Macguffin Games

Notes & Thoughts on the IGC East Sessions

May 15th, 2009 by Macguffin in Uncategorized

Belatedly looking through my IGC notes… here you go!

You can also find Darren Torpey’s thoughts on his blog here.

This post, as you’ll see, is pretty long.

Taking Game Design to the Next Level

This talk was a panel run by my friend Linda Currie, the Creative Director of Creat Studios – the other panelists were Chris Foster of Harmonix, Chris Zirpoli of Moonlight Media Consulting, Cardell Kerr of Turbine, and the ever-snazzy Steve Meretzky of Playdom.

Darius Kazemi and I both agreed, this was one of the single best design talks we have seen in a long time.  It was organized as a top ten list of important things for designers.  My notes on it follow.  A couple don’t have any sub-points – those were items where nothing stuck out to me personally from what I already knew.  I know, I know, shoddy note taking.

• Project Goals and Vision
  • Foster: If you use Harmonix’s “One Question” technique to put the vision as a question, you can easily use this question to test proposed new features.
  • Put together your vision for yourself, not for the team.  You need to know your game’s vision and believe in it.  If you’re just putting a vision statement together for others, it’s useless.  As the designer, you are the game’s vision’s biggest evangelist.
• Balance
  • Balance your game for your core demographic.  (Needless to say, you’d better know who that is!)
  • Listen to QA early on regarding gameplay, since they are not wearing the blinders you have on as the designer.  But later on, ignore them!  Later in development you will be talking to the most hardcore, experienced players of your game on the planet… if you balance for them, you’re screwing everyone else in the world.
  • Consider using auto-balancing techniques.  (One basic example of autobalancing is when, in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, more enemies show up if more people are playing the game).
  • Balance early and often.
  • Make sure the player feels like they are getting better relative to the challenges over the course of the game!  (One of the word problems I have with un-modded Oblivion and Morrowind.)

• Interfacing
  • What a UI tells your players:  Top level UI items are inherently more important than items you need multiple clicks to get to.  Given that, is your UI set up appropriately?
  • “How can we make this doable in one click less?”
  • Make sure when someone re-enters the game world that they can quickly understand what they were doing and how to quickly rejoin the drama.
• Collaboration
  • Meaningful Choices vs Joy of Discovery
  • How well you convey how meaningful a choice is determines your spot in the market.  I.e., if you make a game as intricate and obtuse as Dwarf Fortress, you are saying that your game is for the ultra hard-core.  If someone has to work hard to understand the ramifications of a given choice, that requires a player willing to put that work in.
  • When the player makes choices, you MUST give them context in which to just how important they are and why.
• Communications and Follow Through
  • Never ask a yes-or-no question in a team environment.  This leaves room for someone to have completely misunderstood what you meant, and you won’t catch it.  Also a good technique: ask people to repeat back to you what you want them to do / are asking.  (This is an incredibly useful technique that I’ve used as a producer.)
• Constraints
  • Constraints can indeed make the game design.  A game with no constraints tends to suck.
  • Don’t be afraid to follow design constraints to their logical conclusion.  If your constraints tell you that doing feature X is going to be a nightmare, make sure you pay attention to that!  It will save you a lot of banging your head on the wall.
• Don’t Over-Design
• Iteration
  • Be flexible.  Be willing to cut features and be receptive to changes.  Your original design may just not be as fun as the things you discover while iterating on your game.  Be open to these new things.
• Research & QA

(Sadly, I missed the rest of the sessions that day – Linda was kind enough to look at the Heritage demo and give me some great feedback, and then I was setting up for Demo Night.)

There’s Nothing Casual About Social Games

Dallas Snell’s keynote was pretty much fantastic.  It was delivered in a long, rambling format, complete with over-the-top stories from his childhood and all delivered with a strong southern drawl.  His overall point was that we as human beings are inherently social creatures, that this sociability as at the core of our identities.  All games, he feels, have a social facet to them (even single player games), and by helping us be social these games help us to be better human beings.

Most of his slides were peppered with psychological research and info, all with footnotes.  My notes here lack that precision, natch, and are a pale imitation of what was a truly excellent keynote.

• The 4 C’s of Happiness and Well-Being
  • Choice – Doing things in this way.
  • Competence
  • Connection – Having family and friends that think you are worthwhile.
  • Commendable – You do things that you feel have value, things that matter.
  • The more we have of each of these things, the happier we are.
• Relationships are More Important Than Content
  • If you stop and think about it, you probably have a really good idea of who you will be spending your time with, a full week away from now on the weekend.  But you probably don’t know with anywhere near that certainty who you will be doing them with.  That’s because we’re wired that way, we care a lot more about who we’re doing it with than what we’re doing.
  • Things start to lack meaning without a community to put things into context.
  • Social connectedness is the number one predictor of happiness and well-being.
  • When people can’t find the Four C’s in what they are doing, they stop playing whatever “game” it was – be that life or a video game.
• Summary of Main Points (these seemed more specific to game making)
  • Go fish where the fish are.  Don’t make some walled garden to do a social game, go to Facebook or wherever these people already are.
  • Use established networks of friends and acquaintances.  Help them import the relationships they already have – they want to keep those networks.
  • Facilitate bids for communication.  Let players broadcast their activity to friends.
• Design for the other 23 hours
  • People will spend maybe 30 minutes on your game.  Make sure your design deals with the rest of the time they have in the day where your game could be interacted with in other ways.
• When you help people play together, you enable them to learn and work together and be fulfilled.
• Make sure that in a single player experience you can help them “be alone together”.  Even playing single-player games involve some sort of sense of community – with other people playing it, other gamers, etc.

Maximizing Press Coverage

This talk was by Sue Bohle, of the Bohle Public Relations.  Bohle PR handles a lot of big companies as clients, and in the video game realm that includes Microsoft, SEGA, and probably others.  Frankly, I was left flat by this talk on a couple levels.

The first was that, while a lot of the things Ms. Bohle had to say about getting PR were helpful, her talk was obviously pitched to people developing AAA titles – or at least ones where you had a decent budget.  While the idea of getting third parties to talk up your game in the press is great, the recommendation that I go get a hollywood director to do so to a major publication is… less than helpful?  Additionally, her talk touched on different approaches for different kinds of releases – one approach for a serious game title, one for a big retail release, as well as one or two more.  There was no mention at all of the non-casual-portal online-only models that I figure half the people in the room would be using.

The second was that, afterward, I went up to Ms. Bohle to ask a question.  While she was talking to someone much more important in the industry than I was, she slowly and distractedly handed me a business card.  Puzzled, I handed mine back… which she shuffled into the big pile of cards in her hand.  Then someone else entered the room and asked her a question, and she responded to that person and walked off with them.   She didn’t manage to acknowledge me directly at all.

That’s about the rudest I’ve been treated in a long time, outside of people yelling at me on the road as I drive.   Ms. Bohle obviously has no interest in my business at any point in the future – which is good, because hell if she’ll get it.

• Serious Games Titles
  • Start early.
  • Build community.
• You CAN get continuous coverage on your game.
  • Assets are key.
  • Screens, videos, original art, given on an exclusive basis to key sites.
  • Lay out a calendar of who gets what and when.  Plan to make the assets.
  • Major sites, yes.  But also pay attention to your community sites.  These sites will be willing to give you coverage over minor game changes that the big sites won’t.  Treat them with the same respect you’d treat the press and they will treat you well in return.
  • Great art makes a huge difference.  Save everything you create; most of it can be useful.
• Promote the full range of talent in your game.  Gives you lots of options for interviews later on, and can help with employees feeling appreciated.
• Do feature spreads.  (Pretty sure I don’t have lots of details on this one since my chances are about the same as running into Napoleon and Wellington chatting at Dunkin’ Doughnuts.)
• Find a 3rd Party Expert to comment on your title to the press.
  • The press won’t print that you think your title is great, but if someone in the know who isn’t part of your team does, they may.
  • Example was John Carpenter getting involved with F.E.A.R.
• Exploit what is different about your game and your studio.  These are good selling points for a reporter hungry for something different (VERY good advice for an indie!)
• If you’re going on TV, seriously consider professional help in prepping for it.
  • Example was Todd Hollinshead being interviewed by ABC regarding violence in games.
  • You need to be prepared for every question that could sink you.
• If a consumer title, think about doing a media tour.  The non-enthusiast press is more interested if you’re there and available.
• Do something fun as a PR stunt to get attention.
  • Example was when they sent a guy in a monkey suit to the grocery store for Super Monkey Ball.  He bought bananas and then proceeded to GameSpot, all on film.
  • Cover all the media categories appropriate for your title.
  • Newspapers – know who to talk to
    • Wall Street Journal doesn’t cover games, except in its personal business section.
    • New York Times – games only covered by freelancers
    • Jinny Gundersen – Indianpolis Star and column for USA Today.
  • Look at New Media Outlets for older companiesOlder outlets are doing new sites, new addons of content to their old sites.
  • Best is word of mouth.  Niche communities that would like your game.
  • Local Papers
• Make sure you get your company positioning down. What are you about that isn’t just “we make t3h awezome gamez”.

Focus Testing

This talk was by my friends Chris Oltyan and Darius Kazemi.  My notes here are poor because I realized about five minutes in that I could just walk 5 blocks and ask Darius any questions I wanted.  I know, I know, shoddy note taking.

• Prereqs
  • Make sure your UI is complete enough to play.
  • Make sure people know what they are supposed to do.
  • Make sure your game won’t crash!
  • Take feedback with a grain of salt.
• Players don’t know what they do want.  They have a much better grasp of what they don’t like.
• Know exactly what you want to ask them, and know why what you’re asking is important.
• You can classify data two ways:
  • Subjective vs Objective
  • Quantitative vs Qualitative
• Certain methods beget certain data.
• Creating an environment to collect data is key.
  • Watch, or have a webcam as they play.
  • Combine surveys with metrics – subjective data in an objective context.
  • Design your metrics to meet specific goals.  Metrics are not one size fits all.
• Summary
  • Identify your goals for testing.
  • Design tests and metrics to accomplish said goals.
  • Interpret your data and implement changes.

Hope this is helpful to you all.