Friday, December 23, 2005
Façade Creators Need Your Help!
For all you folks out there who played Façade when I told you to try it out, you now have a chance to give back to the creators.
We’re working on an improved version of the Façade parser, and could use more raw data of what players tend to type to Grace and Trip.If you’ve played Façade, please do us a big favor and email us the stageplays you generated. Each time you’ve played, a trace of your dialog was automatically saved in c:\Facade\stageplays. (Even if you’ve uninstalled Façade already for some reason ;-) it will leave behind the stageplays folder.)
You can email your stageplay files to us as individual attachments, or ideally your entire stageplays folder as a single zipped-up file, to info -at- interactivestory -dot- net. (from Grand Text Auto)
So, you heard the guys. Go to it!
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Timekiller
I highly recommend the Flash game The Way of the Ninja. It looks like Lode Runner but it feels like the original Prince of Persia crossed with HopperQuest. The animation is just superb; I love the way the ninja moves. And I have a weakness for games with walljumping.
Monday, December 19, 2005
Effective Networking (Be Educated)
Note: This is part of a series of articles called Effective Networking in the Games Industry. I'm writing these articles in no particular order, so I'm sorry if this seems scattered. I promise I will collect it all and put it on my permanent webspace for future reference.
Possibly the easiest thing to do to increase your networking skill involves little to no actual networking at all: you need to read. Become educated about the industry. Learn what the development roles are, what the vocabulary is, and, most importantly, who the major and minor players in the history of the industry are.
Industry Roles
You need to know about the different roles people play at a game company. The first reason to learn about development roles is so you don't look like a complete newbie. The second, and more important reason, is so you can start a conversation with anyone. For example, if you meet someone who says they work in quality assurance (QA), you can ask them, "Oh, what kind of bug tracking software do you use?" If someone's a programmer, you can say, "Do you work on engine code or more on the scripting side?" If you meet a producer, you can ask, "How big is your team? Do you think that affects communication between programmers and artists?" And so on.
Another really important thing to learn about is the complex macro relationship between development studios and publishers. A lot of people assume that the development studios handle all the development, and that the publishers just market and distribute a finished product--but that's not quite right. For example, most developers only have one or two QA testers acting as liasons, while the publishers handle the bulk of the testing! This is related to the reason why, when you go for tech support for a game developed by Studio A, you're often sent to the website of Publisher B. I'm sure someone could write about this stuff at length.
There are a lot of books out there that go into industry roles in pretty exacting detail. If you want a great picture of what goes on day-to-day at a real game company, along with summaries of what all the different roles at a company are (from management to development), I highly recommend reading Game Development and Production
, by Erik Bethke. He goes into the often excruciatingly boring details about who writes engine code, who creates game content, who tests, who handles daily scheduling versus yearly scheduling, the role of publisher relations, etc. Another excellent primer for this process is Game Design: Theory and Practice, by Richard Rouse II, which focuses more on the "what designers need to know" aspects.
Vocabulary
If you're going to walk the walk, first you have to learn how to talk the talk. Do you know what the difference between an alpha and a beta is? Do you know what iterative process is? How about emergent behavior? Neural networks? Normal mapping? The difference between a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop? Ludology vs. narratology? Casual games? Serious games? IGDA? ESA? ESRB? IEMA? IGJA?
And please, don't get caught calling it "the gaming industry."
Like any industry, we have a lot of jargon. If you're going to fit in, you should at least famliarize yourself with jargon from all subdisciplines of game development. This includes art, programming, and design, but also management and even academia.
Here is one simple example of a jargon failure. Often, I will be at a networking event, and a hungry young student will come up to me and ask how they can get "a Q & A job." The problem is, there is no such thing as a Q & A job in the game industry, and if you ask for one, you are demonstrating your ignorance. Or at least your lack of eloquence. What this person means to ask for is a QA job. If you are looking to break into the video game industry, QA is a great place to start. QA stands for "Quality Assurance". While I suppose in a very broad sense, the early build of a game is posing a question ("Does this build suck?"), and it is the QA tester's job to provide the answer ("YES!"), it would be exceedingly silly to think of things in these terms.
Tom Sloper has ranted about this before, too.
So yeah, get your jargon right or you'll look like a doofus.
History
There are myriad reasons to learn about the history of the game industry.
First of all, when you're networking, you're dealing with people. And people love to gossip. But you can't participate in gossip about Company A if you've never heard of them.
Second, knowing local history helps, especially at a regional meeting. If you're in Boston, you'd better know a thing or two about Infocom and Looking Glass. If you're in Maryland, read about the history of Microprose. If you're in California... well, you have a lot of studying to do. But the main benefit of this is that upper management tends to be older, which means that they probably started out in one of the seminal game companies. When you eventually do meet Experienced People, your knowledge of this history will definitely impress them, as they believe (correctly, I'm sad to say) that most people born after 1980 have never heard of these companies or played their games. For the record, I have graciously posted an example of my failure to know my history.
Also, here's another thing, sort of a side note but sort of related. If you live in the United States, don't bother delving too deep into the history of Japanese game companies. If you absolutely love Final Fantasy, that's great, but knowing the history of Squaresoft is not going to be a huge help when networking in this country. One thing I've noticed is that Japan and the US are still very isolated from one another. If you get 1000 American game developers in a room and ask them "Who here has worked with someone who worked at Looking Glass?" you would see something like 200 hands go up. If you asked those same developers "Who here has worked with someone who worked at Squaresoft?" I'd bet a lot of money that you might see 3 hands go up.
Resources
Be sure to read for both breadth and depth. I'm putting a sort of annotated bibliography here of all the books and websites that I read, so you can have a place to start. But this is just a starting point. My best advice to you is to read first for breadth, and then find the areas that truly excite you and delve into those.
Books
Game Development and Production, by Erik Bethke. This book provides an excellent, if sometimes dry, overview of everything it takes to run a game company.
Game Design: Theory and Practice, by Richard Rouse II. Probably the best starter book out there for the aspiring game designer. It not only teaches you design principles, but it teaches you how to interact with the rest of the game company, and provides the necessary communcation tools (SPECS!) you need to do so.
Masters of Doom, by David Kushner. The inside story of iD Software also teaches you about some of the colorful personalities and typical clashes you'll see from time to time.
The Fat Man on Game Audio, by George Sanger. While this looks like a book about audio (and it is, to some extent), the best part about this book is when the Fat Man offers insight into the machinations game industry. A must-read.
Magazines
Game Developer. Written by developers, for developers, you can learn a lot about what problems game developers are currently concerned with. This is a very good place to pick up on new jargon, as well.
Websites
Gamasutra. This website (run by the same people who run Game Developer magazine) is the primary web resource for people who want to know about game development. Again, this is largely because it publishes news and features written by developers, for developers.
Gamesindustry.biz. While Gamasutra offers some business-related news, this UK-based site is an invaluable resource for people looking to learn about the macro stuff that goes on in the industry (mergers, layoffs, game sales, etc.).
The Escapist. For being a relative newcomer, The Escapist has amassed a wonderful selection of pieces. Particularly relevant to this article is the fact that they cover the history of current and long-dead game companies with a fanatical attention to detail.
Tom Sloper's Game Biz Advice. I hope that one day my blog amasses a collection of articles as useful as Tom's. This is amazingly good stuff, and part of the reason I focus on networking and not on general "breaking in" advice is that I wouldn't want to compete with the wisdom of his words.
Art
I'm woefully deficient at the whole art aspect of making games. However, Michelle Clay isn't. Check out this great advice she gives aspiring game artists.
Other Stuff
A Hole in the Desert. A free excerpt from Michael Rubin's history of LucasFilm. This chapter contains a very nice history of the rise and fall of Atari, and then examines Atari's relationship with LucasFilm. Then it goes into some early LucasArts history. This is the story of the first important era in the American games industry. Read it!
Possibly the easiest thing to do to increase your networking skill involves little to no actual networking at all: you need to read. Become educated about the industry. Learn what the development roles are, what the vocabulary is, and, most importantly, who the major and minor players in the history of the industry are.
Industry Roles
You need to know about the different roles people play at a game company. The first reason to learn about development roles is so you don't look like a complete newbie. The second, and more important reason, is so you can start a conversation with anyone. For example, if you meet someone who says they work in quality assurance (QA), you can ask them, "Oh, what kind of bug tracking software do you use?" If someone's a programmer, you can say, "Do you work on engine code or more on the scripting side?" If you meet a producer, you can ask, "How big is your team? Do you think that affects communication between programmers and artists?" And so on.
Another really important thing to learn about is the complex macro relationship between development studios and publishers. A lot of people assume that the development studios handle all the development, and that the publishers just market and distribute a finished product--but that's not quite right. For example, most developers only have one or two QA testers acting as liasons, while the publishers handle the bulk of the testing! This is related to the reason why, when you go for tech support for a game developed by Studio A, you're often sent to the website of Publisher B. I'm sure someone could write about this stuff at length.
There are a lot of books out there that go into industry roles in pretty exacting detail. If you want a great picture of what goes on day-to-day at a real game company, along with summaries of what all the different roles at a company are (from management to development), I highly recommend reading Game Development and Production
, by Erik Bethke. He goes into the often excruciatingly boring details about who writes engine code, who creates game content, who tests, who handles daily scheduling versus yearly scheduling, the role of publisher relations, etc. Another excellent primer for this process is Game Design: Theory and Practice, by Richard Rouse II, which focuses more on the "what designers need to know" aspects.Vocabulary
If you're going to walk the walk, first you have to learn how to talk the talk. Do you know what the difference between an alpha and a beta is? Do you know what iterative process is? How about emergent behavior? Neural networks? Normal mapping? The difference between a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop? Ludology vs. narratology? Casual games? Serious games? IGDA? ESA? ESRB? IEMA? IGJA?
And please, don't get caught calling it "the gaming industry."
Like any industry, we have a lot of jargon. If you're going to fit in, you should at least famliarize yourself with jargon from all subdisciplines of game development. This includes art, programming, and design, but also management and even academia.
Here is one simple example of a jargon failure. Often, I will be at a networking event, and a hungry young student will come up to me and ask how they can get "a Q & A job." The problem is, there is no such thing as a Q & A job in the game industry, and if you ask for one, you are demonstrating your ignorance. Or at least your lack of eloquence. What this person means to ask for is a QA job. If you are looking to break into the video game industry, QA is a great place to start. QA stands for "Quality Assurance". While I suppose in a very broad sense, the early build of a game is posing a question ("Does this build suck?"), and it is the QA tester's job to provide the answer ("YES!"), it would be exceedingly silly to think of things in these terms.
Tom Sloper has ranted about this before, too.
So yeah, get your jargon right or you'll look like a doofus.
History
There are myriad reasons to learn about the history of the game industry.
First of all, when you're networking, you're dealing with people. And people love to gossip. But you can't participate in gossip about Company A if you've never heard of them.
Second, knowing local history helps, especially at a regional meeting. If you're in Boston, you'd better know a thing or two about Infocom and Looking Glass. If you're in Maryland, read about the history of Microprose. If you're in California... well, you have a lot of studying to do. But the main benefit of this is that upper management tends to be older, which means that they probably started out in one of the seminal game companies. When you eventually do meet Experienced People, your knowledge of this history will definitely impress them, as they believe (correctly, I'm sad to say) that most people born after 1980 have never heard of these companies or played their games. For the record, I have graciously posted an example of my failure to know my history.
Also, here's another thing, sort of a side note but sort of related. If you live in the United States, don't bother delving too deep into the history of Japanese game companies. If you absolutely love Final Fantasy, that's great, but knowing the history of Squaresoft is not going to be a huge help when networking in this country. One thing I've noticed is that Japan and the US are still very isolated from one another. If you get 1000 American game developers in a room and ask them "Who here has worked with someone who worked at Looking Glass?" you would see something like 200 hands go up. If you asked those same developers "Who here has worked with someone who worked at Squaresoft?" I'd bet a lot of money that you might see 3 hands go up.
Resources
Be sure to read for both breadth and depth. I'm putting a sort of annotated bibliography here of all the books and websites that I read, so you can have a place to start. But this is just a starting point. My best advice to you is to read first for breadth, and then find the areas that truly excite you and delve into those.
Books
Game Development and Production
, by Erik Bethke. This book provides an excellent, if sometimes dry, overview of everything it takes to run a game company.Game Design: Theory and Practice
, by Richard Rouse II. Probably the best starter book out there for the aspiring game designer. It not only teaches you design principles, but it teaches you how to interact with the rest of the game company, and provides the necessary communcation tools (SPECS!) you need to do so.Masters of Doom
, by David Kushner. The inside story of iD Software also teaches you about some of the colorful personalities and typical clashes you'll see from time to time.The Fat Man on Game Audio
, by George Sanger. While this looks like a book about audio (and it is, to some extent), the best part about this book is when the Fat Man offers insight into the machinations game industry. A must-read.Magazines
Game Developer. Written by developers, for developers, you can learn a lot about what problems game developers are currently concerned with. This is a very good place to pick up on new jargon, as well.
Websites
Gamasutra. This website (run by the same people who run Game Developer magazine) is the primary web resource for people who want to know about game development. Again, this is largely because it publishes news and features written by developers, for developers.
Gamesindustry.biz. While Gamasutra offers some business-related news, this UK-based site is an invaluable resource for people looking to learn about the macro stuff that goes on in the industry (mergers, layoffs, game sales, etc.).
The Escapist. For being a relative newcomer, The Escapist has amassed a wonderful selection of pieces. Particularly relevant to this article is the fact that they cover the history of current and long-dead game companies with a fanatical attention to detail.
Tom Sloper's Game Biz Advice. I hope that one day my blog amasses a collection of articles as useful as Tom's. This is amazingly good stuff, and part of the reason I focus on networking and not on general "breaking in" advice is that I wouldn't want to compete with the wisdom of his words.
Art
I'm woefully deficient at the whole art aspect of making games. However, Michelle Clay isn't. Check out this great advice she gives aspiring game artists.
Other Stuff
A Hole in the Desert. A free excerpt from Michael Rubin's history of LucasFilm. This chapter contains a very nice history of the rise and fall of Atari, and then examines Atari's relationship with LucasFilm. Then it goes into some early LucasArts history. This is the story of the first important era in the American games industry. Read it!
Labels: know_your_history, networking
Friday, December 16, 2005
RDKF Dev to Start Own Team
Everyone congratulate Mark Healy (developer of Rag Doll Kung Fu)! He recently left Lionhead to focus developing more for RDKF and start his own dev team. Woot!
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Sorry For the Lack of Content
I've been pretty busy recently, we hit crunch here at work and I've been doing 12 hour days... not a lot of time for blogging. You can always subcribe to my del.icio.us games feed, which is constantly being updated (and lives in the sidebar here).
Crunch will be over at the end of this week, and I should be back in blogging form at that point.
Crunch will be over at the end of this week, and I should be back in blogging form at that point.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Meaningful Combat
John Rogers keeps a blog about script writing. It is funny and caustic and occasionally brilliant. Today he has a post that I think is very relevant to action game design. The major point of the article, Writing: Action Scenes, is (and he bolded it himself):
He talks about making combat part of story development. The only game that I've ever played that made me feel this way was Deus Ex. Not just combat itself, but every move I made during combat related to the development of my character and his outlook on the world. Do I shoot the terrorists or use my stun gun? Do I avoid combat through stealth or just hack the security system? Do I use my nano augmentation or do I try to make it through on my natural human strengths?
Deus Ex is a game about the identity of J.C. Denton, the main character. And every choice in the game (combat included, in fact combat especially) is a choice about identity. I think more games can take this to heart.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Nostalgia Enabler
Okay, so at the moment I am on a major nostalgia trip, due both to the fact that I did some cleaning in my office, and to the fact that I've been trying out GameTap.
Specifically I am listening to Dr. Octogonecologyst, the 1996 album by Dr. Octogon (aka Kool Keith) while playing Comix Zone, an action game from 1995. Both of these works share something in common: they are brilliant and flawed at the same time. Kool Keith's seminal solo album is incredibly unique but weird to a fault, while Comix Zone, a game where you fight your way through a comic book, plays brilliantly to comic book tropes but in the end is conventional beat-em-up.
GameTap, on the other hand, is really pretty cool. It runs a sort of catch-all emulator on your computer and, if you pay a monthly fee, you get access to an already impressive yet ever-growing library of games. Notables I saw include Shining Force, Worms 2, Phantasy Star I/II/III, Bubble Bobble, Beyond Good & Evil, Cannon Fodder, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, and Heroes of Might and Magic III. To name just a few.
Technologically, the emulator is impressive (although I did experience a few problems with Worms Armageddon). I'm glad we finally have the technology to play basically any console game on the PC. And downloading each game is painless over broadband; there's even entertaining Seinfeld-style movie clips starring classic video game characters.
I should also add that each game comes with "Bonus Material", which is usually a number of fun facts about the game. Wait! Don't cringe! These facts actually appear to be written, with great wit, by people who know something about video games. For instance, the Worms 2 bonus material notes that the game owes a debt to Scorched Earth. Way to know your history! That was an awesome touch.
But it looks like Worms 2 has downloaded. Gotta go!
Specifically I am listening to Dr. Octogonecologyst, the 1996 album by Dr. Octogon (aka Kool Keith) while playing Comix Zone, an action game from 1995. Both of these works share something in common: they are brilliant and flawed at the same time. Kool Keith's seminal solo album is incredibly unique but weird to a fault, while Comix Zone, a game where you fight your way through a comic book, plays brilliantly to comic book tropes but in the end is conventional beat-em-up.
GameTap, on the other hand, is really pretty cool. It runs a sort of catch-all emulator on your computer and, if you pay a monthly fee, you get access to an already impressive yet ever-growing library of games. Notables I saw include Shining Force, Worms 2, Phantasy Star I/II/III, Bubble Bobble, Beyond Good & Evil, Cannon Fodder, Rainbow Six, Prince of Persia, and Heroes of Might and Magic III. To name just a few.
Technologically, the emulator is impressive (although I did experience a few problems with Worms Armageddon). I'm glad we finally have the technology to play basically any console game on the PC. And downloading each game is painless over broadband; there's even entertaining Seinfeld-style movie clips starring classic video game characters.
I should also add that each game comes with "Bonus Material", which is usually a number of fun facts about the game. Wait! Don't cringe! These facts actually appear to be written, with great wit, by people who know something about video games. For instance, the Worms 2 bonus material notes that the game owes a debt to Scorched Earth. Way to know your history! That was an awesome touch.
But it looks like Worms 2 has downloaded. Gotta go!
Labels: know_your_history
Uncanny Valley
Excellent article in Wired about the Xbox 360 and the "Uncanny Valley" effect. *cough* Not that I told everyone this would happen with the 360. *cough*
This paradoxical effect has a name: the "Uncanny Valley." The concept comes from the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who argued that simulacra of humans seem lively and convincing so long as they're relatively low-resolution. Think of history's best comic strips: With only a few quick sketches on a page, Bill Watterson can create vivid emotions for the characters in Calvin and Hobbes. When an avatar is cartoonish, our brains fill in the gaps in the presentation to help them seem real.
But when human avatars approach photoreality? Something weird happens. Our brains rebel, and we begin focusing on the tiny details that aren't quite perfect. The realism of our avatars suddenly plunges downward into a valley -- and they begin to look like zombies. [Wired News: Monsters of Photorealism]
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Effective Networking (Know Everyone)
Note: This is part of a series of articles called Effective Networking in the Games Industry. I'm writing these articles in no particular order, so I'm sorry if this seems scattered. I promise I will collect it all and put it on my permanent webspace for future reference.
Today I'm going to share with you a story that had a massive impact on my life. Just before going off to college, I read a book called Hardball, by Chris Matthews (it is related to the TV show in name only, as far as I can tell). This book, while explicitly about politics, is implicitly about people, and how to deal with them. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to convince people that they want the same thing that you do. But the real gem I wanted to share with you a is story I picked up from this book.
Back in the 1930s, there was a hotel in Washington, D.C. where all the congressional assistants lived. This was a big building full of men in their 20s, so it basically served as a sort of dormitory. Lyndon Baines Johnson had just arrived to take up residence there. His first night, he
In fact, this one story is the crux of my whole series on networking: know everyone, try to understand everyone, and you will get ahead.
Today I'm going to share with you a story that had a massive impact on my life. Just before going off to college, I read a book called Hardball
, by Chris Matthews (it is related to the TV show in name only, as far as I can tell). This book, while explicitly about politics, is implicitly about people, and how to deal with them. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to convince people that they want the same thing that you do. But the real gem I wanted to share with you a is story I picked up from this book.Back in the 1930s, there was a hotel in Washington, D.C. where all the congressional assistants lived. This was a big building full of men in their 20s, so it basically served as a sort of dormitory. Lyndon Baines Johnson had just arrived to take up residence there. His first night, he
took four showers. Four times he walked towel-draped to the communal bathroom down along the hall. Four times he turned on the water and lathered up. The next morning he got up early to brush his teeth five times, with five-minute intervals in between.Anyone who knows me personally can take a guess at how profoundly this one story has shaped my life. In college, I used to take three hours to eat my lunch or dinner in the cafeteria. This is because the cafeteria was open for a three-hour window, and in that time I could have dinner with five different groups of people. I made a lot of diverse friends that way.
The young man from Texas had a mission. There were seventy-five other congressional secretaries living in the building. He wanted to meet as many of them as fast as possible.
The strategy worked. Within three months of arriving in Washington, the newcomer got himself elected Speaker of the "Little Congress," the organization of all House staff assistants.
In this, his Washington debut, Johnson was displaying his basic political method. He was proving that getting ahead is just a matter of getting to know people. In fact, it is the exact same thing. [From Hardball
In fact, this one story is the crux of my whole series on networking: know everyone, try to understand everyone, and you will get ahead.
Labels: networking
