Play/Reset… Party During AGDC

Tonight I’ll be at this benefit. I’m posting this in hopes that friends from out of town, friends from in-town, random convention-goers and all available game developers will join us. See you there.

Austin GDC ‘08

It’s been a rough year for Austin game studios. Lots of upheaval. Some people have been affected adversely by project cancellations and layoffs, while others are staffing up, excited about the coming years. This seems cyclic to me, but there’s definitely been a lot of chaos, in Austin and elsewhere. I’m eternally optimistic, because I know that the desire to play (and design) games will never go; everything else, including “the industry,” is a distant second to that primal drive.

I’m excited by projects here at Arkane Studios and I’m hopeful for games underway at other independent Austin companies: Certain Affinity, Edge of Reality, King’s Isle, Blazing Lizard, Pixel Mine (who just got nominated for a couple of awards, I think), etc. There are a few interesting startups in the background too, coming soon. Larger companies like Nintendo, Disney (Warren’s group), and Bioware hold great promise, and I’ve even got high hopes for (ex-Deus Ex designer) Ricardo Bare’s project at Midway.

Because of the year we’ve had, I’m hoping that Austin GDC will be exciting and reflective this year; a bunch of smart people coming together to network, socialize, share ideas and debate the process of not just shipping games, but making games great.

I’m giving a career-track talk aimed at new people coming into games now, at a time when no one knows what the industry will look like in 5 years.

There’s a charge in the air…is it the imminent hurricane or is it something else, generated by passion… by people who love what they do, who want to pick themselves up and charge the hill again?

Interesting Write-up on Achievements

Check out Unlocking the Psychology of Achievements, via GameCyte.

I have an in/off relationship with Achievements; I love it when games use Achievements to highlight interesting gameplay native to the game, and I think they’re an interesting tool for creative teams.

But this part depresses me:

Based on personal experience, completionists need goals to achieve and do not enjoy open-ended game experiences.

In a way, it feels like Achievements cater to some inner obsessive-compulsive, rather than encouraging play in what I see as the right spirit. Is the player there to immerse himself in the experience or to carefully set up a situation where he can get three enemies in a straight line and headshot them all with one bullet?

Given the nature of our medium, I suppose both are actually valid in their own way.

Birds I’ve seen on my bike

Riding my bike this weekend, I came across a vulture eating a squirrel. Last weekend, I spotted a peacock in another part of town. Both times, the birds were standing in the middle of the road. They seemed cautious as I rode up, but not overly concerned. Both were beautiful in different ways, though it’s hard to tell from the phone photos. The vulture wasn’t hideous; shiny black feathers, gray bands running up its neck and head. The peacock was all irredescent blues and greens, though it didn’t see fit to show me much plumage. Sometimes you get one, sometimes the other.

Last Night in Austin

Last night the Alamo Drafthouse hosted film director Monte Hellman for a double feature. This would not have happened without the efforts of my friend Charles Lieurance, who loves Hellman’s work.

We watched The Shooting (with a young Jack Nicholson) and Two Lane Blacktop (starring musician James Taylor). Both were interesting and beautiful films. (It was actually a triple feature, but I didn’t stay for the Weird Wednesdays showing of the third Monte Hellman film…)

Below are phone pics of 1) Lars talking to Hellman, and 2) the poster the Drafthouse put out. Unfortunately, I was too busy listening to Charles’ passionate introduction to catch a photo of him on stage.

5 Moments

At lunch we were babbling about games over BBQ, a common practice for Arkane’s Austin studio. The subject today was emotional moments in 2007. All part of the ongoing, endless drive to knock it out of the park with a great game no matter how many times you have to get up to bat.

I rattled off my emo moments without hesitation, which means it was a great year:

(WARNING: SPOILERS.)

1) The first time I saved a Little Sister in Bioshock. The perfect swell of music, the little form struggling in your hands, the voice…all perfect. Much more powerful that first time.

2) The moment the puzzle game became a story game in Portal, via empathy for whoever had come before me… Never has so much been said with so few “words.”

3) One of the rainstorm gun battles in STALKER, with an enemy in the dark breathing hard on the opposite side of a pillar. I felt hunted. Honestly, it was like playing an intense game of Capture the Flag in the woods at night at age 13…exhilarating, scary and empowering.

4) The staggering death, post nuke, in Call of Duty 4. “Omg, someone finally did it.”

5) The pistol slide sacrifice at the end of Call of Duty 4. Captain Price is counting on the FNG in a way that is still emotionally evocative. Amazing use of drama.

I think 2007 reinvigorated my faith in games, which had (perhaps understandably) flagged. And all but one of those moments came via console.

I can wait for the followup to these games (in addition to Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Mercenaries 2)…omfg, so much goodness.

positive and negative weights

I’ve been craving an iPhone since the first one came out. But I knew that a 3G version was on the way, so I waited. This time, I assumed there would be crushing lines and bugs, so I waited. I’m still waiting. In part, it’s probably due to the fact that I love my Blackberry Curve’s keyboard. Hard little buttons that I can mash very fast.

I’ve been watching a few new people deal with the Apple paradigms and, of course, struggle. I remember the first time I got an iPod, vs the prior non-Apple MP3 players I had. It’s always a struggle at first for me, no matter what platform. “You’re converting my files to what format? Where are they…hidden now? I can’t sync my iPod at home and at work? I can’t back my music from home up on my work machine…why not, since my iPod is basically a portable harddrive?”

Intuitive just means “like something I’ve done before.”

What’s interesting to me is the weight we give to annoying features vs pleasing features. For instance, the iPhone does most things much better than my Blackberry. I am fascinated by the fact that the iPhone supports web browsing so well, has YouTube, the screen is gorgeous, the fingertouch interface is revolutionary, and it doubles as an iPod. But again I still have a Blackberry simply because the iPhone keyboard annoys the hell out of me.

So which is “better?” Do negative or positive weights matter more? How strong one way or the other does something have to be to overcome all other considerations? For that matter, is the suckiness of the iPhone keyboard a negative, or is the Blackberry’s a positive?

I will eventually get an iPhone: One device, with phone, camera, the web, my music, etc…it’s unbeatable. So I’m sure I will eventually overlook the 3 or so really annoying things about the iPhone in favor of the pleasing features. In currently prefering my Blackberry, I’ve simply already accepted the features that annoy me on the Blackberry. (And there are a bunch…)

The murky depths

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Fl0w. Lots of smart people have commented on how the game’s setting and mechanics manage to evoke various feelings.

Additionally, I find that there’s an interesting flirting with death feeling that comes to mind when I’m playing. There’s the sensation that as you go deeper the layers of the world get darker, colder (imagined) and more dangerous; early in the game, the entities that swim several layers below you seem truly threatening. And so in addition to evoking a number of peaceful, positive feelings, the game also sometimes gives me this type of self-destructive thrill…oblivion is below, just keep diving.

It’s amazing that so much springs from such a minimal, elegant game design. I love it.

L.O.D.

I was just thinking about Syndicate for some reason.

Great game(s), of course, but what struck me was how smartly Syndicate was abstracted. Anything that the game could represent in detail was featured at a low level, in terms of systems granularity and even physical proximity. Everything else was seen at just the right distance, concealing weaknesses in terms of mechanical variation or precision, animation fidelity, number of character models, etc.

Often, when starting a new project, we forget this and assume that everything in the game needs a very granular, close-up representation. There are so many great lessons in our favorite games.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

Check out my pal Austin Grossman’s DIY cinematic for his cool super villain novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible.

http://austingrossman.blogspot.com/