Game Design as Cultural Practice Fall 2009

Flash Source Codes

Hi all,

Click here to download a .zip that contains all the source code and shit (now with super helpful comments!) from our first Flash lesson.

And this has the .zip of the source code for the XML lesson (the one with the bouncy ball).

Thanks, Matt!

 

Dysphoria: some design documentation

Here's some "design development" stuff - meaning photos from our design sessions.

Tables of possible object interactions, and their effects on mood stats:

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/interactions_table_left.jpg

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/interactions_table_right.jpg

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/interactions_table_top.jpg

A diagram of the relationships between a set of objects (how the presence of one object can affect the interactions available with another object):

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/interaction_rels.jpg

An early map of the house

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/map.jpg

Table of the objects we'd wanted to include, and the default starting mood stats

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nwatson7/dys/objs_and_defaultstats.jpg

Dysphoria - team Vignesh pro studios - SAm's unsued assets

AS you know I had created multiple user interfaces and background animations (which a copy is provided below) as well as testing animations for the objects and the man silhouette  (unfortunately though the final material was built on top of this material which left me without a draft to publish here - one of which you might recall as the red silhouette for the walking man, and another is the walking silhouette that cycles through different characters).

Old UI:

old BGs:

Growth Dev Docs and Other Assets

header / logo - Tom

 

Level Designs (Collaboration - Tom, Brian, Mariam)

 

 
 Growth Production Docs (Tom) -
 
Download Growth project schedule 

Download Growth_workflow
 

Other Random SWFs (Tom) -

Download LightSourceOn

Download LightSourceOff

Download Hellz_yeah

Download Foobie_run_left

T-Totalers Level Design Maps

Below are the paper mock-ups of our three levels:

 


 
Below are the complete three level designs done in Photoshop.  The levels were done in segments, so the combined images aren't that clear because I had to scale it down since the files were really large initially.

Level 1:

Level 2:

Level 3:

 

Level 3 Revised (Level 1 and Level 3 were combined later on during our design phase in order to make Level 1 longer for the final prototype; but the change was not made in our prototype):

I've attached the zip files of the 4 levels with the more detailed images below:

Download Level1

Download Level2

Download Level3

Download Level3_Revised

A Social Understanding of WoW and Second Life

Having played both of these games briefly, the interesting thing I felt I should talk about is how my personality in real life could be altered by playing these games for an extensive period of time. I am going to talk about the things I felt affected me while playing these games, which are social consciousness and emotional investment.

While describing MMOGs, Pearce says that "they are public places that thousands of people enter simultaneously to share an entertainment experience". I think it's not just a space for sharing an entertainment medium but also a social forum to display one's accomplishments. I think some people see the Amusement Park as a forum to show off their lack of fear in dangerous situations(in this case, being the rides). In WoW, I've noticed people using the community as a forum to show off these same skills, but in terms of game play and tactics. Perhaps they are compensating for their lack of accomplishments in dangerous situations in the real world with their accomplishments in this game.

In the paper on Productive Play, Pearce mentions that play can be productive when it contains means of producing your own culture and expressing yourself. I feel this is especially crucial when considering how players develop their real-world personalities by playing the game. In Second Life, I realised I can develop my real-world personality because my behaviour can be easily translated into the virtual world. In WoW, due to the rule based nature of the game, I feel like I'm only trying to accomplish immediate tasks so I can move on the next task.

In "A Rape In Cyberspace", it is quite clear how much emotional investment people have put in their avatars. The effect of such an inappropriate interaction is more drastic for the player in Second Life than in WoW because the player has a stronger investment in their virtual identity. In WoW, I felt like my avatar was merely a tool for just completely the tasks at hand. I can see how difficult it would be to regulate a world where the results of such inappropriate actions have such far reaching consequences that bleed into the real world. Mnookin describes the complexities involved in clearing enunciating the differences between the laws in both worlds. After playing Second Life, I was confused as to whether I'd actually want somebody to give me a clear distinction between my real-world and the virtual world. It seems obvious that it would be helpful in many aspects but it seems like many people are so invested in this world that they'd rather not accept terms which state that there is a clear fundamental difference between the worlds.

Building on individual development, I had mentioned in my previous blogpost that even single-player games can induce multi-player feel because of our social nature. Morningstar and Farmer state that "a definitive characteristic of a cyberspace system is that it represents a multi-user environment." They further go on to explain the difficulty in creating a process that would resemble a real human being's interaction. I do not think this is significant in WoW because we have a strong propensity to accept a social space within a rule defined world that doesn't resemble our real world. The moment I started interacting in Second Life, a world that is extremely familiar to my real-world, I was not as willing to accept any interaction that was not human-like. I expected familiar emotional responses to all sorts of interactions because of the familiarity of the environment.  

In particular, as Curtis mentions in his paper on Mudding, "Some players apparently find it quite difficult to interact with those whose
true gender has been called into question". I realised the difference personally while playing Second Life as opposed to WoW. Because Second Life induces a sense of familiarity with my real world, I would not like to see such odd discrepancies in social interaction. In WoW, however, because of the exaggeration in costumes, avatar designs and other non-familiar elements involved in my interaction, I would not find it particularly disconcerting if somebody does not mention their real gender to me. I feel as if their personalities are important to me in the realms of the task that we have to complete together.

After having personally experienced these aspects during my game play, I wonder if these players, who have been immersed in these games for a long time, are able to notice their change in social behaviour. Would they be able to tell if they seamlessly changed their behavioural patterns from one world to fit another?

References:

Curtis, P. "Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." 

Pearce, C. (2007). "Narrative Environments from Disneyland to World of Warcraft." In Space, Time, Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level. Friedrich von Borries, Steffan P. Walz, and Matteas Bottger (eds). Basel: Birkhauser. http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceSpaceTimePlay.pdf

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." ion 19, no. 1. 

Pearce, C. (2006). "Productive Play: Game Culture from the Bottom Up." Games & Culture. Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2006.http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/PearceGC-Jan06.pdf

Mnookin, J. (1996) Virtual(ly) "Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO." Volume 2, Number 1: Part 1 of a Special Issue, June, 1996. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/lambda.html

Dibbell, Julian. (1993/1998). "A Rape in Cyberspace."http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

Farmer, R. & Morningstar, C. (1990/1991) "The Lessons of LucasArts Habitat."

The Designer

Regardless of medium, and beyond the variables presented by production environment, there is one thing that makes a master designer capable of producing masterpieces in said field. Articulation.

In producing our game we had a concept that was very difficult to approach and I believe we did such in an academic fashion that charted a new behavior for everyone involved. That difficult concept was how to maintain articulation within a game environment. While many games may have had more embellished art or more intricate collections of game content, we had the most daunting logical challenge of all to tackle, and it could have been as contorted and out of control as our plant device itself.

The needed articulation calls for a very unique design process. The product needed to be designed for use but also needed to be designed for development. My answer was to approach the game with a design methodology similar to play methodology. Arguing against the process that Nicole Lazzaro and Kevin Keeker propose, I believe that testing processes should be ubiquitous and that poor receptions should kill a process in favor of industrial Darwinism.  Separation of designer and developer shields one element from criticism while every element in the process should always be exposed to proper evaluation.

T.L. Taylor describes the organizational effects behind software development and how they impact product. With this I completely agree. However, I find that he is incorrect when he references only technically complicated games. Even simple projects can be elevated through an intuitive trigger system. In doing so, the rhetorical options given to my designers expanded game options in ways that are barely understand on the surface, but become clear and unavoidable upon deeper analysis. Where Taylor would refer to painting a canoe in the water, I wanted to approach the problem differently and find a way to make a pontoon boat. By having choices available such as spawn, approach, state change, remove controller, and add controller, there are some impossible choices that are now available to the designer.

Our game is broken up into four main parts. These parts followed design conventions, but they did so in a very unique way. As developer, I attempted to create a game environment that would have cornerstones from our conceptual design readings as they applied to the designers that contributed to it. This was done by basing having a system of xml files that represent everything from maps to collision boxes. The xml files would load in a bottom first hierarchy, allowing designers to make general specific choices. The primary parts that are represented in the build files are as follows :

Artifacts, these are what normally are regarded as sprites or tiles. They had three different categories, they were the Artifact, the Sprite, and the Doodad.  The point behind this part is to be mostly representational. It is primarily based on Norman’s first rule of design convention, association between convention and artifact. Artifacts were usually given not only assets, but also default behaviors (Artifacts were special in that they had no asset but had behavior). The choices with these elements were meant to be as intuitive as possible and this was the entry point for creating a world recognizable object.

Controllers are behaviors, they are meant for Artifacts. They become the life of the elements, giving them complicated behavior and establishing relationship hierarchies. They were the parts that could be encapsulated and extended. The intention behind these was to create scalable actions that could intuitively be applied to their targets. For example, the grow action was the combination of approach light behavior, spawn bud, and spawn leaf behavior. They were deceptively simple and very particular in effectiveness. Their existence was based on Norman’s second rule, logical use of action. In reality, Norman’s rule is meant for effective communication between gamer and developer. In our case, this environment was intended to bridge designer and game environment.

Maps, these are the environment. A map on its own would be completely empty; however, it is an architecture that arranges artifacts into a logical manner. The fabled “environment” (that is so important to the game designers) does not actually exist. Instead, it is entirely conceptual. The designer was capable of making multiple maps within a single game that could overlap, they were not the same as levels or zones, instead they were abstract collections, the designer’s involvement with this part of the engine was based upon metaphorical development. Maps could be ceiling sections as they separated from floor sections. They could be growth sprouts layered onto caverns.

Actions are affects produced by the Maps, they move artifacts from one space to another, they assign controllers, and they bring elements in and push them out. These became the most unique part of our engine and easily the most useful. They require a bit of learning but after some consideration, they become a powerful tool. Following the coherent conceptual model that Norman discusses in point number four of his short on Affordances and Design, I crafted a method for applying abstract actions to abstract organizations of Artifacts. This tool allowed for the most articulate choices but required the most amount of understanding.

 With these different items in place, we were able to craft a game that had almost limitless possibility as we intended it, down to the tile. The plant effect you saw was changeable down to minor details. In our demo we are going to revise the “plant chase” level to show just how much can be changed with a few variable alterations.  The reason for this is that I feel our product is designed both inside and out, for development and use.

 

Taylor, T.L. (2003). "Intentional Bodies: Virtual Environments and the Designers Who Shape Them." ion 19, no. 1.

Lazarro, N. & Keeker, K. (2004). "What's My Method? A Game Show on Games." In CHI 2004 Conference Proceedings, April 2004. http://www.xeodesign.com/whatsmymethod.pdf

Norman, D.A. (2004). "Affordances and design." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html

The Great American Satire

Grand Theft Auto IV as notorious of a game as it is, presents one of the best commentaries on modern American society to date, in a highly interactive and free environment. The game revolves around the values of the modern American Dream, bringing about phrases such as, "The money makes decisions, it's the American way" or "I'll do it as long as it pays." It strives to embody the insanity in which our consumer driven capitalistic in every feature it has to offer, as a means to mock "the American way".

Brenda Laurel in her book the Utopian Entrepreneur makes a valid and very intriguing point, "Values are everywhere, embedded in every aspect of our culture and lurking in the very natures of our media and our technologies" (Laurel 62). The most fantastic stories told are the ones that have the most impact on our values as a culture. In terms of GTA IV, the designers have modeled a similar representation of one of the most symbolized cities in America, New York, and filled it with what they perceive as our "values" everywhere throughout this place known as Liberty City. One of the most iconic figures is the Statue of Happiness on Happiness Island, a mockery of the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York. The Statue of Happiness holds in it's hand a cup of Starbucks coffee, and a book of corporate law. It speaks for itself as an icon and satire on America. Another key medium in which our values as a culture are portrayed is within the radio station heard anytime the player's avatar is inside a vehicle. In particular the commercials poke some serious fun at our consumerist values, trying to get the player to almost go out and buy fake products advertised in a fake world. The player hears commercials like, "Did he really do it? That's not the question, it's are you going to win or are you going to go home! Watch the Science of Crime a crime show where scientists sit in a lab all day, while we watch with utter boredom. We are taking out the drama of from the crime show and making it forensically boring. The Science of Crime, only on CNT." This is obviously a mockery of CSI or other modern crime shows. The game also has an in game television that allows you to watch shows advertised on billboards, the radio, or even the in-game internet, one of which is called "I'm Rich", a show that mocks E!'s portrayal of Hollywood glamor and the over spending of wealthy Americans. One quote from the show is about a fake yacht a hotel heiress owns, the narrator states, "This is Chloe Parker's 9 trillion dollar yacht that costs 300 million dollars a day just to run." Though one can only laugh at the seriousness the in game characters use to present the culture of this fake world that mimics our own, it's all but frightening that some of these values have truth in their roots. 

The tortoise and hare story Laurel tells us, where the Hare wins the race due to his ability to do everything fast, from trading stocks on his handheld, to eating fast, and driving fast, is a grand example of the use of the story in relation to our cultural values. She states, "Okay, what's wrong with that story? It's cynical. It doesn't give good advice about how to live. We probably don't want our children to believe it, even though some of us may be afraid that it's true" (Laurel 65). This relates back to GTA IV's utter influence on culture, it aims not to grow our children in to consumer hungry adults bent on using any means necessary to make a dollar, but to show us how ridiculous our society has become. 

There are radio commercials in the game that are almost insane to think as real. For instance, "Babies Overnight," a company that sends you a baby of your choosing overnight in a box on your doorstep, in much the same manner couples who have trouble conceiving for whatever reason depend on 3rd party companies to receive children. The commercial can be played here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4XQzOrqPMA. After hearing an entire game full of advertisements and fake media such as the one just presented, we as American's are either angered at the deprecation of our culture, or wake up and realize how true this portrayal is of our culture. 

Laurel states optimistically, "Change the stories, and you change how people live" (Laurel 65). The most iconic trait of GTA IV is the mere fact it can only represent American culture. Perhaps if we stop emphasizing the importance of wealth in our stories our culture will change. GTA IV in the context of European or other foreign cultures causes it to make absolutely no sense, it is a an American phenomenon. Perhaps the story GTA tells isn't so harsh, but it's quite frightening to think a world where killing for money, helping corrupt politicians, and utilizing any form of violence as means to gain wealth, isn't so different from the one we currently dwell.

I Won't Forget

Earthbound was an RPG for the Super Nintendo released around 1994. It remains to be one of the few games that has stuck in my mind for years for a multiplicative of reasons, and upon replaying for this assignment I was awestruck by how amazing the game presented itself to me. This game offers to it's audience, a brilliantly and vividly portrayed world for the audience to explore, which Johan Huizinga states as a core aspect of play: "We found that one of the most important characteristics of was it's spatial separation from ordinary life. A closed space is marked out for it" (Huizinga 113). Earthbound uses this element of play to attempt to parody many aspects of American culture within the world it represents. Instead of defeating hardened enemies to collect powerful weapons, we find Ness our protagonist buying supplies at the local supermarket, department store, or super mall complex, in much the same way a suburban mother does her family shopping during the course of a day. This is not only a humorous representation of Americans, but the comical portrayal of a young elementary school boy buying a baseball bat and cheeseburgers to supply himself to fight the greatest evil the world has ever seen seems like a preposterous idea. 

However as Huizinga states, "play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. It is rather a stepping out of "real" life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition of it's own (Huizinga 103). Earthbound models itself after real life, using American culture in particular as its base, but pushes the bounds of the imagination to present to us the audience a world in which a child with his infinite faith in the universe can save all mankind from an impending doom, while having a sense of humorous irony. We giggle as Ness' capitalistic pig of a neighbor, in their luxurious house, mocks Ness' family and their home, while we see visually how Ness' house is smaller than the one next door. We enter his house to realize what it means to be home as Ness' mother states, "You look tired Ness, I'll fix you a steak and then you go straight up to bed, a mother knows these things." Though these are only a few examples of the vivid world induced through mimicry, as Roger Caillois stated, "All play presupposes the temporary acceptance, if not of an illusion, then at least of a closed, conventional, and, in certain respects, imaginary universe" (Caillois 135).  The universe of Earthbound as fake as it may be mimics the real world to the point, I felt an emotional attachment to it. 

Earthbound shines brightest at the end as the player faces the final boss. The traditional rules they have followed up to this point become uncertain and the player's own intuition must be utilized to find the solution to the goal. Normal attacks prove fruitless, and as the boss in a roar of confusion constantly wails on your party, all seems hopeless. In this hopelessness the player realizes they must pray to succeed and ask for the prayers of the world to ensure their safe return home. As the player does this the boss is vanquished and one realizes the true power play has to offer. 

Interfaced - A Retrospective

            Coming into this class I was expecting to work with a bunch of designers to come up with some cool game ideas. I was looking forward to the class, but overall I was worried that my voice would be lost in a crowd. Instead what I got was the opportunity to work with one the best project teams I have ever had.

            When we first started brain storming session I had the personal goal of all my proposed ideas being ones that Activision would never produce. Some of the early ideas included a stacking game where you stacked large every day objects (cars, houses, trees, etc.), and who doesn’t like stacking stuff. Another idea involved a ricochet mechanic where the player would have to bounce objects off of themselves and the environment. This idea stayed on the table for quite a while actually, becoming mixed with two of our other platformer ideas. The game eventually transformed into a blob game where the player would be able to stick to the sides and various objects too navigate the world. While all of these ideas had merit we eventually went with our programmer’s idea of interfaced.  We all wanted to use this project as an excuse to make the craziest idea we could come up with, without the worry of sales figures and market appeal. It reminds me of a quote from Zimmerman when he says, “While every game embodies some kind of conflict, we were drawn towards modeling a conflict that we hadn’t seen depicted previously in a game,” [1]. From there we went on to designing constraints. From the start I was adamant that the player should not be able to drag the elements. I felt that this could potentially lead to lazy level design where you’re just moving pieces to plug gaps or uncovering elements. Ironically I soon went from saying, “why the hell do you want to move these things”, to, “how the hell are we going to make these levels without being able to move these things”. While I’m still getting a bit lampooned by my team for this reversed position, but in the end I think it was the right decision. Still if we allowed players to move the elements unrestricted or we would have no semblance of puzzles. In the end we decided to constrict the movement of each element individually. To make the inventory useful we had to give it unrestricted movement, but to keep it from breaking the game we made it so that you couldn’t move it when the player is inside. We also made it so the stamina bar could only move left to right so player couldn’t just raise themselves higher. Finally, to balance with the stamina bar we made it so you could move the mini map up and down. Unfortunately this too caused more trouble than it was worth and we ended up fixing it in place.

 

            A game about breaking conventions can be difficult simply because players will expect for conventions to be in place. Sure we have a game where you can jump into the inventory, but how is the player going to know you can do that when all they’ve ever done with an inventory is put loot in it. This presents the unique challenge to the designer of telling players what they can do without breaking the flow of the game. Personally, I hate tutorials were every feature of the game is laid out in front of the player. This robes the player of the satisfaction that comes with discovering the game mechanics for themselves. In my mind I had a grandiose plan for developing amazing levels that cleverly and subtly drove players to use the mechanics that they never new existed. There was just one problem with that clearly ingenious plan...it was really really hard. Near the end of development we realized we needed a simple solution for this problem. To that end we turned to Norman who recommends that you use, “Use words to describe the desired action (e.g., "click here" or use labels in front of perceived objects).” [1]. That’s right with just a few words integrated into the level via sign posts we were able to point players to the mechanics without spelling them out. For example, the first level includes a sign that instructs the player to “run around”. The player now knows the input, but they have to figure out what to do with it. Upon observation the player will notice the stamina bar falling and KABAM, knowledge has been learned.

My main job as development went on was level design. I tried to focus on creating a logical progression, both in terms of difficulty and introducing the elements. For some time I was worried about the difficulty combined with the very unconventional concept leading to frustration. Eventually I decided that as long as the puzzles could be solved by my teammates that the difficult levels would be better than easy levels. As Lazzaro puts it, “a 100% success rate eliminates most of the aspects that make a game fun” [3]. To develop my levels I first drew them all on pieces of graph paper. I then marked out the solutions with dotted lines. This allowed me to develop and refine the levels even before our XML system was in place to build them. I honestly think that our biggest success in this project was the XML interpreter. Not only was I able to easily build and edit levels with out playing with the code, I was able to do so independently of the coders. In other words I was able to build the levels concurrently with the programmers without having to worry about having to heavily edit my syntax. This saved us a lot of time and is the main reason we have so many levels. I would highly recommend that any future class student rely on this system as it allows very rapid level development.

 

Oh and by the way. Tech just became the ACC champions!!!!! Clemson still can’t stop the perfect option!!! Go Jackets!!!

[1]

Zimmerman, E. (2003). "Play as research: The iterative design process."http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Iterative_Design.htm 

[2]

Norman, D.A. (2004). "Affordances and design." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html 

[3]

Lazarro, N. & Keeker, K. (2004). "What's My Method? A Game Show on Games." In CHI 2004 Conference Proceedings, April 2004. http://www.xeodesign.com/whatsmymethod.pdf

Gaming Outside of the Box

Learning about the New Games Movement was one of the highlights for me this semester. I have always had "Hippie Tendencies", and was intrigued to see a gaming philosophy that incorporated "Hippie Values". DeKoven, who made a huge impact on the New Games Movement, presented the ideas of collaborative play and the importance of the players' knowledge of the rules of the game, as well as coming together collectively to decide whether rules should be adjusted. "...By establishing guidelines, we assure each other of a common intention and mutual respect for the willingness to play, for the need for safety and trust" (DeKoven 19). Communication before, during and after play was something that DeKoven valued in general.

DeKoven introduced a game called "Zip, zorch, boing, perfigliano"(DeKoven 80), where players sit in a circle and try to pass along these phrases to the players sitting next to them without making any mistakes. The rules sound simple enough, but it's actually a lot harder than it seems. We played a variation of this game earlier in the semester, and saw how difficult the game can be. More importantly, it was a game that we all could play, and play together. The rules of the game did not, particularly, require skills of the players involved that are subject to a specific type of person. The nature of the game relies on communication, voice/speech, and little collective coordination, but that's it. Anyone can join in, or drop out, when they are ready, without much disruption to those who still would like to play.

Another game that I found interesting, and somewhat profound, is the game called "Incidental Music--Five Piano Pieces" a game where you stack blocks onto piano strings, and build a tower as high as you can. When you have reach a point where the tower can no longer hold itself, the game begins. As the blocks fall, "music" is made, hence the name of the game, Incidental Music. This is a cool idea as "the games formulation is the inverted game mechanic: it is at the moment that you 'lose' the game the music itself is created" (Pearce 19). I love the idea of player wanting to "lose" in order to win at a game. It's a completely reversed use of game mechanics to create something interested and unexpected.

A third game that sort of breaks traditional game mechanics, and could be classified as a sort of New Games Movement game, is "Rock, Paper, Scissors Tag". The game requires that the group of players split into teams and collectively decide which move their team will make against the others. So most of the traditional "Rock-Paper-Scissors" strategy is distorted because it's a little more difficult to guess what move a TEAM of people will make in RPS, than one other opponent. When the teams make a move, the "losing" team must run or be tagged by the other team, and once tagged becomes part of the other team. This is interested because typically when you are part of a team, you stick with them, but in the case of this game you could become a part of the "opponent's" team at a moment's notice. 

I would like to explore more of these kinds of games in future game design projects. Fair Play, collective ruling, and dynamic/organic rules of play could be interested in the digital gaming space.