Relatively Good

BattleField Bad Company 2 for iPhone

“this games actually pretty good”

My flatmate Jamie’s surprised reaction to playing an iPhone game I purchased recently. The game was Battlefield Bad Company 2. The game is based on the popular multiplatform game of the same title, but has been built for mobile platforms. 

As he watched the clunky characters wobble about and wrestled with iPhone’s touch-screen interpretation of first-person shooter controls, I mused that he would scoff at it on any other platform. It got me thinking: has this game received a positive reaction from the player entirely because of relative and not absolute expectations? Is it only good because his expectations on this platform are low?

It makes an interesting comparison, since a game with an identical brief (and title) has been produced for other platforms which allows us to make direct comparisons. The console version has undeniably better graphics, better control, longer gameplay, more dramatic cutscenes, more weapon variety… the list goes on. If the mobile game were ported directly, with no changes made, onto a console platform, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone that gives the game the time of day.

Of course, it seems perfectly natural to scale our expectations to match the platform on which we are playing. However, if our ultimate goal of playing a game is to enjoy it, is our observation of “good” – relative or otherwise – at all relevant anyway? Shouldn’t we be making comments like “this games actually pretty fun”? As soon as we force our observations to meet the criteria of “fun”, we can make relevant relative comparisons across not just platform, but also time: “the new Prince of Persia games haven’t been as fun as Sands of Time”.

The next best thing to having
a magical Ocarina in your pocket

One of the most anticipated titles for Nintendo’s new handheld, the 3DS, is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time. The decision to remake this game for 3DS might have been out of convenience – production costs for remakes are certainly lower. It might have been for the sake of the game's heritage and renown. Or just maybe it was because what was fun 13 years ago will still be fun today?

Minutes later, a different flatmate walked past and said the above iPhone game looked like sh**.

Update 3

It’s been a while since the last Progress Update and for that I can only apologise!

  

I also rendered this out in a turntable video

Since then I’ve modelled trees, a sniper rifle and a transit van. In each project I’ve been trying to experiment by doing things somewhat unconventionally to see how successful different methods of texturing and modelling can be. They’ve yielded mixed results, but the learning process has developed my skills further. I will, however, need to work faster in future since I took longer than most of my colleagues, and certainly longer than a professional would take.

Trucker character miniature, height ~8 inches

   

Perhaps I am too close to it, but I feel progress in my visual design has been a little slower and at times I’ve been reluctant to give it the time it deserves. Hopefully this admission will stir me into action! I am pleased with my development in Photoshop, though I still need a lot of practice.   

Life drawing has taken a larger component now and highlights a weakness - my experience at drawing the human figure is limited and its something I should be concentrating on. I’m looking forward to focussing on the face later in the course since right now most of my faces look awful!

A giant mushroom I did for the BGR project

 As far as extracurricular activities go, I’m still plodding along with the mod for Dragon Age. Due to a skills shortage in scripting, I’ve taken up that slack rather than doing much by way of art stuff. I’ve become pretty fluent in scripting for Dragon Age now, though I’m not sure of the value of such a skill. I guess it can’t harm! I have begun to wind down the amount of time I spend in this area, since I’m expecting to need more time toward the end of term…

Illustrations for our project by teammember Tristan Silva

An exciting recent development has been the forming of the Games Society - a collaboration of Game Art and Games Programming students to design and create playable games. We’re really excited about our game and it will be great seeing some of my work in real use! We’re making a “you’re a gingerbread man, escape the bakery” obstacle course adventure. Even if it turns out to be a rubbish game, I’m confident I’ll have a lot of fun working on it… Let’s just hope we can follow through on our plans!

 

Art Directors

Being, as I am, an aspiring game artist, my interest in the visual style and execution of video games won’t be too surprising. While many games hum the well-rehearsed rhythm of ever-improving photorealistic visuals, others adopt an entirely unique style, or even whistle their own tune for what is expected of photorealism. 


Madworld's very distinctive visual style is not just skin deep:
the musculature of characters and weapons as well as the
environments is all highly stylised, but consistant.



However, when you consider that each game has a single art style, despite a swathe of different independent artists (working in a team), one might wonder how the skills and tastes of this team of artists is unified into a single creative vision… that’s where the Art Director comes in.

It is the Art Director’s responsibility that the visual style is coherent and consistent, and projects the correct feeling onto the player. The Art Director will be responsible for overseeing concepts for the visual elements, requesting refinements and steering the course of all the visual elements’ designs in a single direction. 

While a single artist toils over a handful of assets with utmost care, it is the Art Director’s responsibility that that artist’s body of work fits seamlessly into the game and does not result in a visually inconsistent environment, character or other asset.

The role should not be confused with that of Lead Artist. While the role may, in smaller companies be embodied by the Art Director, it is still a different set of responsibilities.

A Lead Artist would be responsible not as style consultant or visual consistency advisor, but take on a more technical and perhaps even managerial role. The Lead Artist will be concerned with ensuring artists’ work flows through the pipeline with maximum efficiency: their work should be meeting a clear technical brief concerning budget, scale and other factors. They may be responsible for delegating art tasks, and ensuring artists are meeting deadlines.



Not like that, like this!



So while a Lead Artist’s skillset is likely to focus on proficiency as a 3d artist coupled with managerial skills, an Art Director’s requirements differ somewhat. The art director must understand holistically the visual aesthetic required of the game. They must be able to communicate this vision with all artists and must be able to identify when created content does not fit this brief. It will not be enough to simply request changes to each asset which does not fit – the existence of poorly-matched assets represent a communication failure either by the art director in expressing the aesthetic, or the artist in understanding it.



It takes a very special type of artist to become a director – one who is able to step back from a single isolated piece and see the entire body of work, often well before it has been created. Their communication skills must be able to match with every member of the art team. They must be willing and able to be less hands-on with the work since they are unlikely to be able revise every asset themselves.



Conductor.



One might argue that the Art Director has very limited creative freedom – simply steering other artists and often producing little work themselves. However, it is their hand guiding the entire visual design for the game. Much as an conductor lifts baton and not instrument, so too does the Art Director orchestrate the visual performance of the artists, and assist in the composition of the visual score for the game. No easy feat.

So take a bow, Art Directors.

Game Design part 1

Everyone wants to be a game designer.

Moar. I want it.

Heck, I know what’s fun, I could design a game easily. I can list a dozen ways to improve a good game and I know why bad games are bad. This job’s a walk in the park… More explosions! More violence! Better graphics! More weapons! More levels! I could invent my own game easily… the industry just hasn’t recognised my potential yet!

The above statement was brought to you by game consumers en masse, and makes hefty use of the word “more”. The consumer always wants more and they want it for less. This is true of any marketplace. Unique to the gaming market, however, is the popularly held belief by consumers that they could do the producer’s job better. And within this, few jobs receive the level of scrutiny as that of the game designer.

And who can blame them? Each year, dozens of shooters come out, many of them sequels with what must surely have been a design document similar to the above. [end obvious and rather unfair snipe at course leader Mike’s preferred genre].

I think the designer of the contraptions
in 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions
was trying to make a statement.
But you get the point.

In actuality, inventing a game is much like inventing any other product.  Superficially effortless: a simple idea worth millions. In execution: countless hours spent developing, prototyping and refining the design. And that’s all before it’s even shown to a distributor.

At home we have a book: 101 Un-useless Japanese inventions. Many of them are simply brilliant; Excellent solutions to everyday problems. I believe in every case, however, they have failed due to entirely misreading consumer demand. But at least they made it to production. One cannot say the same of poor game designs. Bad designs simply do not get made by any studio worth its salt.

  

So game design is important. That’s why it’s a full-time job performed by specialist professionals. In actuality, the ideas for games (the bit consumers think is the entire role of the game designer) tends to come from management or from a publisher. Very often a game designer will be given a safe-bet brief, mashing together a few games into a cocktail management believe will have the lowest chance of failure. Low risk pleases the stockholders. I’ll leave my feelings on the harmful effect of low-risk development to another blog post.

Design Documents often reach
hundreds of pages

So what does a game designer do then, if they don’t come up with the original idea? Their major activity will be writing and maintaining a design document – a body of work which every member of a development team will refer to while creating the game. The design document will include detailing gameplay, narrative, setting, characters and environment. Art direction may be contained in the design document, or be supplied in a separate document once the design gets the go-ahead.

The design document should leave no member of a development team guessing what is required of their role and will provide expectations of the final product which can be presented to publishers, partners or investors. A good design document will be say precisely enough to allow everyone to do their job. This means enough information to prevent developers second-guessing and enough freedom to benefit from expert judgement from specific roles.  

So if that’s what makes a good design document… what makes a good design? More on this in coming posts.

Why corners are dark

I am constantly plagued by “why”. One of the “why”s which has been eating away at me for a couple of days is that of ambient occlusion. Ambient occlusion is a technique in games that allows raised details to “pop” more by darkening surfaces close to corners. It works well and gives extra strength to the 3D illusion. It relies on the following truism: “corners are dark”

But does it really happen? My first response was: well sure, if you’ve got a shadow being cast, otherwise probably not - just a trick to make things look less flat. But as time passed, this problem ate away at me, and I have concluded that yes it really does happen. And here’s why…

A - Corners receive less direct light. 

Relevance: 6

In the diagram, a four-walled room is being lit by an ordinary bulb casting light in all directions evenly. If we divide this light into 15 degree sections, each emitting the exact same amount of light, we can examine where this light strikes. In sections near the middle of the wall, the light strikes only a small area of the wall. The same amount of light strikes a much larger surface area in the corner of the room, where the angle is more acute.

If the same amount of light strikes a larger surface area, it stands to reason that the strength of that light is diluted across the surface, and consequently the surface appears darker.

B - Corners are far away from lights.  

Relevance: 0.1

This might be some people’s immediate response to why the corners of a room are dark. While there is some truth to this, I believe this case to be very weak.

Let’s assume light sources are not found in corners (they generally aren’t). This means generally, corners are further from the source, and when this is the case, some light scatters on dust particles/similar before reaching the corner. This is called light falloff. Comparing corners to flat surfaces, however, we’re talking about very short distances, so the amount of falloff is negligible. Dusty rooms or foggy or smoky environments would cause more light falloff, but I’m still going with “barely relevant” on this one.

  C - Corners receive less scattered light.

Relevance: 4

Light bouncing around all over the place has a reduced chance of striking in a corner. In the diagram we follow 8 paths of light from the source - only a couple strike anywhere near a corner, whereas 4 could be said to hit very near to the middle portion of one of the walls. The innermost of the corner is affected most strongly by this phenomenon.

    

D - Corners are in “scatter-shadow”. 

Relevance: 0 to 10

This is not at all true of our four-wall room scenario, but it certainly is true of many other corner situations. While this shadow may not be from direct light sources and consequently no hard shadow edges are shown, here’s an example of where a corner is in scattered light shadow (another surface is catching its scattered light).

The diagram illustrates that those sections tucked away in the corner do not catch much, or any of the primary bounce light, and must receive it from a secondary bounce (which is less strong).

  

And here’s a real-life photo taken from the comfort of my desk to demonstrate the above. Apologies for the picture quality - fetching anything more than my phone camera would require me leaving my seat. Goodness, just the thought of it… 

 

D - corners are in scatter-shadow. 

We're already in shadow from the direct light, so the shadows you're seeing within the shadow are entirely scatter-shadows. 

C - corners receive less scattered light. 

Notice how the corner is darker, particularly very near to the corner. 

  

A - Corners receive less direct light.  

As the angle becomes less perpendicular to the source of the light, the light is spread over a larger area. This can be seen in two places of this picture.

C -  corners receive less scattered light. 

Again, the very innermost part of the corner has quite a dark line where very little scattered light reaches. 

Games Journalism

It might not look like much but I challenge you
to find better camera reviews than MagaPixel.net

When Canadian camera review site megapixel.net went on (seemingly permanent) hiatus early last year, I was most disappointed. Their impartial and exhaustive reviews of popular digital cameras led to the purchase of four digital cameras for myself and friends, all of whom have been very satisfied. Their nine-part illustrated review structure laid out in meticulous detail everything you could possibly want to know before making your choice and contained typically only 20 words for their personal opinion. Extremely suitable for the subject, for which subjectivity is unnecessary.

But games journalism is different. Games journalism is personal. No statistics, screenshots or videos can tell a player whether they will enjoy a game. Certainly a rating out of ten cannot. These things can express the content and quality of the game, but who can say how enjoyable an individual will find a game? I do not think a games journalist can.

…For that matter, I haven’t played a new game in a while. I Should really pick up something…

So why do games magazines and websites exist at all? Despite the above fundamental flaw, they have an arguably stronger raison d’être than music or film journalism. These mediums ask less time and money of their consumer than games do. Gamers need to know what to spend their limited resources on - it’s a big investment. Gamers need games journalism.

It’s a position that publishers exploited for years. Cries of skew and bias were rampant in the early 2000s, particularly among publications devoted to a single platform. A solution was proposed in 2005 by journalist Kieron Gillen, dubbed ‘New Games Journalism’ (NGJ) - it focuses on how the journalist experienced the game, rather than focusing on the game itself. This was born from the simple observation: gamers do not play games to interact with a feature set and pretty visuals, but to experience something fun. The experience is what is of interest to the gamer.

…Enslaved: Odyssey to the West allegedly has an engaging and cinematic gameplay experience. Pretty screens a plus. Short gameplay a plus. Something of a flop a plus (should be cheap soon). Check Amazon. Not cheap yet. Such a spendthrift. Justification: Student…

The biggest difficulty here is that of objectivity and subjectivity. It is possible to be objective about visual fidelity, gameplay mechanics, quality of writing, gameplay mechanics, music score, etc. It is not possible to be objective about one’s overarching experience of the game.

Whilst video reviews are relatively new,
GameTrailers.com follows a traditional 'describe and critique'
approach and closes with a score breakdown

It is, however, more entertaining to write in this way. The writer can compose their inner monologue, primal frustrations and ecstasy in a more personal way. They can connect with their reader as an individual. They can write their entire article in first person if they wish. They can write some utterly egotistical self-centered rubbish. It’s a problem that has developed over time.

Chris Lepine wrote an article in 2009 addressing the issue, declaring the NGJ movement “dead” using adjectives like “pretentiously intellectual… opinionated… corrupted”. His major criticisms seem to be that NGJ has led to poor quality journalism and/or a loss of objectivity, particularly in reviews. Lepine was inviting change.

In Brendan Caldwell’s rebuttal, he cites examples of excellent articles in the New Games Journalism style and contests that poor quality exists because of the author, not its style. Lepine’s later commented on the article, suggesting that while NGJ isn’t fundamentally at fault, it invites poor journalism and publications have become “driven by economic and prestige considerations” above those of “good writing”. It all sounds somewhat familiar.

…Also on Amazon: Castlevania. Played that at Gamescom and was impressed. Another cliché fantasy setting. Should probably try and broaden my gaming palette or else the vampires will start to recognise me…

So what do we, as consumers of games journalism, make of this mess? I find that most gaming media fits into a spectrum and that each publication has a specific niche within this spectrum. Before I subscribed to GamesTM earlier this year, I read through a few gaming magazines for the same month. Having now read up on new games journalism, it seems clear that GamesTM seems to separate their NGJ into its own little section at the start. While not game reviews per se (some would claim NGJ can never be reviews), these 800 word pieces I have found to be very hit-and-miss. And I find they often fail to answer the questions I have before buying a game. But I guess that’s exactly what the above debate is all about.

…Distracted by reading magazine. Not noticed Little Big Planet 2 preview before. Looks good. Family might also like the game. Investigate the purchase of a PlayStation 3. Justification for new console (hours spent playing) cannot be met (no hours to spend). Disregard…

So do I like NGJ? Yes, I very much do. I find it highly entertaining. But waddayaknow - I still don’t know what game to buy.

Personal Gaming History

One of my flatmates was looking through Ebay listings of old consoles today. He wanted to buy a Sega Dreamcast. Looking through the games included in the listing descriptions, soft cooing could be heard from behind his laptop screen while I cooked my dinner. We exchanged nostalgic gaming memories; I concluded I was most sad that I had sold my Nintendo 64, exchanging it for the GameCube which has lain dormant on a shelf for the past few years. He made me promise absolutely to bring it back with me the next time I go home. If I forget, I’m not sure I will be going home again…

The first computer game I remember playing was Commander Keen on my Mum’s PC. It was some years later that I got a Nintendo Entertainment system (NES) with a light gun and Duck Hunt. I remember the games being quite difficult. I even exchanged a game which I couldn’t get past the first level, only to watch in the store as the press start screen demo showed how to get past the bit I was stuck on. It was only later in my gaming life that I came to really enjoy difficult games.

Command and Conquer really got me into PC gaming. Although I had enjoyed many PC games before that, realtime strategy became my preferred genre for some years after that game. Its sequel, Red Alert, was the first game I made custom content for - the maps I made for that game were the start of a side-hobby of modding games that has continued to this day.

Everybody's favourite blue hedgehog in his heyday

But there was never a year went by I didn’t buy at
least a few games for my console. I played the Sonic games to death on my Mega Drive, but my fondest console memories are for the Nintendo 64. Having mates around to play the likes of Super Smash Brothers and Mario Tennis was an experience no childhood should be without. Of course, no talk of Nintendo 64 would be complete without a mention of Goldeneye, which really set the standard for compelling and diverse single-player first-person shooter experiences. I’m baffled to this day how I managed to get almost all of the stars on Super Mario 64 without any form of guide. The internet spoils us these days.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time set a benchmark for
adventure games that few were willing or able to follow

Looking back on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I feel it was the first game that really tied down everything I like in a game. A compelling plot and emotional attachment to key characters, challenging gameplay which sometimes required a bit of thinking and interesting environments enhanced by solid visual and audio production values. Those three benchmarks can be set to most mainstream games. In my opinion, only one game has bested that game.

Not a year has gone by since its release
that I haven't played Baldur's Gate 2

I’m not even sure why I picked up Baldur’s Gate 2. I got stuck on the first level (sound familiar?) and decided to pick up a walkthrough book. Before BG2, I barely knew what a role-playing game was. I have never read literature so compelling, never been so absorbed by a world in film or TV, nor played a game whose mechanics I have dissected so thoroughly to improve my play… as Baldur’s Gate 2. I could go on praising it, and I might just do that… but in another post. I have to move on.

As my gaming palate matured, my appreciation of gaming genres broadened. There really are very few genres I don’t enjoy sampling, even if I don’t have enough time or money to try everything the genre has to offer. Even my parents have got in on the act - owning a Nintendo DS and Wii between them; and we continue to regularly play board and card games as well.

To say that games in the past ten years have been less influential on me would only be partly true. I think the frequency of high production cost games (triple A games) has resulted in fewer games that stand out head-and-shoulders above the competition. Games I love from the current generation include Lost Odyssey, Bioshock, Portal, Dragon Age: Origins, Ninja Gaiden 2, Mass Effect, Guitar Hero 3… I could go on.

Ninja Gaiden 2 was renowned for its brutal difficulty. I guess I love a challenge!

Games continue to fascinate me. I only wish I had more time to play them. I asked my friend how long ago he sold his Dreamcast. He never owned one. Nostalgia is a funny thing.