Game Design Expo Event Wrap Up

[Tami]

Game Design Expo Wrap-Up

Over the past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Game Design Expo which is organized by the Vancouver Film School. First let me say that the VFS event team once again did an incredible job of putting on a first class event. The topics and speakers chosen for the Expo were both informative and entertaining, and the opportunity to hear industry veteran Don Daglow give a seminar on console wars was one not to be missed. This article is meant to be a brief overview of the Expo's two days of seminars; over the coming week I will be posting more in-depth articles which will go into more detail for each topic covered.

Day One of the Expo opened with a keynote address given by Bungie's Jay Weinland and CJ Cowan, who gave a post-mortem on the audio and cinematics in Halo 3. The keynote gave attendees an inside look at the massive amount of work that goes into the making of a large franchise game - and doing it right - or, as was stated throughout the day by several speakers - mostly right. From an educational standpoint, an opportunity to look at the processes and tools used in making what will ultimately become 50% of the player's ingame experience. The amount of detail and planning which goes into the making of a game such as Halo 3 is overwhelming, from the simplest sounds such as falling materials to the minute particle tracking which catches the sound made from machine gun bullet casings as they hit the ground during battle. Add to this the appropriate musical soundtracks, and you have an audio folder which is mindboggling at the least. Never again will I take the audio ambience of a game for granted.

Following the keynote was a seminar on Shared Design, given by Arnab Basu and Riley Cooper from Crystal Dynamics. Shared Design is a concept used at Crystal Dynamics Studio utilizing a team known as Design Resources. This team provides talent, information and design services where needed at any given time during product development. This department provides everything from helping with focus feedback to providing templates for in-house documents and reports. Members of the Design Resources team have found such a team to be useful to them as it is an easy way to keep a roadmap of their career and experiences within the industry. It is a good department for junior talent to begin working with as they have an opportunity to assist in many different areas of a studio's tasks at hand, and more senior staff are able to nurture them along, aiding them in finding what areas of game development they truly enjoy and excel at. I find this idea of a Design Resource team to be very interesting, and one which I definitely want to spend more time investigating and learning about as I believe many of the practices utilized would be applicable in projects which I am involved in.

Next up was one of my favourite seminar speakers, Kelly Zmak, president of Radical Entertainment. I truly enjoy any topic which Kelly tackles as he is informative, very entertaining, and he lays everything about the topic right out on the table. He tells it exactly the way it is, there is no sugar-coating about the industry in his seminars. For this Expo, Kelly spoke about the insanity of chosing to develop an original IP for a video game versus using a licenced product. From concept to release, Kelly walked the audience through the process, emphasizing the realities about undertaking such a project, especially in today's industry with production costs rising exponentially for the new consoles. The amount of time, knowledge and talent involved in just getting to the green light stage is enough to scare off all but the most passionate, robust and insane game developers. This is another area which I will be spending more research and writing time on, as I think it is a glaring view at the realities all young designers must be aware of if they wish to prepare themselves for the hard path ahead, otherwise known as video game development.

After a break for lunch, we were treated to the knowledge and experience of Don Daglow in regards to the console wars. As Mr. Daglow has been active in the game development industry since 1971, it is safe to say that he is very experienced when it comes to the wars of game console manufacturers. He was also the recipient of this year's Emmy Technology Award for Creating The First Graphical Online Role-Playing Game - NeverWinter Nights. Taking us back to the days of writing games on an old mainframe and then moving forward to the current generation of "next gen" consoles, Mr. Daglow afforded much insight to the younger generation into events they may only have read about in game industry history books, if they were aware of those events at all, such as the industry crash of 1983 when the video game makers almost (but not quite) disappeared. Mr. Daglow also discussed some points and counterpoints which had been previously raised by Kelly Zmak - original IP versus licenced products and their place in the console wars, along with the (almost) guaranteed success in the sequel market. Also covered in this seminar was the console life-cycle and how game development progesses through those cycles.

Mac Walters and Jeremie Voillot of Bioware Corporation were next up, their topic being a post-mortem for the audio and design in Mass Effect. When all was said and done, there was enough dialogue in Mass Effect to fill four good sized novels, with 300 unique characters to keep players busy. The cinematic designs in the game comprise approximately 1000 scenes, and to quote the developers - what the heck were they thinking? With over 700 sound files to keep track of and insert into the right areas of the game, Mass Effect was definitely a learning process for the teams at Bioware. The system they invoked to keep track of what went where and when is definitely an invention of necessity. By assigning each instance of conversation to a gold, silver or bronze level, they were able to save themselves alot of time as well manage that time more effectively. With the implementation of a staging system for each character in each scene, the cinematics designers were able to match facial animations to dialogue as well as make sure the ambient music tracks worked for each scene. They found that when developing the script which would move the gameplay forward, it was easier to think of the story as more of a film screenplay than a novel, allowing them to write less dialogue but put in more description for the artists, animators and level designers, thereby streamlining much of the work and making each cinematic scene and piece of dialogue be imperative to moving the game forward and keeping the player engaged.

Preceding the panel discussion which would end the day was a presentation on Designing New Experiences on New Platforms for New Audiences, given by David McCarthy of EA's new Fusion Unit. David gave us a case study involving EA Sports Family Play and EA Family Playground, both for the Wii. With Nintendo's new console came a new formula for change as new emerging audience segments became apparent when Wii sales demographics were studied. These new emerging trends include mult-generational gaming, casual play, female gamers and of course the aging baby boomers. In many aspects, the game experience offered to these markets has helped to make gaming more of a legitimate entertainment activity. However, not even Nintendo, I think, could have known the full impact which the Wii would have, especially on older markets and family gaming. These discoveries have led to somewhat of a change in the philosophy at EA, with a renewed emphasis on accessibility, platform specific design, and a return to the roots of gaming. This is where the new Fusion Unit at EA came in. It is a team of designers who have a strong appetite for new challenges, such as those opened up by Nintendo and the Wii. Among the greatest of those challenges was coming to understand the dynamics of family play, and then designing games which would be playable by gamers of any level. This could include simple Wiimote control options (to nunchuck or not to nunchuck, for example) or reduced game complexity for those who are new to the world of video gaming. Due to the Wii's ability to allow each player to set his or her own skill level within a multi-player game, it was possible for even the most unskilled gamer to play against a more skilled gamer and have fun - while still offering both skill levels appropriate challenges and rewards. As with all of the previous seminar topics, EA learned some valuable lessons in regards to designing for you market, and again, this is a subject which I will revisit in a more indepth article.

Closing out day one of the Expo was a panel discussion in regards to Innovation and the Reality of Games. Panel members were David Elton from EA Black Box Studios, Josh Holmes of Propaganda Games, Tarnie Williams of Relic Entertainment, Joe Bonar of BackBone Vancouver and Douglas Tronsgaard of Next Level Games. Moderator for the panel was Kelly Zmak, Radical Entertainment. The first question given to the panel was "define innovation" - which fell into a 90 minute discussion and question session, leaving the other eight points for the panel untouched. Innovation is a very hot topic in the game development world, and as evidenced by this panel, there is never enough time to do the subject justice in a public format such as this. Even though this was the only area covered by the panel, it was far from incomplete or uninspiring. Many great ideas and possibilities were voiced, along with a myriad of opinions. I cannot do this section of the Expo justice in a brief wrap-up article, so rest assured that this panel discussion will be among the first of the in-depth articles I will be posting.

Day two of the Expo opened with a post-mortem discussion from HotHead Games in regards to their new property, Penny Arcade: On the Rainslick Precipice of Darkness. While a post-mortem is slightly premature (as mentioned by Joel DeYoung, Producer) as the game has not yet shipped, the team did offer up many of the areas where lessons were learned, going into detail on many of those points. They also covered the many areas which went right, and shared some insight as to what it is like working with the incredibly creative minds of 'Tycho and Gabe' from Penny Arcade. If you aren't familiar with Rainslick, it's a blend between the action and vintage adventure game genres - a style which I have enjoyed since the earliest days of...the Atari 2600. The team then went on to outline how plans for the game's distribution will be handled via digital download for the PC, Mac and Linux operating systems, as well as for the Xbox 360. Game content will be expandable through episodic chapters, a model which I think will be very successful for this game - partly because it mirrors the episodic content of the Penny Arcade comic, and partly because I feel that many gamers in today's market are looking for more affordable and accessible game products. Again, you can look forward to a more in-depth look at Rainslick in the near future.

The next and final seminar which I attended was on Game Audio, presented by Chad York of Next Level Games. Unlike the previous two seminars which focused on post-mortems, Chad went into detail of audio design as a whole, looking at the history of audio in games and its growing importance as part of the game play experience. He also went over the basic skills required by an audio designer, as well as what part the audio team plays as a game is developed. The challenges faced by the audio design team are often added to by time constraints as many times audio is the last part added to a game. Chad pointed out that as game development has become more sophisticated, following more of a film production model, developers have begun to add more audio tracks earlier in a game's development - sometimes having some type of working audio even in a prototype as this adds so much more to the feel of a game when presenting it to those who have the green light power. In modern game development, many companies such as Nintendo have a very strong commitment to game play music, which has opened up a whole new market for composers who, like the audio team, are now seen taking part in early development meetings. Audio is fast becoming as important to the product as a whole as the design and artwork has been for years.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this second Game Design Expo. It is always nice having the opportunity to catch up with friends as well as make new ones at each event. This event has matured and developed alot in the year since VFS held its first Expo. The open house which runs in conjunction with the Expo is an excellent opportunity for future students to get an inside look at the school, and for their parents to get a better understanding of what it is their child wants to do when he or she leaves high school. At least two or three speakers during the event mentioned during their seminars that their parents felt that playing video games, messing with computers and then of all things designing games was a waste of time. They are now all very successful designers - and veterans - in the industry. Let's hope that the designers of tomorrow took away one of the clearest messages shared at the Expo - let nothing stand in the way of your passion.

[Jim]

Sounds like a lot of fun. o.0

[Tami]

It was - and as always, there was alot of interesting discussion happening.