Semesters End

For me, Philosophy has to be one of the most perplexingly pointless academic pursuits. I admit my knowledge of the field to be rather limited, so by all means make the argument I remain ignorant in my interpretations; but it seems to me like a bunch of oft-bearded dudes sitting down to discuss and devise deliberately unanswerable questions, occasionally composing elaborate and poetic theories which they don’t necessary think are true, but merely consider to be pleasing from an aesthetic perspective. A kind of “what would that imply?” “Well nothing, but isn’t it a neat idea?” form of exchange.

While it is perhaps a true blue mark of the sophistication of our species that we can find the time to indulge in such deep intellectual consideration of the life the universe and everything and why it equals 42, I am a pragmatic soul, and I cannot quite see how any of that is ever going to find practical use in improving the human condition it discusses all day long. Philosophy seems deliberately opposed to finding solutions; it’s more interested in thinking at length about the questions. Also, it’s a hard word to say sometimes.

Friday Feeling
Why am I talking about Philosophy? Well, our last contextual session was about the Philosophical perspective on aesthetics and design, which I think acted as quite a poignant metaphor for the subject as a whole. It was entertaining to watch and some fun discussion was had, but when we left, we hadn’t actually learned anything. On a related note, I was talking to a student of Philosophy about a month ago, who described to me the theory of the collective unconscious. A brain child of everyone’s favourite Philosopher, Carl Jung, this states that all human thought and imagination exists on a shared plane of existence, and therefore any idea you ever have is merely an existent concept translated from the shared ether. Preposterous, obviously. I was actually borderline offended by the implication my ideas were not my own, but, I must admit it does act as a pretty colourful explanation for some of the things I discovered in the weeks that followed.

Jung would be Proud
Initially I was reluctant to bring any of these discoveries to light. Firstly in case it comes off as inventing an alibi for arrogant trickery after-the-fact, and secondly because pointing your audience towards anything similar to your ideas can often dilute their impact. In the end though, I think it factors into my reflective exercise (in an aesthetically pleasing way), and anyone that knows me or reads this very blog, knows I don’t suck so hard I have to go around stealing ideas to pad my own. I came to my conclusions the old fashioned way. Scribbles, spider diagrams, and caffeine induced hallucination.

So the first disappointing realisation was that upcoming horror title, Alan Wake, while totally different in narrative, setting, theme and specialised mechanics to Parasomnia 101, was almost a direct realisation of how I wanted it to look and control in game. Wake even went so far as to use the torch/pistol crossover position and light-beam-as-a-targeting-cursor concept. As anyone I mentioned this to knows, I was quite disproportionally excited about that very superficial part of Parasomnia... One could suggest from the trailers Alan Wake also experiments in using open control/camera methods in combination with rebalancing the protagonist/antagonist ability ratio to bring back the survival element to the equation. And with some success it seems. Well, lucky I still have my personal phobia director, adaptable enemy types and sleep deprivation mechanics all to myself.

Ultimate, which was based on a concept Matt Burton and I had originally conceived in mid-first year, had some of its own thunder stolen by a little game called Borderlands. Although I read a bit about the title about a month ago, I was to be honest, more wowed with the graphic-novel visuals than the premise, and didn’t realise how many similarities in theme could be drawn until it released. Mixing RPG and MMO elements into the FPS genre, advanced teamwork and instanced areas were all shared topics for Ultimate and Borderlands... luckily, the latter is more concerned with dungeon crawler style mechanics and focuses on a small band of characters in a free roaming world, rather than persistent community zones as lobbies for dozens of gamers. Also, when the RPG aspect was imported into Borderlands, it brought with it stat-based balance, which I deliberately avoided in Ultimate; balancing the game via gear and ability levels.

Final kick in the teeth was my shadow walking mechanic, which I deliberately designed to be a unique defining ability for Narro’s character in Affinitus. Hello November’s GamesTM issue, featuring an article on a game called Lost in Shadow. Although this quirky platformer is barely on the horizon, it is all about puzzles based on manipulating light sources to cast shadows you can then use to progress. On the bright side (pun?) in Affinitus the shadow walking isn’t nearly as central to the experience, and finds itself supported by many other unique elements.

Great Minds Think Alike?
At first I must confess these little jabs kind of took the wind out of my sails, but thinking about it another way, this was bound to happen. My activities this semester were based on analysing current trends and designing new concepts based on what I anticipated to be the upcoming demands and interests of different demographics. The industry has to be doing the exactly same thing, so if anything it perhaps only demonstrates I was on the right track all along with my design outcomes, realistically generating ideas which are in fact applicable to the market place. They must be, because approximations of them are already appearing on shelves in the coming year. The shadow walking mechanic was perhaps less fortunate, but again I must be on the same wavelength as professional designers to be landing at the same conclusions when looking for new mechanics. In this regard, it’s all quite reassuring. Obviously though, I will have to go much further outside the box in future, I’ve been making small leaps of a year or two, when perhaps I could think much farther ahead.

It isn’t like these examples are the first time I’ve been burned this way either. I’m sure all of us have had ideas which appeared in the market before we had a chance to make them reality. Believe it or not, I had designed games very similar to Gears of War and Crackdown prior to even starting the BA course...You probably don’t believe me, but that’s ok, I have plenty more ideas were that came from!

1 Down 2 to Go
This will be my last blog/diary/reflective entry for the semester. All that remains is for me to do is burn my project folders to disk, which I will be doing as soon as Jim has done a last check to see it is all in order. I have really enjoyed this first stage of the Masters, and feel I have genuinely hit my stride as far as idea generation and conceptualisation goes. My process is becoming more natural and polished, which is allowing me to manage my time and meet deadlines with relative ease. The proof lies in the pudding, being that I “finished” a week early, somehow. Next semester though, I’ll be out of my comfort zone, tackling new problems and challenges I will no doubt struggle with. Hello, UDK. Be gentle.

-Steve

Nearing the Finish Line

By my standards, it has been quite a long time since my last blog entry (well, since a blog entry about my actual work anyway) but I return bearing gifts. Gifts being images of completed work that is! Yeah I know, you wanted a pony. But life is cruel and you have to learn that early if you are to survive. So, having completed a design response for each of my 4 research activities and drawn them neatly together under the umbrella of idea generation, it appeared at first glance I had the semester wrapped up in a little bow. (Snap, Christmas theme, how seasonal of me) Alas, Josh and Jim are always pushing me to go one step beyond and try that little bit harder. Rightfully so I guess! Thus, the existing pitch boards were discovered to be a first draft. As previously explained, they were more visual aids than standalone communication boards; they could not function on the wall independent from the accompanying text or my gibbering Irish verbal explanations. And so I began the task of returning to each project and composing boards which would put forward the ideas by themselves.

Banner Happy

Part of this was adding relevant concise textual captions to back up the visual demonstrations, but it was also a chance to take on board all the suggestions and advice the tutors had provided during the year. (And give a once-over to the projects where I felt I had perhaps rushed to the finish line.) During a discussion with Josh I expressed the difficulty I was having fitting the content neatly onto a set amount of A3 boards. This led to him suggesting a radical and dynamic solution; to use long “banner” A3’s for each project, rather than separate boards. This would subconsciously cause the audience to read across the board and see the idea as a whole, rather than framing specific chunks of the concept. Further, I wouldn’t have to frame the sections off with borders, giving me more space to fit in the content and experiment with visual delivery. To cap off the banners, Josh recommended example box art and/or listed USPs, to really knock home the concepts as marketable realities.

Re-Inventing the Wheel

Jim “Christmas Jumper even-if-he-says-it-isn’t” Thompson had his own suggestion for the now-banner shaped boards. Concerned that the depth of my creative process and conceptualisation methods were not coming across in the final game idea, he requested I experiment in ways I could try and express these kinds of elements in the final outcome. Jim was of course totally right, and I was really intrigued by the idea, because as a designer I am always interested in covering how a conclusion was reached, and I am personally aware my ideas are strongest when you are aware of the thought process supporting them. Unfortunately the prospect was as daunting as it was intriguing; essentially I had to re-invent the wheel, discover an all new method of presentation never utilised before in the classroom. I needed to find a way to inject a large amount of analytical information into the board without it forming as a wall of text. Around then I realised there was a reason I hadn’t tried this before.

Eventually I dove into the work of one Edward Tufte, an expert in communicating large amounts of information in clever succinct ways. Despite the fact Tufte himself was a numbers guy and I was dealing with words, I was inspired by his use of diagrams to invent something similar to meet my purposes. And thus was born “the thought tree”. Seen as a “graph” of keywords explaining how they relate to each other via arrows. Extremely basic, but I hope at the least the keywords will suggest the issues I have considered, and in an interview, provoke the kind of questions I’d be itching to answer. I also took a few cues from game magazines, which I recognised as addressing a range of points within a review spread. Notably I lifted the idea of short inset captions from GamesTM, adapting their “Missing Link” feature, into a Q/A one which would posit an identified design problem in similar games, and then explain the solution my response provides. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start!

Future Tense

And so was born the 4 new “long” communication banner-boards you see sprinkled throughout this post. Meanwhile, I had done a light-speed draft of both contextual projects over the weekend, so I had Jim take a look at them. He subsequently told me that these kind of documents work best in pseudo third-person (but without ever referring to yourself) so after much internal struggle, I finally just this afternoon forced myself to fix this perspective oversight. And put my Learning Agreement in the right historical tense also. I then went the extra mile and gave both projects a totally unnecessary visual overhaul in Indesign, and tweaked my Liteary/Contextual bibliography to Harvard standard. Welll, almost. Location published? Yeah, right.

What remains to be done, you ask? Well I am going to spend tomorrow putting together some external design documents to hold all the information still not on the communication banners, and then later in the week I have to start examining realistic methods to print and mount these behemoths. I also need to run the Literary and Contextual review past Jim one last time, to ensure it IS meeting the assessment requirements. Generally speaking however, I seem to have completed the semester’s workload in record time. I now have leeway to consider final presentation and polish/tweak at a relaxed comfortable pace. This would be a first, gentlemen.

Dear Live Journal

That’s pretty much all the actual work and content covered, so feel free to bail out if you don’t want to listen to me wax lyrical about my current mind set. No not tales of dead relatives, tragedy and emo-disaster, this is still me you’re talking too. I merely feel it worth mentioning in this, my reflective man-diary, that I was home for a few days last week, and when I returned to Preston, I felt genuinely refreshed. I always like getting home for a bit because it gives me a chance to get out of the design-mines and actually PLAY some games. Having returned to Preston, I am totally juiced about Games Design all over again, which allowed me to tackle the communication banners and contextual blahdeblah with renewed vigour. That energy has not yet abated though, and I am itching to design some new concepts, jump into the Unreal Dev Kit, and get my fingers in some potentially career-making pies. Don’t mistake my relaxed tweaking of my finished projects as a chance for me to kick back while everyone else is slaving away, I actually have a variety of extra-curricular activities lined up which I have been intending to make time for for a while now. For one thing, I am now deeply interested in doing some iphone app concepts (and possibly pitching them to the relevant interested parties), grabbing any more placement or experience work that is going, writing an article I would consider worthy of the international Games Design journal “Games Studies”, making myself known on more official design forums/competitions, and pimping my website. Which is finally up! Following some hosting confusion.www.dexterxs.com people, check it out.

Cheer up everybody, ‘tis the season.

-Steve

Open09: A Question of Innovation

Just over a week ago Jim “probably reading this on his new iphone” Thompson, master of my Masters course, hosted a small design-orientated discussion forum known as a “Turtle” as part of a larger Trandisciplinary event called Open09. The implied beauty of the event is it brings together a mix of people experienced in the discussed field alongside designers from different backgrounds; new angles of approach combining with the existent knowledge base to produce new and exciting solutions to oft discussed problems. Warned not to be too specific, Jim put together a series of three questions all circling the same issue: how to encourage and enable innovation in the videogame industry, and by curious extension, how to get those innovative ideas to new markets. Although I expected to enjoy it as I enjoy any opportunity to wax lyrical about my beloved medium, I was surprised as anyone when the meeting actually led to very real exciting possibilities I’d love to see implemented in the actual industry.

First things first, I’ll get the same old answers to this same old topic out of the way. It Is clear to see that at the moment the industry demonstrates a disturbing reliance on franchising and sequels. This is not a surprise, given that people will always be attracted to the titles and brands which have earned their trust previously, this is close to an inevitability. Every industry abuses this trait in order to survive and prosper. But, therein lies the implicit paradox of the creative industry; a business founded on imagination, two regularly conflicted elements relying on each other for survival. Like any other industry, the games industry is about money, and when it’s about money, seemingly callous business practice is always going to be part of the equation. It isn’t always as simple as being greedy either, companies have to consider the well-being of their employees and their families, they have to be pragmatic in a market place as jam packed, competitive and cut throat as videogames.

#1. Independent Games Development

So, early answers to the conundrum involved ways to completely skip over the contrived and restrictive (if well-meaning) concerns of producers and publishers. Independent development allows the idea people free reign to create what they want to create without limitation based on business logic, and although for a while the industry ballooned in scale so that it seemed the “bedroom coders” which once defined it were long dead, like most mediums, videogame trends appear to be circular in nature. Publicly available software and programming languages like Flash, XNA, Game Maker and the now completely free Unreal Development Kit (UDK) provide easily accessible tool sets for designers working independently to finance and create their own products, while the constant growth of digital distribution services like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and the iphone App store, make the perfect cheap platform for getting them to audiences. Clearly the industry is already encouraging and enabling independent game development and release, which will allow new and innovative ideas to reach gamers. This should in turn allow independent talent to gain the attention of the larger companies, innovative approach taking the “back door” into the business so to speak. Of course, contrary to popular belief, independent does not guarantee innovative.

#2. Digital Distribution/Episodic Release
Digital distribution in combination with episodic release is also of great advantage to mainstream companies who wish to explore innovation and new intellectual properties without the implied risk to their own well-being. Not only does it avoid scuffles over shelf space and skip out the costs associated with physically packaging and dispatching the product, but it allows developers to put only a few eggs in the basket at first, putting a fraction of a full games budget into the release of a first episode to “test the water” before green lighting more financial support. The lower risk and investment factor is reflected in gamers also, who don’t need to fork out a full titles RRP in order to play a new game, hopefully encouraging them to dabble in new markets they might have felt were too big a financial risk before. Players can even provide feedback to the developers between episodes, allowing the dev teams to cater better to the market place on-the-fly. Episodic release is also partially responsible for the resurrection of a handful of “dead” genres such as the point and click adventure, further evidence of the industry’s current retro revival.

#3. Packaged Samplers/Demo’s This idea of “testing the water” links in well to one of my favourite idea clusters from the turtle. I cannot credit the source due to how the question bounced around several groups, but the concept is that companies would package samplers of new innovative properties (tech demo’s, beta’s or episodes) along with products the developers are already confident in; aka the sequels and franchises lamented for saturating the marketplace. This is an adaptation of how Pixar include “movie shorts” at the beginning or on the DVD release of their larger attention-grabbing titles such as Toy Story. This tactic would nurture a pre-release install base (the reason sequels are so reliable), garner early interest, and alike episodic release, enable time to consider player feedback and cater more naturally to the audience. Some companies already experimented successfully with this concept, packaging access to multiplayer beta’s and demo’s in other titles, although rarely with the intention of testing new innovative properties. One interesting twist on the idea can be seen by Konami with Zone of the Enders. They did the opposite, and packaged a demo for the latest entry in an incredibly popular and highly anticipated series (Metal Gear Solid) inside a new IP, which did wonders for their sales. People came for the MGS2 demo, stayed for the ZoE itself. Both interpretations of this approach could be utilised to encourage and support innovation in the industry and actually exploit the audiences attraction to “old” IP rather than find a way around it.

#4. Innovation Fund/Guild

Speaking of using existing popular franchises as a launch pad for innovative new games, my group came upon the idea of an “innovation fund”. Basically, the large successful companies are solvent enough to create new IP’s thanks to the success and exploitation of their popular franchises. Following this train of thought, perhaps whenever the company is “on top” following another “successful sequel” is when the risk of innovation is lowest. If needs be they can “take the hit” should their new idea fail, and thus they are not betting the farm by releasing a new innovative idea into the market. So, what if developers could save up their money from their successes and put some aside in an “innovation fund”? When enough money is saved, the company then give a new idea a chance, and try something new. Should the idea be successful, it can then become a franchise in itself, which can be relied on in the future to support other new ideas. This would of course require the included companies to have a genuine interest in creativity and improving the medium as a whole, which led to the further suggestion of a kind of movement or “guild”. Companies could join this guild as a sign of their dedication to innovation in the medium, and their intention to institute concepts such as the innovation fund or aforementioned “samplers” approach. This is kind of similar to the Kyoto Protocol, which is the agreement countries and governments signed in order to mark their intention to tackle the problem of global warming by lowering their emissions… albeit on a much smaller less serious scale. Once the movement was off the ground (ideally thanks to some of the industries more vocal creative personalities), it would be only good publicity for larger companies to commit.

#5. Diversify

As far as the extended topic of reaching new audiences goes, Nintendo seems to have things covered with the DS and Wii. Nonetheless, several suggestions to aid the process further were heard at the turtle. One involved more exploitation of familiar celebrities whose own demographics overlap with your target audience, pretty much what Nintendo has going with Ant and Dec, the Ball family and Beyonce, who even has her own game. The best approach I heard was however on the Open09 site itself, from Uclans own Bev Bush, course leader. The easiest answer to understanding and meeting the demands of a more diverse audience is for the industry to employ a more diverse range of games designers. Gamers naturally know how to make games for other gamers, and up to now have had to engage in heavy market research and audience analysis in order to satisfy the audiences they are not acquainted with personally. The answer is similar to what Patrick Redding recently said of answering the issue of narrative in videogames; we need people acquainted with both the methods of videogame development and traditional writing. Luckily, the success of Nintendo’s products and the borderline mainstream appeal videogames are currently enjoying will likely attract new kinds of people to a career in the industry. Looking at each colourful new shipment of fresh first years leaves me confident this is also already happening.

-Steve

Explication of the Indecorously Abstruse

Why Universities insist on coating their project briefs in needless academic jargon will always remain a mystery to me. “Issues to all disciplines within the area of design are to be related to student’s own proposed path of study and thus will facilitate the understanding of comparability and differentiation of methodological approach”. Yes, we all have access to a thesaurus, but even with years of experience in essay-heavy analytic courses like English Literature and Psychology, I get confused by this kind of rubbish, how anyone coming to course from a purely artistic background (never mind students for whom English is not a first language) are meant to cope, I have no idea. And, since the administration have failed to prioritise explanations of the briefs during the Friday lectures (an issue I will be raising with the reps, or at the rep meeting should I be “elected” and such) it fell to MA Games Design tutor Jim “Never Gets to the Movies Anymore” Thompson to translate the brief for the group. I took notes, and there was interest in photocopying those notes, but it was gobbledegook frankly (wow, Word recognises gobbledegook as a word) so I offered to post a tidier version here at the Blab.

First thing to know MA Games Designers, Jim himself will be marking both the reviews and the report personally, so he will be fully aware of the difficulties of adjusting our medium to such standardised guidelines; so no worries about a general design tutor having to decide whether or not to make “exceptions” to the rules for us. Any other MA folk reading, the same no doubt goes for you, your own tutor will mark your contextual projects. It is equally vital everyone realise the following summaries are just personal interpretations and helpful notes; it is essential you READ THE ACTUAL BRIEF AND ASK YOUR PERSONAL TUTOR before you start the project. Remember, I am not infallible, I may be wrong. ;)

Literature Review and Contextual Review

1500 words total for these two. That isn’t 1500 each, its 1500 total.

The first half, the Literary Review (LR), first requires you to find 10 books, 10 journals and 10 websites relevant to your “area of research”. (That is whatever your first semester research and activities have been based around. For me, it would be idea generation, genre and mechanics/design principles, for my buddy Scott it is how lighting can be manipulated to affect mood.) According to a personal email response Alan “Bossman” Philips sent to a MA student, this list DOES count towards your final word count. Whether you put it at the beginning or at the end in the reference section is probably up to your discretion.

The LR also requires an introduction which briefly explains your “area of research” (See above) and basically recaps what you said in your learning agreement about the “purpose” of your first semester and your design goals within it, and as such, explains what the listed books, journals etc are relevant too.

You then pick 5 items from your list (which must include at least one book, one journal and one website) and evaluate them as a research source. This can be why they are so great, or even an explanation of why they turned out to be pretty rubbish/weak. This section is intended to be around 500 words. To clarify; that is 500 words total, for all 5. Not 500 per evaluation.

Games designers fear not, Jim has explained that for us, online blogs (and some magazines) can be used as loose examples of a “journal”. Look for anything that shows the personal reflections or opinions of an individual, even our fellow student’s reflective diary blogs may pass for relevant research “journals”. There is some crossover between “websites” and online blogs/journals, so be careful you are referencing a very specific individual perspective. “IGN” is a website; Dexter’s Blab is a journal. Also, your list doesn’t have to be all about games, if you can find research sources in other mediums that remain relevant (for Scott, a book about mood in movies perhaps) that is “allowed”.

The contextual Review (CR) part then; begins with a list of 10 “non-text” based sources. There is a larger list on your brief, but this includes events, products, environments, processes, philosophical approaches... Jim also said you could use works of art, movies, and you guessed it Games Designers, videogames. No doubt this list also counts towards your word count, and also requires a “source, location, creator, and date of viewing”.

You evaluate 5 of these non-text sources in the same way you did the text-based ones in the LR section, and again, there is a suggested word count of 500 total for this section. Not 500 for each evaluation. 100 per source, basically.

Then, you need a conclusion. Now, there was some discrepancy as to whether the LR and CR needed separate introductions and conclusions, but Jim said that “if he was doing it”, he would write an introduction at the beginning, do the LR and CR, and then include a conclusion, which makes sense given the world limit and that both “reviews” are on the same topic. However... looking at the brief again, it certainly implies you need a separate introduction and conclusion for both. My recommendation, consult your tutors.

To me, 1500 words is a tight squeeze for those of us trying to satisfy the army of buzz words the brief marches out in front of us. I mean with between the 1000 used up on the evaluations, the supposed TWO introductions and conclusions, and then the lists themselves, I don’t know how we are to fit in any kind of decent “critical discussion” or “comparative analysis”, but I digress. The word count is apparently a recommendation rather than “limit”.

The Report

2500 words total for the report. Also, don’t be afraid to include pictures.

Again, this project is based around your personal “area of research”, whatever you have spent your first semester doing, that is what this report is about. As it has been explained to me, the report is a follow up/sequel to the learning agreement, where you set out your “plan” for the semester. This is where you explain what you did to enact that plan, the research and activities you have undertaken in order to explore your specific area of research. As the name suggests, it is a progress report of sorts.

Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as all that. As well as explain how you have dealt with your area of interest/research within your own discipline/course (Games Design for me) a big part of the report is relating that activity to other disciplines/courses. The reason for all the transdisciplinary Friday lectures and the Preston project was apparently to prepare us for this report, where it is vital we explain how other courses and disciplines taught us new things we could apply to our specialisation, encouraged us to consider things from a broader perspective, allowed us to explore a larger spectrum of design and find information sources in new places, all that good stuff. It is about how we learnt from mixing with other courses to improve our work within our own discipline. Equally, it should feature explanations of how the work you did within your own specialisation can be applied to more general design; for example new methods of research you explored this semester or new approaches/angles and “schools of thought” you discovered which could be considered useful across all disciplines. Experience you gained which are useful to you as a designer rather than just in my case, a Games Designer.

A nice trick during the report will no doubt be referencing the lectures given to us on Friday and what you “took away” from them to aid your own work, as well as anything you feel you learnt from the Preston project before all the nonsense. And of course, the report needs an introduction and conclusion. That should go without saying. Speaking of which...

Conclusion

Well, not really. Just sounds better than “the end”. I hope this entry was useful to some of you, I will be undertaking the contextual projects as soon as I clear up some confusion about the learning agreement, so I may post them up as examples to help folks out. Overall, don’t panic, it's only 4000 words. Less than you think.

-Steve

A Moment of Reflection

Setting aside that this entire blog is a "reflective" diary, I’d like to take just a moment to slow things down. Earlier in the week I made the mistake of looking at the calendar and realising it to be mid November already. A light panic ensued, and I worked like a demon to finish my last few projects, most notably Parasomnia. Although the quality did not dip too much (I don’t think it did anyway), I do feel in myself that I rushed to the finish line with it, and that while the visuals were pretty strong, they didn’t reflect the exact image of the game I wanted to project. Handily, I am probably going to be taking a second look at all my boards for the final hand in, so there will be an opportunity to correct such niggling issues.

Visual Aid Versus Visual Communication

The A3 pitch boards I have posted here at the blog are specifically designed to accompany the textual explanation of the idea. They could be used as visual aides for a verbal presentation, but quite obviously do not function independently. Josh has been pushing me lately to reconsider creating such boards so as to focus more on a purer kind of visual communication, to create pitch boards which could explain the idea by themselves. The fact Grease Monkey achieved this goal so successfully way back at the start of the year (um, last month) was actually a coincidence which set an accidental precedent, and I have since struggled to present my other ideas in a similarly succinct way. In short, I think they need text on them to work.

I was reluctant to add text originally because all the relevant text was right there beside them in the blog article (essentially I would have been “doubling up”), but since the final hand in for this semester is now in the form of a miniature degree show, the reasons to reconfigure the materials I have into new stand-alone boards are piling up. Such an activity would also give me time to make the various tweaks in composition the different tutors recommended in their feedback, replace or polish some of the weaker artwork, and try to push games like Parasomnia more clearly in the direction I had intended.

Idea Generation X

In addition to preparing for the final hand-in, I think the time has come for me to clarify exactly what I am doing and where it is taking me. When I take a step back, I realise what I have really done thus far in this blog is look at two different forms of idea generation, two different starting points from which I could create new game ideas and properties. Jim advised me early on to analyse emergent traits within different genres, the logical design response to which was a game concept built on those emergent traits, reflective of that genres evolution and history. Josh meanwhile suggested I use existing mechanics from existing titles as a more focused starting point for a new game concept. Both were attractive opportunities in which I saw a lot of potential, and despite the different forms the research of each took, both warranted a design response that involved the conceptualisation of a new game idea or intellectual property. It is this shared outcome which reveals the nature of my first semester; idea generation.

I feel both methods created interesting and unique new game ideas, but there is a notable distinction between the concepts created. By focusing on singular mechanics as an anchor for the whole game, Josh’ activity created strong simple ideas which sold themselves extremely well on paper and on the wall. Affinitus, and Grease Monkey particularly, were attractive concepts which could be succinctly explained; their strengths were immediately obvious and imaginative in nature. Ideas created in response to genre analysis were however far more complex and nuanced, as you might expect given the much wider breadth of research material and inspiration. While I am confident I made strong logical advances from the existent emerging traits and innovated on the formula of the genres in question (addressing various issues along the way); what makes those concepts attractive is a little more subtle and internal. Arguably, it is these more “complex” games which are more fit for the market place, as they are based on a wealth of research into the desires of a genre demographic, specifically using the emergent traits of that genre to anticipate future holes in the market. It actually reminded me in that regard of the horizon scanning activities in my BA “Futures” module.

Unfortunately, these concepts do not do as well “on the wall”, because their innovations are not always as obvious and visual. Ultimate for example, innovates on personalisation/ customisation and in-game community/lobby mechanics/systems, much harder to show on a board than wii-motion actions or platforming movements. (Such a distinction reminds me once again of the line between academia and industry, and what each is looking for in a game idea.) Both methods have clear advantages and eventual disadvantages, and are in no means the only starting points for idea generation. In the past I have utilised everything from existing properties to random noun-adjective combinations as starting points for new game ideas; but I can rest easy in these two methods being a gateway to strong research methodology, which I feel supported my design activities extremely well so far this year.

What Now?

Good question Steve. Rather than try to squeeze in another project, I am going to take the weeks I have left and ensure I have time to properly craft and polish a series of stand-alone communication boards for the semester show, prepare an accompanying portfolio of design documents and pitch material, AND satisfy the contextual vultures circling overhead. Lest we forget, we still owe the University a Learning Agreement, a Literary Review, a Contextual Review, and a “Report”. I am unsure of the exact nature of a few of these due to a distinct lack of priority being given to such lectures on a Friday morning, but luckily Jim has offered to clear up the confusion tomorrow. (Thursday)

Apologies that this post had no accompanying visuals, but as there were no relevant images to include, I didn’t feel the need to force it. More colour next time! Probably.

-Steve

Survival Horror Genre: Parasomnia

Setting: Although Parasomnia is set in a contemporary urban setting the majority of the gameplay takes place in locations which have been condemned or abandoned for years; as such they have become decayed and dilapidated, providing the game a suitably gritty/grungy isolated atmosphere. People tend to feel uncomfortable in places which have gone unused and unvisited for so long, and they can provide an “oasis” of horror even within the modern world.

Story: The player character is Detective David Craven. Before the game begins, Craven was investigating a prolific serial killer known as “The Sandman” who targetted children. Upon his arrest, Sandman reveals he has another child, a young boy, hidden somewhere. Eventually they locate the boy, but to Cravens horror, it is his own son, already dead. 3 months later, Craven is returning to work and undergoing a psychological evaluation to determine if he is ready for duty. He passes, but is secretly suffering from severe insomnia and graphic nightmares following his son’s death. When more children begin going missing, Craven starts noticing elements of The Sandman’s MO at various crime scenes, and eventually interprets what he believes to be messages from him. Believing him to be paranoid or suffering post traumatic stress, his colleagues do not take him seriously, and he undertakes the “case” alone, delving into the history of the killer, and following the “messages” to areas throughout the city. He is soon confronted by a supernatural force somehow connected to The Sandman, and eventually discovers a labyrinth of hidden tunnels underneath the city itself. But in the darkness of those tunnels, as his sleep deprivation bleeds into hallucination and real paranoia, Craven finds it difficult to maintain his perception of reality.

Core Gameplay: Parasomnia is a third person “over the shoulder” survival horror title, with deliberately open and fluid movement, in contrast to the “tank controls” of old. The player character has access to basic firearms due to his occupation, but ammunition is limited, meaning he will often have to rely on melee weapons he can procure from the environment. There will be limited item combination mechanics in place; for example a lighter and an aerosol can to create a personal flame thrower, or a dagger and a stick to create a spear. The enemies are however extremely fast and aggressive, and adaptive to the players methods. Featuring a kind of “hive mind”, information is gathered whenever the player kills an enemy; for example if the player constantly uses the tactic of shooting the creatures in the leg, they will evolve a third limb for stability, grow bone carapace to protect against gunfire, or learn to walk on their hands. (See pitch board 2 for examples) The player will have to constantly adapt their strategy in order to deal with these creatures, because if he sticks to one method for too long, they will become near-immune to it.

The health system is very realistic, the player will have to procure medication relevant to their injury type; for example, bandages for slice wounds to stem bleeding. The effect of the injury is also realistic; if a wound is causing blood loss, the screen becomes hazy and the character gets dizzy, if the wound is in a leg, Craven may begin to limp. This should eliminate the need for a traditional on-screen HUD, and in combination with the limited ammunition and powerful enemies, create the feeling of “vulnerability” and desperation vital in the genre. The goal is often not to “defeat” enemies, merely evade them or survive the encounters well enough to escape and progress through the environment.

Personal Phobias: The psychological evaluation at the beginning of the games story (as well as an accompanying “nightmare” sequence which introduces the games core mechanics) will be specifically designed to gauge the personality type of the player; along with their personal weaknesses, fears and phobias. The goal is to collect information (overtly but mostly subtly) from the player, and then have the game organically incorporate that knowledge into later challenges and experiences. Such an activity would require input from professional psychologists to work, but ideally it will allow the game to cater to what scares the individual player. These specialised experiences range from multiple scenarios from which the most “fitting” will be chosen (Such as being buried alive, drowning or a demented dentist’s office), certain rooms in the level design chosen due to applicable “fear factors” (tall heights, blades, darkness) and finally specialised enemies designed to play on less metaphorical fears; spiders, snakes, disease, reptiles, insects and clowns. For feasibility reasons, these outcomes will be targeted at the most common fears and phobias, and not be the subject of the “core” enemies, whom will be universal, and distinctive only through adaptation. (See above) During replays, players will be able to deliberately provide fake input to try out the alternative experiences and outcomes, or alternatively, “unlock” them as options.

Sleep Deprivation: Cravens insomnia eventually leads him to suffer visual and auditory hallucinations alongside the “genuine” supernatural forces. These range from hearing laughter and voices (Which make it difficult to detect the true audio cues of enemies), to visions of his dead child calling out to him, to obscure environmental changes (such as the walls bleeding or the corridor growing) and eventually forming as literal enemies, which despite being “imaginary”, must be defeated or evaded so as to avoid Craven going into shock. The player has access to a variety of drugs and medicines to keep Craven awake and stem off these hallucinations (epinephrine and caffeine tablets for example), but eventually, as he becomes lost in the depths of the tunnels, Craven comes to believe his hallucinations are actually allowing him to see into the layer of reality in which the supernatural forces exist, and find new paths through the labyrinth. At this point the player must juggle the caffeine pills with sleeping pills, which allow them to enter a nightmare reality version of the environment. There is an added factor of strategy here, because some of the pill types cannot be mixed/taken together, so the player has to wait a certain amount of time to avoid damaging Cravens overall health.

Conclusion:

I think Parasomnia answers many of the issues prevalent in modern incarnations of the survival horror genre; it features a character which controls well and has access to weapons, but is nonetheless vulnerable to the aggressive and adaptable creatures he has to face; so much so that the emphasis is taken off the action itself and onto the puzzle elements. In response to Kaile, the game features an unfolding mystery involving The Sandman; why and how he is connected to this supernatural force and what exactly that force is. The use of blurred reality in the gameplay and narrative meanwhile returns the genre to a more psychological place, and takes Left 4 Dead’s concept of an “AI” director a step further, by giving the game the power to supposedly determine a players own fears, and adapt the game to suit. This adaptability to the player is in turn carried forward by the mutable enemies, who change form to suit the player’s tactics. I think in this regard, the different aspects of the game complement each other nicely.

-Steve

Developmental: Parasomnia

Oh how I wish I had the kind of effortless artistic talent that would make even my scribbles attractive in that uniquely fluid conceptual way. The kind of raw ability that would make even the stuff I threw away worth putting on your wall or saving to your computer. Unfortunately, my scribbles are only getting worse as I shift more and more to the digital post-scanning manip methods, so although I am including pages from my sketch book as developmental reference (which they are) do not judge too harshly the parts which would not be out of place on a fridge under a magnet. Thankfully, I do however rank my designer chops highly enough to consider a lot of what I throw away still worth a look (or a read). I have said before I appreciate the chance this reflective journal offers to showcase not just where I ended up, but the ideas I was forced to discard along the way. It actually made it easier to move forward to know the possibilities I left behind were not totally wasted.

Tactical Juggling

Welcome tutors, fellow MA designers and strange unknown people who have yet to reveal their identity, to this special behind-the-scenes progress update. I am on the cusp of posting a design response to my Survival Horror genre analysis, but as my last few pitch posts were bogged down by hefty “developmental notes”, I thought it might be a better idea to cover the development and thought processes behind the ideas in a separate entry. This particular entry in combination with the one I will be making almost directly after it, will hopefully paint a fuller picture of my intentions and design goals with this latest project, “Parasomnia”.

So the analysis left me with a lot of questions to answer, and a lot of issues to consider. Was I to ride the action horror bandwagon? Try my hand at the balancing act and spin some plates of my own? Get back to the roots of the genre? Experiment with vulnerability through protagonist/antagonist power ratio? What about eastern psychological horror?

Realising I did not have time to doddle or juggle (good lord it’s November! Squee!) I approached the topic tactically, listing the issues and collating them into a variety of different ideas from which I would have to choose. I was quite interested in the idea of a survival horror game starring a child (Squee again! Get it?), because that is arguably the most vulnerable you can get. Some of the most potent fear we ever feel is related to our “irrational” childhood phobias, and movies have regularly experimented with a child’s connection to the supernatural. Josh T suggested that the “experience” of horror is perhaps more vital than the nitty gritty gameplay, due to the genres over-arching goals of manipulating the players perception and emotions, similar to a digital “ghost train” of sorts. Whereas I never like designing a game around pure cinematic staging rather than gameplay, I really liked the idea of “experience” based events within the final game idea, alongside the core mechanics. These thoughts would find themselves into my final design outcome, but before I move forward to that, there is one more concept on the editing room floor I want to mention. You could say that staging plays an important role in it too.

Game Concept: Shattered Iris

This game is representative of two definitive Survival Horror paths I wanted to explore, converging into an intriguing direction I very nearly pursued. It was set in a grungy washed out version of contemporary Tokyo, telling the story of a typical cubical worker as he went along with his day to day work, moving back and forth between the office building, the subway, the market and the gritty apartment complex in which he lives, areas populated with similarly “drone” like workers going about their business. The games atmosphere is intentionally oppressive and eerily vacant not in terms of people, but emotion and colour, driven at first by mystery and dialogue while meanwhile, increasingly bizarre events occurring in and around the characters apartment building gradually bleed out to other areas in the game. Eventually full horror elements are introduced, the character realising he is being stalked by a supernatural presence that haunts the building where he lives.

Intended to make a return to the psychological stylings of Japanese horror, Shattered Iris is deliberately set in an oppressively mundane contemporary world, so that it can start more subtly; play more on the players perceptions, before and between the more visceral horror sequences. That definitively isolated areas such as haunted mansions and mountain cabins are the “place” for horror is a very western belief. Japanese horror has always experimented with isolation even in the real world, alone when surrounded by people. The Ring and The Grudge met critical acclaim world-wide, and take place primarily in “real world” settings, taking strength even from how they twisted mundane life against the audience. Silent Hill is evidence of how human characters often offer no solace through their company.

The second path I wanted to walk with Shattered Iris was the first person perspective, hopefully extended through the Wii. Although my esteemed colleague Kaile disagrees, I personally feel that the first person perspective is naturally more immersive than third, due to you literally being in the characters eyes and shoes. Your awareness is funnelled in one direction, you are less aware of what is around you, your blind spots are naturalistic not artificial. What the Wii offers is the ability to even take traditional controllers out of the experience. I wanted to use the Wii like the original hype liked to claim it could be used, as if your hands were “in” the game along with your eyes, so that the actions you performed were also more visceral, more natural. When you aimed a gun, your arm would be outstretched, when you held a torch, you’d have a torch like object in your physical hand, when you were forced to bludgeon an enemy in melee, you would literally be swinging again and again. A problem I always have with survival horror is that when the enemies reach you, all designers can do to shake them off is tap a button, it lacks the impact the enemy “reaching” you should have. This is even the case in Dead Space. Unfortunately the Wii’s own aesthetic is kind of off-putting, it’s rounded and childish and white... despite the claim it can be used for mature games, I cannot ignore how psychologically connected the Wii’s whole image is to family-friendly happy fun party times. And thus, my desire to make a Wii FPHorror faded. Perhaps the Natal, should it be everything it claims to be, will give me reason to return to Shattered Iris.

Gory Trinity: Stumps, Subjective Horror and Waking Nightmares

So, my disappointment with the empty flat impact of the enemies “grabbing” you and shaking you around to the detriment of your health bar, is something I have personally identified in the genre as detrimental to my experience. But it isn’t the only thing. I realised during the “Sights and Sounds” section of my analysis that what you cannot see is often the scariest thing, and true enough, it is whenever enemies take form that they often lose the impact they once had when they were scuttling around unseen in the darkness. Although enemies do “take form” in Parasomnia, I wanted to put them forward as agents of a larger formless evil; have many of the threats in the game be less physical and direct than re-animated corpses. The twisted nightmare creatures you face are one with the smokey darkness; although they do not “teleport” around you like ghosts, they are wraith like and form in the shadows. A third issue I had with even the best modern survival horror, was that the enemies were predictable; I could rely on tried and tested methods to dispatch them; for Ganados a leg shot to make them fall down followed by a head shot to finish, for Majini a knee shot to allow a falcon punch, for Necromorphs a horizontal wave to sever their knees, and a vertical one for the arms. I wanted enemies which had a larger intelligence, that would physically adapt and surprise the player.

Josh T wisely recommended that I consider the subjectivity of a genre like horror; during a discussion about the nature of fear and what parts of the experience were vital to developing that fear. This discussion sucked in everyone in the immediate vicinity as they often do, allowing me to see things from a variety of viewpoints. I also had a long chat to Kaile “The Baker” Walker, which gave me even more to think about. The idea of subjective horror in combination with the AI director from L4D (already present in my research) made me think that perhaps not only the enemies should be adaptive, but the experience as well. If the game could somehow collect information about the players specific fears and phobias and use it to cater to them as an audience, it would be extremely powerful. The question was only how that information could be collected in a subtle manner. This in turn led to the final storyline of the game, which opens with a psychological evaluation within the narrative.

A final member of this trinity of inspirational thought was an idea I had years ago, called “Waking Nightmare”. In that game, the character suffered a combination of narcolepsy and night terrors which sporadically plunged him into a nightmare reality where he was forced to defend himself against horrendous twisted creatures. Unfortunately, upon awaking he would realise the truth, he had just bludgeoned to death not a demonic monster in a hell dimension, but an old lady in a supermarket. I temporarily abandoned the concept due to my worry the character would be unsympathetic for not committing suicide for the good of the people and that it would need to be balanced with unfortunate fugitive/GTA elements (although I had tentative solutions for both) but the mechanics of balancing sleeping and caffeine pills to drop in and out of reality fit in well with the increasing psychological angle of Parasomnia.

Bradstreet Wise

A potent developmental note or two can be attributed to the art direction I chose for the game. While exploring a few new visual options for Ultimate (my FPS response, see below) I stumbled across a very strong stylistic pop-art-esque style, which, while too far a departure from the existing artwork to be a viable option for Ultimate, was drag and dropped into the backburner folder for future reference. Very near future it seems, because when it came to Parasomnia, it’s the first place I looked. While searching for more examples to work from however, I came across a more polished evolution of the style in the form of established comic-book artist, Tim Bradstreet. He has worked on many titles, including Hellblazer but primarily the Punisher, developing a unique approach he calls “stylish photorealism”.

Unaware of his complex process of inks and colours, and lacking his experience in lighting, the best I could hope for was combining his techniques with the style I was aiming for originally, to create a hybrid style suitable for Parasomnia. Dark and gritty. Investigating his work also caused me to discover a lesser known comic he had worked on called “Criminal Macabre”, which was yet another useful point of inspiration for the project. Another eventual source of inspiration was Serious House on Serious Earth, a landmark Batman comic which features an art style I looked up as reference during polish of the psychological aspect of the game and the beginnings of the enemy design. Loose, messy and grungy, I deliberately employed rudimentarily similar techniques during concept art of the enemies. I hope this helps reflect the formless darkness they spawn from, while complimenting rather than clashing with the more solid artwork, but only time will tell.

Conclusions

Parasomnia is the result of me starting down a variety of different developmental roads, collecting unexpected information from each of them as I went. A few of the roads forked or came to a dead end, but I can honestly say this game has one of the most complex and rich developmental histories of any of my projects. Hopefully that comes across in the final response, which will be up very shortly!

-Steve