The title of the talk was ‘Writing Games: Tall Tales of Triumph and Terror’ and it was held last Thursday at the Writers’ Guild of America, West headquarters in Los Angeles. It went alright, with some discussion of what it’s like to be a game writer, the new and growing position of game writers within the WGA (which allows game writers to join according to lower standards than film or television writers), and lots of nods to Uncharted 2 and Half-Life.

Everything pretty much went as I expected, but I found it very unfortunate that we did not see a discussion of the art or craft of game writing. We only really heard about the differences in work environment and technicalities. For example, it was generally agreed that game development involves far less clearly defined roles than filmmaking, so a writer can expect to play some role in game design and should expect the game designer to play a role in writing. A script writer should also expect his usual 125 page script to shoot up to around 800 pages for a game, since games are longer and a player may only experience a fraction of a game’s writing in a single play through. We did not, however, hear about anyone’s ideas on game writing, how a game is structured, approach, how they use the game to convey meaning or feelings. At one point it was mentioned that while in film it is said that a writer should ‘show’ and not ‘tell,’ in games a writer should ‘do’ and not ‘tell,’ but that was the extent of artistic discussion.

I stood up for the Q and A at the end and asked about the difference between games with mute protagonists and those with talkative protagonists, citing Half-Life and Uncharted and asking how each writer felt about the different approaches to game writing. This, I thought, was a question they could bite into. Surely one of these guys struggled at one time or another with the contradiction of a game’s protagonist being both a unique character and being played by the player, or at the very least, thought it was interesting, thought something could be done with that. Right? One of the writers reiterated that Uncharted 2 and Half-Life were both great games and simply said sometimes you go the one direction with a mute, and other times you go with the yapper. Nobody else had anything to say. So that was my shot. Oh well.

Anyway, I had a good time, especially talking to some of the writers over cokes. I even met a flash developer by the name of Tamar Curry. Seemed like a cool dude.

This is my second IGDA meeting and I recommend checking them out, especially if you want to meet some local LA game developers. Students and indie devs show up in addition to folks from some of the larger companies, so it’s a good bunch.

-Christopher J. Rock

Bryson’s been pressuring me to post about Children at Play for a long time, and I kept telling him “I’m too busy working on the game!” But enough a’ that crap. I uploaded the video preview to YouTube and I’ll have a playable demo up here very soon.

I started work on Children at Play at the start of last winter and its eaten a lot of my time since then. I consider it a small step, but an important one, in the right direction. I’ll save any in depth discussion for when I’ve got the demo up. For now I’ll post some text I’ve put together for various submissions and whatnot.

Team:

The team would be my brother and I. He handles sound effects and any non-procedural music and I do everything else.

Description:

Children at Play is a physics based puzzle game with gravity as its core mechanic.

Players must fire a blue star through curved space and around obstacles, bending space-time and igniting supernovae to destroy a red star target and darken the sky that much.

A boy’s mother refuses to buy him marbles, but while pouting at home, his wish is granted by a sparrow. The bird only requires the boy to play a game.

Beautifully generated procedural artwork and spacey, harmonic music are the backdrop to an eerie story about hidden consequences and the nearness of all that governs the universe.

Does Children at Play do anything new?

The experience of Children at Play is most similar to that of puzzle and sandbox games, but it is unique in that it lends meaning to the puzzle/sandbox skeleton within the context of a world and story and its primary means of doing so is via direct analogy, which I consider fundamental yet uncommon in game designs.

(THIS PARAGRAPH OF SPOILERS HAS BEEN CENSORED)

Furthermore, while the qualification of any game as art is regularly challenged, even those that agree games are art would not expect one to discuss the puzzle or sandbox genres as such. This is unfortunate because it is these genres that lay at the heart of all video games. Every game with an objective boils down to some kind of a puzzle, regardless of how far removed from puzzledom a game may appear on the surface. I’ll cite Braid and its predecessor Oracle Billiards because they each take a genre that would never be considered akin to “puzzles” and create an experience that I would consider primarily puzzle-like by exploring the use of time within their genres.

The sandbox is of greater importance to me because its curiosity-motivated, exploratory experience is exactly what I wanted to achieve with Children at Play, however it is the least respected of all genres. Even the gaming community will write-off sandboxes as “not really games” because they don’t have a clear objective. I find this extremely problematic because it is only a step away from claims that games cannot be art. The game cannot be art because its experience is variable or, in other words, the objective is unclear in comparison to works of static art (in which the “player’s” objective is obvious: sit and enjoy). The freedom of a player, limited as it may be in some cases, is what defines a game regardless of the artificial moral judgments enforced by point systems or forcing players to retry levels the right way. In fact, the only reason I included a point system in Children at Play was because some players seemed very apathetic without having something to maximize (or minimize–I included both to encourage experimentation), but ideally a player would invent challenges spontaneously.

Hope that wets some appetites. More comin.
-Christopher J. Rock

Chris and I attended the IGDA LA Chapter’s July meeting for a panel discussion titled “Running a Small Development Studio: Perils, Pitfalls & Promise.” I was interested in checking out the event because it was a relevant topic and I’ve yet to attend any of the LA Chapter meetings. I’ve been an IGDA member on 2 separate occasions but failed to see value in the membership since there were never any meetings. This year they’ve restarted and are having meetings the 2nd Thursday of every month.

The talk was excellent. The speakers gave a good idea of some of the challenges of getting a company started and keeping it rolling.

The speakers were:

John Beck CEO, WayForward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob, Where the Wild Things Are, Space Chimps)

Jenova Chen Creative Director, thatgamecompany (Flower, flOw, Cloud, Journey)

Tian Mu CEO, Co-Founder, Naked Sky Entertainment, Inc. (Star Trek DAC, RoboBlitz, RoboHordes)

Jesse Vigil Founder, Partner, Psychic Bunny (Codename Games, Lead Balloon)

After the talk, it transformed into a mixer. It was good chit-chatting with some of the homies and the regulars. Met and re-met a couple people we saw at the USC Global Game Jam. I had a good chat with the homies Nite and Deon, who worked on Lulu Cao’s thesis project, SomeDay.

This IGDA-LA event is every 2nd Thursday. It hasn’t been updated for a while, but you can try the website for info about the next one. If they keep having meetings of this caliber, I’ll have to renew my membership.

Oh yeah, baby. I came up. Won this wonderful game at the raffle.

I’d have liked to see Santiago take Ebert down a notch with a strong argument, but she came off as many of the ‘game school generation’ do: all talk and born to sell out (e.g. using marketability as evidence of artistry). I assume this is because graduates would rather not alienate the industry or general populace with their ideas, but the need to maintain a friendly facade dilutes the message too much for my taste. For that reason, I’d also have liked to see Ebert take Santiago down a notch, until he stopped making sense.

One of Ebert’s key failings is that his actual views on art remain a mystery and for that reason, I hope to convey my perspective through my discussion of Santiago and Ebert. I welcome attack.

I agree with Santiago’s saying that games “already are art.” And I more or less fall in line with her concession to Ebert’s infamous statement:

“To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.”
-Roger Ebert

But I’m not impressed by her conservative declaration that Chess cannot be considered a work of art, saying that “We must draw a line.” In my view, the status of art is binary. Games either are or are not art. I argue that they are art, but as a whole, I wouldn’t call them very good art. Perhaps Santiago would support my distinction because she bases her definition in part on Robert McKee’s description of good writing–not art writing, but good. And with popular video game development over 30 years old, I do not buy the argument that games as an art form are in their infancy. Film was invented in 1895 and by 1925 the world was full of masterful and respected filmmakers practicing their art solely as an art and their work is studied to this day.

Ebert rightly attacks Santiago’s description of ancient art as “chicken scratches,” however I’m not sure why he discusses the cave paintings of Chauvet-Pont-D’Arc because Santiago displayed a completely different example of ancient art that appears to be Native American (though I don’t recognize it off-hand). And while Ebert fails to appreciate Santiago’s examples of gaming artistry; Waco, Braid and Flower; they are the same examples given in countless other art-game arguments that also failed to persuade the least of sophisticants and I would happily expand upon Ebert’s criticisms if prompted. I am again left with no side to take when Ebert becomes distracted by Santiago’s screenshot of George Melies’ A Voyage to the Moon (1902) because I’m more apt to compare the average video game to Thomas Edison’s Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). Ebert’s criticisms are entirely appropriate, but at each attempt to formulate his own idea, it becomes clear that this debate isn’t going very far.

His meandering struggle to imply a philosophy led me to believe Ebert’s thoughts are far too disorganized for him to be taken seriously as any kind of theorist, especially in regards to games. This may go without saying considering his famous distaste for film theory and more importantly, that his judgment of the entire video game medium comes without having played a one of them.

Ebert cites famous approaches to art, suckerpunching Santiago’s attempts to define it until at one point he seems to consider the act of defining art a pointless endeavor, saying

“But we could play all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one.”
-Roger Ebert on defining the word ‘art’

I was very disappointed by this because ever since Ebert’s initial decree that games are not and never will be art, I was curious about what complex and deep understanding of the arts led him to that conclusion. Without providing any reasons for his statement, it appeared that he preferred to attack the work of others without ever making his own ideas vulnerable–like some kinda lousy critic! Not so, because throughout the entirety of a discussion inherently linked to the definition of art, Ebert managed a single related concept:

“My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist’s soul, or vision.”
-Roger Ebert enlightening no one

I couldn’t help but notice the hint of hypocrisy passing flatulently between Ebert’s words,

“Kellee Santiago has arrived at this point lacking a convincing definition of art.”
-Roger Ebert clearly meaning to address himself

Ebert does state that a difference between games and art is that you can win a game. Ah, what a school of thinkers to join, the ‘art is the thing you can’t win’ guys. He goes on to make one obvious point against his definition of art as ‘a thing one cannot win’ in saying

“Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film.”
-Roger Ebert implying that if games are art, they must be some other kind of art (?)

I have to admit, he’s gone over my head here. When the video game came about, everyone seemed to agree it was a new, patentable invention worthy of an original name and place within our culture, but apparently that’s when Ebert diverged from the mainstream. Is he conceding that our so-called ‘video games’ ARE art, with the caveat that they’re actually some digital offsping of dancing and books? Is he confusing games with the ipad? Frankly, I don’t care to find out, but in case his claims are anything more than totally ridiculous, I’ve cited a few ‘Loser Games’ at the end of this post, each of which leads one to question the concept of victory and each of which is clearly a game.

Ebert does end on a high note, condescending as it may be:

Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why aren’t gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.

Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, “I’m studying a great form of art?” Then let them say it, if it makes them happy.

If I was unconcerned with the perception of games as art, I wouldn’t have written this post, but I don’t think we need to be pleading to anyone. We don’t need a friendly facade or to win over outdated critics. If you believe in games as art, the criticism of likeminded peers has to be feedback enough because catering to an audience uninterested in one’s art will only lead one to create bad art. I believe what we need is a higher standard for ourselves, our ideas, and our games. Today’s game development community is all too accomadating, especially among independent developers. Kellee Santiago is doing a good job screaming out the message and I hope she can bring together some talented people, but Ebert is right about one thing: video games as art suck. Everyone seems to agree with this when we discuss games in general, but no one has the guts to point out examples and criticize them. How else will progress be made?

Things are developing, but it’s not because of universities, publishers or markets. Just as in any art, it’s thanks to the artists who invest themselves independently of any of those influences, out of personal desire.

Ebert says that we won’t live to see games respected as an art form. I say give it 10 to 20 years and pretentious developers will have us wishing he was right. I say games are art, and yes, that makes me happy.

-Christopher J. Rock

Loser Games
If Ebert were ever to actually play a game, he might be aware of how questionable the claim of ‘winning’ one really is as opposed to ‘finishing’ it, as one does a film or novel.

Here’s a bit of artwork I drew for the Donut game’s intro animation. It’s roughly animated so my man Cryptic Circuity can lay down some tunes for it while I tend to other areas of the project. My current focus right now is the top-down driving portion of the game. I should be showing bits of that part soon.

Chris has been touring Europe for the past couple weeks so don’t think the war is over. He’s just been readying the quiet before the storm. I’ve managed to gain some ground on him without having to sabotage his project, but his game was just about ready for a demo release even before he left. Regardless, both of our games are looking top-notch and I look forward to revealing more.

Peace.

I’ve been hustlin’ on the Donut game. In the past month I’ve been busting out on the collision for the car segment and the intro animation for the game.

I’ve been working with the other members of the team — Ricky, David and Cyptic Circuity — to organize our tasks. Ricky’s doing most of the game’s character art and animation, primarily the Car segment and the Donut segment. David’s doing animation for a Fight segment — he did LUV Tank’s in-game animation. Cryptic Circuitry is doing the sound, as he did with Sammy Samurai.

I’ve had an idea of what I’ve wanted for the intro for the game for a long time but I had been conflicted on how I could get the story across without it being too drawn out. As an introduction to the game, I didn’t want the intro animation overshadow the game itself. I also don’t want to devote too much time to it when I have a game to make! I want something that basically says “Here’s your character. Here’s your scenario. Now play!”

I think of my games as interactive animations so I’ll continue to explore this balance. I haven’t made an animation like this in a while but I’m having fun so I may grow accustomed to it.

I had contacted Anders Gustafsson, creator of Gateway II, and he gave me a preview of the first chapter of his latest game — The Dream Machine by Cockroach Inc.

I had played the demo before and while it was presented well, I didn’t know what to think of it. It was so short that it felt like it was over before it ever began. But after playing through the first chapter, I can now rest my worries. I can’t wait to play the rest!

First off the game is well written. While Gateway had some dialogue, its story was mostly told visually through the animation of the characters. In The Dream Machine, the characters have some great dialogue, which I find believable. The game start with your character, Victor, just moving into an apartment with his girlfriend. You get a good feel for their relationship through their talking. The game has dialogue branches which allow you to respond in a more serious or joking manner if you wish. It helped me to believe in the characters — okay, Game Creator, you’ve got my attention.

A Turnaround from their ‘Character Generation’ blog post

The game’s unique art style kept me guessing. Is this clay? Or 3d? Or photographs? The visuals in the game are great. From their blog posts, it seems they are a mixture of figure, 3d, and composite images. So I guess I was right with all guesses, haha. I dig that the art has a handmade feel to it, a good change from most things being super clean, super digital.

It hit me maybe about an hour in. The sound is friggin incredible. And I think that’s when you know when it’s good. When it creeps in on you, and before you know it, you’re under its grasp. You really just don’t get sound at this quality very often with web games. The sound adds to the eeriness of the experience, reminds me of a Resident Evil game. How you always have that feeling that something’s… not… quite… right…

Oh yeah, I forgot about the gameplay! The game seems to be along the lines of your standard adventure game. Chapter 1 is mostly finding items and finding where they go, scavenger hunt style, with a logic puzzle or two to break things up. It didn’t really have those environmental “move here then move there” puzzles of the Gateway games. I felt that Chapter 1 was mostly an introduction to the characters and their world.

I don’t think the gameplay is innovative, and that’s probably a good thing. I think there’s a lot of pressure to be innovative and break rules and conventions but often the result is something broken and not enjoyable. Or something that’s claiming to be innovative while just replicating features some game made 10 or 20 years ago. If innovation is something that drives you to play a game, I’d say innovation is something that comes from the heart. In games like these where you can feel the love put into it.

I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen of the game. And look forward to seeing more of it. The guys at Cockroach Inc. are still hard at work at it so the results may vary, haha.

Links:

• Play The Dream Machine
• The Dream Machine development blog
• The Dream Machine Facebook group

So I’ve been hard at work on this Sokay stuff but nothing much is ready to show yet. For the past month I’ve been cracking away at a new version of Sokay.net . It’s a bit of a subtle update, but I’m giving each game a profile page. I’m aiming to launch it with the release of Christopher J. Rock’s game, Rush Hour. He finished it a while ago and tried to find a sponsor but ended up starting work on a new game. He’s decided to release Rush Hour as a Sokay game, I’m proud to present it. You can read about it in Chris’ post about it.

I’ve been heavy in the art and interface of the Donut game, on and off for the past few months. I’ve finished most of the menu interface. I’m glad that’s together. Next I’m going to finish up the introduction game. The Donut game is essentially 3 mini-games tied together through a scenario. So far I have 2 of the 3 engines in prototype forms, practically alpha. A lot of the final artwork is in, but the gameplay’s missing a lot of features. I develop games heavily with the artwork in mind, so I tend to do more of the artwork upfront, which is the reverse of what many developers would recommend. I think they’re probably just more programmer oriented, rather than visually.

Here’s a sketch I drew for the game. Most of the art starts off like this.

So we continue, one step at a time. I look forward to showing ya’ll another game. It’s what I live for.

Peace.

I read about Indiecade accepting submissions for the 2010 game festival on Gamasutra. If  you read this blog, you might know that we went to last year’s Indiecade and had a good time. I told Chris and he’s down for action! He wants to submit his upcoming game. I think it’s unannounced…

I see this as a threat. He may be my friend, something of an ally, but I will never let him make me look like a chump by outclassing me at Indiecade. Never!

So I now announce that we are at War.

This ain’t no East Coast/West Coast thing. We’re both representing Los Angeles, no problem there. Nobody’s getting killed. This war is more of an arbitrary goal to provoke motivation, sorta like Obama’s car MPG requirements for 2016.

Chris’ game is looking great. It’s a physics based puzzle game, he’s doing all the art and coding as well. In addition, there will be some procedurally generated music. This guy is nuts, but it works. A demo for it is coming soon.

I’ve been forever working on my Donut game. It’s looking great but I’ve been neglecting it because I’ve been doing long hours on a game I’m doing for my day job. And I’ve been working on an update to the Sokay.net site. When things get back on track, I’m gonna knock it out.

Last December Chris tried peer pressuring me into doing this Global Game Jam nonsense.

“Come on Bryson, you wanna be cool don’t you?” -Christopher J. Rock

While I always feel obligated to elevate my coolness, I resisted. At the time I wasn’t interested because I felt that I needed to give love to my elusive Donut project. As January 29th approached I realized that the Game Jam is something I needed to do. After attending the Game Developer’s Conference and Indicade it’s become ever-so apparent to me that connecting with others within the same community builds deep bonds. And it dawned on me.

Independent game developers need a spot where we can kick it. A spot where we belong. Where we don’t have to get all dressed up and be Hollywood.

Something similar to a Thugz Mansion, but for game developers. Global Game Jam is our Thugz Mansion.

Global Game Jam is an event that took place at over 130 locations around the world where people got together and made a game in 48-hours. From Friday night to Sunday night. Each location is independently run. Some locations had competitions, but not the one we went to.

Chris and I attended the Game Jam organized by MEGAusc located at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I left after work so I got there a couple hours late. By the time I arrived, Chris had assembled an army.

We worked in a dorm lounge. Our home for 48 hours. (I went home to sleep though, haha)

We had Troy, a computer science student at USC that learned Flash in his “spare” time, and Gabriel, a local artist that had never made an all out Flash game before. Also we had Noe, Cameron, and Andy who intro game development students that had drove an hour or two to the event for some extra credit points. They hadn’t learned any development skills yet so they helped us out with ideas, taking photos and collecting text for game.

The theme for the Game Jam was “Deception.” By the time I sat down, the team had a solid idea. The game was to be about propaganda sneaking through the brain and dissuading its thoughts and beliefs.

Here’s the background I drew. Gabriel made some tweaks and made the bullet-man.

So I sat down with my MacBook and hit the ground running. I started a Photoshop sketch of an environment based on the ideas that were being passed around, this became the second stage — “The Reptillian Brain.” By this time, I knew it was a platformer within the brain. I imagined you were an invader in an eerie land, a neural forest of trees. Meanwhile, Gabriel began drawing out the “Eye” stage and character designs. After seeing my sketch, he went off and did all of the art for the rest of the stages.

At this time Chris and Troy were going over how they were going to separate and integrate their programming tasks. Chris was tasked to do the gameplay, he wrote a platformer engine from scratch. And Troy created the game shell, which included a menu system, in additon to creating a camera system for the game.

The focus for the first night was to define our idea and what tasks each of us will take on to make that happen. We had decided on a screen resolution of 640×480,  the gameplay elements, visual style and the story.

The second day I started by cleaning up my background, exporting every element as PNGs and prepping everything as Flash assets. After that, I scrapped together a parallax engine for the foreground and background elements. Quick and dirty. I didn’t want to worry too much about integrating it with their code so I just told them to give me a camera position and I’ll be able to do the math to offset the tree positions. I got stuck and wasted some time trying to do my code smarter, extending classes and whatnot, but I ended up copy & pasting because some timing problems were popping up.

After defining an art pipeline I worked with Gabriel to clean up his art so we can import it into the game. While he was focusing on drawing the character animation for the game — I took his backgrounds, exported them and brought them into flash.

The programmer guys, I didn’t know what they were working on. But I knew I didn’t want to be a part of it. Their SVN was screwing up so they had to resort to passing files with a Flash drive and trying not to break each others work. They lost a lot of time over that.

About midway through Saturday we grouped up and organized a schedule for the tasks that we had remaining. Scheduling is similar to a 4-letter word in my book, but I can’t deny how important it is to meeting any kind of deadline. Even though we were all in the same room, we were so busy looking at our own screens that we didn’t really know exactly what point each of us was at. The estimates gave us a good idea of whether we had enough time to implement all of the stuff we wanted.

Sunday was a mad scramble to get everything in the game. Gabriel stayed up all night working on the animations and making an intro movie. Troy and Chris were working to merge their code. I gathered together all of the game assets and started laying out stages. Troy had a homie in New York, Giancarlo, whip up some music for the game and it worked well.

The project went together frickin smoothly. Since Chris and I have been making Flash games for years and have worked together on projects before, we already had a style for building a platform game like this. It only took a little discussion to decide how I needed to prepare the art assets for the engine. When all of our pieces were together, they worked almost flawlessly. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to polish everything once it was all in place, as that 48-hours came to an end quite soon.

I enjoyed this project. I got to meet some random people that I’d be down to work with again. I love the exhilarating feeling of concepting on the fly and running with it, not having to deal with lengthy meetings and approvals. I appreciated everyone sticking with it for the long haul, 48-hours is a long time. It was an uncomfortable, inconvenient situation that forced us to cooperate and resolve differences which in the end resulted in a deep bond. Kinda like camping, haha.

I’m looking forward to Game Jamming next year!

Credits:

• Troy
• Chris
• Gabriel
• Bryson
• Giancarlo
• Cameron
• Noe
• Andy

Links:

• Triune Soldier Outline ( Gabriel’s outline of the game’s artwork and content )
• Triune Soldier on Global Gam Jam ( you can download the game here )
• Gabriel’s Blog
• Global Gam Jam website
• MEGAusc