GDC 2010, Day 3

Welcome to the last day of GDC 2010. First, there was my lecture.

David Sirlin (Sirlin Games)

I was supposed to inspire the students who are trying to join the industry. This was part of a student track, so several other speakers would speak on various student-themed topics over the course of the day. I didn't know ahead of time what other speakers would say, and I still don't know actually, but I figured they would cover boring detailed stuff. So I gave a lecture about how to get into the game industry that isn't really about how to get into the game industry.

Those new to work in games will probably face a "hump" they have to get over to really be allowed in. I'm not saying this is how it should or shouldn't be, but just that it is. If you're not "in" then people kind of push you away usually. But if you are "in" then even if you kind of suck, it seems to be easier to get work than if you're "not in." So how do you get over this hump? My lecture is a 4-step process to forget that there was ever a problem in the first place. The steps are:

1) Have courage from within
2) Do Something
3) Get Better at the Thing
4) Stand Apart from Others

Courage Within. Absolutely do NOT wait for anyone to give you permission to be what you want to be. If you're a game programmer (or whatever) then be it, live it, do it. If someone tells you that you aren't or that you can't, then tell them (out loud or just in your head) "Fuck you, and don't tell me what I can't do." You have to have internal motivation to keep going, and ignore external factors like naysayers who don't have the vision that you do. Every visionary who ever lived was told by naysayers they couldn't do whatever it was they were doing. Ignore them.

There's a reason to ignore them though, it's not just delusion. Take as an example, the first time I saw the movie Reservoir Dogs (I was in high school). It has an unusual plot structure and I starting thinking about why it has the structure it does. The non-linear structure allows Tarantino to have careful control over the flow of information, so that each question he answers raises more questions. I started thinking about 1) what was the designer intent behind lots of these choices and 2) what effect on viewers did these choices have. For the first time, I was thinking about structure of a film.

From then on, I thought about the structure of other films...and books, street signs, conference halls, laundromats, and so on. It becomes a way of looking at the world, a "designerly way of thinking." Now you might have your own discipline such as programming or art and I'm not saying you have to be a designer. What I'm saying is that I didn't wait around for people to call me a designer or game designer or whatever. I just started being one by adopting the right mindset myself. It comes from within.

 I mentioned an artist I knew who said basically the same thing. When I asked how he can draw as well as he does, he said he and other artists have "the artist's eye." That means when he looks at something, he really LOOKS at it. He sees the shadow, the highlight, the outline, the form, the color, the composition of the scene, the tone. He looks at all these details and really sees them and thinks about their interplay. You can't wait until someone calls you an artist, you have to just be one.

I then told them about an interview I saw with actor Jim Carey. Carey described a time in his earlier career that was analogous to the situation many students in my lecture were probably in. He cared about comedy, he studied it, he worked on material, and he even performed in local clubs on stage, but he was not famous or successful. He looked more "unemployed" than "comedian." He had his one big shot to be discovered by a talent scout...and he really blew it. He thought his career was over. He got past his depression and pushed on though. He decided that he IS a comedian god damn it, and there would be another talent scout and another and another and someday, someone would realize his ability. THAT is why we know who Jim Carey is. It takes enormous internal drive (aka persistence or stick-to-it-ness) to make it, especially in a creative field.

Machiavelli said kind of the same thing. He talked about "virtu" and "fortune."

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GDC 2010, Day 2

Come with me to day 2 of the Game Developer's Conference. But first, here's some things I left out from yesterday.

Jaime Griesemer Again (Bungie)

Jaime Griesemer made a point yesterday that when gets feedback, he doesn't like hearing solutions, just problems. He's ok with "I don't like this" and he's even better with "I don't like this because [of X]" but he's not hot on "this should be changed to that." Often these solutions are not feasible. Sometimes they have technical problems, sometimes they cause other even worse problems in some other area of the game, or whatever. He says don't discuss solutions with playtesters, do that with other designers.

I've found this to be good advice from both sides of the coin. I've also heard lots of "change this to that" pieces of advice that can't work, but the real message from the player is that SOMETHING is wrong, so figure out a better solution. On the other hand, the playtesters I work with these days have a close relationship with me. They have learned a lot about my ideas and methods and are often able to provide good solutions. Even with that, there have been many times when there most valuable feedback was identifying a problem that I then puzzled over to find a solution. I mainly bring this up because Sid Meier said exactly the same thing today...but one thing at a time.

Another point he made yesterday was about ignoring balance feedback in some situations. He was saying that if the people giving the balance feedback (aka, the people complaining) realize that you can easily change a number somewhere to change the game, then they will complain over all sorts of things. Maybe a strategy or weapon or move or something is pretty good, so they complain rather than explore the game more and find counters. And yet many of these complains go away the moment the game is in a more fixed form, like when it's actually burned onto a disc and changes would be hard. At that point, many of the previous "complaints" go away and those players learn to overcome whatever challenge by actually getting better. Obviously you have to be careful about when to ignore or not ignore this kind of feedback, but I've noticed this same phenomenon.

Rob Pardo Again (Blizzard)

I remember a few more things Pardo said yesterday. "Don't make players read a story." He limited quest text to 512 characters on purpose in World of Warcraft, not for a technical reason, but to make quest designers keep it to the point. He said that players should be able to get the gist of the story by only reading the objecting and actually doing the quest. The quest text can then enhance, deepen, or further explain things, but it shouldn't be necessary for understanding the basic story.

He said one place they really failed at that was Diablo 2 quests. In that game, you talk to the quest giver and they launch into 2 to 3 minutes of monologue about all this story stuff. You sit there with no form of interaction. The quest is really just "Kill Andariel" or whatever though. He said that's a fail. But he said World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King succeeded here, specifically the quest chain for become a Death Knight. (I agree, and so does basically everyone else.) In this quest chain you steal a horse that you then turn into your Dreadsteed. You get quests from Arthas himself at first, but we see how your alliances change. Just playing through it all and reading almost nothing gives you a great sense of what Death Knights are all about.

Another point was that players will choose the shortest path, so make sure the shortest path is also the most fun. In EverQuest, the fastest way to level up is to fight the same monster over and over a million times, standing in like the same spot. In World of Warcraft, the idea was that quests were the fastest way, not standing in one place killing the same monster. He pointed out that even the most boring of all quests "Go kill X bears" or something is a big improvement because at least you finish that, turn it in, then get another quest to go kill some other monster, maybe with some other abilities, and that is located somewhere else in the zone. It gets you to move around at the least. Better still are quests that are more creative and fun, and that give enough XP to be worth doing even for the optimizer players.

Pardo also said that Blizzard is known for polish, but that polish isn't something you do just at the end; you have to do it all the way through. I think that's another way of saying you need to iterate and iterate and iterate. He showed a top down map of Arathi Basin (the battle ground in World of Warcraft) that was really low res and pixelly, like something you'd see on an Atari 2600. He said that was the design document for the battleground, ha. (It was remarkably accurate!) Then he showed a screenshot of the earliest playable version of it. It looked ugly of course, but it was playable. They could move the bridge or the flags or whatever and try different things. They did this through its development and it turned out to be one of the best battlegrounds with the LEAST overall development time.

The contrast was Silvermoon City. Silvermoon is a HUGE city, bigger than they had done before. It was so big that they had to break it up into several sections, each built in isolation. It was so unwieldy to connect up all these sections and actually play it as a whole that they very rarely did it. I think he said they did that only about 2 times in a YEAR (oh my). As is no surprise, Silvermoon turned out to be unwieldy to actually navigate as a player, too. It just didn't have the continuous iteration and polish (as a complete, continuous city) that Blizzard usually does. Pardo said that they now call this "Silvermooning" and are very careful to avoid any situation that prevents them from doing many, many iterations on something.

Another point he made (he sure made a lot of points, btw) is that he has to create a culture where his employees "show their work early." He says if you work on something (maybe a map or a character or programming a feature, whatever) you don't really want to show people when it still has obvious problems. It will make you look stupid. But the alternative is to keep working and working in secret, building up to some kind of "big reveal." At this point, you're too invested. If you've been working on something for three months, he said, and then finally show it, you aren't looking for feedback. You are looking for a pat on the back. But the only way to make things good is many, many iterations. He encourages his employees to show each other even their very early work and to give each other suggestions on whether that work is going in a good direction or not, or how it could be improved.

Ok, now let's start GDC Day 2 for real.

What You Need to Know About Casual Games 2010

This was the worst named session in all of GDC. Or...was it the best named session? Maybe the worst because it showed almost no casual games and almost nothing from 2010 (the games are mostly from 2009 I think). Or maybe it's the best named session because it seeks to redefine what a "casual game" even means. I thought it meant lame match 3 stuff, peggle, and facebook non-games. Apparently to Juan Gril and Nick Fortugno, it means a bunch of awesome experimental web games. Sweet.

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GDC 2010, Day 1

Welcome to Game Developer's Conference.

Nicole Lazzaro

I was too exhausted and needed to sleep, sorry Nicole. I'm sure you did great.

Yoshiro Sakamoto (Nintendo)

Sakamoto started with 20 minutes describing in excruciating detail exactly which Metroid and Wario-Ware games he did make and did not make. (Short version: a lot of them.) Also he made some series of detective games that we haven't heard about.

He said Metroid is the only non-niche game we would know him for, and in Japan, Metroid is niche (wait, what?) and so over there he's seen as only making niche games. But he's a quirky guy and he likes that.

Early on, he worked with Iwata (current president of Nintendo) on something, I think he meant Balloon Fight. He showed a picture of him and Iwata where each has a thought bubble. Iwata's has a bunch of equations and techie stuff. Sakamoto's has "3 + 3 = 7?" and like a cartoon cat with an arrow to a lunchbox and a lizard or something. They have different modes of thinking, apparently. Recently, Iwata asked Sakamoto how he is able to make such opposite games. The Metroid games are "serious" while the Wario-ware games are totally silly and funny. Sakamoto suspects that actually Iwata's question isn't "how can you make such opposite games?" but is really "how can you make a game with a serious tone AT ALL?"

Sakamoto said to explain, we should know what influenced him as an artist. Early on, he was very affected by Dario Agento, especially his films Deep Red and Suspiria. These are horror films (I think?), and Sakamto said he was so impressed at how the films had tension and heightened emotions. There was some certain kind of music he thought was unusual, but effective. The rhythm had a "dead" quality to it, I think he said, and the music stops entirely at just the right moments.

He was also influenced by Luc Besson's film Leon: The Professional, John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, and Brian De Palma's Carrie. He's also quick to point out that he is not a movie buff, that he has not watched more movies than the average person, that he has not watched all the films of those directors, and that he doesn't wish he were making movies instead of games. It's just that these particular films showed him tools of the craft.

Specifically, he learned the use of these four techniques: mood, timing, foreshadowing, and contrast. He probably should have talked about these in much more depth as this was really the central point of his entire talk, but I don't think he gave specific examples. Anyway, these are the four ideas that he felt were very important to making horror movies work, to have just the right tension.

Then he talked about comedy. He likes comedy and he likes to laugh but a) he is definitely not a comedian (his words) and b) he actually likes making other people laugh more than he likes to himself. Making games that are silly and funny is his way of achieving this, without being a standup comic. He said those same exact four concepts are what makes comedy work. Mood, timing (especially timing!), foreshadowing, and contrast.

Oh, and he also showed us a crazy, indescribable DS game called Tomodachi Collection. You make Mii's (avatars) of your friends, then the game allows you to put them into a bunch of surreal and completely absurd situations. Some are like love scenes on a beach, one was running away from a *gigantic* rolling head of one of your friends, or doing silly dances with them while wearing even sillier costumes, and so on. Sakamoto certainly has a comic touch. Even I started to wonder how he makes a game with a serious tone.

Anyway, his point is that the reason he can do these opposite things--make a comedy game and a serious game--is that they are not opposite to him. They require the same sort of care and he thinks about many of the same ideas in both.

One last interesting thing he said, but I have to translate it a little for you. He talked about how he spends all this time making sure the timing and mood and all that is right, because that's what will create the right emotional response from the player. He was trying to say that he thought of the player as this nebulous thing out there. Kind of like he makes a work of art, then throws it into some sort of void where, theoretically--some humans will enjoy it. I know exactly what he means because I often have that exact same feeling. I've heard other artists mention this same idea too. They are designing something that people are supposed to enjoy or appreciate, but...who are these people? Sakamoto just does his best then hopes for the best.

BUT, then one day he changed his view. After the release of one of those detective games we don't know about here, a woman who played the game liked it so much that she sent him homemade chocolate candies. He explained that in Japan, this is what women do for men to signal romantic interest. He said he was shocked by this, like he didn't know how to even react. It was the first moment he really felt deep inside him that actual real people enjoy his games. Not just theoretical people. So this praise he got had quite an effect on him, and from then on, he pictured specific people when he makes his games. What will his wife think? What will some little boy he knows think? And so on. Well, I thought it was interesting.

Jaime Griesemer (Bungie)

Griesemer's talk was called Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle From 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds For Halo 3. It was about multiplayer game balance, and he covered many similar ideas as my GDC lecture last year and my writings. He even quoted me in his presentation

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GDC 2010, The Day Before Day 1

I usually call Day 1 of the Game Developer's Conference the first day of the main sessions. There's actually always two days before that. This year, I went to the second of those two days. Come with me on an exhausting internal and external journey. This is super long, but you at least get some character arc here if you make it through.

Pre-Conference

I arrived and picked up my speaker's badge. I saw Steve Swink (formerly of Flashbang, now of Enemy Airship) and Matthew Wegner (Flashbang). They also had speaker's badges, but Matthew's had an extra green ribbon saying Session Advisor or something. We debated whether this made his badge more cool or less cool. Steve asked if I was going to the Independent Game Summit. I said no, what's what, I'm going to the all day thing on virtual currency in social games. He gave an expression of surprise and disgust and said "dude, you should really go to the indie game summit." Incidentally Steve and Matthew were running the summit. I explained that since I'm going to launch an online gaming site for Yomi, Puzzle Strike, Flash Duel, and probably more...and that that site will have at least basic social features like chat and friends lists, and virtual currency, that I feel obligated to go to this. Shouldn't I find out as much as I can about the various methods and tricks they use, so I can use some of them and write articles about how unethical the rest are?

Steve explained that the indie game summit would be interesting because of all the talk about how to develop experimental games that do interesting new things, but just as importantly, it's "the center of all heart and passion at the whole conference." I nodded and said it sounds really entertaining, but I maybe I'll be a grownup and go to the business stuff this time.

Mitch Davis (Live Gamer)

 Davis opened the so-called V-Con (I guess that means conference about virtual items, but they can't be bothered to use full words? Maybe a less lol-cat name would work better next time?). He gave us many impressive stats about the world of virtual currency. It used to be a thing that just took hold in Korea, but now it's really worldwide. His company, Live Gamer, is a service that handles virtual item payment stuff. In a kind of handwavy way, he said that all the backend to handle that well is very complicated and has a ton of parts. The thing is, I've looked into this a bit, and yeah he's right. Maybe I should be considering his service.

Anyway, the most interesting stats he gave were changes in ARPU per country and per year. APRU means average revenue per user (measured per month usually), and you have to say that as a normal word a lot when you talk about virtual items. Say it with me. Arrrrrrrpooooooo. His point was that yeah, the amount of money from virtual item sales has increased each year in basically every country worth mentioning, but it's even more than that. Also in every country, the NUMBER of users paying for virtual items has steadily increased and also the Arrrrrrpooooo has increased in every country. Even in established markets like Korea, each user is spending more and more each year. If I remember right (ALL of this is from memory, no written notes), he said US ARPU is about $24, in Japan it's gotten as high as $50 or $60 I think, and even South America musters up $4.

Then Davis introduced Dave Perry, and made the seemingly disingenuous remark that Enter The Matrix is one of his favorite games. (Really?) 10 hours later, a guy named Brandon who was not at this lecture coincidentally mentioned that he bought Enter The Matrix for $1 in a bargain bin.

Dave Perry

(If you're short on time to read, skip this section as it gets more interesting later.)

Perry showed us travel pictures of his trip to Korea and maybe China too, I forget. He proved to us conclusively that he's much taller than everyone there. He showed some graphs that mapped out various strategies taken in the online game space and how much money each were making. It gave us some perspective to see the big ones like Blizzard and Zynga, and Perry pointed out how scary it is that many major game companies do not even APPEAR on the graph because they have no discernable online strategy. Scary for them, he meant.

Then Perry talked about lots of ways you can approach selling virtual items. He has a short list of horrible ideas that you should avoid, like items that prevent you from playing with friends who don't have the items, or making people buy new items because their old items are literally broken by some change in the game. He had a long list of good ideas for items, such as anything to do with customization, and anything improving the social situation in the game. He said having scarce items means people will be more likely to flock to the guy who has the scarce item. (Hmm...) Anything that helps you express loyalty to your friends, or to break the ice with strangers, or to recognize people who are trustworthy, are all good areas, he said. Items like silly snowballs you can throw at each are ways to break the ice and start talking to strangers. He showed one game that was a boys vs girls thing, and after the game ended, people immediately left. But they added a thing where the losing team's avatars are shown wearing ridiculous silly costumes for losing, and it caused people to stick around and "lol" about it, sometimes even apologizing for bad behavior during the game, or congratulating each other. Maybe you could buy different silly costumes or something? I dont' know.

Then Perry went off the rails, as far as I'm concerned. He mentioned two things off-handedly

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Handout from my GDC Lecture

Here's the 4-page handout from my Game Developer's Conference lecture about balancing multiplayer competitive games. Several people have asked me for the link, so I also put it in my sidebar under "Multiplayer Game Balance" (click to expand it) then "Four Page Overview." Now you can find it easily in the future!

Remember that this handout was designed to be viewed on paper, rather than online. It's meant to be printed on a single sheet of 11x17 paper, folded in half to create four 8.5x11 pages. It was quite a trick to summarize the 16,000 words of my game balance articles in just four pages...but I somehow did it. Maybe you can use it as a case study about how to densely pack information in a way that still has decent aesthetics.

Enjoy!