Game Design: Theory & Practice- P3 pptx

have you create your own really cool mental images based on some suggestions that we give you on the screen. You were one of the first game designers to get your name above the title on the box. I was curious how that came about. Well, the way that happened goes back to Pirates! That was the first game that had my name on it. In those days I was working at Microprose and my partner was Bill Stealey who did the business/marketing side of things while I did the develop- ment/creative stuff. And the previous game before Pirates! was one of the flight simulator games, and I said to Bill, “Well, I’m going to work on this game about pirates.” And he said, “Pirates? Wait a minute, there are no airplanes in pirates. Wait a minute, you can’t do that.” “Well, I think it’s going to be a cool game.” And he answered, “Well, who’s going to buy a pirates game? Maybe if we put your name on it, they’ll know that they liked F-15 or whatever, and they might give it a try, OK.” There was a real concern that there was this pirates game coming out, but nobody’s going to be interested, because who wants a pirates game? People want flight simulators. So it was to say, “Sure, you want a flight simulator, but maybe you might want to try this pirates game because it was written by the guy who wrote that flight simulator that you’re playing.” I guess it was branding in a very crude, early form. It was because we were making this big switch in the type of game that I was working on, and to try to keep that connection between the games. So it wasn’t your lust for fame? [laughter] No, no. Even today, fame is not a computer game thing. I think it’s good. It’s still a pretty non-personality oriented business. I think that people remem - ber great games, and they know to a certain extent who’s involved. But there’s not a cult of Robin Williams or, you know, movie stars who really have a cult of person - ality. I think it’s good. Once we get the idea that we can get away with anything just because we’re who we are, that’s not a good thing. 38 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier F-15 Strike Eagle TEAMFLY Team-Fly ® But that sort of confidence led to Pirates!, didn’t it? [laughter] Well, it was a good game. Had it not been a good game, that strategy would not have worked. A lot of your games have had sequels of one kind or another, but you have never been the lead designer on one of them. Why is this? I think they are a fine thing to do in general, especially if they’re done well. I seldom go back to a topic primarily because I haven’t run out of ideas yet, so I’d rather do a dinosaur game than go back to an older title. I don’t have a lot of energy to get too involved in the sequels. Some of them turn out well, some of them turn out not quite so well. As opposed to letting the topic fade away, I think doing a sequel is often a good idea. In an ideal world, I’d like to be involved in everything, but I can’t really do that. So I tend to be more interested in being involved in a new product as opposed to a sequel. It’s certainly gratifying that people want another Railroad Tycoon or Civilization, et cetera, I think that’s great. I’m happy that it can be done. On Civilization III, since it’s being done inside of Firaxis, I’m able to take a more direct part in that, which I think is good. I would have liked to have done Railroad Tycoon II and do a new Pirates!, et cetera, if I had an infinite amount of time. But it’s just not feasible. I hear a lot of people talking about storytelling in games. Usually by storytelling they mean using cut-scenes or branching dialog trees or devices like that. Your games have never been very concerned with that side of storytelling. To me, a game of Civilization is an epic story. I think the kind of stories I’m inter - ested in are all about the player and not so much about the designer. There are players that are more comfortable in situa - tions where they’re making small deci - sions and the designer’s making the big decisions. But I think games are more interesting when the player makes the big Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier 39 Civilization decisions and the designer makes the small decisions. I think, in some sense, games are all about telling stories. They have a story created more by the player and less by the designer, in my mind. I think in Civilization there are fantastic stories in every game, they’re just not in the more traditional sense of a story. We have, amongst our rules of game design, the three categories of games. There are games where the designer’s having all the fun, games where the computer is having all the fun, and games where the player is having all the fun. And we think we ought to write games where the player is having all the fun. And I think a story can tend to get to the point where the designer is having all the fun or at least having a lot of the fun, and the player is left to tidy up a few decisions along the way, but is really being taken for a ride. And that’s not necessarily bad, but our philosophy is to try to give the player as much of the decision making as possible. Though Gettysburg! had a multi-player option, by and large your games have been single-player only for a long time. What do you think of the emerging popu- larity of multi-player gaming? I think down the road I would like to get more into multi-player, perhaps even a game that is primarily multi-player. But I still enjoy essentially single-player games, so I’m not sure exactly when or how that’s going to happen. Online multi-player gaming is probably the only revolutionary development in our technology we’ve seen since I started writing computer games. Everything else has been pretty much evolutionary. Better graphics, better speed, more memory, et cetera. But the multi-player online thing was a revolutionary change in the tools that we had to make games. I’m interested in doing something along those lines, but I’m not sure what it would be right now. In an old Next Generation magazine interview, you said, “Games are going to take over the world. It’s going to take a while, but there’s something inherently more engaging about computer games than any other form of entertainment.” Board games have certainly been around a long time, but have not yet taken over the world. I wondered what it is about computer games that you find so compelling. Yeah, I think I stand by that statement. I think that it’s the element of interactivity that makes them unique. They interact personally with you as a player, as opposed to movies, television, or music, which don’t. There’s this phenomenon of watching television and using the remote control to desperately try to make it an interactive experience, going from one channel to another [laughter] But the interactivity of computer games is what differentiates it and makes it so very power - ful. Now, we’re still learning how to use that tool and in a lot of other ways we’re not as good as television, movies, et cetera. But I think that as we learn to use the advantages that we have, they’re more powerful advantages than the advantages of other entertainment media. 40 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier I think that board games are kind of interactive, but they require other players. The computer brings a lot of power to the equation that board games don’t take advantage of. If anything, the advent of the Internet and multi-player play, that com - bined with interactivity seems to me like a really powerful combination. I think as we learn to use that element of our technology too, games can be very very compel - ling. The question that pops up is do people want games that are that interesting to play? There was the whole Deer Hunter phenomenon, and there was Slingo and things like that and I’m still working to integrate that into my model of the world, and I haven’t totally succeed in doing that. But what that tells me is that there’s a broader range of potential gamers than I am really familiar with. And part of our learning process is going to be to integrate them into the way that we design games and the way that we create games. But I still think we’re going to take over the world. Sid Meier Gameography Hellcat Ace, 1982 NATO Commander, 1983 Spitfire Ace, 1984 Solo Flight, 1984 F-15 Strike Eagle, 1985 Decision in the Desert, 1985 Conflict in Vietnam, 1985 Crusade in Europe, 1985 Silent Service, 1986 Gunship, 1986 Pirates!, 1987 F-19 Stealth Fighter, 1988 Railroad Tycoon, 1990 Covert Action, 1990 Civilization, 1991 Colonization, 1994 (Consultant) Civilization II, 1996 (Consultant) Gettysburg!, 1997 Alpha Centauri, 1999 (Consultant) Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier 41 Chapter 3 Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story “You know what’s the number one dumbest question I get asked when I’m out at some great university lecturing? I’m always asked ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ For about forty years I’ve been yanking their chain when I answer ‘Schenectady.’ They stare at me, and I say, ‘Yeah, Schenectady, in New York. There’s this idea service, see, and every week I send ’em twenty-five bucks, and every week they send me a freshly picked six-pack of ideas.’” — Harlan Ellison 42 H arlan Ellison might scoff at the idea of trying to explain where ideas come from. Certainly, if you are a novelist having trouble coming up with ideas, it may be time to wonder if you have chosen the right profession. Simi - larly, a good game designer, at any given moment, will be able to come up with no less than five solid ideas he would like to try to make into a computer game. There is no shortage of ideas in the gaming world. Aspiring game designers often think they can sell their idea to a development company. They seem to be under the impression that game developers are just sitting around waiting for a hot idea to come around so they can spend several million dollars to make it a reality. On the contrary, the challenge in game development is not coming up with a good idea, but in following through and being able to craft a compelling game around that idea. That’s what the rest of this book endeavors to explore. In the arena of computer game design, the process of coming up with a game idea that will work is complicated by a number of factors fiction authors do not need to worry about. In part this is because computer game ideas can come from three distinct, unrelated areas of the form: gameplay, technology, and story. These different origins are interconnected in interesting ways, with the origin of the game’s idea limiting what one will be able to accomplish in the other areas. So when a game designer starts thinking about the game he is hoping to make—think- ing about it in terms of gameplay, technology, or story—it is important that he consider how that initial idea will impact all aspects of the final game. Starting Points Perhaps a quick example is in order. Say a game designer feels the need to create a game based around the specific stories of Greek mythology. This would be starting from a story. Immediately this limits the type of gameplay she will be going for. Chances are a Civilization-style strategy game is out, since that sort of game really has nothing to do with the classical stories of Zeus, Heracles, Ares, and so on. A real-time strategy game is out of the question as well, since it is not good at telling stories involving only a few protagonists. A high-end flight simulator is probably not going to work either. She could, however, still pursue it through an action game, a role-playing game, or an adventure game. Similarly, the technology is limited. In order to tell the story of the Greek gods, she will need some way to communicate a lot of back-story information to the player. There will need to be technology in place that can allow this. Furthermore, if she chooses the technology to be employed by the game at this point, this will have still further impact on what type of gameplay will be possible. For example, choosing an isometric 2D engine will best lend itself to an RPG or an adventure game instead of an action game. If a 3D technology is to be used, in order to tell the story of Greek mythology properly it Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story 43 will need to support both indoor and outdoor environments, which immediately eliminates a lot of 3D game engines. For each decision the designer makes about the game she is hoping to create, she needs to understand how that limits what the game will be. If the designer tries to fit a type of gameplay around an ill-suited engine the game will suffer in the end: trying to do a Populous-esque “god-sim” using a first-person, indoor Quake-style 3D engine is a big mistake. Just as if one tried to tell the story of the Greek gods through flight simulator gameplay, the game would simply fail to work. Herein lies the difficulty with many “high-concept” ideas, often the brainchildren of marketing specialists who want to capture disparate markets with one product. If the parts do not work together, it does not matter how many markets the concept covers: no gamers will be interested in playing the final game. Starting with Gameplay Starting with gameplay is one of the most common starting points for game devel- opment, especially for designer or management driven projects. Thinking about a style of gameplay is often the easiest core for someone to latch onto, especially if that gameplay is similar to an existing game. “It’s a racing game!” “It’s a flight sim- ulator!” “It’s a 3D action/adventure like Super Mario 64!” “It’s a first-person shooter like Doom!” Often a game developer will have enjoyed a game in one of these genres and will want to apply his own spin to it. With a general idea for a game that is interesting to him, the designer will want to work out what his particu- lar game is going to accomplish in terms of gameplay. What type of racing game will it be? What aspects of racing are we trying to capture for the player? With a more specific idea of what type of gameplay he wants to create, the designer should start thinking about how that will impact the technology the game will require and what sort of story, if any, the game will be able to have. Depending on the type of gameplay you are hoping to create for the player, you need to analyze what sort of technology that undertaking will require. Does the game need a 3D engine, or will 2D be enough or even more appropriate? What sort of view will the player have of the game-world? Will it be fixed or dynamic? Does the action transpire fast and furious with a large number of entities moving around on the screen at once? Are the game-worlds large or small? All of these questions and many more need to be analyzed to understand what the game’s engine must accomplish in order to properly execute the gameplay idea. Of course the technol - ogy you choose to employ for your gameplay must be one that will actually run on the target system, whether it be the PC, a console, or a custom-made arcade cabinet. You must also ask if the game’s programming team is up to creating the required technology. Technological feasibility may end up limiting the scope of your gameplay. Even worse, will the engine team’s existing technology work or will they 44 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story need to scrap it and start from scratch? Is there enough budget and time to trash it and start over? If you find that you need to adapt your gameplay to match the engine, you really are not starting out with gameplay as the origin of your idea, but instead with technology, as I will discuss below. If you are starting out with a gam - ing engine that must be used, it is in your best interest to not fight that technology with incompatible gameplay. Instead you should try to think up your gameplay idea in terms of what is well suited to that engine. The type of gameplay your game will employ similarly limits what type of story can be told. An RPG can tell a much more complex and involved story than an action/adventure game, and in turn an action/adventure can tell a more substan - tial story than an arcade shooter. Certain types of stories just will not fit with certain types of gameplay, such as the Greek mythology in a flight simulator example dis - cussed previously. Similarly, a romantic story might not fit with a strategy game, and a tale about diplomacy would not fit so well with a fast-action first-person shooter. Since you made the choice to come up with your gameplay style first, you need to ask yourself what sort of story is best suited to that gameplay, and try to tell that tale. Sometimes a designer will have both a story he wants to tell and a type of gameplay he wants to explore, and will attempt to do both in the same game, even if the two do not go well together. Do not try to cobble an inappropriate story, either in terms of complexity or subject matter, around gameplay that is ill suited to that type of narrative. Save the story for a later date when you are working on a title with gameplay that will support that story better. And while your technology is lim- ited by what your team is capable of accomplishing in the time allotted, the story is limited only by your own ability to tell it. You should pick the story best suited to your gameplay and go with it. Starting with Technology Going into a project with a large portion of the game’s technology already devel - oped is also a fairly common occurrence. If this is not the development team’s first project together at a new company, then it is likely that there will be an existing technology base that the project is supposed to build from. Even if the project is to use a “new” engine, this often only means an older engine updated, and as a result, the style of game best suited to the engine will not change significantly. Even if an engine is being written from scratch for the project, it is likely that the lead pro - grammer and her team are best equipped to create a certain type of engine, be it indoor or outdoor, real time or pre-rendered, 3D or 2D, with a complex physics sys - tem for movement or something more simple. The programmers may be interested in experimenting with certain special lighting or rendering effects, and will create an engine that excels at these objectives. The designer is then presented with this Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story 45 new technology and tasked with coming up with a game that will exploit the sophis - ticated technology to full effect. Other times it is predetermined that the project will be using an engine licensed from some other source, either from another game developer or a technology-only company. Sometimes the project leaders have enough foresight to consider the type of game they want to make first and then pick an engine well suited to that. More often, the engine licensing deal that seems to deliver the most “bang for the buck” will be the one chosen. Then, with an engine choice decided, the team is tasked with creating a game and story that will fit together well using that technology. Just as starting with a desired sort of gameplay dictated what type of engine should be created, starting with set technology requires that the game designer con - sider primarily gameplay that will work with that sort of technology. If the engine is 3D, the designer will need to create a game that takes place in a 3D world and uses that world to create interesting 3D gameplay. If the engine is only 2D, a first-person shooter is out of the question. If the engine has a sophisticated physics system, a game should be designed that makes use of the physics for puzzles and player movement. Of course, the designer does not need to use every piece of tech- nology that a programmer feels compelled to create, but it is always better to have your gameplay work with the engine instead of fight against it. Usually when a pro- ject is using a licensed game engine, that technology will often have been created with a certain type of gameplay in mind. The designer needs to seriously consider how far he should deviate from that initial technology, for it is surely going to be easier to make the engine perform tasks for which it was intended instead of push- ing it in directions its programmers never imagined. For instance, the oft-licensed Quake engine was created for handling an indoor, first-person perspective, fast- action game involving a lot of shooting. Though some teams that have licensed that engine have tried to push it in different directions, the most artistically successful licensee thus far, Valve, retained much of the standard Quake gameplay that the engine excelled at for their game Half-Life. Certainly Valve added a lot of their own work to the engine, technology that was necessary in order to do the type of game they wanted to do. But at the same time they did not try to do something foolish such as setting their game primarily outdoors or using only melee combat. When technology is handed to a game designer who is told to make a game out of it, it makes the most sense for the designer to embrace the limitations of that technology and turn them into strengths in his game. The technology can also limit what sort of story can be told. Without a sophisticated language parser, it is going to be difficult to tell a story in which players need to communicate with characters by typing in questions. Without an engine that can handle outdoor environments reasonably well, it is going to be difficult to make a game about mountain climbing. Without robust artificial intelligence it is going to be hard to make a good game about diplomacy. Without 46 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story compression technology that can store and play back large sounds, it will be hard to have huge amounts of dialog and hence hard to have characters whose dialects are important to the story. Without the ability to have large numbers of moving units on the screen at once, it will be impossible to tell a story where the player must participate in epic, massive battles between armies. The game designer needs to consider how the story line will be communicated to the player through the engine that he must use. Trying to tell a story with an inadequate engine is just as likely to compromise the game as tying a particular story to inappropriate gameplay. Again using the example of Half-Life mentioned above, if the team at Valve had tried to set their game in Death Valley and involve the player battling gangs of twenty giant insects at once, the Quake engine would have ground to a halt and the game would have been miserable to play. In the Death Valley sce - nario, Valve might have been telling the story they wanted to, but no one would have cared since the game would have been miserably slow and looked horren - dous. For the greater good of the game, the story and the technology must be compatible with each other. Starting with Story Finally, it is certainly possible that the brainstorming for your game may start with a setting you want to employ, a story you want to tell, or a set of characters you want to explore. This is probably a less common starting point than technology or gameplay. Indeed, since many games have no story whatsoever, the very concept of a game starting with a story may seem strange. At the same time it is not unheard of Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story 47 The designers of Half-Life smartly used the indoor first-person shooter gameplay established by Quake, the engine licensed for the game’s creation. Pictured here: Quake II. [...]... artistic ramifications on the game s design: the player, at any time, is able to see the entire game- world, and can make his decisions with a full knowledge of the state of that game- world Obviously, empowering the player with that kind of information seriously impacts the gameplay Many of the games in the classic arcade game form would include more than one screen’s worth of gameplay by switching play-fields... the game s gameplay, the new Centipede 3D used the story line only to support the gameplay In the end, Centipede 3D was all about the gameplay Embrace Your Limitations In many ways, developing a game is all about understanding your limitations and then turning those limitations into advantages In this chapter I have discussed how the designer must understand where his game idea is coming from: gameplay,... attributes of the game how a certain gameplay calls for a certain type of story and technology, how one story requires a specific technology and gameplay, and how technology will lend itself to specific types of games and stories It is the designer’s job to make all the pieces fit together, and to find the perfect parts to make a compelling game Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology,... However, the gameplay variations these games embraced are far more radical than the tiny amount of variation one will find in modern games, which are more content to endlessly clone already-proven gaming genres Despite the wild variety of gameplay that can be found in classic arcade games, one can still look back on these games as a collective, as an artistic movement in the brief history of computer games... analyzing the form’s shared traits, modern game designers can learn a lot about how they can make their own games more compelling experiences for the player 62 Chapter 4: Game Analysis: Centipede Classic Arcade Game Traits l Single Screen Play: In a classic arcade game, the bulk of the gameplay takes place on a single screen, with the player maneuvering his game- world surrogate around that screen, sometimes... story-centered game design are some of the adventure games created by Infocom and LucasArts All of the adventure games from these TE 48 Team-Fly® Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story 49 Maniac Mansion was the first of the storycentered adventure games from LucasArts to use the SCUMM system companies used very standardized play mechanics and technology The game designers... same time, having an unwinnable game makes every game a defeat for the player Every game ends with the player’s death, and hence is a kind of tragedy Having an unwinnable game also necessitates making a game that can continuously get harder and harder for the player, hence a game design with a continuous, infinite ramping up of difficulty With the advent of the home market, game publishers no longer wanted... wanted players to play a single game forever Instead they want players to finish the games they have and buy another one This is one reason why it is rare to see a game with infinite play any more l Multiple Lives: Typically, classic arcade games allow the player a finite number of lives, or a number of “tries” at the game before her game is over Perhaps derived from pinball games, which had been providing... Limitations Experienced game designers already understand the limitations placed on the creation of games by the technology, gameplay, and story When they take part in brainstorming sessions these game designers have a good gut-sense of how making certain choices about the game in question will limit its creation further down the road For each decision that is made about the game, many doors are closed... compelling story or a brilliant game design If none of these components support each other your game will be just as bad as if you were working with a hackneyed story, a thin game design, and an incomplete technology Team-Fly® Chapter 4 Game Analysis: Centipede Designed by Ed Logg with Donna Bailey Released in 1981 O ne can think of the classic arcade game as a form of the computer game, in the same way that . the concept covers: no gamers will be interested in playing the final game. Starting with Gameplay Starting with gameplay is one of the most common starting points for game devel- opment, especially. of story-centered game design are some of the adventure games created by Infocom and LucasArts. All of the adventure games from these 48 Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology,. my having enjoyed the Marathon games so much, I decided to make my game embrace the technology and gameplay that Marathon had Chapter 3: Brainstorming a Game Idea: Gameplay, Technology, and Story