triggerthis.net

If you ever played Time Donkey, then you’ll recognise similar mechanics in this Flash platformer. The later levels start becoming really quite involved and challenging, additionally, the story delivering the tutorials is also quite well done.

I stumbled upon Church’s 6 year old interview whilst learning of LMNO’s cancellation last year and then reading further into what the project was aiming to achieve. Rather disheartening to see that it’s been six years and that the industry is still in the same state as it was back then. If not more intensely aligned with his fears.

His comments on vocabulary, in our unconscious fall back to other entertainment mediums to describe what players will experience is significantly valid, as are his points on assigning games to genres, crippling our capability of truly defining “play”. These are two points that are having serious impacts in our ability to really achieve the goal of differentiating ourselves from other forms of entertainment.

It’s a really interesting read and one that makes the fate of the early LMNO a little sadder.

A couple quotes:

“You start trying to figure out how we get to a bigger space of non-enthusiasts: people less steeped in the culture and the language. Which is fair enough, the more people that get to play stuff, the better. I’m certainly not against that. But until we can communicate more clearly what experience they’re getting I think the entertainment angle is going to continue to dominate, because it’s the thing that’s easier to explain in two sentences.”

“I do think if we continue to find it impossible to explain play, and continue to rely on movie notions of entertainment in particular and fail to develop any identity or vocabulary of our own, then we miss the chance to be what we probably should be. Because as the interactive media, not the passive media, if the only way we can talk about ourselves is borrowing the language of a non-interactive media, that strikes me as a bad sign.”

~1hr long podcast with Tim Bissell, author of “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter”.

Highly recommend getting the book, the interview itself is a great back-and-forth on its subjects, touching primarily on story design and implementation in games, the reception of story, how players interact and manipulate them into their own experiences. If you haven’t listened to any of Michaels other podcasts, there are also quite a few gems in there.

None the less, linked here is brief interview with Clint from 2009 discussing points from his Click Nothing Tour:

“You’ve talked in the past about how film, in its early stage, [borrowed heavily from] plays, and used that as an example of how each artistic medium has to find its own footing outside of the influence of other artistic mediums. This new Generation Y model almost sounds like your way of moving towards that goal. What to you is the purest state of what a game medium can be?”

I think it’s fundamentally ludic. I think one of the main points I’m trying to make that I never said explicitly in the talk is that games fundamentally are something that you play WITH, not something that you play IN. I think we really have tried for too long to force them to be something that you play in, to try and get ride of the notion that the game itself is something that can be manipulated by the player.

But it can’t be gotten rid of. No matter how immersive a game is people WILL stop and play WITH it. They may switch back and forth between playing WITH it and playing IN it, but when that’s the case it’s always the case they are still playing WITH it. So I think we’re better off acknowledging that, and getting on with it. To me it almost feels like Generation X is ashamed of that. It’s like we need to make our games more immersive so people will start taking them more seriously and stop playing with them like they’re toys. And start playing IN them in these things that we have created. I think we should stop taking ourselves so seriously and let people play WITH [the games] the way they seem to want to.”

“That’s not the only unique thing about development at Valve. Laidlaw said the company split its developers up into different teams for a period of time and told them simply to work on dream projects. And while he said the company’s accountants still grumble about the exercise since they can’t point to ways in which it produced anything for the company, Laidlaw added that the projects are still referred to regularly by the employees, whether as learning tools for new hires or reminders of things that did and didn’t work.”

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25292

“And it was new territory for Laidlaw as well. “One thing that’s different from writing a novel initially is that writing is such a solitary process, while your vision when writing a book is a solitary vision,” he said. “That’s a real difference. [In games] that vision has to evolve with other people.” He was still able to help guide the story making process at Valve. While Half-Life began with a very strong vision, as the story developed, along the way the team was “lost in the weeds,” and doubted the path that they were on. That’s where Laidlaw’s experience as a solitary book writer came in handy. To him, the hang-up was all too familiar.

“The answer isn’t, in my mind, let the player save anywhere. It’s almost 2010. Save state should be invisible to the player. The player should never worry about if the game is saved and how to reload and which reload to use. The game should automatically do the right thing.”

A fun little prototype video, demonstrating interaction with lights and shadows as a means to progress through an environment.

• Sound can replace visuals, as in Enemy Zero
• Watching DVD, playing games in different languages to get a feel for how environments and acting portray what they’re expressing verbally.

Notes and presentation from Harvey Smith and Matthias Worch on Environmental Storytelling. I found it to be a very good read, touching on a lot of points that are common and then taking some others in depth. Also offering thought processes for creating these moments that can apply to both preprod and production.

A short 11 minute talk from Spore lead designer, Chris Hecker, on investing time to fully explore your games mechanics, giving them the time they deserve.

“It doesn’t matter if your game takes 2 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes or 6 years, it matters that you make the game the game it should be.”

From the opening minutes, Heather Chaplin sets the tone with these wise words:

“Entertainment is culture, you guys are the 21^st century culture makers and culture is the glue that keeps society together [...] don’t you want your games to be more than just entertainment? More than just cool?”

Bob Bates gave an excellent talk at GDC that’s available for free online. It’s an hour long, but applies to all departments and individuals. He interviewed sixty developers for their input on his topic – Living a Creative Life in the Game Industry – that touches on burnout, turnover, motivation, environments, rewards etc.

A really nice article on how this indie team is moving away from creating levels and instead focusing on creating systems. Works quite well for their particular game but further implores the importance of system design in increasing a game’s longevity.

“How is this different from level design?

• Instead of creating content that can be enjoyed only a handful of times, we are setting up game modes that can be played a very large number of times.
• How each mode unfolds is primarily determined by game mechanics, not a set of scripted events.  As a result there is a very wide range of possible scenarios, not a single predetermined outcome.
• Modes are modular, robust and loosely coupled so that tweaking critical values is rarely damaging to the mode’s fun.  Level design is fragile because you are trying to squeeze fun out of a very narrow playspace.  One tiny mistake and the experience is broken. However, when you have a big broad playspace and you’ve plunked the player smack in the middle of a wide Goldilocks zone, you have a lot of room to push variables about without harming the rich pleasures of the game.”