I still remember back in 2005 when the Wii was announced at E3, and the entire games industry just gasped. “What IS that?” It just didn’t make any sense at all. The words were coming out of their mouths and the demos were on the screen, but it just sounded like complete madness. A revolution indeed.
While motion control seems obvious now, you’ll have to take a moment to appreciate how impossibly innovative and creative it was at the time. No one else was anywhere near thinking something like controlling a game some way other than buttons was possible. And thus you have the makings of a fascinating story, of a company going from just about out of business in the console world to being #1, with sales that are unmatched by any other platform, and its leaders being named the top CEO’s among all industries, not just games. The Wii is certainly a lot of fun. Everyone remembers their first time playing Wii tennis, hearing about it, and trying it out. Everyone remembers being amazed that aunts, uncles, and grandparents were suddenly interested in games when they had displayed not a shred of curiosity before. If nothing else, it makes a great first impression, and that first impression has led it to over 50 million units and the best selling single game title of all time.
But there’s something wrong, isn’t there?
Isn’t it odd, that though so many Wii’s have been sold, they are actually played significantly less than other consoles? Isn’t it strange that despite how much fun everyone has swinging their arms wildly during Wii Sports tennis, eventually they are reduced to simply flicking their wrists? Doesn’t it seem unusual that while there are seemingly hundreds of Wii games on the market, you could count the ones worth playing on one hand? WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
I’ve given lectures on game development and getting into the games industry at libraries, college, and universities in the U.S. and abroad. Many students ask me what they can do to get into a video game career, and I always tell them the same points that have worked for me and many of my peers who are now in the industry, the same things that I cover in my book, Break Into Games.
This week I’m making Break Into Games (114 pages) available here at The Game Prodigy, and we’re kicking things off with a deal for early customers! Anyone who orders in the next four days (before Friday, Jan. 15) will receive a 20% discount and a free copy of The Player’s Guide (normally $11) along with their purchase.
A $35.95 value for $19.95 if you order before Friday Jan. 15!
This deal will only be around for 4 more days. After that, the book will cost $24.95 and will not come with The Player’s Guide.
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In our final article detailing the Game Design Canvas, we talked about the Aesthetic Layout, the icing on the cake, the visuals and sounds and interaction methods that give games their artistic spark. Many games are revered for their gameplay, but not as many games nowadays are praised for fun Aesthetic Layouts.
However, this is still an area ripe for innovation. Playing with visuals, sound, or interaction in a way that hasn’t been done before is a highly underestimated way to add originality and memorable moments to games. Some of my all time favorite anecdotes from childhood game experiences come from these little Aesthetic surprises, that are built not from the Base Mechanics or the P&R Systems, but from the developer’s fun ideas about making it more than a game and bringing it into a real world experience.
To illustrate, I’d like to highlight three of my favorite Aesthetic surprises, all of which made me practically jump out of my seat and say, “Wow! This is so fun!” With an open mind centered around a game’s Core Experience, developers can easily create these kinds of moments in their own games. Thinking outside the box in this area also makes your game very noteworthy; it’s definitely the kind of moment that would be shared online or in person with fellow players.
Note that this post contains spoilers for all three of these titles. So if you’re ready, my three picks for the best jump-out-of-your-seat-moments:
Star Tropics’ Secret Letter
This one goes waaaaaaay back. In this tidy little action adventure title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, the player sailed and yo-yo’d all over the world in search of their lost uncle. The puzzles were simple, consisting mostly of Zelda-style button and switch challenges. The battle system was fun and the music was snappy; not a bad title in my book. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Who cares if the main character is wearing silver armor or an orange cloak? Does it really matter if your military troop is fighting in Europe or Asia? There can’t be any difference between a game about saving the world, and one your one true love, right?
It does matter. In fact it matters a great deal. The sights and sounds and feeling contribute to the Core Experience of a game like no other part of the game can. They are what make games a true art form instead of pure science, they are what make games closer to theater than arithmetic, painting than to geometry. These artistic strokes are the skin that the world will see view the game, its face, its exterior.
Welcome to the fifth and final component of the Game Design Canvas: the Aesthetic Layout.
The Bells and Whistles
Hardcore gamers, and even some game developers, often tend to think of games exclusively as mechanical systems. This is expected, because these types of people have typically played so many games that they’ve become experts. Trained to analyze and dissect, they see through the smoke and boil the game down from bells and whistles to gears and oil. All of the other systems we’ve talked about within the Game Design Canvas, the Base Mechanics, the Punishment and Reward Systems, and the Long Term Incentive, are all of these gears. And once they see under the hood, they manipulate the gears as much as possible to get what they want. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Hello readers! I wanted to take a moment to THANK all of you for making The Game Prodigy such a success in only its first three months. There have been over 3,000 unique visitors to the site and I’ve gotten great feedback from many of you fellow game developers, via comments on the blog, videos, and email. It’s been a great learning experience for me and I hope I’ve been able to give some of you some useful information about game development as well. Thank you so much!
Many of the emails I’ve gotten have started some fantastic dialogues about game design and development, and so I wanted to create an opportunity to interact with readers a bit more by sharing some of the discussion with the rest of you in a mailbag post. I love answering game development and career questions, so please feel free to submit your own.
Our First Mailbag Question
I find that, for some strange reason, I’m not confident when I’m designing games. Sometimes it feels like I’m designing in a void, and don’t exactly know how to piece things together. I’m wondering if it’s because, in the last ten years, I haven’t played/completed that many games at all. I keep starting then giving up in the first hour or so.
So, just like if you’re a writer, you gotta read, I’m wondering if the reason I’m finding game design so difficult is because I haven’t played that many games recently, *especially* in the genre I’m working in. I’m hoping that playing more will make things go more smoothly.
Another thing. How do you game designers. Do you sit down and play, say, Metal Slug with a ‘YEAH BOI GONNA SHOOT SOME BAD GUYS’ mentality, or do you pay more attention to design . I remember playing Lufia 2 with a notepad at my side, but I’m not sure if it did any good.
Thanks guys!
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Most of what everyone else has said is correct. I like to think of it as research. If I am working on a game, then I need to know what else is going on in the genre. There was a really good article on Gamasutra a while back about how to go about doing this kind of research, pick up some different games and notice exactly how they work.
So for example, if you’re doing a platforming shooter and you want to do a charge-up, then you’ll want to check out games like Megaman, Contra, and indie games with similar mechanics. How long does it take to charge? Do they limit how long you can do it? How powerful is it? Once you establish what has been done, you can decide what YOU want to do.
A lot of big game companies actually have free game libraries for employees to use exactly for this purpose.
And you don’t need to finish the game, but you should be able to pick apart exactly what’s going on and hone in on what you’re looking for. If you want to learn about a combat system you probably don’t need to play more than an hour or two. But if you want to learn story progression then you’ll want to play through most of it. AAA Games are made up of many things; if 80% of another game has nothing to do with the one you’re making, then you probably don’t need to play it.
“I find that, for some strange reason, I’m not confident when I’m designing games. Sometimes it feels like I’m designing in a void, and don’t exactly know how to piece things together. I’m wondering if it’s because, in the last ten years, I haven’t played/completed that many games at all. I keep starting then giving up in the first hour or so.
So, just like if you’re a writer, you gotta read, I’m wondering if the reason I’m finding game design so difficult is because I haven’t played that many games recently, *especially* in the genre I’m working in.”
Answer
You are very right in your hunch; I like to think of it as game design research. If I am working on a game, then I need to know what else is going on in the genre. If you are working on a brawler title, then you will want to play other brawlers to see what they do and how they work. If you are working on a mystery title, same deal. You need to know what other developers have done so that you can get a head start on where you want your game to go. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
What makes a person want to continue playing a game? What takes a game from a 30 second experience to a 30 hour experience?
To answer this, we’ll have to start from the beginning: Why did the player begin playing the game in the first place? Fun and enjoyment are the most obvious answers. The thrill of the chase, the challenge, the quest! The opportunity to interact with others, to improve one’s skills, or to go on an adventure. All of these are examples of Core Experiences, which gets people to start playing a game. People want to have interesting experiences, and games are one way to fulfill that.
How about once they start playing, what does the player do then? They got there because they were seeking the Core Experience, and then they begin to enter into the game itself. They jump, they run, the roll dice, they make moves. They begin to interact with the game and perform actions within the game’s construct. Seeking an Experience, they are beginning with the Base Mechanics. They are beginning to become coordinated, so to speak, to learn to move and live in the game’s world.
Once they get going with the Base Mechanics, then they begin to learn the broader gameplay. They learn that they need to look before they jump, that they should treat villagers with respect when discussing delicate matters, and that they need to use the red bullets when fighting the red enemies. They begin to map out the interconnections between the actions they are making and the results the game is serving them. They are making their way through the Punishment and Reward Systems, learning what behaviors are encouraged and which ones aren’t. Building on top of the Base Mechanics, the P&R Systems draw them even deeper into the game and to the Core Experience they were originally seeking.
But then what?
After the player has learned the game, how it works, how it interacts with them, what makes them continue playing? What could cause a player to perform the same actions, the same strategies, the same rituals, over and over, yet enjoying themselves at every step?
Enter the fourth Game Design Canvas component: The Long Term Incentive. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Run for your life! That’s the Core Experience delivered by Adam Atomic and Danny B’s hit browser game, Canabalt. Created for the Experimental Gameplay Project, Canabalt was designed to use only one button. That’s right, only one button. Our intrepid survivor runs automatically to the right of screen, while the player presses a button each time they want to jump. By dashing over buildings and avoiding obstacles, the player runs and runs and runs as birds leap off the rooftops and military ships fly overhead. The game really is a thrill.
Canabalt was an absolute breakout hit in the indie game world, so what can other developers learn from it? How can we apply the principles that made Canabalt so popular to our own games? Why, by breaking out our old friend, the Game Design Canvas!
Breaking it Down
As we said, the Core Experience of Canabalt is to make the player feel like they’re running for their life. Games that achieve their Core Experience well are the ones that we dream of and latch onto, and so the trick is to understand exactly how they did it.
Careful choice (and elimination) of Base Mechanics. To begin, you’ll notice that in Canabalt, the player’s character runs automatically. There is no Base Mechanic for making the character move forward; that was purposely left out. The effect? A sense of urgency, a feeling that you have little control. He’s going to run right into that wall in just a moment unless you do something! This simple subtraction of control is a beautiful example of design through simplicity. By causing the avatar to move automatically, the player becomes panicked from the first second the game is being played. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
You have many choices in your everyday life. Wake up and jump out of bed, or hit the snooze button? Eat chicken, beef, or veggies? Do some work, or go out with friends? These choices, these actions that you can take are the different colors you use to paint the landscape of your day, your week, and your life. It is through these choices that you experience and express yourself in the world.
If life were a game, these actions that you can take are examples of the Base Mechanics of life. They are actions that you can perform, that you have the ability to perform, and that you may choose or choose not to perform. They are the inputs into the system from yourself. You can freely choose from all the possible abilities you have and perform them to your liking.
…Or can you? Well, there’s more to it than that. Your actions and free will are not as free as one would think. Yes, you have choices you can make, but there are consequences, there are requirements, and there are strings attached. You may have the ability to go into the middle of a library and shout at the top of your lungs. You may have the ability to insult your best friend or to rob a convenience store. You may have the ability to sit in your apartment and be depressed instead of going out and enjoying the weekend with friends.
You could do these things, but you probably won’t. Even though you have the ability and the means, there is something else that is guiding your decisions. There is more to this so called “choice” business than you might imagine. It is as though some invisible force outside of yourself is governing your actions.
Enter the third component of the Game Design Canvas: The Punishment and Reward Systems.
Free Will? Or Not So Free?
As we discussed in our last introductory article to the game design canvas on Base Mechanics, every game has actions that it lets the player perform. The player can run, shoot, paint, throw, eat, duck, swap polarity, teleport, or what have you. But these actions are not isolated; they have higher systems that govern them. These Punishment and Reward Systems nudge the player towards certain behavior. They give meaning and weight to the Base Mechanics, forcing the player to think about their choices. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Super Mario Bros. is the best selling video game franchise of all time, with over 222 million units sold across all genres and platforms. 222 million! Incredible! But you wouldn’t expect less from one of the most beloved heroes of all time, a hero who at one time helped to single-handedly save a struggling video game industry.
Behind those baggy overalls and red cap lie an incredible game design experience, one that has withstood the test of time and established a high bar for the level of fun and enjoyment required for a commercial video game. What can modern day developers learn by analyzing the Game Design Canvas of the original Super Mario Bros.? A lot, as it turns out. The principles that made Super Mario Bros. a hit back then still apply today.
In “Game Over”, an excellent account of the history of Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, referred to his experiences as a child. He discussed the feeling of seeing something, such as a manhole on the wall, and wondering, “Why is there a manhole on the wall? Where does it lead?” When he made Super Mario Bros., he sought to recreate that same experience for his players. As it turns out, this is a child-like experience that millions around the world were longing to relive as well, and was one of the most massive contributing factors to its wild success.
Breaking it Down
Let’s try to figure out what the Core Experience of Super Mario Bros. is. Defeating enemies? No, you can run through almost every level without attacking the enemies at all. Saving the princess? No, the relationship between our intrepid plumber and the princess is almost entirely left up to the player’s imagination; that aspect of the game seems tacked on. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
“Casual” games have been all the rage in the games industry over the past few years. From the explosive growth of online games to the major First-Party support of the Wii, the “casual gamer” and the entire supposed market space has become a great buzzword and mainstay in game development. Entire divisions of large companies have cropped up solely around the idea of casual, and smaller companies and developers striking it rich in this wild west of an audience.
But seriously. What does “casual” really mean?
Of course anyone can point out games that are casual versus hardcore. Wii Sports and Farmville are casual games, sure. Call of Duty and World of Warcraft are not. But what does that actually signify? And if you’re going to base independent or corporate projects and future sales figures on these genres, doesn’t it make sense to understand what they are and how they work?
By using the Game Design Canvas, we can break down both casual and hardcore games and find out what really makes them tick. When we contrast them as you’ll see in a moment, there aren’t as many differences as one would assume. However, one major difference betrays a casual game as a casual game, and that one difference influences the game’s audience, the viable platforms, sales methods, everything. It is the difference that sets it apart from the hardcore titles and gives it its soul. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »