this bear. He proceeded to annihilate my party with only a few swings.

After this death, I became a bit dismayed. I didn't know where to go and it seemed like every time I tried exploring somewhere new, death was the only one there to greet me. The solution seemed simple - kill lots of easy, well understood enemies, right? As a general rule, I tend to over train my characters when playing RPGs anyway. The problem lies in the fact that the location of these enemies relative to early parts of the game clearly didn't indicate to me what was dangerous and how strong I needed to be. In addition, the game punished me for one of my favorite aspects of playing RPGs - exploring the world. Also, the game hasn't taught me much about how I can fare better in those unexpected circumstances, other than grinding enemies over and over. All of this added up to a poor early impression. I was also left to wonder if the developers spent much time observing people play through the early game or thought about how powerful a player could be at the time they encountered these early enemies.

The second example I'd like to call out is Stuntman:Ignition for the Xbox 360. As a caveat, I must admit that I have never played Stuntman games before so I had no idea what to expect. The result was ultimately an exercise in frustration. I failed the first level within 30 seconds of playing the game. I proceeded to fall in holes, instant death lava, and missed the timing on scripted sequences about 10-15 times before I completed that first level. One failure lead to another. In addition, there was a timer which served as another failure mechanism. This creates an additional pressure that pushes you forward while you attempt to avoid the numerous hazards. Each of the hazards can instantly set you back to the start of the level. In addition, the stunt sequences are fixed, but you encounter several in rapid succession, and you have to be familiar with the geography of the level and timing of the events to complete them. You also have to get within close range of each objective to complete it, with very little wiggle room and a ticking clock staring at you.

On average, this game probably reinforces failure more regularly than any recent game in memory. In addition, once you succeed, you rarely get a perfect score, and several of the achievements are tied to perfecting each level. After playing the game for a while longer, I made a couple of adjustments to my strategy, one of them being to set the difficulty to easy. This mode was still quite challenging and as a long time gamer, I feel aversion to feeling forced to play on a mode called "easy" to make progress. Gears of Wars' naming convention of 'Casual' difficulty has a much nicer ring to it, but I digress. While switching difficulty temporarily stopped the frustration, the challenge naturally ramps up over time and the levels become longer, and at one point a 'shelf moment' (not my term, but a good one for declaring when the game has an event that makes a player turn it off and leave it to sit on a shelf for the remainder of its life) was triggered. I stopped playing without any intention to return.

For my last example, I'd like to offer a counterpoint to these games. Guitar Hero 2 has one of the smoothest difficulty ramps I have experienced in any game. Easy mode felt like a difficulty that was fairly unchallenging for me until I shifted my focus to perfect each song before moving onto Normal. The tail end of easy mode flows nicely into the early parts of Normal. Attempting to perfect each song on Normal segues perfectly into Hard, and Hard difficulty introduces another chord which makes you feel like you need to expand your toolset even more. Finally, expert feels as it should, an exercise meant only for those that seriously practice the game in order to develop the muscle memory needed to reach the peak of their skills. Along the difficulty progression, Guitar Hero 2 made me feel as if I had genuinely improved my ability, and that I could consistently perform at that ability, even after putting the game away for some time.

My appreciation for Guitar Hero led me to the GDC talk Harmonix gave at GDC last year. It was enlightening to hear the evolution the company went through in making abstract games such as Amplitude as well as mass market titles such as Karaoke Revolution. To them, each game felt like a success in some ways and a failure in others, until they arrived at Guitar Hero. The lessons they shared about making games deep for core gamers and accessible to casual ones were well stated and resonated in my personal experience playing Guitar Hero. Harmonix managed to create a game that hooks you early, teases you with challenges that are ever so slightly out of your reach, and generously rewards you along the way with digital gifts such as new songs as well as an intangible sense of satisfaction from reaching the next plateau in your personal ability. They also created a game that truly follows the "simple to learn, difficult to master" mantra. It's refreshing to have games that balance their challenge so well when there are other well produced but poorly paced games that also cross my path. As I stare at the combat numbers and playtest results at work, I think of the Harmonix design principles and aim for the goal of achieving the finely tuned balance present in their latest creations.

The pain of the wait

2007-10-29T23:11:00.001-07:00

My second Xbox 360 is on its way back after flashing the dreaded Red Ring. I felt like a baby ripped from the womb because it died on me during the launch weekend of Halo 3, when I planned on coordinating some serious co-op games with my friends. Having been through this before, I knew the process and wasn't excited about the prospect of starting it again. I called into the repair center the following day. I was pleased to speak with a helpful service representative who processed my repair after lecturing me about using a surge protector with the system. Apparently for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 you are supposed to plug the console directly into the wall outlet or you risk burning out the system faster and voiding your warranty. This came as a rather large surprise to me since there is a substantial market for high end power protection solutions for home theaters.

All of that aside, what I found fascinating is how my gaming habits changed to accommodate the loss of my primary game system. Unrelated to this incident, I recently put together a new PC to replace the one that died on me. I spent a fair bit of time playing The Orange Box with the traditional mouse and keyboard set up. I always intended to do this because the PC is the platform Half-Life 2 was originally developed for. I generally prefer to experience games in the way that is closest to the original vision, which is why I like playing old games on an actual NES rather than through the Virtual Console (although convenience and shelf space are slowly winning me over). In addition to being highly engaged by Portal and Half Life 2:Episode 2, the updated community features of Steam impressed me quite a bit. It's amazing to see this service turn into something truly robust and user friendly. In addition, I installed the free copy of Lost Planet that I received with my video card. It looks gorgeous on the PC and with my Xbox controller it played as well as I remember it, which is to say that I feel has a lot of untapped potential. I also started digging out PC games that couldn't be installed before for lack of hard drive space on my old computer. I managed to play a little bit of Titan Quest, which is by far the prettiest looking game that pushes a magical "I love Diablo" happy button in my brain.

On the console side of things, I went back to the tried and true Persona 3, one of the best RPGs I have played in ages and a severely under appreciated game. I also fired up the Playstation 3 for the first time since MotorStorm was released. After updating to the latest firmware, I decided to give the remote play feature a whirl. I love the concept behind it - this feature allows you to access much of the PS3 functionality remotely via your PSP. You can watch movies, listen to music, view photos, and even play a limited selection of games through the PSP. This hints at the the nirvana of gaming I hope to see in the form of a high quality console console gaming experience that you can take with you on a handheld that plays off the same data and save files. Unfortunately, with this technology there is a fair amount of lag for anything that needs to render images, but music seemed to play reasonably well. I sincerely hope this technology can be improved because I think it's a fantastic idea.

Once I had my fill of remote play, I decided that it was time to get my Playstation Network account properly set up. I was looking forward to checking out the PSN interface and downloading some of the original games including Calling All Cars, Flow, Super Stardust HD, and Everyday Shooter. I also pulled down several larger commercial demos including one for Ratchet and Clank Future. I wasn't sure what to expect having spent the bulk of my online gaming on Xbox Live. As it turns out, I rather enjoyed the interface. It mostly looks like a web site but it was clean and relatively easy to find what I wanted. There are some navigation issues when you want to go back and forth, but the overall time it takes to find an item is relatively speedy.

To round out my gaming, I picked up Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles for the PSP. I was grinning from ear to ear playing it until I reached stage 4 where the game crushed my soul and reminded me of the good times of classic game difficulty ramps. I've since managed to get further along and have learned the game systems well enough to play better, but the difficulty spike felt like a punch to the gut.

Throughout my recent gaming journey I've missed being logged into Xbox Live and collecting achievements alongside my friends. During this waiting period, gaming felt a little lonely since many of my friends have since finished both Halo 3 and The Orange Box on the 360, and are now rocking out on Guitar Hero 3. I am still looking forward to finishing Halo 3 but I feel like someone who missed the train. It won't be new to my friends anymore and the experience of playing it co-op won't be that novel. My gamerscore has also remained stagnant and is no longer that high relative to my colleagues. All these feelings make me a stronger believer in the notion of a connected playing experience where gaming communities are perpetually online. The one caveat is that I wish there was something even larger than Xbox Live that tied all the services together so that I could be "gaming alone, together", no matter what platform I was on. The timing of the defect and subsequent repair is truly unfortunate because Super Mario Galaxy is guaranteed to turn me into a non-connected hermit for some time. Only after this hopefully joyous experience will I be able to reemerge from my cave and embrace the community I have become estranged to. I only hope that the little man living in my Xbox 360 doesn't decide to throw another temper tantrum after being ignored on his return. The recent journey has been fun, and I now understand the power of a platform to be compelling for more than just the games that play on it.

The cat's out...

2007-09-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

Or rather, the cat has been out for a while - since E3 anyway. The game I have been working on has oficially been announced. Destroy All Humans!: Path of the Furon is a title that immediately excited me. You can find videos of the project at Gametrailers. Write ups and impressions are available at IGN, GameSpot, and 1Up.

There are many reasons why I find this franchise to be fun and compelling to work on. For one, humor is a large part of the game fiction. I've always felt that comedy is woefully underrepresented in games. I remember reading that the number one reason people go to see movies is to laugh. In games, the reasons people play them seem to be different and perhaps more diversified. There are inevitably exceptions. Playing board games or MMOs will generally lead to laughing more often than what you get in a typical single player adventure, but I chalk that up to the social nature of those genres. Through the entertaining exchanges between the main characters and the playful harpooning of pop culture throughout the ages in Destroy All Humans!, there are many moments that arouse a chuckle.

Another reason I was particularly drawn to this game is its stylish take on the open world genre. Grand Theft Auto opened many eyes about the wonderful possibility space games can achieve as a medium. Since then many titles have offered their own twist on the genre and, as is is to be expected, some have succeeded more than others. Destroy All Humans! is one of the franchises that I believe has staked a unique claim. While driving cars around town is fun, being able to control a UFO and run around the world with alien super powers is compelling for a lot of different reasons. There are many opportunities to harness the open ended nature of the game because of all the permutations of powers that are available to this franchise. Developing gameplay within this sandbox is a fulfilling journey as a developer.

Since I wasn't part of the team that originally birthed this series, I hope that our studio can exceed all expectations and that the hard work of crafting such a massive game pays off. We still have a ways to go, but in the meantime I will continue to pontificate on other areas of the game development world.

The joy of conferences

2007-06-18T23:56:00.000-07:00

With Casuality, Austin Game Developer's Conference, and Gamefest looming on the horizon, I wanted to reflect on what excites me about conferences in general. I love to absorb information that can make me a better developer whether it be in the form of books, conversations, lectures, or podcasts. Conferences are great for the networking, reconnecting opportunities, inspiration, and challenging thoughts to ponder. For all of these reasons, I feel compelled to pack my schedule at each one. Thus far I haven't managed to construct a talk of my own, but that is certainly on my short list of upcoming career goals.

I've been attending GDC since 1999. Since then, I have missed 2 of the conferences on account of school or work taking precedence. I make it a priority to attend whenever possible, and I'm always empathetic when speakers mention team members that couldn't attend because they were crunching away on a game. I think this is one of the unfortunate side effects of short term management thinking in the games industry today. I firmly believe that developers need to constantly learn. Learning is important not only for their personal career growth, but also for bringing effective new processes to their studio. I can understand why managers don't perceive sufficient value in these conferences - they cost a lot, they disrupt teams while members are away, the sessions are of inconsistent quality, and it's often hard to improve work processes with the inertia inherent on most projects.

So why do I enjoy attending so much? The reasons are many. One of the great things about our industry is its relatively small size. This means we can still get a large amount of the best quality developers together in one place. These industry leaders offer deep insight into the voodoo of crafting the awe inspiring games we play each year. We also get to hear the success stories of indies who manage to bring their unique ideas to market in spite of the ever increasing barrier to entry. Hearing both ends of the spectrum talk is highly motivational and challenges me to work harder at mastering my trade. I come back to work far more excited about whatever it is I am doing. This excitement tapers off eventually, but my productivity is noticeably higher for a short time after a conference.

Another reason I love conferences is for all the meeting opportunities. More specifically, I frequently run into long lost colleagues and classmates. DigiPen has proven to be not only a solid educational foundation, but also a wellspring of contacts within companies all over the country. While attending college I had the good fortune of interacting with several different levels of the school while I tutored. Former schoolmates I run into at conferences surprise me because of the brief shared moments they remember. They also have plenty of interesting stories to share about their work experiences. In addition to the fascinating peers I reconnect with, I also manage to meet with several new friends during the sessions and parties. I value this human connection very much because it allows me to better appreciate life outside the company I'm working at. Perspective is a wonderful thing.

Finally, there is definite value in the sessions I have attended. I make it a habit to attend diverse talks across different sectors of the industry including academia, serious games, casual, mobile games, pay for play models, and each of the different disciplines within game development. Attending talks on different business models allows me to better understand market trends and shapes my thinking about the evolving needs of players. Talks from different disciplines increase my overall knowledge of the development process. Attending lectures on production, for example, helps me to be more effective at presenting information to producers who can then do a better job of scheduling the project. In a slightly different example, going to a lecture on sound challenges me to think more deeply about improving game design through dynamic effects and music.

For all of these reasons and more I continue to eagerly anticipate each upcoming event. I hope that others can also appreciate the value provided by these gatherings and are able to find the time to attend. I also hope that we can one day share our stories at a conference together in the near future.

A Tale of Two Co-Op Games

2007-02-27T01:43:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the pleasure of playing two excellent games that feature co-op gameplay. The games in question are Gears of War and Crackdown. While I thoroughly enjoyed both games, my opinion on the quality of the cooperative experience varies greatly for each game. To me it seems that Gears was created with co-op in mind early on. On the other hand, Crackdown's co-op strikes me as a feature tacked on late in the development cycle. In principle, sandbox games would seem like the perfect fit for a co-op experience, but Crackdown simply missed the mark for me.

Co-op feels like it was weaved into the design fabric of Gears of War. Even in single player, there is a strong teamwork component built in. I was a little disappointed that your AI stand-in couldn't revive you, but I felt a duty to back them up when they got into rough situations. The single player game also featured conversational interplay between members of the squad. While a lot of this dialogue wasn't exceptionally deep, it was amusing and fit with the character archetypes presented. Many of the game scenarios specifically split the squad up and provided "windows" into which you could provide cover for the other half. If one of the squads died during these segments, both had to restart from the previous checkpoint. This lead both sides to focus not only on what was ahead, but what was going on with the other squad.

The high quality of the co-op experience really hit home when playing online with a friend. While playing through the harder difficulty modes, it was essential to lay down a game plan for how we would navigate upcoming encounters. Feelings of guilt arose if a game over screen appeared when I had missed an opportunity to protect my friend. Fundamentally, Gears put me into a gaming mode that is usually limited to MMOs or team based multiplayer experiences. My fate in the co-op story mode was intricately linked to my ability to support my team mates, a rare thrill indeed.

Crackdown provided an entirely different experience. On the positive side, it featured a great multiplayer interface. I could immediately find and host co-op games or jump into someone else's world whenever I wanted. Crackdown was one of the first games where I used the Xbox Live friend invite functionality regularly. The trouble is, once in a game with my friend, there wasn't a compelling reason for us to stay together. Maybe I didn't get the co-op vibe they were going for. YouTube features several videos of emergent gameplay that is fostered by co-op multiplayer. I suspect the loosely structured single player experience was a major part of the problem. While there was a framework - namely, hunting down mob bosses, the fiction surrounding this hunt was stretched thin. I rarely felt that defeating these bosses made me feel like I was affecting the world until all of the bosses in a particular section were defeated. In addition, it was easy enough for one player to defeat the boss while another was returning to the scene. I also loathed the friendly fire that was constantly present. I spent most of my return trips grumbling about a stray rocket that was fired while we were engaged in a close quarters fight with our enemies. My friend would wait for my return to finish off the boss, but eventually I realized I wasn't missing much and he took them out while I headed off to the next mark.

The co-op experience improved substantially when we started doing the vehicle stunt achievements. Some of the car stunts were fairly hard to accomplish and we would take turns trying different approaches, including the infamous "toss a car occupied by your friend into the ring" trick (or cheat, depending on your point of view). Together we were able to cut down our completion time on these challenges. Even if we failed many times in a row, it was hilarious to watch spectacularly failed attempts. I think the main story mode could have benefited from requiring more teamwork in the way that we were able to assist each other for the stunt challenges. In the end, I was very satisfied with my overall Crackdown gameplay experience, but I'd love to see the co-op mode fleshed out in future versions, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

Long overdue update

2007-01-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

My writing has been sparse for the last several months and it's time for me to explain. When I left Nintendo last year I spent my time enjoying the summer, catching up on games, doing interviews, and learning various technologies. I also begin filling this space with my thoughts. Towards the beginning of fall things started getting busier and my list of potential topics grew without a corresponding burst of inspiration. Then I began working again.

I'm now officially a designer at Cranky Pants Games/THQ where I am working on an incredibly fun, super-secret title. I was looking at different companies for a while and I'm glad I hooked up with the talented group over at CPG. I've been working full time since November and it's been a great experience so far. The game is looking great and I get to work with awesome people every day.

While my title has changed I'm leveraging my background as well. While working at Nintendo I did a lot of gameplay programming on Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Metroid Prime Hunters. I worked on areas such as player control, gameplay objects, enemy AI, and boss development. These days I'm not programming so much as prototyping and experimenting. In addition to writing design documentation and thoughtful discussions I look forward to being hands on with the game as much as possible. That's the approach that worked best for teams I've been on.

I'm happy to have firmly established myself in a design track. Engineering is an amazing discipline as well but ultimately I decided that I needed to love engineering for the sake of engineering to truly excel. I didn't get jazzed about new shaders,APIs, and algorithms in the same way as my colleagues. I was always much more interested in getting the controls of Mario down or making the enemies feel right. I also preferred to use tools that were more abstract than the programming languages I'd become accustomed to. I definitely enjoy design for the sake of design. In fact, when I go to GDC my tendency is to mostly attend design talks with a smattering of production and engineering lectures. I'm looking forward to bringing some great gameplay to our super-secret title. And to updating my blog..