@Guitar Hero 3

Mixed feelings. I worked at Neversoft so I know a lot of the people who’ll be working on this. Expect to see a Thunderlords song, and the guy in the Viking hat there, Alan, to be the lead designer. And huge ups to Dave Rowe, the audio-cranking beast machine. It’s gotta be a dream come true. But, seriously, harsh there Activision dudes. Activision has a habit of taking franchises and licenses away from the developers who created them and giving them to other studios they own…with mixed results. It worked out ok with Treyarch and Spider-man, but don’t think for a second there isn’t still some residual animosity at Neversoft over losing Spidey. Neversoft solved the major problems of a Spidey game in 3d waaay back, and were rewarded for their highly successful (2+ million units sold!) efforts by an insulting and unceremonious handing off of the franchise to Treyarch. It makes business sense, obviously; they’re using Neversoft as a multimillion dollar pinch hitter.

Unfortunately, Spiderman ≠ Guitar Hero. Here’s why: Harmonix is a music company. In order to be hired there, I’m told, you must, in addition to being really f’ing smart and really f’ing good at what you do, play an instrument. I’m not talking glockenspiel* here, although it would be badass if you could shred the gloc. You need to be able to hold your own in a jam session with the team at Harmonix and these guys are unbelievable musicians, every one. So, are there people at Neversoft who can make a functional sequel? Yes. Is it a good idea? I’m not so sure it is. And it’s odd, oh so very odd that Neversoft, the darling of Activision, has been tapped as a base runner on this one.

On the plus side, Harmonix is now free to reinvent the music game genre yet again (with Band Hero? Who knows!) The game industry: even when you win, you lose. *sigh*

@ Supple Interfaces

This is coinage by my friend Katherine over at RPI, and part of the title of her workshop “CHI 2007 Workshop on Supple Interfaces”, where CHI = Computer-Human Interaction. I’m conducting a lecture/activity at said workshop and wrote about ten pages “deconstructing feel” in games for my submission, which I’ll post here in chunks starting next Monday. It’s an interesting direction, closely related to my virtual sensation stuff, but it starts with player classifications of feel such as ‘floaty’ and ‘stiff.’ I think I could write an entire book on the subject. *ponder*

@ Flow

Having re-read Jenova’s thesis, I’m more convinced than ever that it was the single most important theoretical contribution to the field last year, and that most everyone missed the point. I think people are confused by his use of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) because of the various connotations and ill-conceived experiments given that name over the years. What he’s espousing is a holistic view of game design that integrates Flow theory into mechanic, system, and rule design. This in contrast to the bolt-on approach most people associate with the acronym DDA. So, as you’re designing your game, as a fundamental part of the process, asking the question ‘how can I allow the player to adjust the challenge to perfectly fit their ability?’ I think the key here is the notion of integration, of making the ability to adjust challenge part of the game’s primary mechanic, giving control of it to the player. Part of it is giving the player freedom and choice, but there are so many more concerns – you need to find the right kind of freedom, the right kind of choice. Giving the player four possible difficulty levels to choose from is a blunt instrument, as is adjusting the actual numeric difficulty of the game based on player performance. Jenova’s insight is to view control over challenge as simply another ability, another verb for the player which needs to be balanced against all the other parts of the system like any other.

The game flOw is a cool experimental step in this more elegant direction, neatly skirting issues of player intelligence (it’s too easy to game a real time number balancing system by lowballing early) and competitive psychology (some players, like me, will always choose the hardest difficulty level.) Anyhow, read the thesis and play the game. They contain a number of simple, startling insights.

*Not to impugn the noble Glockenspiel and its many fine, prodigious players, but it is Guitar Hero for a reason .

1 Comment

Brian Eno (!!!)

I was actually listening to Brian Eno as I read this:

Brian Eno to Create Generative Spore Soundtrack

Yay, Brian Eno!

I’m getting this kind of sad feeling, though, welling up inside. Is Spore going to be the last game that Will Wright ever designs? He’s acting like it’s a swan song; pulling out all the stops, calling in the best of the best of his friends and acquaintances, talking about Spore as the game he’s always wanted to make…even his wife has stated publicly that she thinks this will be his last game. What a sad, beautiful thing that would be.

I was thinking of writing ‘I hope he writes a book. Or stops smoking. Or both.’ But, really, he teaches us so much more by his games, by his creative example. Oh, Will, won’t you ‘pull a Miyazake’ and make five games, each of which you declare your last? That would be peach

4 Comments

Rapid prototyping, huzzah!

Shanke

Play Shanke Prototype 1 Here!

Time: 2 days.

This was a quickie physics game I cooked up for fun and as a launchpad for design discussions regarding our (the Art Institute of Phoenix)’s submission to this year’s Siggraph Game Competition. You can also press number keys 1-5 for different physics simulation speeds. Default is 2, I think 3 is the funnest. 5 is madness, 1 is molasses. Enjoy!

hotNote

Play hotnote Prototype 1 Here!

Time: 1 day.

This is based on a student’s board game design from last quarter – the notes scroll from right to left. At any time, you can click on one of the colored ‘pucks’ and drag out to create an arrow. When a note of the corresponding color hits the left bar on the musical staff, all pucks of that color who have had impulses specified for them are triggered. Eventually, we want multimouse support (better) or we may use controllers (not so great.) Either way, it won’t really be testable until we have multiple players going simultaneously. And, of course, we’ll need to demarcate which team is which, as both teams will have pucks of each color. Good fun .

Please help us out by leaving constructive criticism below.

- Swink

2 Comments

11.19.2006 4:13am

I’m waiting in a shortish line on a cold pavement stoop outside an obscure Circuit City on the outskirts of Scottsdale, Arizona. I can’t remember the last time I was this cold, or the last time I saw the sun come up. I feel like I’m 16 again.

I’m waiting for a Wii, obviously, and my ‘getting up a 4:00am instead of staying up all night’ gambit appears to have paid off: including the empty chairs holding friends’ places, I appear to be the 15th person in line for one of the 24 Wiis the Intersweb tells me will be here.

Uneventful. The sun comes up, we get our Wiis, and we shiver our way back to a friend’s house. Apart from hoping that the thing is fun and that it will indeed deliver on its promise of gaming revolution, I’m desperate to find out what the Wiimote means for the future of virtual sensation in games. What will it feel like to control some virtual avatar or agent with the Wiimote?

The potential is, as per Nintendo’s PR, to change what it means to play a game and who does so, to tap the mythical “mass market.” People who watch TV don’t call themselves ‘TVers’, right? Why should games be different?

Honestly, I’m sold on the concept. I’ve watched dozens of self-proclaimed “non gamers” try to master a mechanic, try to master a virtual sensation the way they’ve mastered riding a bike or driving a car. They cannot or will not do so and, for the most part, end up feeling bad about it. Before they do, however, almost every one will swing the controller wildly left or right, trying to get Mario to move a bit faster or jump a bit higher. This movement seems to be as intuitive to non gamers as turning a wheel to steer a car. It had previously occurred to me, while watching this near-universal flailing phenomenon, that if one could build a controller that did respond to flailing, it would change the face of gaming forever. Nintendo, apparently, feels the same way.

So now the multi-billion dollar question: is this little white device I now hold the future of virtual sensation, the very future of gaming?

As usual, observations come in half tones: yes, as they say, and no.

For reference, here are the Principles of Virtual Sensation I outlined in a previous article:

1. Predictable Results – Allowing a sense of mastery and control by correctly interpreting player input and providing consistent, predictable results.

2. Subtlety and Freshness– There are small, subtle differences in reaction each time a specific input is triggered, making each interaction feel fresh and interesting.

3. Traction – Enabling mastery, control, and learning by rewarding player experimentation.

4. Low Skill Floor, High Skill Ceiling – Making the mechanic intuitive but deep; it takes minutes to pick up and understand but a lifetime to master.

5. Context – Giving a mechanic meaning by providing the rules and spatial context in which it operates

6. Impact and Satisfying Resolution – Defining the weight and size of objects through their interaction with each other and the environment.

7. Appealing Reaction – Producing appealing reaction regardless of context or input.

Also, peppered throughout are impressions of and observations about playing Wii by my Girlfriend, Amy, who does not consider herself a gamer (and is therefore, arguably, more the Wii’s target audience than I.) I found them illuminating .

System and Interface

The Wii interface and system controls make a great first impression. The ability to rotate the cursor is huge. It feels intuitive and right. The subtle vibrations and noise as your cursor touches a button and the nice, jiggly reaction show the tremendous potential of the system and its controllers. It is hot, slick, and very compelling just to navigate the menu. I was surprised to find, then, that few games among the launch titles we brought home take significant advantage of this potential.

Wii Sports: Tennis

There are obvious benefits to combining a device specifically intended as a natural mapping with a sports metaphor, and Nintendo is smartly milking that potential by including Wii Sports in every box. Swing the controller, swing the racquet – that’s about as natural as it gets, right? It’s a perfect physical analogy. Swing the racquet soft for a soft shot, hard for a hard shot. Left for left, right for right. Predictable results from each input, right? Well, sort of. Let’s take a look under the hood.

Predictable Results

First, they’re doing some nice, sneaky things to mitigate the inherently squirrelly nature of the Wiimote. Chief among them, they are not using the pointer at all in Wii Sports: Tennis. This is smart –crucial, in fact – because the pointer severely inhibits predictability. On its own, the pointer is extremely effective. Essentially, you have a mouse cursor on a home console, which is fantastic because it represents hitherto unheard of levels of input sensitivity in a home console input device. The problem is this: it is extremely easy for the pointer to fall outside the Wii’s sensor bar, resulting in a temporary and unexpected disconnecting of input, one of the ultimate no-no’s in creating good virtual sensation.

Imagine driving on the freeway. You signal and prepare for a lane change, checking your blind spot. Suddenly, as you begin to steer left, the wheel goes unresponsive. Panic, frustration, and helplessness overwhelm you. These feelings are the result of a lack of predictable results from a given input. Of course, the stakes are higher on the freeway than in piloting your Monkeyball, but the sensation is analogous. This feeling is the enemy of control, of mastery over some virtual avatar or agent. Unfortunately, this input disconnect often occurs during heightened moments of gameplay, when your movement becomes boisterous or erratic. So, they’ve avoided this pitfall in Tennis by using only the gyro and accelerometers. Of course, this poses a new problem: how to achieve compelling depth – a high skill ceiling – after disabling the most sensitive input of your controller.

Low Skill Floor, High Skill Ceiling

Since the “footwork” of your tennis player is handled automatically, and the swinging motions are pre-created using LiveMove there’s little room left for expressivity. Add to this the fact that the ball springs to the character’s racquet if a swing is recognized anywhere close to the ball (watch closely, it’s a subtle effect) and you’ve got very little to build a game of compelling depth with. Still, you are able to guide your shots to various parts of the court, and to hit lobs or stingers (very hard, low, straight shots.) The lob is a separate recorded gesture it’s checking for, as is the serve, so there’s very little sensitivity there. Effectively, the lob is being mapped to a different button press, while the serve is just the same as a serve in every other tennis game: it’s simply two timed button presses, one to toss the ball, one to hit it. It does seem as though the game tries to interpret how hard you’re swinging and respond in some way but, as noted by Matt Casamassina, the gyro responds much better to a flick of the wrist than to a barreling swing. So now we’re down to it: how do you ‘aim’ your shot?

Where the shot is aimed is determined by the direction the Wiimote is moving at the moment the swing gesture is triggered:

Imagine that instead of the wristy swing gesture, you simply had to press the A or B button to trigger forehand and backhand swings respectively. In order to aim with this setup, you’d simply press the button as the Wiimote was moving in the direction you wanted the ball to go. It’s that simple. Assuming you’ve got the correct swing, the only thing that changes the placement of your shot is the relative movement of your Wiimote in the time between when the gesture was accepted and when the shot completes. They’re looking at the direction and speed of the movement of the Wiimote (via the accelerometers) and checking for a triggered swing gesture (via the gyros.) The tricky part, and the part that’s actually kind of cool, is that it’s physically hard to swing forehand, from right to left, while moving the Wiimote left to right (to send a forehand shot to the back right corner.) That said, it took me a relatively long time to figure out exactly what the heck they were doing and to wrangle it into offering any kind of predictable reaction to my input. It’s easy enough to swing the racquet at the right time and in the right direction and to get the ball over the net on the serve, but to get the ball to go somewhere other than straight is a real chore. I’m still trying to figure out how to trigger the power serve consistently.

What they are assuming is that most people will be happy with swinging a controller in the right direction at the right time to get the correct swing and hit the ball. Indeed, when we played Wii with the various girlfriends, they seemed to have enough trouble with that, precluding more advanced strategies and play. Not quite the natural mapping that was promised, unfortunately. And, despite the free-floating analog nature of the controller, there’s just not enough input sensitivity to give rise to satisfying long term depth one might find in, say, Virtua Tennis.

Impact & Satisfying Resolution;
Appealing Reaction

At first glance, Wii Sports: Tennis appears aesthetically sparse. There are no particle effects or scaling (squashing and stretching) on characters, ball, or racquets – not even dust particles at the characters’ feet, a Nintendo mainstay. One might conclude, then, that the game is lacking impact and satisfying resolution between its objects and has little appealing reaction to its input. Fortunately, this is not the case. What is lacking in visual aesthetic indicators is overshadowed by the surprisingly powerful sound effects. While the sound effects in Twilight Princess sound tinny and rather cheap on the rather cheap and tinny Wiimote speaker, the various thudding sounds and racquet reverberations in Wii Sports: Tennis are spot on. The fact that they come from the individual speaker on each person’s Wiimote is a detail that simply can’t be overlooked. It’s quite powerful and goes a long way to establishing a strong feel and sense that you’re really whacking a virtual tennis ball around.

Verdict: some nice things going on; wonderful use of sound and subtle controller vibrations to enhance virtual sensation, some surprising depth to be found in serving and aiming the ball. Low skill floor, which is nice, but the skill ceiling is also low, leaving very little long term appeal. This is compounded by some difficulties in the input mapping, a significant disconnect between system image (what the user expects – that they can just swing the Wiimote the same way they would a tennis racquet and get the same result, including speed of swing and perfect position interpretation) and the reality of the underlying system (swing gestures triggered by gyros, aiming dependant on direction and speed of acceleration at the time of the swing.) In other words, the mapping presents itself as a purely positional metaphor, but is not. Wii Sports: Tennis is a good game to play with four inexperienced players who aren’t particularly serious about the outcome and who are happy with swinging the Wiimote to bat the ball around.

Amy’s take:

“Playing Wii Tennis was not at all what I expected. I was told ‘it’s just like real tennis, that’s how you play it’ but found it to be a poor representation of real tennis. It wasn’t like playing a video game, it was like playing a hamstrung not-as-fun version of real tennis. By contrast, we played a tennis game on Xbox a few weeks ago [Editor’s Note: the game was Top Spin 2] that was a lot more fun. That was like playing a video game, just pressing buttons to do what you wanted. The Wii tennis just made me want to play real tennis.”

Wii Sports: Bowling

Wii Sports: Bowling is actually my current favorite Wii game. In my observation, it has most effectively accomplished the stated goal of the Wii, drawing in and entertaining people who would otherwise not touch a video game. Bowling succeeds where tennis does not because it has a natural mapping, an easy to understand, everyday metaphor, and enough input sensitivity to make it compelling each time it’s played. In short, it’s a hell of a lot like actual bowling.

Again, Bowling ignores the pointer, using primarily the gyros and accelerometer. Also similar to tennis, they’re doing some rather clever things to achieve a certain system image, one in which the player feels like they’re actually throwing the ball. Interestingly, this is not strictly representative of the system’s underlying realities. This time, though, it works. The illusion is complete, and makes Wii Sports: Bowling a very compelling argument for the future of the Wii and its unique input device.

So what are they actually doing? First, the game instructs you to hold the Wiimote up in front of your chest, as you would a bowling ball. This is entirely superfluous and was done completely for effect. You can throw the ball just as effectively if you hold your hand down and press the B button to start your roll. As long as you give it some motion as you’re releasing the ball, it’ll launch that sucker down the lane quite happily. Next, your bowler moves along a predetermined path, swinging their arm with a canned animation. There is some recognition in the upstroke as the Mii swings the ball – it will try to match what’s happening with the gyro a little bit – but if you don’t move the gyro at all, it will still swing back to forwards. You can actually just hold the B button indefinitely and the bowler will stand at the end of the lane forever, waiting for the ball’s release. Ipso facto, the ‘swinging motion’ it recommends is totally unnecessary from the system’s point of view. The control has been disconnected at this point and swinging the Wiimote doesn’t do anything. In terms of the system image, however, the payoff is huge: the motion seems familiar and is easy to connect with.

Once the ball is released, the functionality is much like Wii Sports: Tennis: the only thing that has bearing on the trajectory of your ball is the motion of the Wiimote at the moment of release. The difference is that in Wii Sports: Bowling, the game adds spin the ball commensurate to the amount of rotation in the gyro at the time of release. This is not to say that actually rotating the gyro, being in the act of rotation as the ball is released, is important. You can simply hold the remote twisted at an angle as you swing back to forward, and you’ll get the same curve you would by rotating at the time of release. In fact, this is more effective at getting the curve you want; actually rotating the Wiimote is less accurate than simply holding it twisted. What’s cool here, what really makes the game worth playing multiple times, is the input sensitivity represented by being able to put spin on the ball. You could throw the ball a hundred times and not get the same angle. It’s the messy nature of reality used to great effect. Olympic shot-putters spend their entire lives trying to produce a perfect execution of the same simple motion, and can only do so a fraction of the time. This is the crux, what makes it feel enjoyably close to real bowling. You’re trying to master your own body in a very real, very precise way.

The other place we get nice input sensitivity is the ability to position and rotate your bowler before beginning your throw. The movement and turning is very fluid, allowing an infinite variety of positions to start from and directions to face. Enjoyably, you can even throw the ball off into another lane if you align your bowler properly. Combining these two highly input sensitive parameters, position and rotation, with the highly reaction sensitive ball rotation and shot power (based on the speed of the accelerometer at the time of release) creates a game of surprising depth. Huzzah!

I do have a few gripes, however, mostly in the area of aesthetics, which tend to be closely tied to impact and satisfying resolution in virtual sensation. The lack of reaction when the ball misses the pins, when it simply hits the back of the lane, is totally lame and jarring. It crosses a single black polygon, seeming to warp out of existence. This is not an issue when the ball actually hits pins, obviously, but it’s quite jarring when a shot goes awry, and it undercuts the game’s otherwise solid sense of mass.

Amy’s Take:

“I liked it. A lot better than the tennis. There was a weird problem with the bowling ball not releasing as you released the button. My brother was having trouble with it and we were all giving him advice but then I started having the problem as well even though I was following my own advice and it occasionally happened to the others too. I liked that the system let me bowl granny-style (between the legs with two hands) and behind the back, like in real bowling. Also, the bowling sounds were realistic and satisfying.”

[Editor’s Note – I believe the problem we (Wii?) were having in this regard was related to a lack of motion as the ball was released. People would either swing their arm then release the ball, or the converse (releasing the button before their arm was in motion.) Again, the game tracks speed and rotation for a few milliseconds at the moment the button is released and at no other time.]

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Earlier I mentioned a problem with the pointer falling outside the screen or sensor bar area, effectively (and, most importantly, seemingly randomly) disconnecting the player’s input until the pointer is brought back into the sensor area. This input disconnect also happens when a game, such as Twilight Princess, switches between a state in which the Wiimote is using the accelerometers and gyroscope exclusively to one in which the pointer is featured. For example, often times you find yourself running around, swinging the sword when, suddenly, you need to pull out the bow for a precise shot (required in multiple boss fights.) Almost without fail, when I switch from running around to pointing with the bow or slingshot, I get a ‘point the remote at the screen’ message in big red letters and a darkened interface. My hands naturally drift to a neutral, relaxed position when I’m running around, so each time I need to point at something, even if I feel I’m pointing properly, it takes a while for the Wiimote to recover positional sensing. This is jarring, frustrating; an extreme flow breaker. Each time I try to point at something, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. Barf.

Control Obfuscation

One thing I greatly enjoyed about Wind Waker was the depth of the sword fighting and the amount of emphasis on mastering it in the game. There is, on the first island, a master swordsman who trains you. There are various thresholds of training, measured by how many times in a row you can hit the master in one on one sword combat without being hit yourself. As you defeat each level of challenge, you are rewarded with new sword techniques that can be used throughout the game. At the highest level, you have to hit something ridiculous like 500 times in a row without being hit yourself. I actually managed to do this, and did it very early in the game. The commensurate reward was a much deeper level of satisfaction and enjoyment throughout the rest of the game because the skills that I as a player had spent time practicing prepared me for success and allowed me to feel powerful and in control for the rest of the game. This sensation is, by virtue of the Wiimote gesture triggered controls, entirely missing from Twilight Princess. Since here’s just no precision in flailing the Wiimote around wildly, there’s nothing gained by it. It is obfuscation of player intent because it uses a highly sensitive input (high input sensitivity) to trigger a very small variety of actions, all of which are prerecorded animations (low reaction sensitivity.) In this way, they’ve effectively removed the extremely enjoyable feelings of mastery that were possible in the sword fighting mechanics in Wind Waker, which are otherwise very similar in Twilight Princess. So this is an example of Wii gone wrong: they obviously felt the need to shoehorn more Wii stuff into a game that was conceived and constructed before the Wii existed.

More on Zelda as I complete more of it (it is a ponderous game.) And, if there’s interest, I’ll work my way through the rest of the Wii launch titles I have access to including Super Monkey Ball, Excite Truck, Rayman, and the other Wii Sports titles. I also plan to continue this series with “Virtual Sensation and Next Gen”, which will delve into my experience playing Gears of War, Lost Planet, and Dead Rising, and why I snort with derision when I hear the term “Next Gen” used in seriousness. Also, I desperately need to further refine my classification of the Principles of Virtual Sensation, making them an easy to use reference tool. There’s just too much there that’s too poorly organized to be of use to anyone. Like, I’ll get right on that and stuff . Stay tuned!

5 Comments

OH EM GEE!

Do I really need to go into why this is an unbelievably awesome turn of events? I’ve been saying for a long time that Will would be a perfect guest for The Daily Show, since well before the Colbert Report existed. So, tune in and watch the magic unfold. I can’t wait for a wide audience to get a load of sweet, tasty Will.

By the by, I’m not espousing a return to the Romero days of game designer rockstardom. Rather, we should be celebrating people – Will especially – who really make our industry look good. Show them off, take im out, parade im ’round. Because, seriously, Will is a goddamn rockstar.

1 Comment

In the first installment, we talked about why one would want to teach. Let’s assume you’re sold on the concept of teaching, have the requisite degrees and experience, have contacted a local school, and have been slotted into the schedule for next quarter.

Now you’re faced with a terrifying, exhilarating question:

What in the hell am I going to teach these people?

This is not an easy question to answer, especially in the two weeks you have before you find yourself standing in front of a room full of students. So what do you do? Well, you make stuff up. Huh? What? Well, yes!

The first step to creating your curriculum is a brain dump of your knowledge about the topic. This is perhaps the most difficult step because it is at this point you must distill your years of knowledge and hard won experience (things which are most likely so intuitive and engrained as to be subconscious) into some kind of external format. This is, as you might expect, a somewhat time-consuming process. Here are some strategies I’ve developed in prepping for classes over the years:

1. Create framing questions to direct your thinking. This is just good brainstorming technique – framing questions are great way to guide your thinking. If you have a clear, concise question like ‘what is the most important thing I know about level design?’, your brain will feed you some answers. The trick is keep going even when you feel you’ve found the ‘right answer’ (a notion which is flawed and will severely limit your creativity if you don’t abandon it.) If you look for twenty right answers to a question, I guarantee you’ll find some answers that are surprising, and, in the case of drawing out knowledge on a subject you know well, surprisingly insightful. Here are some framing questions I’ve had success with:

• What is the most important thing I know about _______?
• What is the first thing I do when I _______?
• What are the different kinds of _______?
• What skills make someone an expert in _______?
• What qualities make someone an expert in _______?
• What knowledge makes someone an expert in _______?
• If I could give someone starting their new job only one piece of advice about _______, what would it be?

You can pretty much just insert the title of your class into the above blanks to get a solid framing question. Level Design, Gameplay and Game Design, Programming for the Artist, and so on.

2. Mine for Metaphors. One of the best and most common ways to explain something to someone is through metaphor. Take some of the concepts you’ve brainstormed above and look for some powerful metaphors for explaining them to the uninitiated. For example, one of my favorite metaphors for explaining the difference between single and multiplayer level design is that of “playground versus birthday party.” In planning a birthday party for one child, you buy napkins, hats, and a cake with the child’s favorite superhero or character on them. You plan all the activities around them, scheduling a clown, a bouncy castle, a trip to the arcade; their favorite things. All your effort is geared towards maximizing enjoyment for that one child, the birthday girl. In designing a single player level, the designer is creating a tailored, specific experience for one player, much like a birthday party. Multiplayer level design, however, is like designing a playground. Your primary focus is on creating a space in which the children can focus on having pleasurable interactions with one another. You’re designing a space which maximizes the children’s ability to have fun interacting. Most particularly, you must avoid elements which cause distraction from this interaction. In games this is typified by levels where players end up fighting the level more than each other – constantly having to pay attention to avoiding traps or pitfalls that are just as lethal as other players, for example.

Metaphor is extremely effective in conveying ideas and concepts. Take some time to brainstorm some effective metaphors for the concepts you’ve outlined. I often find that I metaphorical representations when thinking about these concepts anyway; all I have to do is identify and record them for later use.

3. Models of excellence. For whatever topic you’re going to teach, there are going to be some amazing examples of how to do it brilliantly out there. Quickly capture a list of your personal “masterworks” in the relevant area – pieces of work that make you step back and go oo-ooo! For example, as I was prepping for my level design class, I started by writing down a list of games that I thought had particularly excellent level design, getting as specific as possible if I could remember exactly where in the game those levels were and what they were called. Metroid Prime, Counterstrike, Super Mario Kart, Half-Life, and so on. If you’re going to be teaching a 3d modeling or art class, crack open images.google.com and start tracking down games you think are particularly beautiful or well executed, gathering a directory of ‘example’ screenshots. And, while you’re at it, write down what you think are your personal best pieces of work in the field. These, besides giving you a nice mental refresher on topical experience, will be extremely useful in establishing credibility, which I’ll get into in Part 3.

Finally, make a list of people in the field who you consider expert. Who created these pieces you’ve listed? Is it possible to get in contact with them? Is there anyone local who might be interested in guest speaking?

4. Research existing ideas. I’ve put this last because I’ve found it to be the most frustrating aspect of prepping to teach game classes. There simply isn’t that much out there that’s useful, especially if you’re teaching game design and related disciplines. There are lots of neat, specific, topical articles on Gamasutra, Escapist, and others, but there is most certainly a dearth of cohesive theories and practices to work from when prepping a curriculum. So, find stuff that’s out there, integrate it into what you have, and use it, but don’t just grab articles that have your topic in the title and hand them on to students: read them, figure out what they have to teach, and reconcile it with your own experience. I see far too many teachers defaulting to simple handing out articles from Gamasutra and saying ‘read it’ because they don’t know what else to teach.

Organization

So now you have your thoughts on paper. If you’ve done this correctly (and haven’t let your logical/analytical brain interfere with the brainstorming process) your thoughts should be scrawled all over the page, a jumbled mess. Now it is time to engage your logic circuits, to organize this stuff into ordered, bite-sized chunks, each of which builds on the ones before, and which culminate into some sort of complete, cohesive knowledge base.

A lot of times, this sort of ordering becomes self evident: you need to know Photoshop before you learn about UVW unwrapping, and so on. One strategy is to look over your topics and start by rating them 1-5 in terms of complexity or difficulty, then arrange them accordingly. Another way is to group ideas and concepts by “knowledge chains” – simply figure out concepts and skills that have others as prerequisites, draw out little chains between them, and then organize the chains by difficulty. Go with whatever makes the most sense to you.

In my level design class, I organize lessons according to specific games. I start by having students create levels for Excitebike, a simple, easy to understand game, and one of the first games released with a proper level editor. I lecture about iteration, which is what I’ve identified as the core skill of level design. Design, Test, Record, Revise, and Repeat – the more iterations of this cycle you can get, the better your levels will be. I introduce the basics of running a playtest (don’t talk, answer questions, or interrupt in any way, just watch and record) and get into spacing, timing, and creating flow for the player by removing pieces which consistently trip playtesters up without providing a rewarding challenge to master. Next week is Chu Chu Rocket, before which I lecture on puzzle games and the challenges involved in balancing frustration (too difficult) against boredom (too easy) to create ‘aha!’ moments in players, and make them feel clever. After that, it’s a lecture about multiplayer level design and creating Battle Mode maps for the original Super Mario Kart. And so on. As the quarter goes on, the games get increasingly complex, and the concepts layer on top of one another, eventually culminating in the creation of a level for Tony Hawk’s Underground (a game I worked on) and a special “design test” and interview in which I directly gauge the students’ designs (and writing) on the scale I would apply if I were looking to hire a level design to work on Tony Hawk. Obviously, the structure of your class will be dictated by the subject you’re teaching and your experience; just make sure you diagram out a logical, ordered map to guide your lesson planning.

Also, note that some structure is imposed by the format of your classes. As I said, at AIPX the classes are four hours long. More precisely, classes begin ten minutes after their scheduled start time (so 6:10 for a 6:00pm class), and there is a twenty minute break halfway through the class. In addition, the AIPX quarter consists of 11 weeks, and there is usually at least one week where class is not held due to school vacation. So, this means that you’re going to want to break this stuff up into about 20 chunks of learning, one for each ~ 2hr sub-period of each class.

Not unlike a good level, I try to design my class periods with a nice mix of stimulus: lectures, group activities, tool learning, and in class “work time” where the students work individually and I move around helping each in turn with their specific projects. I find that having a structured in-class goal to work towards – a peer critique of levels at 3pm, for example – is the best way to keep work time from devolving into ‘screw around online time’ (more on the ‘how’ of teaching in the next installment.)

At this point, you can break down your lessons and map them directly to specific class periods. At AIPX, you’re actually required to file this weekly plan with the school for each class, each quarter you teach. I usually print out a version of this to give to students on the first day of class. Also, I maintain a shorthand version for my own in-class use.

Weekly Plan for Level Design
“In Class” Weekly Plan for Level Design

And there you have it! Your class is locked and loaded. In the next and final installment we’ll look at the how – how exactly to keep a classroom full of eager, ADD game students, each of whom is sitting in front of a computer loaded with games, on task.

2 Comments

So, looks like my Principles of Virtual Sensation article went up as a feature on Gamasutra. Coolness.

Principles of Virtual Sensation

This was actually a draft that got posted; I’m in the process of revising and cleaning up the language. But, hey, neat that they wanted to post it as-is and great motivation to write more neat stuff . Also, I realized now I never actually posed on my blog proper about the article itself, even though it’s been linked from the sidebar for weeks.

Whee!

4 Comments

My friend drew this. I felt compelled to share it.

2 Comments

I’ve had a request for an article! The reader in question writes:

I’ve been in the game industry for almost 6 years now, about the average burn-out time I believe, and my attitude towards the commercial game industry has gone pretty much on a straight slope from “amazing” and “so much to learn” territory to where I am at now, “I can’t believe I’m working on this” and “I guess it pays the bills” land. I would love to quit my job tomorrow and work on game prototypes in my garage, but alas I believe I am going to require some intermediary step to get to that goal.

I have friend who migrated from industry to teacher, and after meeting your online persona, my interests in that direction have been doubly piqued. I am born and bred from the mod community, so self teaching and helping others to learn is part of my deeper character.

What is teaching like? Is it satisfying? What are your responsibilities? How’s the pay? Are there positions for environmental art / level design teachers? What kind of qualifications are required to teach?

I would like to give teaching some serious consideration, I believe it might give me some sort of satisfaction that has been on the decline for me for years. I hope you can find the time to shine some light on the subject for me, I know you would have some resourceful and well written advice on the subject.

I empathize with this position, especially having come from a ‘yearly grind’ style development house (I was a cog in the Tony-Hawk-a-year machine at Neversoft.) I found it to be a thankless, dreary existence, lacking any definable conclusion or sense of hope (I’m ceaselessly amazed by the stamina of the guys who have been there since day one and have continued through eight iterations of the same game.) Plainly put, working at Neversoft wore me down. I was worn down physically (I gained over thirty pounds, stopped shaving or getting haircuts, wore the same tattered rags, and rarely exercised), socially (interacting with two or fewer persons per day leads to anti-social behavior and agoraphobic tendencies), and emotionally (by the end I was having erratic mood swings and pseudo-breakdowns.) Clearly, this position was no longer tenable.

So I left Neversoft, moved to Arizona, and took up off-road mountain unicycling. This was (and continues to be) the greatest decision I’ve ever made. I’m happy, well adjusted, have lost all the weight (and then some), am fitter than I’ve ever been, live with my amazing girlfriend, and, perhaps most importantly, believe in what I’m doing. Currently, I’m working as a game designer (and artist, and programmer, and bizdev dweeb, and producer) at Flashbang Studios.

The reason for relocating to AZ was to join up with my good friends, who had recently founded Flashbang. Flashbang is our realization of the common and naïve game student dream. As in ‘once we get out of college we’re going to start a game company together it-will-be-aweshome!!!11!One!!’ Well, yes and no.

What is exciting about working at a small, independent company is the sense that I’m in the driver’s seat. If I’m working on a project, it’s my dream. I’m not toiling away in a dank quarry, hauling blocks across miles of boiling sand to build someone else’s pyramid. If you’re going to grind your life away in a masochistic profession – and make no mistake, game development is unadulterated masochism – I say to you this: make it mean something. Spend your life making meaning. Create things which excite you, which get you out of bed early in the morning and keep you up late at night. Create experiences which will set minds on fire and inspire, in turn, to create experiences for others. We all have a reason for wanting to create games and, at some level, it boils down to an experience we had playing someone else’s creation, their dream. What was that game for you? Think of that experience. Now, imagine giving that experience to someone else. There’s just no excuse for hunching over a keyboard 80 hours a week, forgoing health, hygiene, socialization, and everything else a balanced life needs, to squeeze out something you don’t believe in. A paycheck is not a paycheck. Don’t drink the Koolaid. Eject!

So, Flashbang’s original plan was to create a hit casual game which would leave us bathing in cashmonies, opening our ‘tech tree’ to interesting, innovative, physics-based projects. As it turns out, this was and is much more difficult than one might suspect. We’ve done much better picking up small contract projects (we recently did a teaching game for Cisco Systems – for their internal sales staff) and cranking them out quickly than we have spending months fretting over the minutia of our casual titles. That said, up next for us is something interesting, something truly ‘indie,’ which I’m exceedingly excited about. Anyhow, I realized quickly that Flashbang was going to need some bootstrapping, so I started looking around for teaching jobs, which is how I found the Art Institute of Phoenix.

What is teaching at the art institute like? Is it satisfying? What are your responsibilities?

I must say, it’s been one of the most rewarding, fulfilling, and enjoyable experiences of my life. There is Yiddish word, naches, “pride from the accomplishment of a child or mentee” which synopsizes the feeling nicely. Many of my students have graduated and gotten awesome jobs. This fills me with a sense of satisfaction, purpose, and meaning I’ve rarely known. Two were recently hired (out of school, mind you) to work on Warhammer Online (one as character artist, no less!) There’s nothing quite like the feeling of watching them get their dream job, of having helped them on their way to that success. I think that no matter what I do or where I go, I’ll always want to be teaching.

As for the particulars, the classes at AIPX are four hours long, which means that you really need to plan well to fill the time with content and keep the energy level high. Honestly, though, once you’ve meticulously planned a class out week by week and run it a few times it takes little effort to maintain. And if you’re teaching an art centric class it tends to boil down to a lot of one-on-one time spent helping individual students. I’ve convinced them to put all three of my classes on one day, which is something they don’t normally do (3 classes * 4 hours + travel time = 16 hour day), but which I’m very happy with. This means I can work full time on Flashbang and fun prototypes while having my bills and expenses handled in one day of teaching.

As far as responsibilities, you’re required to show up for each period of each of your classes. If you cannot make it to class on a particular day, you’re responsible for finding a substitute teacher, prepping her, and informing your academic director of the change. If you cannot find a substitute, there is a list ten tiers deep of phone numbers and contact information you must go through until you can find someone to be in your classroom during your allotted teaching time. Past that it’s up to you to decide what’s important to teach and how to teach it. You must provide students with syllabi and weekly plans, create any handouts or exercises needed for your classes, and keep detailed grading records. This ‘paper trail’ is especially important as any student can, after receiving a grade in your class, “challenge” this grade, which leads to a formal inquiry. If you can’t provide substantive proof that the grades issued in your class are the result of fastidious bookkeeping, meticulous grading, and some kind of underlying scale or system, there are problems. Essentially, you can’t arbitrarily assign grades because a student makes you feel icky. This may sound a bit daunting, but the answer is to create a “rubric” for each and every assessment you give. Here are some of my rubrics:

For the Board Game final in my Game Design class
For the ChuChuRocket assignment in my Level Design class
For playtesting Soldat maps in my Advanced Level Design class

…and a weekly plan (to be thorough):

Weely Plan for Level Design

The students are, for the most part, bright, excited, and naïve; the way we all were. Occasionally you get stinkers. Sometimes you get kids who you like personally but who you have to fail because they don’t show up or have problems getting their work done. Sometimes you have to give people A’s who you simply cannot stand on a personal level because they show up and do good work. Occasionally, someone will sit there looking at filthy tentacle porn during class (the preceding sentence contains zero hyperbole, btw.) It’s the Law of Averages, really – you’ll see the gamut, from brilliant to…not so much.

It takes a little while to get used to having the sort of responsibility one has as an instructor and to feel comfortable wielding it, but it seems very natural to me now (after two and a half years teaching.)

Hows the pay?

The pay is reasonable [email if you’re interested in exact figures – sswink (at) flashbangstudios (dot) com]. Really, it’s about how little effort goes into a class once you’ve already prepped and taught it. I barely think about my classes during the week. Some occasional grading and emails – little else. It’s not like having two jobs, it’s getting paid to hang out, help people learn, and share the experience of working in the game industry for one day each week.

Are there positions for environmental art / level design teachers?

Yeah, totally. The major at all Art Institutes that carry it (there’s one in San Diego) is “Game Art and Design.” The emphasis is primarily on the art, though. Obviously, I represent the voice of design here in Phoenix, but the final output of the major is a high quality demo reel and portfolio web page, so most classes are geared towards art. I can’t speak for other AI schools, but here at AIPX we always need additional qualified instructors.

What kind of qualifications are required to teach at a place like the art institute?

Because it is required by their accrediting body, you must have a Bachelor’s or equivalent to teach at an Art Institute. This is somewhat unfortunate, honestly. Schools deny themselves the benefit of quality game instructors because of it, as many of the best and brightest simply didn’t go to college, or found it wasn’t for them. My partner at Flashbang, Matthew Wegner, an amazingly brilliant guy, dropped out of college. It simply wasn’t for him. I looked at getting him in at AI – there’s just no way to get around the accreditation thing. But, hey, you should look at the colleges in your area. They might be more open. Never know till you try. Matthew ended up teaching an online course which paid well and didn’t require he have a degree.

To sum up: I can’t recommend teaching highly enough. The extrinsic rewards, though somewhat sparse by certain standards, are far outstripped by the intrinsic rewards. Naches, ahh…

Stick around for part two: “What should I teach these people?”
..and part three: “How should I teach these people?”

2 Comments

It is said of Guy Fawkes that he was the only man ever to enter Parliament with noble intentions. You know what this country needs? More holiday burnings-in-effigy. I tell you what!

No Comments