THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY

MAGAZINE VOL19 NO 11

NOVEMBER 2012 INSIDE:

GAME DEVELOPER POWER 50 THE BINDING NOVEMBER 2012 OF ISAAC www.unrealengine.com

real Matinee extensively for Lost Planet 3. many inspirations from visionary directors Spark Unlimited Explores Sophos said these tools empower level de- such as Ridley Scott and John Carpenter. Lost Planet 3 with signers, artist, animators and sound design- Using UE3’s volumetric lighting capabilities ers to quickly prototype, iterate and polish of the engine, Spark was able to more effec- Unreal Engine 3 gameplay scenarios and cinematics. With tively create the moody atmosphere and light- multiple departments being comfortable with ing schemes to help create a sci-fi world that Capcom has enlisted Los Angeles developer Kismet and Matinee, engineers and design- shows as nicely as the reference it draws upon. Spark Unlimited to continue the adventures ers are no longer the bottleneck when it “Even though it takes place in the future, in the world of E.D.N. III. Lost Planet 3 is a comes to implementing assets, which fa- we defi nitely took a lot of inspiration from the prequel to the original game, offering fans of cilitates rapid development and leads to a Old West frontier,” said Sophos. “We also the franchise a very different experience in higher level of polish across the entire game. wanted a lived-in, retro-vibe, so high-tech the harsh, icy conditions of the unforgiving Sophos said the communication between hardware took a backseat to improvised planet. The game combines on-foot third-per- Spark and Epic has been great in its ongoing weapons and real-world fi rearms. The Utility son perspective action with fi rst-person mech relationship, plus his studio has been able to Rig feels more like a trucker’s big rig than a combat against an array of monstrous Akrids. utilize the Unreal Developer Network (UDN) mech. Surprisingly, there was only so much in- For the fi rst time in the best-sell- for any issues throughout development. spiration we could take from the arctic. Snow ing franchise, the game is being devel- “UDN offers a great community knowl- environments can easily devolve into looking oped with Unreal Engine 3 (UE3), which edge base that we can tap into any time like Antarctica, so we were careful to accentu- suits Spark well thanks to a long his- a question arises for how to tackle tough ate the alien nature of the landscape to con- tory of working with UE3 technology. problems,” said Sophos. “This has helped stantly remind players E.D.N. III is not Earth.” “The previous two current-gen titles answer many questions that would nor- In addition to a very deep single-player developed here used UE3, so the deci- mally have taken weeks of research, al- experience, aims to deliver a campaign sion to use it for Lost Planet 3 was natu- lowing us to iterate more quickly than if we that’s massive in scope yet fueled by an in- ral,” said Matt Sophos, Lost Planet 3 game had to recreate the process from scratch.” timate story, down-to-earth characters, and director, Spark Unlimited. “It allows us to Spark has added proprietary technol- the small personal touches that drives a leverage our past experience and opti- ogy on top of UE3, including dynamic storm player’s desire to see what happens next, mized workfl ow, thus increasing our ef- states that punctuate the volatile nature of the Spark is pushing the multiplayer experience. fi ciency and quality. UE3’s robust toolset hostile planet of E.D.N. III. The storm states Sophos said the team has chosen to imple- also makes it the best choice for level de- allow for environmental storytelling, as well ment a robust suite of gameplay modes that sign because it enables us to hit the ground as giving the player new visuals that show is separate from the single-player narrative running from day one – laying out game- the damage and effects of extreme weather campaign in order to best serve the needs play spaces and prototyping encounters.” conditions on the planet and its inhabitants. of both experiences. Gamers will be able “The tools are extremely powerful for “Most of our additions on top of UE3 to explore the extreme conditions of Lost artists and designers who are creating con- are gameplay systems to support Lost Planet 3 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in 2013. tent for a game,” said Sophos. “UE3 has a Planet 3, such as a more robust third- Thanks to Spark Unlimited for speaking with freelance reporter fast iteration pipeline and the ease of use person camera system, animation cho- John Gaudiosi for this feature. allows artists and designers to be directors reography, a collision system for larger so they can work on shaping the scene and creatures, a multi-threaded AI formation UPCOMING EPIC ATTENDED EVENTS the experience rather than simply creating system, a quest system, and so on,” he said. D.I.C.E Summit assets that go into a game. Another ma- One of the many things that stands out in Las Vegas, NV jor benefi t to using Unreal is the amount of this new adventure is the cinematic look and February 2013 documentation and training videos made feel of the game. The world of E.D.N. III comes Cloud Gaming Europe available by Epic. This can dramatically cut to life in a new way, thanks to the game’s set- London, UK down our training time for new employees.” ting that takes place early on in the human February 21-22, 2013 Although there are many tools to work habitation of the distant planet. Sophos said Please email [email protected] for appointments with, Spark used Unreal Kismet and Un- the art direction of Lost Planet 3 has drawn

© 2012, Epic Games, Inc. Epic, Epic Games, Unreal, Unreal Developer Network, UDN, Unreal Engine, UE3, Unreal Kismet and Unreal Matinee are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. postmortem departments

26 THE BINDING OF ISAAC 2 GAMEPLAN By Patrick Miller [EDITORIAL] One year ago, SUPER MEAT BOY dev Edmund McMillen rocked the indie- Help Us Help You game world with THE BINDING OF ISAAC, a highly controversial—and at 4 HEADS UP DISPLAY By Lauren Manary [NEWS] times even disturbing—dungeon-crawling roguelike that captivated TECMO SUPER BOWL 2013 and including players with disabilities audiences with its grotesque, evocative imagery and design. In this month’s postmortem, McMillen tells us how THE BINDING OF ISAAC started 34 TOOLBOX By Tobias Heussner [REVIEW] life as a game jam project conceived from a deeply personal place— Articy:Draft Review and how it went from an underdog to an international indie hit. 37 INNER PRODUCT By Niklas Frykholm [PROGRAMMING] By Edmund McMillen 10 Tips for Cleaning Bad Code features 42 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore [ART] 6 POWER 50 Seen Through Goggles People power the game industry. In this year’s installment of the Power 44 DESIGN OF THE TIMES By Soren Johnson [DESIGN] 50, Game Developer and Gamasutra editors team up to acknowledge How to Become a Game Designer the individuals in and around the game industry whose efforts in art, audio, design, business, evangelism, and programming have inspired 47 AURAL FIX By Damian Kastbauer [SOUND] us to step up our collective games. Dynamic Animation Sound Now By Patrick Miller, Christian Nutt, and Thomas Curtis 49 THE BUSINESS By Sana Choudary [BUSINESS] Tell Story, Sell Game 14 SHOOT MANY ROBOTS: ARENA KINGS MIDMORTEM How does a game developer “pivot”? Demiurge Studios’s cofounder 50 INSERT CREDIT By Brandon Sheffi eld [EDITORIAL] takes us through a special “midmortem” that explains how work on Video Games in Retrograde XBLA 2D shooter SHOOT MANY ROBOTS set up the studio to make a free- 52 GDC News By Staff [NEWS] to-play multiplayer spinoff called SHOOT MANY ROBOTS: ARENA KINGS. Find GDC Next, App Developers Conference, and GDC China 2012 talks out what has gone right and wrong (so far) with the process of taking work on one game and turning into a completely new game altogether. 53 GOOD JOB By Alexandra Hall [CAREER] By Albert Reed Q&A with Derek Manning, new studios, and who went where 54 EDUCATED PLAY By Alexandra Hall [EDUCATION] 23 HOW LOUD SHOULD IT BE? OF LIGHT & SHADOW Loudness metering standards can open up new avenues for game 56 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT By M. Wasteland & M. Underland [HUMOR] audio designers to be creative (and effi cient)—but only if they use the The Real Hollywood Mojo right standards. Audio specialist Shaun Farley explains why the game audio community needs to look outside loudness metering standards designed for broadcast media or risk losing their oomph. By Shaun Farley

CONTENTS.1112 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 11

WWW.GDMAG.COM 1 game developer GAME PLAN //// patrickBRANDON miller SHEFFIELD magazine www.gdmag.com

UBM LLC. 303 Second Street, Suite 900, South Tower San Francisco, CA 94107 Help Us Help You t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090 Are you a bad enough dev to help Gam… D…v…lop…r? SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES Hello, world! Starting with this issue, I’ll officially be taking over the Game Plan editorial (and FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND the rest of the magazine) while editor emeritus Brandon Sheffield jumps headfirst into the ADDRESS CHANGES deep end of game development. (You can still find him in the mag in his new column called t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606 Insert Credit, where he’ll continue to opine on all things dev-related.) e: [email protected] www.gdmag.com/contactus GDMag: The Game edition: Thanks! We’re still trying as a full-time magazine freelancer. EDITORIAL » Brandon usually used this to make it better, and we should We rely on a wonderful network Publisher editorial page for hard-hitting have some new announcements of expert developers to help us fill Simon Carless e: [email protected] and insightful opinions and on that front soon.) our pages every month, but once Editor commentary on issues and On the other hand, magazines you’ve written one or two articles Patrick Miller e: [email protected] trends in the game industry— also give us a few major about a game you’ve been working Manager, Production Dan Mallory e: [email protected] which is a tradition I hope to problems that game devs can on for the last two years, we can’t ART DIRECTOR continue—but for this issue I’m sympathize with. First off, we have really ask you to write a third, so Joseph Mitch e: [email protected] going to do something different. discoverability issues within the we have to wait for you to make a COntributing writers I’m going to describe a bit of the magazine—it’s hard to surface new game and write about that. Lauren Manary, Alexandra Hall, Albert Reed, Shaun process of making a magazine each issue’s excellent lineup. As a result, we’re constantly on Farley, Edmund McMillen, Tobias Heussner, Steve Theodore, Soren Johnson, Damian Kastbauer, Sana in game development terms, and Outside of the GDMag loyalists the hunt for more people to tell us N. Choudhury, Brandon Sheffield, Magnus Underland I’m hoping you’ll be able to help who read every issue from cover about the problems they’ve solved ADVISORY BOARD us out with it so that we can help to cover, we know you guys read and the things they’ve built. Mick West Independent you make better games by giving the front page, the back page, and Brad Bulkley Microsoft Clinton Keith Independent you a better magazine. the postmortem, but it gets fuzzy How you can help Brenda Brathwaite Loot Drop At first glance, the process after that. Now, we know that most » It would be pretty cool if we Bijan Forutanpour Sony Online Entertainment of making a magazine doesn’t GDMag readers have to wear a lot had some kind of electronic, Mark DeLoura THQ really look much like the of developer hats—even if you’re Internet-connected paper Carey Chico Globex Studios Mike Acton Insomniac process of making a game—but primarily a coder, you may need replacement that we could use to you’d be surprised how much to know a bit about other dev solve all our platform problems ADVERTISING SALES they can have in common. disciplines too—but it’s hard to (—sent from my iPad). Fact is, vice president, sales Games have artists, producers, surface all that stuff with only a however, we’re still doing a print Aaron Murawski e: [email protected] designers, and testers; we have table of contents and a few small magazine because we love it, t: 415.947.6227 a small staff that covers the cover lines. You can’t really share and from what we can tell, you Media Account Manager Jennifer Sulik e: [email protected] bases (you can see who does articles with your friends online, love it too. So instead of trying t: 415.947.6227 what on the masthead to the either, so we can’t really count on to fix our platform problems global Account Manager, Recruitment right of this column). Games our magazine stuff going viral. with newfangled tech, we really Gina Gross e: [email protected] often have miserable crunch Related to the discoverability just want you to help us make a t: 415.947.6241 times for weeks or months problem is an analytics magazine. We’re not asking for global Account Manager, Education Rafael Vallin e: [email protected] before a major development problem—it’s not easy to tell much; there’s one simple way you t: 415.947.6223 milestone; magazines often what you guys are reading! Print can help. ADVERTISING PRODUCTION have a miserable week every magazines don’t really support Talk to us. You can contact month while we scramble to get JavaScript, so we can’t track the edit staff through our Editorial PRODUCTION MANAGER everything edited, laid out, and page views or social networking Feedback Contact Form on our Pete C. Scibilia e: [email protected] t: 516-562-5134 approved in time for our monthly shares or anything like that. And website (http://gdmag.com/ ship date. We may have more in considering our options for reader contactus), you can “Like” the REPRINTS common than you might think! engagement are rather limited— magazine’s page on Facebook Wright’s media paper doesn’t have any ways to (search for Game Developer Jason Pampell e: [email protected] Magazines as a platform embed apps or plug in with other Magazine), and you can message t: 877-652-5295 » As a publishing platform for APIs—the readership statistics us on Twitter (@GameDevMag). Tell AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Game Developer, magazines are we do get aren’t easily correlated us what you like and what you don’t Audience Development Manager reliable and consistent enough, to what we did in any given issue like. If something doesn’t look right, Nancy Grant e: [email protected] although we miss out on a few of the magazine in the first place. tell us. If you have a question for List rental major features compared to web Finally, we have something of us or one of our authors, ask us. If Peter Candito Specialist Marketing Services and mobile-focused publishing a content pipeline problem—we you are working on something you t: 631-787-3008 x 3020 platforms. With magazines, we have to outsource most of our want your peers to know about, tell e: [email protected] don’t have to worry about maxing content development. After all, us about it. ubm.sms-inc.com out your bandwidth or killing your pretty much everyone who is good Let’s make a better magazine battery life, and we’ve got our enough at making games to merit so we can make better games. production process down pat. (If publishing in Game Developer is, —Patrick Miller you are reading this on our digital well, making games, not working @pattheflip

2 game developer | november 2012 WWW.UBM.COM

heads-up display level playing field Is your game accessible to players with disabilities? Nonprofit organization Ablegamers recently published the most comprehensive text on game development for people with disabilities: “Includification,” a 48-page guide that can assist developers with making their games available to the widest audience possible. Game Developer spoke with Steve Spohn, editor-in-chief of Ablegamers.com, about why game devs should be working to make their games more accessible.

his lead developers and say, “This is important; we should implement what we can from these.” And so we did. Since then, we have had contributions and encouragements from EA, BioWare, Rockstar, PopCap, and a huge welcome from independent studios such as Minicore and Uber Entertainment.

LM: Given that alternative input devices (touchscreens and motion controls, for example) aren’t going away, what can developers do to make games that use such Fruit Ninja (Kinect) controls more accessible? is a game that can SS: Motion-controlled games are be controlled from a not going away, but they’ll always wheelchair. be a niche market up until the point where you are talking holograms Lauren Manary: What kinds of in the “Includification” document. accessibility. He agreed good game and the Holodeck. They are popular accessibility issues do you look Second, as the average age of design is all about keeping your in their own right, but a Wii or for in games? the game enthusiast market options open, and adding features Kinect just doesn’t compare to the Steve Spohn: Take, for example, continues to increase, players people want to see. gaming experience of a console a player with color[-perception] with disabilities will continue to or PC. However, the accessibility deficiency who wants to play be an ever-increasing percentage LM: How have your guidelines of those devices depends on the a new puzzle game. With no of the market. Studies from been received by the game themselves. means of differentiating colors, studios like PopCap have shown development community so far? Fruit Ninja is a game that can he becomes frustrated and an overwhelming part of casual SS: “Includification” was actually be controlled from a wheelchair. returns the game. If the game had gamers consider themselves to launched due to demand from The iPad has hundreds of games included an accessibility option have some sort of disability. developers. We have been for the autistic community. So, not for the colorblind that allowed advocating for more than all motion-control and touchscreen different shapes for the puzzle LM: Do you see “Includification” eight years on the importance games are bad. They’re just pieces, markers on the colors, making waves in the game dev of accessibility, but around inaccessible to a certain segment or some way other than color to world? two years ago, the questions of the disabled gaming community. differentiate puzzle pieces, the SS: Waves? No. Actually, at PAX-E from developers changed player would have been able to 2012, we gave Star Wars: The Old from “Why should we include LM: Are some genres more enjoy his purchase. Republic our game of the year award accessibility?” to “How do we inaccessible than others? for most accessible mainstream include accessibility?” At that SS: Generally speaking, FPS LM: What’s the business case game in 2011. The lead developer on point, we knew we needed to and driving games are the most for making games accessible to the panel accepted the award, but create a document that laid out as inaccessible due to the large people with disabilities? refuted the idea that the game was many problems the disabled game amount of buttons that need to be SS: Two business reasons. First, made with accessibility in mind; community faces as possible, as pressed often and simultaneously, there are over 33 million gamers he said that they simply created a many solutions as possible, and and the twitch reflexes these with disabilities in America alone. game with as many features they the cost-effective/bottom-line genres demand. MMOs and RTSes With these kinds of numbers, thought the audience would want argument for doing so. tend to be the most accessible developers are potentially leaving to see as possible. After the panel Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix was because they’re a little bit slower a large amount of money on the in an off-the-cuff conversation, we the first studio head to inform us of paced, and often include difficulty table by not including some easily spoke about his comments, and I the need of such a document. He modifiers that allow players to go at implemented features we outline told him good game design includes wanted something he could give to their own speed. —Lauren Manary

4 game developer | november 2012 heads-up display move over, madden How a dedicated modding team brought Tecmo Super Bowl into the modern era

Why line up for a midnight Madden release when you can stick to NES classic Tecmo Super Bowl? The intrepid TecmoBowl.org team has been regularly updating Tecmo Super Bowl with new features and updated teams and player rosters since 2007, so we thought we’d ask lead developer Matt Knobbe about the process of (and problems with) modding 8-bit games.

Lauren Manary: Why Tecmo computers and programming. modify the original names and Bowl? I started up a forum about attributes of TSB without having Matt Knobbe: Actually, when modifying the game after finding to manually change pointers people say Tecmo Bowl, they some like-minded people on the or learn hex. This caused the usually mean Tecmo Super Bowl; Internet, and we’ve been doing interest in modding TSB to surge, while Tecmo managed to burn this ever since. and soon people were asking, the name of their company into “Well, what else can we change?” the collective consciousness LM: Was modding Tecmo Super Once you start programmatically of gamers from the ’90s, Bowl different from working with eliminating modifications that they made it really hard to other NES games? are essentially trivial or well distinguish between their various MK: It mostly came down to defined, you free up those who incarnations of the game. Tecmo deadlines. We’re essentially are capable of digging further Bowl was a four-person arcade shooting for a release on a certain into the game. football game, and its success day and with the fluidity of a paved the way for the fairly pro football roster which would LM: Were you concerned about popular NES game Tecmo Bowl rarely be a constraint of any other programming language, then legality issues? featuring licensed NFL players. non-sport NES game. Otherwise, emulating it. Thus while you’re MK: Originally, we were quite Later, toward the end of the the majority of skills that might no longer really constrained by afraid of Nintendo or Tecmo NES era, Tecmo combined all its be leveraged on Tecmo Super the physical limitations of the sending a cease-and-desist letter. programming knowledge from the Bowl apply across the board to memory of the cart, you’re still Over the years, Tecmo sort of two previous games—along with a majority of NES games. Since limited by the original design of let us know it wasn’t an issue, being the first company to secure we’re a sports-centric community, the NES itself. The original TSB and Nintendo stopped caring the NFL team and NFLPA rights— we have hacks based on RBI was 384KB, and many of the about games for the original NES to create the masterpiece known Baseball, Baseball Stars, and the early advanced hacks out there system. I suppose that the NFL as Tecmo Super Bowl. catalog of games Tecmo put out were the exact same size. Over could decide to send out a C&D, I first started playingT ecmo like Tecmo NBA. the years, as we’ve increased but I doubt it’s worth their time. Super Bowl with my college in knowledge and added the Now I’m not completely terrified roommate, and it soon progressed LM: How’d you keep the file size occasional superstar hacker to to be candid about the issue—it into a floorwide thing. Throughout down? our team, we’ve been able to would seem that being essentially the years, Tecmo Super Bowl MK: When we’re modding Tecmo remap certain areas of the game nonprofit and perhaps a bit off- has been a social exercise of Super Bowl, we’re essentially with some versions topping out the-radar is a pretty good way to sorts, and eventually grew into a talking about deconstructing at a whopping 1MB! The 2013 not get sued. hobby, as I’ve always been into NES code written in the 6502 version we released is at 512KB, which includes extra teams and LM: What kind of bugs did you some new menu options. find in the original release? MK: Over the years, we found LM: How’d you build your team? that certain attributes weren’t MK: Sometimes you get lucky actually implemented by and find someone who excels at Tecmo—maybe they ran out of low-level hacking and modern time, or forgot about them. The programming languages, but player attributes for passing usually it’s about connecting accuracy on offense and the people who do one with the quickness on defense were people who do the other. One of remapped as the values for the first programs ever written other functions in the game. for this was by the guys at Probably the biggest bug in the emuware.com—they essentially game we found was when Player started the Tecmo modification 2’s attributes were displayed Tecmo Super Bowl. movement. They originally made incorrectly when conditions it possible for nearly anyone to change. —Lauren Manary

www.gdmag.com 5 { HERE’S TO THE PEOPLE THAT POWER OUR INDUSTRY }

BY PATRICK MILLER, CHRISTIAN NUTT, AND THOMAS CURTIS

Making games may be largely a team effort these days, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge the individuals who make outstanding contributions to the industry as well. That’s why Game Developer and Gamasutra are proud to bring you another yearly installment of our Power 50: a list of 50 individuals (give or take) in the game industry who have stood out for doing work in the last year that is new, different, or better in the categories of Art, Audio, Business, Design, Evangelism, and Programming. Here’s to the people that inspire us to do better. Here’s to the Power 50. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

6 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 { Here’s to the people that power our industry }

www.gdmag.com 7 { ART } of focus, key lines of dialogue linger Provinciano knows this. It takes 2012 awards) with its cartoony, onscreen to emphasize Max’s guilt, more than a crash course in pixel syncopated charm. The credit for and clever split-screen action scenes art to make a proper retro game; said charm belongs to Simogo make poignant moments seem Provinciano’s deep understanding cofounder Simon Flesser, who was VINCENT more frantic and distressed. These of the NES hardware’s capabilities the art-and-sound whiz behind Perea visual techniques are subtle on their and limitations were instrumental BSB’S whimsy. In an interview with Disney Mobile own, but when combined they really in making RETRO CITY RAMPAGE ring Gamasutra, Flesser described BSB elevate the game’s depressing and true to the old-school. as “Cool, but in a silly cartoon show ✜ Design aside, the Disney- action-fueled narrative. kind of way.” We want more of that. published WHERE’S MY WATER? really stands out because of its visual style. DAN Illustrator/designer Vincent Perea MARIEL Miller RANDY uses a simple, personality-packed Cartwright The Blast Furnace Smith cartoon aesthetic with a fairly Reverge Labs Tiger Style Games minimalist approach. Perea’s fl uid ✜ Now that we’re done ranting animations and adorable character ✜ The fi ghting game genre may about the overuse (and abuse) ✜ With WAKING MARS, Tiger Style designs manage to inject the be alive and well these days, but of “retro” aesthetics, we thought Games founder Randy Smith led experience with a ton of charm— the impeccably fl uid, detailed 2D we’d call out a rather exceptional his dev team to make something which is particularly impressive animation we loved about the genre case. New Activision mobile dev atmospheric, curious, and considering the screen is fi lled with in the 1990s is practically nowhere studio The Blast Furnace made an gorgeous—and as we’re looking little more than dirt and concrete to be seen—except in Reverge Labs’s intriguing PITFALL! iOS game that at all the different ways mobile most of the time. SKULLGIRLS, anyway. Thanks to lead we would describe as “new retro,” game devs try to make their work animator Mariel Cartwright, SKULLGIRLS if that makes sense. Under Dan visually stand apart from the pack, looks every bit the 2D fi ghter of Miller’s artistic direction, PITFALL! we think that Smith and his team SHELDON our dreams, with hand-drawn for iOS brings us into a world of are on the right track. Carter characters and backgrounds that cartoony-looking untextured In an interview with Gamasutra, Digital Extremes ooze personality and craftsmanship polygons that look kind of like the Smith described WAKING MARS’S out of every frame. Step aside, STREET original PITFALL! and SUPER MARIO 64 aesthetic as “a combination of fi ne Hand-painted, cel-shaded visuals— FIGHTER III: THIRD STRIKE; SKULLGIRLS had a video game baby. It’s kind of details and abstract implication...not check. Ruthless heavy-metal has set a new standard. how we imagine the original PITFALL! realistic, exactly, but believable.” We soundtrack—check. Sheldon Carter’s would look if we were trapped weren’t sure what to expect when creative direction in THE DARKNESS inside of it. you described your game as “action II is, well, dark, and that’s exactly DANIEL gardening,” Smith, but you and your what a game about mob bosses Dociu team ended up nailing it. THOMAS with supernatural powers should ArenaNet be. Kudos to Carter and his team for Shahan { AUDIO } building THE DARKNESS II’S unifi ed and GUILD WARS 2 looks like art director Northway Games seamless aesthetic vision. Daniel Dociu took a bunch of beautifully detailed concept art Next time you have a hard time and somehow plugged it directly fi nding an artist for your game, try ROB into a game. That Dociu could looking around on Wikipedia. That’s SHAW-HAN n/a Nelson lead ArenaNet’s art team to do how INCREDIPEDE dev Colin Northway Liem Rockstar Games that much is impressive; that he found photographer/woodblock-print managed to do that in an MMO, artist Thomas Shahan, anyway; ✜ If you look at any recent where visuals must often be Northway was reading the entry JONATHAN Rockstar title, it’s clear the studio sacrifi ced for performance’s sake, for “jumping spiders,” saw one of Mak has a real affi nity for fi lm. Its game is nothing short of spectacular. Shahan’s illustrations, and tracked Queasy Games cinematics often borrow editing him down from there. While we may and compositional techniques from not be tremendous fans of spiders ✜ PlayStation 3 indie hit SOUND movies and other visual media, BRIAN (jumping or otherwise), we have to SHAPES marries music and platform- and under creative director Robert Provinciano admit that we can’t think of a better hopping together in a manner so Nelson’s direction in MAX PAYNE 3, VBlank Entertainment match than insect-specialist Shahan elegant and intuitive you might not the studio experimented with some for a game that is “about life and feet.” at fi rst realize how many iterations new visual techniques from outside ✜ “Retro” is probably the most- it took to get right. Jonathan Mak the traditional GTA wheelhouse. overused term in video games SIMON and Shaw-Han Liem (also known MAX PAYNE 3 tells the story of these days. Everything with visible Flesser as I Am Robot And Proud), from a haggard ex-cop with a crippling pixels, TEMPEST-style vectors, or low- Simogo Toronto-based Queasy Games, are addiction to both booze and resolution textures can be called the two responsible for making painkillers, and Rockstar’s cinematics “retro,” and we’re kind of tired of ✜ In early 2012, Simogo’s BEAT SOUND SHAPES work. go a long way toward reinforcing it. However, there is something to SNEAK BANDIT rocked our worlds Games built around music the character’s tormented mental be said for getting retro right, and (and snagged Best Mobile Game largely live or die by how well their state. The camera often fl ickers out RETRO CITY RAMPAGE creator Brian in the Independent Games Festival designers can integrate music into

8 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 the core design. In Sound Shapes, Turns out that person is film The Pinball Arcade, a cross-platform for $380 million, while OnLive laid songs are the levels, and with the studio Lionsgate’s VP of digital pinball game that featured licensed off its entire staff and got bought level editor, we too can make and marketing, David Hayes. In the digital remakes of real-world classic and restructured by a venture play our music. With Sound Shapes, world of film marketing, Hayes has pinball tables. FarSight Studios’s VP capital group. Perry’s work speaks Mak and Liem remind us that music made a name for himself by building of development Bobby King, along for itself; it takes more than good games can be more than a series innovative marketing campaigns; by with President Jay Obernolte, were tech to make it in this business. of notes that we plug into a bulky, getting an indie dream team to make the ones responsible for getting plastic, guitar-shaped controller. The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire, by the licenses to more than 20 tables getting that indie dream team to from manufacturers Bally, Williams, Ibai make more than just a Canabalt Stern, and Gottlieb—which included Ameztoy David reskin, Hayes has left his mark on running successful Kickstarter Active Gaming Media Kanaga the game industry as well. campaigns to get the necessary N/A funding for licensing fees and Active Gaming Media has its production for the Star Trek: The Next fingers in a lot of pies; CEO Ibai ✜ If Sound Shapes gently Greg Generation and Twilight Zone tables. Ameztoy founded the company as massaged our brains into a state Rice We wouldn’t wish that kind of red- a Japan-based game localization of musical play, composer David Double Fine Productions tape wrangling on our worst enemy. agency, but since then AGM has Kanaga’s work on Dyad simply done work in public relations, QA, melted said brains outright. Thanks ✜ By now, everyone knows the and other aspects of the industry. to Dyad, we can check “David story of the $3.3 million Double Aram This year, Ameztoy and AGM get Kanaga and (Dyad creator) Shawn Fine Adventure Kickstarter, so we’ll Jabbari the Power 50 nod for Playism, a McGrath” off our list of fantasy indie keep this one short. These days, Manager, PR/Sales, Atlus digital distribution platform that game dream collaborations. game-related Kickstarter campaigns they’re using to bring Japanese are flooding our in-boxes and news ✜ Sure, PR and marketing are indies to overseas markets (the feeds, and we blame all of that on hard at any publisher. But when English-language Playism portal Rich Double Fine Adventure (tentative you’re a niche company like Atlus, launched with a localized version Vreeland title) producer Greg Rice, who was which focuses almost exclusively of indie Japanese hit La Mulana) Polytron Corp. that Kickstarter’s mastermind. Next on the decidedly untrendy genre of and vice versa (localizing and time you disrupt the traditional Japanese RPGs, you live or die by publishing Dear Esther and ✜ After years of anticipation, developer-publisher business model, the thinnest margins. That’s what SpaceChem in Japan). Way to Fez finally wowed indie game give us a minute or two to prepare makes Aram Jabbari’s job so hard. spread the indie love (and make a scenesters with its throwback look our spam filters first, okay? Jabbari interfaces with the company’s buck doing it), Ameztoy. and feel. We would be remiss if we finicky community on games like the didn’t include Rich “disasterpeace” Persona series, making sure their La Mulana. Vreeland’s Fez soundtrack work Marcin voices are heard, and along with vice in this year’s Power 50 audio Szymanski president Tim Pivnicy, makes sure nominations. Thanks to Vreeland, Robot Entertainment the games are presented to their Fez feels atmospheric, pensive, exacting standards. maybe even a little bit melancholy. From the outside, designing Though the trend for Japanese free-to-play games looks kind of niche games is ‘supposedly like juggling flaming swords. Your downward’ Atlus’s most successful { Business } game needs to be profitable, but years have been its most recent— not exploitative; engaging, but and its “Atlus Faithful” fans, carefully not demanding. We don’t know if cultivated by Jabbari’s always-on- Torsten Hero Academy lead designer Marcin message but sincere marketing Reil David Szymanski can actually juggle efforts, are driving that success. NaturalMotion Games Hayes flaming swords, but considering Lionsgate how well Hero Academy attracted ✜ If you first heard of NaturalMotion casual and core audiences and David Games during Apple’s iPhone ✜ Both the Gamasutra and Game got them to open up their wallets Perry 5 event, when CEO Torsten Reil Developer staff were in complete without sending off pay-to-win Gaikai/Sony demoed Clumsy Ninja, then you agreement about one of this vibes, we think he could probably haven’t been paying attention. year’s Power 50 candidates for do it if he really, really wanted to. ✜ Two cloud-based streaming NaturalMotion Games seems to get the business category, but we game companies entered 2012 with exactly how to build a free-to-play didn’t know his name. We all just vastly different business plans; mobile game that looks good, plays wanted to make sure we recognized Bobby OnLive aimed its cloud game service well in short bursts, and—if CSR “Whomever it was that got Adam n/a King directly at consumers, while Gaikai Racing’s $12 million take during its Saltsman (Canabalt), Paul Veer FarSight Studios developed its tech and courted first month on the iOS App Store is (Super Crate Box), and Danny bigger hardware companies like any indication—get players to pay Baranowsky (Super Meat Boy, While game-related Kickstarters Samsung and Sony. Gaikai, led with well-designed monetization Canabalt) to make a licensed game were a dime a dozen in 2012, by cofounder and veteran game strategies. Watch out, world: Reil is for iOS based on The Hunger Games.” FarSight Studios caught our eye with developer David Perry, sold to Sony one to watch for 2013.

www.gdmag.com 9 for the stealth game genre. Lead have guided THE WALKING DEAD words, XENOBLADE celebrates (and RICCARDO designer Nels Anderson opted to emphasize smart writing over updates) the best of the JRPG genre. Zacconi not to follow in the footsteps of complex mechanics, and in doing King.com METAL GEAR or SPLINTER CELL and so, they’ve created one of the most instead bring stealth to a 2D game affecting interactive stories we’ve SAMI ✜ It wasn’t that long ago that by introducing a number of clever seen in quite some time. Saarinen conventional wisdom dictated systems that eliminate the genre’s Like the comic book it’s based RedLynx breaking into the top fi ve Facebook rough edges. on, THE WALKING DEAD series doesn’t developers was impossible, thanks In many stealth games, for spend all its time focusing on the ✜ Why build a game when you to the unassailable value of cross- instance, it can be hard to tell when horrors of the zombie apocalypse, can get your players to do it for marketing to an existing audience. enemies can detect you, but in MARK and instead takes plenty of time to you? RedLynx lead technical artist Tell that to King.com CEO Riccardo OF THE NINJA, all of these systems develop its characters and create Sami Saarinen is responsible for Zacconi, who, on the back of the are clearly telegraphed via a number a world that players can invest building the TRIALS series’ original success of BUBBLE WITCH SAGA—a of visual cues. Enemy sight lines themselves in. While there’s plenty 3D editor in 2008, advocating for its title with 3.7 million daily active are represented as beams of light, of zombie fi ghting to go around, inclusion in TRIALS HD in 2009, and users in October 2012—now runs loud noises project shockwaves into it’s the game’s quieter, more guiding it into its TRIALS EVOLUTION the number-two game developer on the environment, and characters thoughtful moments that make incarnation. But this isn’t just a the social networking site. lose saturation as they step into the its more horrifying scenes all the level editor, mind you; Saarinen’s Yes, King.com’s premier game is, shadows, so players know when more poignant. TRIALS EVOLUTION editor actually at its core, a rehash of Taito’s 1990s they’re at risk and how their actions Perhaps most interestingly, gives players access to the game’s arcade hit BUST-A-MOVE, but according will affect their enemies. the game forces players to make visual programming language, so to Playdom’s Steve Meretzky, it’s By making all of the mechanics some extremely tough decisions they can make and share fi endishly the expert application of social so easy to read, the game becomes that’ll affect the characters they’ve diffi cult tracks—or even entirely mechanics that made it a success, less about trial and error and more grown to care about. Every decision new games altogether. and that’s King.com’s secret (and about using your wits to work comes with major consequences, explains why Taito didn’t get there make the most of the tools at your and the game doesn’t hesitate fi rst). The company releases over disposal. It makes the stealth genre to twist the knife when things HARVEY a dozen games a year to its casual far more enjoyable, and other games seem to be at their worst. Very Smith portal, and only the top performers should make sure to take note. few games manage to present are selected for Facebook. A carefully choices that have an emotional designed “social envelope,” in King. impact on the player, and the fact RAF com parlance, is wrapped around a JENOVA that THE WALKING DEAD manages Colantonio game, and then it’s ready for social Chen to do so over and over again is a Arkane Studios network deployment. thatgamecompany tremendous accomplishment. The company has also moved ✜ DISHONORED wowed the industry into mobile versions of its titles, with ✜ Thatgamecompany is well at E3 and Gamescom this year with clever integration between Facebook known for designing games to evoke TETSUYA its compelling steampunk setting and iOS—meaning that players’ specifi c emotions. With JOURNEY, n/a Takahashi and remarkable focus on player progress carries over between thatgamecompany cofounder agency. In an industry with lots of versions. This led to a very successful and creative director Jenova Chen games focused on violence and launch of BUBBLE WITCH SAGA on managed to avoid the frustration, KOH killing, co-lead designers Harvey that platform without a meaningful disappointment, and general n/a Kojima Smith and Raf Colantonio’s direction marketing effort. This is leading, in misanthropy we normally feel while Monolith Soft in DISHONORED’S design adds some turn, to an expansion of King.com as playing games online with strangers, genuine emotional weight behind a company—a big business win for and replace them with camaraderie, ✜ While FINAL FANTASY and other the decision to kill, which is an organization that saw an opening joy, and gratitude. Props. classic JRPG franchises have something we’d like to see more of. for traditional casual games on struggled to fi nd their voice during Facebook, realized it could provide this console generation, Monolith them, carefully executed its plan, and SEAN Soft lead designers Tetsuya CORY took the platform by storm. Vanaman Takahashi and Koh Kojima’s work Davis on XENOBLADE proves the genre has Yager Development plenty of life left—not by revisiting (former) { DESIGN } JAKE the genre’s glory days, but by Spark Unlimited (present) Rodkin making a number of important Telltale Games changes that help bring the genre ✜ Yager Development/2K Games’s into the modern era. XENOBLADE SPEC OPS: THE LINE made waves NELS Many games try—and fail—to gives players a sandbox-style world this year for adding a liberal dose Anderson elicit an emotional response from to explore at their leisure, and even of Apocalypse Now-inspired Klei Entertainment their players, but THE WALKING DEAD uses a number of classic MMO narrative twist to an otherwise is one of the few series that gets systems to help expedite combat, fairly standard cover-based shooter. ✜ Klei’s MARK OF THE NINJA feels things right. Co-lead designers streamline quest systems, and offer Creative director Cory Davis’s like a distinct breath of fresh air Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin more freedom to the player. In other initial vision documents from 2008

10 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 describe Spec Ops: The Line as strength, and even finished the an “intense third-person military game ahead of schedule to meet shooter with a dark and mature that deadline. narrative...[that] confronts you Aside from voice acting, music, with the horrors of war, as you face and a little bit of writing, almost choices between bad and worse in all of Dust: An Elysian Tail came challenging moral dilemmas.” from Dodrill and Dodrill alone, and Well, with Spec Ops: The Line, we can’t help but recognize the Davis did just that. We were developers who devote themselves impressed by Davis’s creative vision to such projects of passion. in 2008, and we’re impressed by how faithful the end product was to that vision four years later. Love it or hate Benjamin Team Fortress 2. it, you can’t deny that Spec Ops: The Rivers Line’s union of narrative and game N/A design—and Davis’s willingness to Valve Software use said design to mess with players’ ✜ If we had a category for Neat ✜ This year, we’re including a special Power 50 candidate: Valve expectations—was a bold statement Stuff, we’d probably put Benjamin Software. We could have easily padded out this list with Valve nominees in a genre that needed one. Rivers on top of the list for Home, a across the categories, but we didn’t think that would be fair (and due critically acclaimed PC adventure to Valve’s notoriously decentralized internal organization, we weren’t game that plays something like a sure we’d be able to find individual devs willing to take credit for specific Ian choose-your-own-adventure horror achievements!). Instead, we decided to give Valve Software itself a nod Marsh short story. Home is unapologetic for evangelism. Every industry needs to have a company that reminds us about how it wants to be played; we can (and should) do better; we can treat our customers better, we can turn the lights off, put your treat our employees and colleagues better, we can make better products, David headphones on, and set aside an and we can even make a bit of money doing all of those. Marsh hour or two, because you can’t save For us, that company is Valve. To consumers, Valve is nothing NimbleBit your game. We like that. but player-friendly, known for excellent support—and seasonal Steam sales that somehow make us excited to empty our wallets. ✜ “Casual airline sim” doesn’t To developers, Valve seems like the place to go if you want to focus exactly sound like the most { Evangelism } on building cool things with talented people. And to everyone else in enthralling premise for a mobile the industry, Valve is taking measured steps to push the envelope, game—until you hear it’s from whether it’s by turning a five-year-old core title T( eam Fortress 2) Tiny Tower dev NimbleBit, anyway. into a runaway free-to-play success, starting an internal hardware Kudos to NimbleBit cofounders Ian Dr. Elizabeth development lab to prototype some virtual-reality goggles, or hiring and David Marsh, whose design Broun an economist just because it sounded kind of useful to have one work on iOS free-to-play hit Pocket Smithsonian American on staff. In an industry that seems more mercenary now than ever Planes had us constantly picking up Art Museum before, it’s nice to know Valve is still there doing the Valve thing. our phones for a quick hit of airline tycoondom. Making a profitable free- ✜ This year, the Smithsonian to-play game that doesn’t feel like a American Art Museum featured us no small amount of good to see Mechner and his crack team of naked cash grab is rare enough; that an exhibition called The Art of that fact recognized by a major digital preservationists managed Pocket Planes is genuinely a blast is Video Games from March 16 to American art institution. to find a box with floppy disks noteworthy indeed. September 30, with still images containing the original 1988 Apple and video footage from 80 games II source code for Prince of Persia, across 20 systems, developer Jordan salvage it, and post it on Github for Dean interviews, historic consoles, and Mechner everyone to see. n/a Dodrill five playable games to represent N/A Humble Hearts their respective artistic eras: Pac- Man, Super Mario Brothers, The ✜ Prince of Persia creator Jordan ✜ Everything animator Dean Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, Mechner has made industry news Dodrill knows about programming, and Flower. headlines a few times in 2012 he learned while working on While the exhibit was curated (he’s got a Karateka remake in Dust: An Elysian Tale for three by Chris Melissinos (with input the works, and the iOS remake for and a half years—which was from an advisory board and public The Last Express just came out) Prince of Persia. about 39 months longer than he polls), we wanted to acknowledge but we wanted to acknowledge had anticipated it would take to the Smithsonian American Art him for something a bit more The medium of video games is still finish the game more or less by Museum’s director, Dr. Elizabeth mundane—going through his young, and the tech-obsessed himself. Along the way, he won the Broun, for giving the exhibit the old stuff in his attic and posting part of our industry makes it easy Dream, Build, Play competition, go-ahead. We know video games the contents on his blog. Before to forget the old in our ceaseless made it into the Summer of Arcade are an artistic medium, and we you rush off for some premature pursuit of the new. But take a promotion based on his title’s know you know this too, but it does spring cleaning, let us explain: second to imagine how many of

www.gdmag.com 11 you reading this article have fond working with others. We think that memories of PRINCE OF PERSIA, and Pitchford’s experience, combined with you’ll understand why we wanted his willingness to speak frankly about to give Mechner a Power 50 spot for our industry, is an invaluable asset evangelism. Developers: We want for the industry as a whole. Randy, you to preserve your stuff, no matter thanks for talking all the time. how old and busted you think it is, because we don’t want anyone to forget about your hard work. ANNA Anthropy N/A SHAY Pierce ✜ What makes Anna Anthropy Deep Plaid Games special is that not just that she’s living a brave creative life by ✜ When Zynga bought DRAW sharing her unique perspective with SOMETHING developer OMGPOP the world through games; she’s and offered all of its employees encouraging everyone else to take DIAMANTE VINCENT PHOTO: jobs, designer/programmer Shay the necessary steps to do it, too. Brandon Sheffield Pierce made news headlines Recognizing the homogeneity Game Developer / Necrosoft Games simply for saying, “No, thank you.” of the game development Pierce’s reason was simple: He scene, Anthropy champions the ✜ It might seem a little self-serving to include our own editor-in-chief had developed his own game in emergence of new perspectives. in our yearly Power 50—but since Brandon Sheffi eld has left GDMag to his spare time called CONNECTRODE, It’s her talks on inclusiveness, focus on starting up his own game development studio (except for the and he couldn’t get Zynga’s legal her own games—such as DYS4IA, occasional column and Gamasutra editorial, anyway), we fi gured he counsel to agree to an addendum which quickly and cleverly takes deserved an evangelism nod as well. in their employment contract the player on a journey through Over the last eight years (100 issues, actually!), Sheffi eld has that would ensure CONNECTRODE the diffi culties Anthropy has worked hard to make sure Game Developer could offer devs a way remained Pierce’s property. Given encountered obtaining gender to share their successes and failures with their colleagues so that the choice between potentially transition treatment and being others can learn. Internally, he has served as a sort of underdog’s giving up his baby or giving up recognized as a woman—or her advocate for both the GD Mag and Gamasutra staff. When all our a job, he chose to quietly walk 2012 book, Rise of the Videogame attention was on the U.S. and Japanese game industries, Sheffi eld away from the deal and instead Zinesters, which encourages both was paying attention to the nascent Korean game industry; when revive Deep Plaid Games, his own “freaks” and “normals” to make we’re following triple-A, Sheffi eld was following the indies; when one-man development studio. the games that the mainstream we’re following the major indies, Sheffi eld was spending his evenings CONNECTRODE may not be a big seller, isn’t making, that make her an sorting through obscure Xbox Live Indie Games. Pierce, but darn it, we’re glad you invaluable voice in the expanding Sheffi eld’s advocacy extends to the people in the industry as well; he fought to keep it. community of game developers. is unafraid to use the editorial pages on GDMag and Gamasutra to point out the industry’s defi ciencies, blind spots, and controversial issues when he feels that something needs to be done. Thanks, Brandon—let us RANDY EPONA know when your games come out! Pitchford Schweer Gearbox Software Indie Bits requires work and ingenuity, but ideas for games in under 140 ✜ While the Game Developer and ✜ In 2009, burnt out on crunch, people fundamentally want to characters. Examples range from Gamasutra staff were hashing out Epona Schweer turned down connect—if you can enable them. “If I made a zombie game it would the Power 50, one of us scribbled a producer’s job at L.A. NOIRE feature just one dangerous zombie, the following note next to Gearbox developer Team Bondi to teach your child. You must sneak out Software cofounder and CEO Randy aspiring game developers in “PETER avoiding society, trying to fi nd Pitchford’s name: “Evangelism— Sydney. By the time the course Molydeux” help,” to “Platformer where if you talking all the time.” Really, that ended in 2010, she realized there @PeterMolydeux fall in a pit you’re trapped forever kind of sums it up. was nowhere for her charges unless you can emotionally Pitchford and Gearbox are to work, thanks to the near- ✜ Yes, you read that right: manipulate nearby enemies positioned at the center of the total collapse of the Australian “Peter Molydeux,” the novelty to pull you back up.” Of course, American game industry; they’ve development scene. Her solution? Twitter account that describes these tweets are inspired by the worked across over a dozen Beef up the local indie game itself as “just a twisted parody real Peter Molyneux’s bombastic platforms, with several publishers, on scene by throwing meet-ups and based on the legendary British descriptions of the work he does everything from HALF-LIFE and HALO holding talks, collecting the power Game Designer,” is one of Game (or wants to do). to TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER and SAMBA of individuals who had worked in Developer’s Power 50. At fi rst, we simply laughed at DE AMIGO. They’ve even shown that isolation, and helping to form a @PeterMolydeux has been our industry in-joke. But then a they can grow and nurture their own thriving local scene. The lesson around for a while now, tweeting strange, wonderful thing happened: IPs (see BORDERLANDS) in addition to here is that building community whimsical, emotionally evocative People across the world, devs

12 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 and players alike, realized that, functions he described to Game well, some of these ideas sound { Programming } Jarod Developer as “all the other unsexy pretty good, and we’d rather spend n/a Pranno parts of games” has shored up a weekend trying to make and Phosphor Games many player-experience design play those games instead of the flaws others simply consider a ones we spent Monday through Boyd ✜ Unreal Engine is a great piece fact of MMO life—such as beefing Friday making and playing. Multerer of tech, but we can’t forget to show up account security, filtering Yes, the parody Twitter account Microsoft some love to the devs out there who spam from chat, building in accidentally inspired a worldwide make it sing—and Jarod Pranno, better analytics to improve player grassroots game jam called “What ✜ Microsoft’s XNA framework (and studio art director on Phosphor retention rate, and so on. More would Molydeux?”—and Molyneux associated dev tool XNA Game Games’s Horn (iOS) did just that. recently, Wyatt has been making himself even showed up to the Studio) has been something of an With Horn, Pranno demonstrated efforts to share his knowledge London chapter! unsung hero for indie devs over that Epic Games/Infinity Blade dev on game server code by writing Wherever you are, @ the last console generation, and Chair Entertainment aren’t the only articles on his blog at codeofhonor. PeterMolydeux: Thanks for the since its future is in question (XNA ones who can make a great-looking com and giving in-depth talks at the laughs—and the inspiration. applications won’t be included mobile game, and we’re eagerly Game Developers Conference. in Windows 8’s Metro UI or app paying attention to see what Pranno store), we thought it only fair to and Phosphor will be doing next. Yoshinori give XNA—and Xbox director of Simeon Ono development Boyd Multerer— Nasilowski Derek Capcom proper acknowledgement. Two Lives Left XNA has made it easier for Yu ✜ Last year, Street Fighter small-time indies and hobby game Mossmouth ✜ There is something to be said for steward Yoshinori Ono made the devs to make games and put them programmers who work on making Power 50 for his design work on Xbox 360s, Windows phones, ✜ Some games so tightly bind their programming more accessible to bringing the franchise back. This and PCs around the world. We’re programming and design together a wider range of people. Two Lives year, he’s making the list again— fans of tech that democratizes that it’s hard to truly determine Left’s Simeon Nasilowski did just but for evangelism, not design. game development, and XNA who deserves the credit. One such that with Codea, a newbie-friendly was unprecedented in terms of is Mossmouth’s brilliant Spelunky, iPad app that lets you quickly build Street Fighter IV. how available and accessible it which released this year for Xbox game prototypes with Lua (see made the Xbox 360 and Windows Live Arcade. Its randomly generated the June/July 2012 issue of Game Phone 7 platforms. We’re hoping levels are the cornerstone of Developer for the review). With that XNA sticks around in some the game’s addictiveness—and Codea, anyone with an iPad and $10 form—there are a few projects out a marvel of designer Derek Yu’s can start dipping their toes in the there working to adapt XNA to other algorithmic design. They’re always game-dev pool, and we think that’s platforms, which could eventually navigable, always fun, and ever pretty cool. enable XNA devs to build games changing. You’ll never complain that In a remarkably candid interview for Metro, Android, iOS, Mac OS, and they weren’t created—or at least with Eurogamer, Ono explained PlayStation Mobile—but even if the not directly—by human hands. Joachim that he had endured a medical worst happens and XNA falls by the Ante emergency brought on by wayside, we want to salute Multerer Unity Technologies work-induced stress—a medical for his excellent work. Patrick emergency involving an ambulance Wyatt ✜ As we’re wrapping up 2012, and a blood acidity level “on N/A we’ve seen one very clear game- par with someone who had just Niklas dev trend: Everybody loves Unity. finished a marathon.” During Smedberg ✜ Patrick Wyatt is practically Whether you’re an experienced that interview, he called Capcom Epic Games the definition of “industry dev in a major studio tasked with out for overworking himself and veteran”; between his stint at throwing together a quick-and-dirty other employees, scheduling an ✜ By now, it’s no secret that the Blizzard leading the original prototype, a small-time indie studio unreasonably intense promotional Unreal Engine can make mobile Battle.net, cofounding Guild looking for an off-the-shelf 3D tour, and forbidding its employees games look amazing—and some Wars dev ArenaNet, and more engine to build a game for multiple from organizing a union. of that credit goes to Epic Games’s recently working as En Masse platforms, or just a hobbyist dev Game developers know they’re senior engine programmer Niklas Entertainment’s COO (TERA), it’s throwing together a fun project in a tough business, with many Smedberg. Between Smedberg’s hard to find an MMO that doesn’t for a game jam, you’ll probably be grueling schedules and unforgiving under-the-hood look at mobile have his fingerprints on its using Unity. Unity Technologies crunch periods. But while it’s one GPUs at GDC 2012, his work on the network code. CTO, cofounder, core development thing to acknowledge the business post-process graphics effects on the When looking at a new MMO, team lead Joachim Ante has as a whole is tough, it’s another thing Infinity Blade series, and his current it’s easy to overlook the underlying been central to that success; entirely to speak on the record about work on Unreal Engine 4, it’s pretty nuts and bolts that keep customers under Ante’s leadership, Unity how bad your employer is for your clear that if you want your mobile happy. Wyatt’s work on the has blossomed into a tool that is health. Shoutouts to Ono for saying game to look like it came straight platform underlying TERA’s account powerful, polished, and relatively what needed to be said. from a console, he’s the go-to guy. management, billing, and other easy to use.

www.gdmag.com 13 midmortem

By Albert Reed, CEO, Demiurge Studios

We’ve been making games here at Demiurge Studios for 10 years, during which we’ve gotten used to a certain way of making them. We select our production practices, technologies, and even people with the idea that we need to package a perfect product that will ship to customers and never be touched by us again. Despite that background, we decided to take a stab at building a free-to-play game-as-a-service. Normally, Game Developer’s development postmortems are written after a game is finished and on store shelves, but since Arena Kings, like many free-to-play games, is still being built, we felt it’d be fair to call this a “midmortem,” and recap what has gone right (and wrong) with the process so far. Arena Kings is a player-versus-player spinoff of Shoot Many Robots (SMR1), our recently launched XBLA/ PSN/PC run-and-gun. Shortly after SMR1 shipped, we spun up a small team to slap together a prototype of a 2D deathmatch game mode targeted at the $10 downloadable market. The results were very encouraging. People at the office couldn’t put down the controllers, and there was gleeful shouting throughout each playtest. The prototype exhibited a nice mix of competitive skill needed for PvP, and bombastic randomness that is characteristic of the Shoot Many Robots franchise. So, we packaged the demo, built a more comprehensive plan and a PowerPoint deck, and took it to various publishers to try to raise capital to build the game. >>>>>>>

14 game developer | november 2012 www.gdmag.com 15 arenamidmortem kings

what · went · right but here’s what we were able to in the PC version. As we’ll describe in the hands of customers before 1 deduce in the first few days later, our social platform (called we felt it was viable (for example, standing on the after release: “duckduck”) gave us a highly it didn’t yet have the e-commerce shoulders of Shoot valuable connection to our previous solution). We were terrified at the Many Robots Our in-game currency customers and got us on the path thought of putting a game with our We should begin by acknowledging “nuts” generated $0.70 ARPU to building game services. studio and IP brands attached to it that we got a head start thanks (average revenue per user). in the hands of total strangers when to SMR1. Once we turned on 2 we knew it wasn’t yet good enough. friendly fire in SMR1, we were Durables in the form of “Launch” mentality This led us to another mentality pretty far along from a production guns and gear generated Perhaps the most exciting thing shift: “No fear.” (As an aside: We standpoint to creating player- $1.00 ARPU. about developing for the PC rather seriously considered naming all of ______versus-player combat in the Shoot than console was the opportunity our new development practices Many Robots universe. I’d wager to make a game based on what our after mid-1990s T-shirt slogans, but that many established developers With in-app purchases, we were customers were telling us, rather “co-ed naked game development” also have technology and IP from able to effectively lift the retail price than trying to speculate about what appealed to absolutely no one.) a previously shipped game that of SMR1 by 17 percent. We applied features or content they would We launched the game in a could find new life as a digital title. a very light touch to the in-game find appealing. Good developers all tightly closed beta. People played One of the surprising successes purchasing functionality and, strive for quality, but most of us it, complained (a lot), and the of SMR1 was the attach rate of our frankly, grafted it onto the game are left to decide what that means dev team saw that the studio in-game currency and weapon as an experiment pretty close to based on our own subjective views, walls didn’t come crashing down sales. We didn’t have any analytics its ship date. If you ask anyone in previous experience, and the around them. Our transformation other than the leaderboards in that the free-to-play space to evaluate limited user-testing we can do prior was in many ways complete. title, but we put together some the design and functionality for to shipping. We had to change this Liberated of a fear that any game info from snapshots provided by our in-app purchases, they’ll mentality to “We are not the sole that left our office needed to be Ubisoft, our publisher. Because of tell you there’s a lot of room arbiters of quality” instead. Metacritic-ready, we became eager that gap, the data is a little opaque, for improvement. Nonetheless, Developers can debate all to test new ideas and engage our something about our mechanics day about how minimal a viable audience in a conversation about The team. was working great, so we felt product can be, so we cut short that what they valued—what they strongly that we could reproduce question by saying that it’s not up to viewed as “quality.” and build on that success in our us alone to decide. Only by listening To keep our first release’s next title. The final edge we picked to our customers can we confirm scope under control, we applied up from the launch of SMR1 was that our decisions and priorities this litmus test: “Is including this the ability to leverage the social- are the right ones. That realization feature worth delaying our chance networking integration included pushed us to actually put the game to learn from customer feedback?”

16 game developer | november 2012 There were some things we just prototype, folks were able to we released an update to current us the courage to try to do the same couldn’t skip, such as making see our fi rst milestone without players. We eyeballed the amount of with our game. Unit-testing alone a new logo and splash screen. needing a long-term schedule. Out work in a given set of goals and tried wasn’t going to suffi ciently test the Other items, like swapping out of this situation we put in place a to keep it to around a week’s worth software, so we had our QA team the programmer art in our new light task-management scheme of development. That functioned spend a couple of hours with the scoreboard, were skipped in the affectionately referred to as “The reasonably well, but we wanted to be game each day. push to start testing the game. Pile.” For our fi rst few releases, we providing updates to players every On Monday morning, we Without changing the way we picked specifi c scope goals that week—and (unsurprisingly) when branched the build for release. as a studio thought about making were printed out and hung on the we fi xed the scope, the schedule We looked at The Pile and moved games, we wouldn’t have been wall. These either took the form tended to slide around. We felt that everything off to the next release if able to put a solid game in our PC of a user story or a hypothesis providing weekly updates would it wasn’t ship-stopping, or assigned customers’ hands with only four we wanted to test. Anyone could be key for driving our retention it to be taken care of right away at weeks, an Xbox 360 prototype, and throw a task they felt necessary on rates (we’ll get to that later), so we the morning stand-up. Most of the a team of six developers. The Pile and tag it for a particular switched around to saying that we released versions of the game had release. Likewise, anyone could were going to try to release Monday less than one hour of testing on 3 grab a task to do off The Pile. Tasks morning’s build regardless of them with a four-person test team. THE PILE also were given a priority and whether we met our goals. The idea Ten updates in, we’ve never had to Getting the game launched and then everyone was instructed to take of releasing a lightly tested game release an emergency patch. providing regular updates required things off the top of The Pile. We on schedule rather than when it was One might think that this fast that we be more nimble than the held daily stand-ups, which gave done took another “no fear” leap. pace would lead to late nights and milestone-driven wings of our the project lead the ability to catch Shortly before we began work lots of crunch. The opposite proved business. Teams at Demiurge follow folks veering off-course before they on ARENA KINGS, we hired a web to be true—the entirety of ARENA pretty strict Scrum methodology, had sunk more than a day’s worth developer from outside the game KINGS development to date has but we opted to try something of work into something. Everything industry. He brought with him a very been crunch-free. different for ARENA KINGS because we was tracked in Jira, but it could different way of looking at releases wanted to be able to realign near- have easily been cards, sticky than our company did. His work on 4 term objectives more often than notes, or a bug database. We could our social platform was pushed live THIRD-PARTY LIBRARIES every sprint. With a small team, we devote a whole article about the nearly every day after being locally We got huge velocity improvements also felt comfortable giving the team merits and drawbacks of The Pile unit-tested and smoke-tested by QA. from our team by using as much members fl exibility to decide what compared to Scrum, but we’ll save These small-batch releases tended off-the-shelf or pre-existing was most important. that for another time. to not be prone to major failures, and technology as we could. Relative To get to launch, we had our Our fi rst few releases were the few times something broke, we to most indies, our costs are team focused on getting the scope-locked. When the user detected the problem quickly and high, so we tend to select product in the hands of customers. stories were implemented and the pushed up a fi x. Seeing this focus on tools that save us the Because we already had a working hypotheses were ready to be tested, Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR) gave greatest number of man

WWW.GDMAG.COM 17 arenamidmortem kings

hours—and usually, those are the sort of account to associate with back-end and an online service to tool that makes it easy to filter most expensive ones. their save file. They need to be able track what goodies the player has and manipulate data and then Arena Kings is being distributed to retrieve this account if they forget bought. Thanks to the success build charts and graphs. Tableau to our testers via Steam, and we’re their password, and we want to be of Facebook and mobile gaming, solves our data visualization making full use of the Steamworks able to reach out to them directly there are tons (seriously...tons) of problem elegantly, but it took platform for achievements, with information about happenings in providers that will handle one or both some time to learn how it works. leaderboards, friends, and so on. the game. User identification is also of these services. We had two unique We’ve previously used other The engineers like working with critical to making analytics effective. requirements. First, we wanted to analytics packages, and usually the Steam APIs, and Steam’s online Most web-based games need a take advantage of the fact that our they provide both the data-gather services have extraordinary uptime. solution to this exact problem, but initial users would all be Steam- and data-visualization, which can We used their local emulation of these systems tend to rely on private based and offer Steam Wallet as a get frustrating when we can’t get the distribution services to deploy keys being stored server-side to payment option. Second, we had the that package to display the data the builds to QA so that QA had the exact communicate with the authentication issue of being a C++, PC-based game, way we want to see it, or perform a same experience as our customers. and microtransaction systems. so we needed a solution that allowed particular analysis. Being able to smoothly distribute We had the somewhat unusual untrusted clients to run the game By making it easy to answer and update Arena Kings was critical requirement that our game client ran logic, and preferably one that offered random questions (“When are to our success; historically the locally on individual computers. We a C++ library. In the end, we opted to our North American customers process of pushing a build to Steam also felt strongly that we wanted to go with the Player.IO tool suite. The playing?” and “How many games involved a lot of manual effort, but have direct access to our customers team at Player.IO offered absolutely on average are those who joined Valve kindly allowed us to test-drive via email, so using Steam’s systems outstanding customer service, and between Updates 2 and 3 still a new system that allows developers wasn’t going to work. their engineers quickly answered playing?”) without involving an to push live builds themselves. Bizarrely, we couldn’t find a all our questions so our team could engineer to do a database query This update made our MTTR tiny, single off-the-shelf system that focus on making the game. or adding some new specialized and allowed us to exactly time the met our requirements. In the end, instrumentation, we are able to release of updates with our email we updated duckduck, our back-end 5 learn way more about our players’ campaigns. Having the patches social services platform, to have Tableau behavior and optimize engineering delivered automatically, with this functionality. Users can create Since the team needed to test their resources. It’s super-pricey, so for minimal size and in the background, accounts or automatically wire hypotheses, we added analytics now we have it set up on a removes one of the biggest pieces of their accounts to Arena Kings using to the game. Most of the issues shared computer. friction that exists in the game-as- Facebook via duckduck. The same stemmed from figuring out how a-service world on the PC. We highly tool also allowed us to pull in the often users are returning and how what · went · wrong recommend it. Long-term, we want names and profile pictures of our many games they are playing. We 1 to offer the game via other means to players so that we could display were able to use duckduck to gather Retention maximize our cut of our customers’ them to their Facebook friends and do data about each of the matches Early on in Arena Kings’s development expenditure, but to get off the matchmaking via real-life friends. (Yes, being played. cycle, when the user base was just ground Steam was the clear choice. we’re thinking of offering the service What we didn’t have was a way a few hundred people, we needed a One of the odd quirks of as middleware to developers.) to meaningfully break down the way to gather qualitative feedback developing free-to-play games is To make microtransactions huge amount of data. Tableau to about the game. Someone came up that our players need to have some work, you need both a payment the rescue! Tableau is an analytics with the idea of building a Google

Users can create accounts or automatically wire their accounts to Arena Kings using Facebook via duckduck. The same tool also allowed us to pull in the names and profile pictures of our players so that we could display them to their Facebook friends and do matchmaking via real-life friends.

18 game developer | November 2012 Docs-based survey and having that Getting PvP games off the ground Age of users by releases automatically pop up in a browser is challenging because you need User join 0 1 2 3 when players quit. We shoved the a critical mass of players of varied 2 100% 38.9% 16.7% 16.7% ID of players into this spreadsheet skill active at any given moment. automatically, along with a In hindsight, tackling a game with 3 100% 26.7% 12.2% 6.7% timestamp so we could later tie no single-player option as our first 4 100% 18.5% 14.4% 0% feedback into user behavior. In the free-to-play game was a mistake. end, these are the fields that have In the end we overcame our 5 100% 14.4% 0% 0% proven most useful: player-count problems by sending 6 100% 0% 0% 0% out beta keys to all to the duckduck How much fun did you have users from SMR1. Our battle with lag Figure 1: This table shows what percentage of users that started playing during a given this session? (scale of 1-10) is an ongoing technical challenge. patch stuck around Arena Kings for subsequent patches. Most favorite parts Once we had the game live, the team got together and laid goodies to buy and a couple of updates the users stuck around. (Note that Least favorite parts out goals for weekly active users later the numbers moved a bit: in this chart, the 0 percent entries (WAU), percent paying users are there because we don’t yet Bugs—Did you notice any? (PPU), and the average number of PPU: 1.2% have data for the seventh update dollars spent per week by each of ARPPU (per week): $2.12 integrated.) We can also view this Are you excited to play those paying weekly users (we’ll ______same data by week (see Figure 2). again? Why or why not? abbreviate that with ARPPU). We These numbers aren’t great This cohort analysis allows our opted to measure things by week either, but up to this point we had development team to drill down to the Anything else you’d like since that was the cadence of our made very little effort to tune our exact impact of the new features and to tell us? development. Each week we got economy, offer a good variety react accordingly. With this analysis, ______together and asked ourselves how of items for purchase, or reduce we were able to start working to we were tracking relative to our friction. We were confident those address the issue of retention Without any fancy technology, this goals, and pushed to implement changes would improve PPU and around update six. Our approach was simple survey form told us some of features we thought would have ARPPU, but we had significant to implement features that directly our biggest problems over the first positive impact on those numbers. problems maintaining our user base, went to the game’s stickiness few updates: Our first update that included so we turned our attention to WAU. by making progress feel more the ability to buy in-game currency Because we’re in a tightly closed satisfying, adding achievements, and Users not being able to find gave us: beta, our WAU measurements weren’t increasing the amount of content in anyone to play with very meaningful—we could juice our RPG systems. As you can see, PPU: 1.5% those numbers by simply sending those efforts haven’t yielded much Laggy games when they did ARPPU (per week): $1.25 out more beta keys. The meaningful improvement. Our next effort will be find someone to play with (Tableau was critical here—we statistic behind WAU is our retention. to make more fundamental changes needed to filter out all Demiurge To make our retention numbers even to the game. Retention is a great Palpable hatred for all employees!) more useful, we broke our players measure for how sticky your game is, ______things Facebook (which into cohorts by the update in which but we think it’s also a fair measure we required up until very they first played the game. Using for how much people actually enjoy recently—more on this This was pretty bad by industry Tableau, we spit out this table (see playing. We’ve got work to do! later) standards, but given that we were Figure 1) without any new work from ______still “beta” and our players knew we the engineering department. 2 weren’t finished yet, we were pretty Along the vertical axis is the Email services Solving the lack of opponents was pleased that the basics seemed to update during which the player first Email communication proved to a gnarly problem and highlighted a be working. We monkeyed a bit with joined. Along the horizontal axis is be an immensely useful way of previously overlooked project risk: the price and added a bunch more the number of updates for which engaging our existing customers and

Week of first place 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 May 13, 2012 100% 66.7% 33.3% May 20, 2012 100% 28.6% 28.6% 21.4% 7.1 % 7.1 % 7.1 % May 27, 2012 100% 20.8% 12.5% 4.2% 4.2% 4.2% 8.3% 4.2% 8.3% June 3, 2012 100% 12.2% 7.8% 4.4% 1.1% 3.3% 3.3% 1.1% June 10, 2012 100% 12.3% 7.5% 6.8% 6.2% 3.4% 1.4% 3.1% 0.3% June 17, 2012 100% 8% 7% 6% 2.7% 2.9% 1.2% June 24, 2012 100% 9.9% 6.4% 5.5% 2.5% 1.9% 0.5% July 1, 2012 100% 4.7% 2.4% 2.8% 1.7% 0.4% July 8, 2012 100% 7.1 % 3.6% 4% 0.4%

Figure 2: Weekly active user retention rates for Arena Kings. Note that the far right column for each row has incomplete data.

www.gdmag.com 19 arenamidmortem kings

reaching out to new ones. There are Ultimately, we didn’t need to coming from the same IP address. to-peer libraries, we had no means of many options out there for sending worry. We did just about everything We gradually just ignored that issue testing the quality of the connection bulk emails. In our case, we needed we could think of (short of directing since it wasn’t causing any harm. between peers without opening up to bake beta keys into the emails and outreach to mediaoutlets, posting Because Steam doesn’t allow us to a real connection to each potential wanted to be able to easily import to forums of similar games, and track the use of each key, there’s host and then testing the connection our spreadsheet-based contact even using our Facebook/Twitter little way for us to determine what quality. That has the potential to database into the mailer. We ended feeds), and still our PR team was happens to users until they fire up be very slow for users if there are up going with Constant Contact, able to get pretty good coverage by the game for the first time. many servers running and we never based largely on recommendations “announcing” the game long after it managed to get it working reliably. from peers with prior experience. was quite public. 4 In the end, we used some During one of our key updates, we Gathering testers was critical Requiring Facebook of the geographic information were pushing out beta keys to about to our ability to evaluate progress, We received a ton of negative provided by Steam as a very rough 10,000 customers. and holding back on gathering feedback to our Facebook-based proxy for how good the connection Timing was crucial for this period, those testers impeded the game’s account management. Early in between two players was likely to because our goal with this push evolution, but there were some the development, we flipped off be. It didn’t work very well, though. was to get our active user count successes in our user-gather efforts. all posting to activity feeds to test We also tried to work the issue high enough so there was always We wanted an easy way for people whether that was the source of the by providing players with better a game to join. Without warning, to sign up to be in the beta, and ire, but it had little impact on the messaging. We added a little dialog Constant Contact opted to put us on didn’t want to take the time to muck complaints. Our analytics were also explaining to the users during the a probation of sorts whereby they around with our existing websites. showing that users were dropping out search process that we hadn’t been sent emails in small batches to make LaunchRock did exactly what we at the registration step. Uptake on the able to find any high quality games sure that they weren’t getting too needed. A web form to gather emails totally optional registration with SMR1 and offering them the option to many spam reports. They waited until isn’t a complicated feature, but their was quite high—around 30 percent connect to poor-quality games or we hit “send” rather than prompting system took us just a few hours to during the first couple of weeks, so just wait longer for a match. At least us with a warning when we built set up and never went down. We did the backlash was unexpected. We that left players understanding why the list. This probation jeopardized get a lot of bogus emails, but overall think the key difference was that by their experience was sub-par during the effectiveness of our campaign. their tools were great. presenting users with a choice, they the match rather than simply To their credit, they provided We pulled users to the LaunchRock found the idea of Facebook integration thinking the game was broken. outstanding customer service by site by posting to online forums for less intrusive. While we worked on a phone—tutoring us on the ins and similar games and by posting to the Facebook-less registration process, we ! Not doing this outs of email marketing and walking Shoot Many Robots and Demiurge improved our funnel by telling users stuff sooner us through what was going to happen, Studios Facebook/Twitter feeds. what the Facebook application was One of the most exciting developments often at night and over the weekend. Check out Figure 3 to see what our used for and by including a “coming at Demiurge has been our application Despite that, I wouldn’t recommend sign-up graph looks like currently. soon” preview of our account-creation of these lessons to our traditional them as an option going forward. We expected to get the biggest system. We think that this nicely game development business. One spikes in new sign-ups and active explained the purpose of Facebook. of our internal projects is now doing 3 players when we announced a new “weekly releases,” where developers Fearing the premature update. However, the large spike on 5 push a stable, testable build to a “announcement” the left actually correlates to the matchmaking and lag set of dev kits sitting in our lounge. Up until recently, all of our beta sending of the first wave of beta The biggest complaint received Other developers at the studio stop players came to us without any keys. As soon as word spread that from customers on the feedback and play the game and then submit meaningful PR. Because we need we were live, we got a huge influx form centers around lag in the feedback on their experience through concurrent testers to keep the game of new potential players. This trend games. Clearly for a PvP experience, a web-based form. At our weekly alive and because our retention was continued—at the moments we having a fair, responsive staff meeting, we even use a show of low, we called our email database of sent beta keys, we got more beta multiplayer environment is critical hands to see what their WAU numbers potential testers “Rocket Fuel”—a sign-ups. We capitalized on the to our success. Our engine does look like. Those changes have helped precious commodity to be spent word of mouth we were getting by not currently have support for focus the team and significantly only when it would do us good. We beginning to send out four keys to dedicated servers nor did we improved the software’s stability. spent countless hours trying to each player. In addition to further want to incur the complexity and Soon, we’ll expand that system to figure out how to gather beta testers generating buzz for the beta, it overhead of setting up a bank of include one-time on-site testers. for the game without spoiling the helped players find games by those sorts of servers while we It’s also wonderful to get to see big, opportunity to announce the title coordinating with their friends. were still trying to learn about the meaningful changes happening to and get the resulting PR bump. To date, we have about 10,000 game’s design. Instead, we focused our in-development games every sign-ups through LaunchRock. Our on improving the peer-to-peer single week. bounce rate to those emails is usually matchmaking and communication between 1 percent-3 percent, and to the player about what is Albert Reed is the CEO and one of three co- our open rate (measured by people happening during that process. founders of Demiurge Studios. He graduated displaying images in the email) is in We also tried to come up with a from Carnegie Mellon University, where he the range of 30 percent-40 percent. metric for determining connection and fellow founders Chris Linder and Tom As we saw the sign-ups come in, it quality. On our console titles, we had Lin shared a common love for pizza and was clear there was a lot of abuse great luck using simple ping times recreational modding. He can be reached at Figure 3: Sign-up graph for Arena Kings. taking place—many sign-ups were but on the PC and using Steam’s peer- [email protected].

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Headline subhead how loud should it be? by shaun farley loudness metering can open up your game’s sound design... if you can stay away from broadcast standards. For the past two years I’ve observed the game-audio community discussing the idea of standards. In particular, the concept of “loudness metering” seems to have gained a lot of traction, and is just starting to gain momentum. I was approached to write this article for Game Developer because I work outside the game industry, and I believe many of you are thinking about this issue the wrong way. >>>>>>>>>>>>>

www.gdmag.com 23 Understanding good measure). These broadcast might end up with a game where new sounds for implementation into broadcast specifications are implementations explosions from an action sequence the existing mix engine. metering specs of ITU-R BS.1770. They do not specify are the same perceived volume as You could conceivably create Let me qualify this before you metering criteria, other than the footsteps during a stealth section of a fairly detailed rough mix using stop reading: I don’t think loudness fact that BS.1770 is required. They gameplay. Unless there’s a specific only a limited set of assets in each metering is inappropriate for games. specify measurement criteria. What reason to do that in terms of narrative category, because your in-house What I think is inappropriate is the they state is that a specific loudness or game experience, you’re losing loudness standards established for specification most people keep measurement, over “infinite” opportunities to create impact. each category of sound asset make talking about: EBU-R128. I’ll come duration, must be met by broadcast People have recognized this, it easier to work in new sound assets back to why I think this is wrong for materials. (“Infinite” simply means and I think that’s why there’s later without worrying about your games, though, because I want to that the measurement must be been a lot of head scratching over levels. This would leave more time for talk first about the specification you averaged over the length of the the implementation of loudness you to focus on engine optimization, should be focusing on instead. program or advertisement.) metering. While it’s possible using system resources, or polishing ITU-R BS.1770 is a metering These broadcast specs also something modeled after the your game’s final mix. specification embedded with three dictate that the measurements broadcast specifications may If it’s so critical to create important qualities. First, it employs also need to remain relatively work—and could even be ideal—for predictable behaviors in the sound a scale that emulates human static throughout the show; your browser-based social games or engine for that real-time mix, why perception of the frequency spectrum measurement at the end needs to mobile phone platforms, no one has not give that engine predictable (thanks to the K equalization match measurements earlier in the figured out how to effectively apply material? NuGen Audio even has curve). Second, that measurement program. To achieve this immovable it to console and PC games. a piece of software called the takes place over a period of time, magic number, the dynamic range of Game audio folks: These Loudness Management Batch because the duration of a sonic the program is necessarily limited to broadcast specifications that Processor that will take care of it event affects the way we perceive a narrower state—nowhere near as you’ve been hung up on are the for you, though I haven’t tried it it. Third, it specifies a need for “true narrow as we find in pop music, but problem. EBU-R128 and ATSC-RP myself. Simply drag your files to the peak” metering, a way to calculate not as wide as film either. Because A/85 are useful for games only if In folder, and the software analyzes intersample peaking and to correct the content of the piece is perfectly you’re trying to understand the and processes the sounds to match for failures of Peak Program Meter predictable (remember, we’re logic behind them. You need to your loudness and peak-limiting (PPM)/Quasi-PPM integration time. discussing broadcast right now), first understand why they work in settings. Done. These are the elements that are most it’s possible to work some dynamic the broadcast conditions they’re important to us as listeners. Any range back into the piece. designed for, then go back to the “Short-term” meter that is ITU-R BS.1770-compliant In a game, your measurement is source, ITU-R BS.1770, and develop measurements and will meet these requirements. going to be affected by the duration your own set of rules. I even have a loudness ranges The awesome thing about of gameplay states (travel, dialogue, few suggestions to get you started. Prototype 2 audio director Rob BS.1770 is its emulation of human stealth, battle, and so on). How do Bridgett recently shared some perception. This method comes closer you predict the duration of those Normalizing interesting numbers from his work. to measuring audio in the way we states when they are, in most cases, loudness in your Here are some “long-term” loudness hear than any previous meter does. entirely dependent upon the player? assets measurements from specific states Let’s say you had two sound files If you have too many sustained Remember why BS.1770 is so of the final mixed game: cutscenes that measured -30 LKFS (that’s quiet moments, your measurement awesome? That predictability of -23, stealth and dialogue-heavy “Loudness, K-weighted, relative to will drop, and the opposite is true perceived loudness could be the gameplay -23, action -19, “insane” Full Scale”; for those who are more as well. You could also easily have a goose that lays a golden egg of action -13. These states were mixed familiar with the nomenclature LUFS, section that goes beyond reasonable workflow efficiency. Let’s say that artistically for maximum impact and the two are analogous). One file has no volume limits, but still have a valid your game’s sonic assets fall into experience, which is important for frequency content above 300Hz, and infinite measurement. Working the following categories: ambient the artistic nature of games. Picking the other is broadband and noiselike. under an “infinite” measurement sounds, small weapons, character/ one infinite loudness measurement That equal loudness measurement window in this scenario would likely vehicle movement, music, and user to suit this game would not only be means that when played through our force you to emulate a broadcast interface. Start by defining a target a difficult task, it would lessen the speakers, the noise is perceived as mix and add compression to hit that loudness measurement for assets audio team’s creative contributions. being equal in volume. Those same magical number—or possibly move in each category. If you can predict One solution is to work in smaller two sounds adjusted to the same closer to the kind of compression that all of your ambience assets measurement windows and to meter reading in another scale, dBFS found in pop music. There may be are the same perceived volume, utilize a minimum and maximum or LEQ-A for example, will likely not appropriate cases for this, which I’ll wouldn’t it make it easier to mix and measurement range—a pair of be perceived as the same volume. touch on later, but this shouldn’t be transition from one ambient area to loudness thresholds. This measurement scale provides the ultimate goal. another? What if, months after your When I say smaller subjective predictability, regardless of Personally, I like to play games initial implementation of weapon measurement window, I’m referring spectral content, which is a good thing. that have some dynamic range sounds, you had to create three to somewhere in the neighborhood to them. I don’t need a film mix, new weapons? Or perhaps you’ve of five seconds—maybe as short as Why broadcast but I want to feel that the sonic been working with placeholder two. In this manner, the loudness models aren’t experience is appropriate for the music and have just received the measurement will more accurately good for games situation onscreen. If you’re trying to final versions. If you knew that all reflect the in-game events as they Now let’s talk about EBU-R128 model a broadcast spec—a specific of your existing weapons measured happen. Because I’m arguing for the (and lump in ATSC-RP A/85, for number over infinite duration—you at -27 LKFS, you could easily create use of dynamic range in games, a

24 game developer | November 2012 target range is more appropriate for short-term measurements. Battlefield 2. Establishing this would require the identification of anchor states. When should the game be loudest? When should it approach the bottom volume threshold? If we use Prototype 2 as an example, we’re going to be looking for archetypal moments of “insane” action and stealth, respectively. Start with those two moments and get a good idea of where the audio should sit. Those become the anchor points and inform the rest of your mix. From then on, the goal is to keep the loudness levels between the two thresholds. Mix artistically, and only worry if you exceed or drop below the respective loudness levels. With the exceptions of examples of social and mobile games, I think there is only one appropriate scenario for a specific target Prototype 2. measurement in games. Start with a dynamic mix that provides flexibility, and then take a page from DICE’s playbook for Battlefield 2—more on that in the next section. Player- controlled dynamic settings Battlefield 2 did something interesting with the dynamic range—namely, it put that range in the player’s hands. Not everyone has a home theater system, and there are definitely times when it’s a bad idea to piss off the neighbors with sudden volume swells. We still want people to have a good experience in these situations as well. DICE that range in a predictable manner, appropriately. To my knowledge, works for you. It’s important to created a base mix with a wide at the parent level, becomes a lot DICE is the first developer to remember that metering, even dynamic range, but also allowed easier this way. This is a case where emulate this functionality in the loudness metering, is merely a tool players to choose an audio setting targeting a single infinite loudness game community. If I were to meter for mixing. It provides feedback called “War Tapes.” This setting was a measurement makes sense. “War Tapes” mode with an infinite and helps the sound professional more compressed mix configuration There is also precedent for measurement window, I’d bet predict how a mix will behave on and wound up being very popular this in consumer media devices. that it behaves very similarly to a other systems. It should not dictate with the game’s core players. When multichannel bitstreams are broadcast television mix. your artistic choices, but inform You could do this pretty easily authored, they frequently have a them. The broadcast industry in many games—after all, it should piece of metadata to indicate an Metering is not has found an application of ITU-R be a simple matter of a final layer of appropriate compression scheme: mixing BS.1770 that works for it, and the compression on the master mix bus “Film Standard,” “Film Light,” There is a way to employ game industry can too. within the game engine. Granted, and so on. Most DVD and Blu-ray loudness metering in the game few things are ever that simple, players have a feature built into industry. Hell, there are probably Shaun Farley is a sound editor and re- but it’s not a complicated theory. If them that might be referred to as several. I’ve laid out a few simple recording mixer, and currently holds down you’ve mixed with the minimum/ “Night Mode” or something similar. ideas that I think would benefit the fort at Teleproductions International, maximum threshold measurement When it is activated, the equipment the game-audio community, but working on television and film productions. model in mind, then you already checks that piece of metadata feel free to ignore them. I really He is also a contributing editor on know what the perceived dynamic within the audio bitstream and only want you to take one thing DesigningSound.org. Contact him at range of your game is. Narrowing adjusts its compression settings away from this article: Find what [email protected].

www.gdmag.com 25 26 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 postmortem

BY EDMUND MCMILLEN

On paper, there is simply no reason for a game like THE BINDING OF ISAAC to have become as huge as it has. It makes no sense—and this is coming from the person who believed in it the most. I knew ISAAC was special, but if you asked me to bet on whether ISAAC would sell over one million copies in less than a year, I would have bet against it. You see, THE BINDING OF ISAAC was made to clash against mainstream games—it was designed to be a niche hit at best. I had hoped it would gain some minor cult status in small circles, kind of like a midnight movie from the 1970s. From any mainstream marketing perspective, I designed to fail—and that was my goal from the start. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

WWW.GDMAG.COM 27 When I started working on The The Binding of Isaac started in a ActionScript 2). At this point in the anything, so I was clueless as to Binding of Isaac, I was still haunted weeklong game jam. Tommy Refenes process, I wasn’t thinking about how why sales were continuing to grow. by the end of Super Meat Boy’s (Super Meat Boy co-developer) was we were going to sell this game (or if Then I checked out YouTube, development, and the hoops we taking a vacation, so I decided to do we were going to be able to sell the and I noticed that fans of the game had to jump through to get there the game jam with Florian Himsl, game at all!); it was just a challenge were uploading Let’s Play videos (See Game Developer April 2011). who programmed a few of my we both wanted to finish. constantly—over 100 videos every I wouldn’t say Super Meat Boy was previous Flash games (Triachnid, We finished The Binding of Isaac day, each getting tons of traffic. Isaac “selling out,” but it was the closest Coil, and Cunt). Florian is the kind after about three months of part-time had found its fanbase, and that base I was going to come to it when it of guy who is up for anything; he development. We released it on was growing larger and larger. Not came to playing by the rules to wasn’t worried about his reputation, Steam, and it was selling okay; for bad for a game that was meant to fail! make sure that we could sell the and was basically down with the first few weeks, the game was game that consumed two years of whatever I wanted to do in terms of averaging about 100-200 copies a our lives (and all of our money). content. This was good, because I day, eventually stabilizing at about After SMB, I no longer had those had two clear goals when I started 150 a day after a few months. By what · went · right worries—I could afford to take designing Isaac: I wanted to make this point, the game had already 1 a bigger risk and fail, if I felt like a roguelike game using the Legend exceeded my expectations, but five Roguelike design failing. I wanted to make something of Zelda dungeon structure, and I months after release something very The roguelike formula is an risky and exciting now that the wanted to make a game about my odd happened. Our daily average amazing design plan that isn’t financial aspects of that risk were relationship with religion. started to climb. 200 copies per day used much, mostly because gone. And I wanted to really push Both goals were challenging but turned into 500 copies, then 1,000 its traditional designs rely on my limits to get back to where I had very fun to design, and after seven copies, and by the seven-month alienatingly complicated user come from—a place where there days we had something that was mark Isaac was averaging sales of interfaces. Once you crack the were no boundaries, where I could turning into a game. It seemed too more than 1,500 copies a day and roguelike formula, however, it create anything without worrying good to pass up, so we continued climbing. I couldn’t explain it—we becomes an increasingly beautiful, about making a profit. working on it in Flash (using hadn’t put the game on sale or deep, and everlasting design that

28 game developer | november 2012 postmortem

allows you to generate a seemingly and really solid. Keys, bombs, what made ISAAC different than characters and items, and when dynamic experience for players, coins, and hearts are dropped in most roguelike games (well, aside they beat the chapter with each so that each time they play your various rooms in the dungeon, and from its visuals) was how I dealt new character, they’ll unlock even game they’re getting a totally new the player needs to collect and use with the diffi culty curve. Instead of more content that makes the game adventure. I wanted to combine the these resources to progress through using traditional diffi culty settings, even deeper still. roguelike formula with some kind of each level. In ISAAC, these elements I simply made the game adjust With ISAAC, my goal was to create real-time experience, like SPELUNKY, were randomly distributed and not to players as they played, adding “magic.” I wanted players to feel like but I also wanted to experiment required to progress, but I included increasingly diffi cult content to the game was endless and alive, that more with the traditional role- them to add structure to the the game as they progressed. the game had a mind of its own and playing game aspect of roguelike experience. I also pulled a lot from This made ISAAC feel longer, richer, was writing itself as they played. I games CRAWL and DIABLO. ZELDA’s “leveling structure,” where and gave it the appearance of a remember the original ZELDA having Fortunately, using the basic LEGEND each dungeon would yield an item as story that writes itself. Using this this feeling of magic and mystery. OF ZELDA dungeon structure as the well as a container heart to level up design also allowed me to reward You weren’t sure what things did game’s skeleton made it easy to the character and give the player a the player for playing and playing rework almost all the elements sense of growth; in ISAAC, each level well, with more items that would of a traditional roguelike formula contains at least one item, and the help aid in their adventures and (procedurally generated dungeons, player can get one stat-raising item keep the gameplay fresh and permadeath, and so on) into a by beating the boss. These items are exciting. Once the player fi nally real-time dungeon crawler format. random, but still designed in a way overcomes Mom, they usually Almost every aspect of the game that made it so your character would assume the game is over, but seemed to fall perfectly into place have some kind of physical growth instead get a new fi nal chapter, six with little effort. as you progress through the game. new bosses, a new fi nal boss, and Let’s start by looking at the I approached the roguelike new items that shuffl e into the mix. LEGEND OF ZELDA dungeon and design from many different When the player beats the fi nal resource structure—it’s simple, directions with ISAAC, but at its core, chapter, they unlock new playable

WWW.GDMAG.COM 29

postmortem

until you experimented with them, and you had to brainstorm with your friends and put all your findings together in order to progress. I felt like since I was referencing Zelda so much in Isaac’s core design, I should also complement it with the feeling of mystery I felt it had back in the day.

2 Uncensored, unique theme I strongly believe that game enthusiasts want what they haven’t seen yet, and that adult gamers should be treated like adults. Some people might argue that Isaac isn’t “mature” when it comes to its content, but those people would be ignorant fools! When I designed Isaac’s story and overall theme, I went in wanting to talk to the player about religion in a manner I was comfortable with—that is, with dark humor and satire. A lot of the content in Isaac is extremely dark and adult. It touches on aspects of child abuse, gender identity, infanticide, neglect, suicide, abortion, and how religion might negatively affect a child, which are topics most games would avoid. I wanted to talk about them, and I wanted to talk about them in the way I was comfortable with, so that’s what I did with Isaac. I’m not saying everyone who played Isaac did so because they cared about these themes, or that they even understood why they were in the game, but I strongly believe that this adult conversation I dove into with Isaac is what made the game stand out to people and kept them thinking. I grew up in a religious family. My mom’s side is Catholic, and my dad’s side is born-again Christian. The Catholic side had this very lot of ways I loved that aspect of our creativity it inspired. The Bible is a game wasn’t going to do well, so it ritualistic belief system: My grandma religion. Sadly, the other side of my very good, creatively written book, wasn’t something we really ever even could essentially cast spells of safe family was a bit more harsh in their and one of my favorite aspects of talked about. I had a few pages of passage if we went on trips, for views on the Bible; I was many times it is how so many people can find “dream ideas” that I wanted to add to example, and we would light candles told I was going to hell for playing different meanings in one passage. the game, but I had to stop working and pray for loved ones to find their Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: I wanted Isaac to have this in its on them and put them on the back way out of purgatory, and drink and The Gathering (in fact, they took story as well, which is why the burner, since I wasn’t sure how much eat the body and blood of our savior my MtG cards away from me), and game’s final ending(s) have many the extra content would matter if the to be abolished of mortal sin. As a generally condemned me for my sins. possible interpretations. game didn’t do well. Six months later, child growing up with this, I honestly I wanted Isaac to embody this we ended up taking these dream thought it was very neat—very duality I experienced with religion. I 3 ideas and expanding them into an creative and inspiring. It’s not hard to wanted it to show the positive and The Wrath of the extra-large DLC expansion. look at my work and see that most of negative effects it had on me as a Lamb expansion The Wrath of the Lamb the themes of violence actually come child—the self-hate and isolation Doing a DLC expansion was never expansion added over 80 percent from my Catholic upbringing, and in a it instilled in me, but also the dark in the plan for Isaac; I assumed the more content to an already-

www.gdmag.com 31 bloated experience—and people ate YouTube, countless pieces of fan it up. 25 percent of the people who art, animations, and plush toys purchased ISAAC also paid for the all over the Internet, and over 30 expansion, and that ratio is going fi ctional fan blogs where people can up by the day. We honestly didn’t ask characters in ISAAC questions expect to make it, but once I started and get in-character responses. seeing such a positive, creative It’s totally surreal. Something in fan response, I felt obligated to ISAAC just spoke to a large group of continue Isaac’s adventure. creative people, and they held him Honestly, however, the up and ran with him. number-one reason why I did the Recently, I’ve been trying to expansion was because my wife fi nd out how ISAAC attracted such Danielle had already 100-percent- a creative and dedicated fanbase. completed the game. It was the What is it about the game that spoke fi rst game I had designed that to this large group of artistic men she became obsessed with (she’s and women? I can’t ever know for actually playing it right now, behind sure, but I strongly believe that me, while I’m writing this), and it something in ISAAC’S theme and made me extremely happy to see story connects to a large number of her fall in love with something I “creative outcasts.” I made it from had made. I just had to continue it the standpoint of a creative outcast; (also, she wouldn’t shut up about the game is about a creative child wanting more). who is looked at as “made wrong” by the one person who cares about

4 him, and his only real escape is his CIRCUMVENTING imagination. This is a story I could CENSORSHIP WITH relate to, and it’s one I think a lot of STEAM creative people latched on to mostly Steam is amazing, and with the because it’s not really a story you ISAAC release experience I’ve found see in video games at all. another crucial reason why: You I am forever in debt to these can use it to sell uncensored and people. Not only did they get unrated games. This was vital with the game to the masses, they ISAAC, because I wasn’t going to also inspired me so much. You bother with getting an ESRB rating guys make me want to continue for a game I wasn’t sure was going designing this game forever. to sell more than 100 copies. Valve knew the game was weird and could possibly get some backlash, but they allowed it on Steam because what · went · wrong they felt it had potential, and I love 1 them for that. SHAKY LAUNCHES Another huge plus to working on THE BINDING OF ISAAC was updated Steam was the ability to constantly every day for two weeks during update ISAAC with fi xes, updates, and launch, and each time we thought new content. They would upload we had solved all the issues. (Each a new build within the day we time we were wrong.) Luckily, we submitted it to them, and if we had were able to remove all game- released it on any other platform this breaking bugs in the fi rst two would have been impossible (and days, but there were still many probably cost us about $40,000). smaller bugs left that gnawed at us for a long time. It sucked to launch

5 with so many issues—we had ISAAC’S FANS save bugs, game-breaking bugs The main reason why you’ve heard that wouldn’t let you complete the about ISAAC is its fans. Releasing game, bugs that would not reward SUPER MEAT BOY and being in Indie unlocks and achievements, and Game: The Movie has shown me a even some really odd ones that wide range of fan types, but ISAAC would scramble item clips and fans are just in a league of their own. cycle through art from the game At the time of this writing, there are constantly. It wasn’t pretty, and well over 30,000 videos of ISAAC on it was even more painful to watch

32 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 postmortem

so many upset players posting around. Sadly, Flash AS2 is quite you might think. During ISAAC’S Flash version, I wanted it to feature in the forums about the many outdated, and even with all the German retail launch, the German local co-op, I wanted the graphics to issues with the game. (The biggest amazing work Florian put in, we ratings board gave ISAAC a 16+ due be totally remade in 16-bit but still question, of course, was “Why simply couldn’t get the game to run to “blasphemy.” That itself didn’t look and feel like the Flash version, didn’t you test the game?”) well on lower-end PCs. Flash even cause controversy—instead, it was and fi nally, I didn’t want to deal with The reason we released ISAAC when had major issues with PCs that the idea that said blasphemy could anything when it came to business. we did was because it was done (if used dual-core processors, so even affect the age rating on a video Nicklas has agreed to these terms, untested), and I didn’t want to waste PCs with amazing specs would slow game. Blasphemy isn’t something and development has started on THE any more of my time on something I down at times. you can defi ne for everyone BINDING OF ISAAC: REBIRTH. expected would crash and burn. I was If I had known that anyone (what’s blasphemous for one religion It’s still too early to tell for sure just so worried it would suck that I would have cared about ISAAC, I isn’t necessarily so for another), so what consoles the game will end wanted to get it out and over with. wouldn’t have made it in Flash how could one defi ne something up on, but both Microsoft and Sony at all. Framerate issues aside, as containing blasphemy? It was a feel like it would be a perfect fi t for

2 Flash’s lack of controller support very interesting argument, and I’d their digital platforms, and we have TESTING (AND THE and integrated Steam features be lying if I said that having the fi rst a feeling the new look might soften LACK THEREOF) really hurt ISAAC. It pained me to game rated 16+ due to blasphemy up a few people at Nintendo for a At launch, THE BINDING OF ISAAC release a game that was lacking didn’t feel awesome, but sadly it possible Wii U/3DSWare release. I’m had 100 items and fi ve playable features almost all games was this controversy that I believe wary about how the game might characters. 70 percent of the have. You’d think by now Flash eventually led to Nintendo’s decision control on iPad, but if they can items in ISAAC stack, and all the would have added some kind of not to port ISAAC to the 3DS. make it work, I’m all for it. item abilities will affect Isaac in controller support, but no. Tommy I remember my wife being THE BINDING OF ISAAC was a huge some way, so there were so many actually wrote an achievement worried about ISAAC’S release, personal achievement. I was able to variables to keep track of that all program specifi cally for ISAAC so it worried that it might offend the talk about something personal and the testing in the world couldn’t could award Steam achievements, wrong people and someone meaningful in a way I felt comfortable have prepared us for launch. which was hugely helpful, but I could end up being hurt. I can’t with, and I was able to get my feet in Everything about the game was couldn’t ever really feel satisfi ed with say I didn’t have some hesitation the water with the roguelike formula based on complex variables that the product due to our AS2 limitations. about this aspect of talking and random generation. multiply with each level you pass. about religion in a satirical and When I started on ISAAC, my

In order to fully test all the variables 4 possibly blasphemous way, but I goal was to make a niche cult we had in place, it would have taken TOO BIG IN SCOPE couldn’t help but avoid the simple classic, something with a tiny but hundreds of testers several days of FOR FLASH logic that, well, most of those kind die -hard fanbase. What I didn’t extensive play time to fully debug Aside from the performance issues of people don’t play games. And expect was how large a “tiny” niche this little monster—there were and AS2’s limitations, late in ISAAC’S after over a year, I really believe audience would actually be. bugs that actually took 100,000+ development we soon realized that that’s true. (Thank God!) But what moved me the most people four weeks to find due Flash simply wasn’t at all made to is the amount of creativity ISAAC to how buried and rare some of support a game of ISAAC’S size. Once inspired in others. Every day I them were. Also, launching on the .FLA fi le rose above 300MB, we read fi ction blogs, watch YouTube PC meant launching on 10,000 couldn’t even consistently generate ISAAC animations, and look at others’ different PC configurations, so we an .SWF fi le from it without crashing. REBORN illustrations while thinking had bugs that would be caused This issue almost prevented As of writing this postmortem, THE about how honored by antivirus software, clean-up WRATH OF THE LAMB from coming out at BINDING OF ISAAC has sold over one I am to have made tools, and even some types of all; we were at a point in development million units on PC and Mac in its something that could keyboard configurations. where simply saving the .FLA would fi rst year on Steam, one-quarter of have helped motivate The sad fact was that it was corrupt it about 25 percent of the time. the people who own the main game so many to create. The the day-one buyers that ended Florian would have to restart his PC paid for the WRATH OF THE LAMB three months Florian up fully testing ISAAC for us, and I and save the .FLA in a new folder every expansion, and the interest seems and I put into creating felt really shitty about that. A few time we had to export an .SWF just to to continue building. THE BINDING OF ISAAC didn’t weeks after launch I put together a test it, and 50 percent of the time A few months ago I was just pay off with a fi nancial free mini-expansion to make up for it wouldn’t work for no apparent contacted by Tyrone of Nicklas windfall—it also gave us an our shaky launch—but that, too, reason. It was quite a horrible (CAVE STORY, VVVVVV) and asked eye-opening experience that was fi lled with bugs. experience, and if we could have about how I felt about remaking proves to me without a doubt that seen into the future with a crystal THE BINDING OF ISAAC for consoles. I people truly want and respect 3 ball, we would have simply not used love consoles as much as the next games that are uncensored PERFORMANCE AND Flash. (Maybe this will be a feature guy, but dealing with the business and risky, and that ask more FEATURE ISSUES WITH in Flash CS7....) end of console development wasn’t of the player than most games ACTIONSCRIPT 2 something I wanted to dive back these days do.

The biggest downfall of THE BINDING 5 into at this point. I told them yes, OF ISAAC is its performance. ISAAC �BLASPHEMY� but I had a few strict guidelines EDMUND MCMILLEN is an independent was designed in Flash using AND CONTROVERSY to make sure an ISAAC remake game designer known for his work on SUPER ActionScript 2; that’s what Florian Not surprisingly, controversy made was perfect. I wanted the game MEAT BOY, GISH, and THE BINDING OF ISAAC. He could program in, so those were a few appearances in ISAAC’S to feature the second planned is based out of Santa Cruz, CA. You can fi nd the limitations we had to work release year, but not in the way expansion that I couldn’t do in the his personal blog at edmundm.com.

WWW.GDMAG.COM 33 TOOLBOX

Sketching locations in articy:draft.

Nevigo GmbH

BY TOBIAS HEUSSNER

Writers, game designers, and narrative designers have been on the quest for the perfect creation tool edges of your workspace and drag for years. Excel has been the best choice in most cases (other than in-house solutions, anyway), but it to the side to open another work now Germany-based Nevigo claims to have developed the fi rst professional story and game design area. You can also display different tool. This tool allows you to compose nonlinear storylines and dialogues, create collections of entities work areas on different monitors. such as characters and areas, display fl owcharts, and defi ne custom templates. The fi rst section is the fl ow chart, where you can lay out all your BETTER THAN EXCEL? to display nonlinear content. The ARTICY:DRAFT 101 storylines, dialogues, and anything » Almost all game professionals only reasons I know of that writers » Think of articy:draft as a else that is best designed as a graph. have tools they’re unsatisfi ed with: use Excel is so information can repository for data where you can Flow elements can contain other fl ow Programmers have their IDEs and easily be put into columns, and so store your ideas, plots, characters, elements, and they can be combined debuggers; artists have Maya, 3ds they can create material that can and whatever else you can imagine, with the template feature, but they Max, and Photoshop; and level easily be used for voice recording and then organize it according don’t have to be connected with designers have tools like UnrealEd. and communicating with the to your needs and to the project each other in case you need to build Writers have Excel—which is hardly development team. you’re developing. parallel storylines or feature designs. a great writing tool because the But unless you’re working for Articy:draft has seven main The second section is the amount of information needed for a developer with a better in-house workspaces, and you can view entity collection, which lists all of a compelling story slows it down tool, Excel alternatives are rare— these sections side-by-side by your game’s entities: characters, so much that it becomes almost which means that a tool like Nevigo’s using multiple windows to show items, or even abstract things unusable. Excel also doesn’t have articy:draft could be very compelling. different parts of the project. All you like quest information blocks or good tools to lay out story fl ows or But is it right for your team’s workfl ow? need to do is move to one of the interactive objects. You can add

34 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 toolbox

more specific information about choice points―this feature is simply export-to-Word function is a fairly these entities in the template to present your game flow and the new addition to articy:draft. It editor (more on that later). results of different in-game choices works okay, but it still has some The third section covers the while designing your narrative or minor issues with the layout of locations for your game and story. explaining it to other team members. the different fields, so the Word You can start with rough sketches, The last section is the asset file may not look exactly like your populate those sketches with collection, which stores all your Nevigo GmbH Articy:draft template in articy:draft. objects from the entity section, reference material so you can www.nevigo.com and gradually add more detail to use it within the other sections. Flow charts, your locations over time. Place an Assets could be anything—artwork, PRICE entities, areas entity on your map, and you can sketches, screenshots, videos, › Single-user application: $450 » As I said before, everything immediately examine and edit that documents, sound files, and so on. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS in articy:draft is built upon the entity’s properties by double- › Windows XP/Vista/7 (32- or 64-bit) concept of references—every clicking on it. Also, the entity will Articy, meet the team PROS object exists only once in your contain a link to the areas it is » As you may have deduced, 1  Entity system makes it easy to keep articy:draft project and then is placed in. These two features make articy:draft is a fairly complex track of story/game elements referenced to every place where 2  Highly customizable it much easier to avoid duplicating program, and it can be overwhelming 3  Import function for Final Draft it is needed. For example, if you information and keep everything at first. I recommend having a look CONS put a character in a relationship in sync. at the tutorial videos on the Nevigo 1  Slight learning curve with another character, those two The fourth section is a web site (www.nevigo.com/products/ 2  No export function for templates are linked so that you can jump simple notepad, which has some articydraft/media.html) to see 3  Sometimes a bit slow when creating back and forth between them. basic dialogue and cutscene its features yourself, because the complex templates Characters are similarly linked layout features usually found in program doesn’t make it immediately when you add them to an area, screenwriting programs, which obvious how you’re supposed to use Of course, articy:draft is at its which makes it easier to avoid a lot of writers find useful for it. You can also download a sample most useful if you have as many duplicating information (thus brainstorming. It is also a good project, which can clue you in to licenses as you have developers reducing story glitches). place for your meeting notes and what a possible workflow could look involved in your game, which can The flow chart feature is minutes, since it makes sense to like, but it’s not a full tutorial, so you get expensive. Fortunately, Nevigo useful for story flow and dialogue store them in the same place as may still need to experiment a bit offers a cheaper viewer license trees, but it can also come in the rest of your design material. before you figure out the right way that enables staff members who handy for more than that; game Another great feature of the note to fit it into your workflow. Once only need read access to view designers can use this feature to section is that you can directly you get used to it, though, you’ll the project without spending create skill trees or menu flows, import Final Draft documents into be defining NPCs in one place and the money for a full client. Also, and level designers can use it to a note, mark the parts you’d like to maps in another, and easily using articy:draft readily exports to lay out level events and connect use, and drag those parts into the that information in story graphs. Get Microsoft Word and Excel, though them to maps. You could even use flow chart section to automatically used to the way articy:draft uses if you start working with Word the flow charts to design complex create a flow chart based on this references as its core organizing docs or Excel sheets you’ll need state machines, which could help information. (Articy:draft will principle and you’ll see how useful it to make sure that they’re up- communicate features with the automatically link character tags can be and how much faster it is to to-date when other people start programming department. (The to the correct entity if there is one; work in compared to Excel. working on them. Note that the flow chart features don’t seem otherwise it’ll show you a warning.) The fifth section is the template feature, which allows you to create the templates you need for your project. So far articy:draft includes only a few very basic ready-for-use templates, but since most writers and designers prefer to use their own templates, it’s probably not a major problem. The sixth section, Journeys, is articy:draft’s newest addition; it became part of the tool with patch 1.3. Journeys are recorded versions of walkthroughs through your flow charts. These walkthroughs can be created directly from within the flow chart section, and display similarly to a PowerPoint presentation. Note that articy:draft does not automatically evaluate any game conditions linked to your Writing a branching conversation.

www.gdmag.com 35 toolbox

to have any notable advantages that everything is referenced is once you update a template, it Happily ever after over other such tools, mind you― helpful too, because during the will also update all entities that » All in all, articy:draft is a great the main reason you’d do it in review process you don’t need use this specific template, which tool for interactive story and articy:draft is simply to have all to open other documents or means you have to be careful game design. It unites all the the content development stuff in programs; you can jump to the not to lose any information. (On different parts that go into good the same place.) needed information whenever the plus side, you’ll always be story and game design in one With the area feature, you can you want and this information up-to-date.) Articy:draft will warn tool, and though it has a steep sketch out an area with vector- can never be outdated, because if you about the consequences of initial learning curve, it gets pretty based tools (and include more any other developer updates any changing templates, which helps. easy to use. For the first hour that detailed background pictures). of the references, these changes As of this writing, articy:draft you’re using it, you might not be However, it’s mostly useful will also be visible in your map. doesn’t allow you export your convinced to switch from Excel, because you can link your other templates and use them in but after that hour you’ll find elements into the map and easily Templates: DIY only another project, which is one of yourself developing your story reference their information— » Whether you find articy:draft the main problems I see, because faster―and communicating that place an NPC guard next to a useful depends largely on how normally I don’t want to create story to your teammates faster guard house, and articy:draft will well you design your templates. the same templates over and over than before. place a link to your guard. If you Articy:draft has some great again. You could create an empty want to play a certain event at tools to create new templates, project and copy it to create a Tobias Heussner is a game content/ a certain spot in your map, you but it doesn’t include many new one, but it should be easier narrative designer, currently working as can drag and drop a flow chart sample templates, so you have than that. Nevigo has promised to a senior level designer on online games. element to this spot and link it to experiment a bit to find the work on a solution, and hopefully His areas of expertise are game content with the map. This is extremely best way to lay out and structure soon it will be possible to move design and game system design, and he helpful when you review map them. It took me some time to templates from one project to has been involved in professional game concepts or when you need to find a good workflow and figure another. Other than that, the development in design and management talk about the narrative space out what to put where, but it got template feature works fairly well, for over 14 years. You can find more and the choices a player will pretty easy once I figured out though it can get a bit slow if the information on his personal web site at have in a certain map. The fact what worked for me. Be careful— templates get highly complex. www.theussner.com.

GDM12_Gama_HalfPg_F.indd 1 6/7/12 2:31 PM 36 game developer | november 2012 INNER PRODUCT // NIKLAS FRYKHOLM

FOLLOW OUR 10-STEP PROGRAM FOR REHABILITATING CRAPPY CODE Guess what! You’ve just inherited a stinking, steaming doing. And then there was that open-source thing you downloaded pile of messy old code. Congratulations, it’s all yours. that you knew was horrible, but it solved a very specifi c and quite Bad code can come from all kinds of places: hairy problem that would have taken you ages to do by yourself. middleware, the Internet, or even your own company. Bad code doesn’t have to be a problem, as long as it’s not You know that nice guy in the corner who nobody had time to misbehaving (and nobody pokes their nose in it). Unfortunately, check up on? Guess what he was doing all that time. Yep, he was that state of ignorant bliss rarely lasts. Someone will fi nd a bug, churning out bad code. Do you remember that module someone or request a feature, or release a new platform that breaks your wrote years ago, just before she left the company? Twenty bad code, and now you have to dig into that horrible mess and different people have since hacked, patched, and “fi xed” a few try to clean it up. I know—it’s no fun for anyone, so here are 10

ILLUSTRATION: JUAN RAMIREZ ILLUSTRATION: bugs in that module without really understanding what they were tips that will help you save your code (and your sanity).

WWW.GDMAG.COM 37 INNER PRODUCT // niklas frykholm

Stereotypes aside, there are manual one. Fire up a game level and download mercurial (or git), create Step 0 merits to both arguments. Believe run the character through a specific a new repository, and put the Is this worth fixing? it or not, but sometimes the set of actions related to the code code that you checked out of your The first thing you need to ask managers are right. I’ve seen many you are cleaning, and check that the company’s stupid system there. yourself is whether the code is cases where an ambitious rewrite behavior doesn’t change. Do your changes in that repository, worth cleaning. I’m of the opinion goes over time and over budget and Since such tests are more time committing as you go. When you that when it comes to code ends up delivering a product that consuming, it might not make sense are done you can merge everything cleaning, you should either karate while better from a programmer’s to run them after every change back into the stupid system. do “yes,” or karate do “no,” Daniel- perspective actually ends up being you make, which would be ideal. Cloning the repository into a san. If you decide to fix it, assume less useful to the end users. But since you’re going to put every sensible source-control system full responsibility for the code and Both programmers and managers single change you make into source only takes a few minutes, and it’s rework it until you end up with should listen to the arguments control (more on this later), all is absolutely worth it. If you don’t know something that you are actually from the other side. Managers not lost. Run the test every once in mercurial, spend an hour to learn it. happy to maintain and proud to should realize that unchecked a while (maybe every five changes You will be happy you did. Or if you have in your code base. code rot leads to a culture of or so). When it discovers a problem, prefer, spend 30 hours to learn git The other option is to decide sloppiness, abandonment, and you can do a binary search of those instead. (I kid! Not really. Git fanatics, that even though the code looks despair, which is the death of a last few commits to find out which you can send me your hate mail now.) horrible, it isn’t cost effective to development team. Programmers one caused the problem. take time out of your busy schedule should realize that their time and If you at any time discover an to fix it. So instead you just do the capacity is finite, and they can’t issue that wasn’t detected by your Step 3 smallest change possible that make every piece of code perfect. test, make sure that you add that Use the compiler solves your current problem. Still, the choice is never easy. to the test, so that you capture it in For languages such as Java and In other words, you either the future. C#, there are lots of tools that can regard the code as yours or theirs. help with typical cleaning tasks— There are merits to both Step 1 renaming methods and variables, alternatives. Good programmers Get a test case Step 2 for example. get an itch when they see bad code. Seriously cleaning a piece of code Use source control In C++, you have to do most They bring out their torches and means messing around with it a lot. Do people still have to be told to use of the heavy lifting yourself, but pitchforks and chant: “Unclean! You will break things. source control? I sure hope not. you can get some help from the Unclean!” That is a good instinct, If you have a decent test Source control is absolutely compiler. For example, if you rename but cleaning code is also a lot of case with good coverage, you will crucial for cleaning work, because a method, you will get compile errors work. It is easy to underestimate immediately know what has broken you will be making lots and lots of everywhere it was used. the time it takes. It can be nearly and you can usually quite quickly small changes to the code. When You can use this to your advantage as time consuming as writing figure out what stupid mistake something breaks, you want to be by deliberately introducing a the whole thing from scratch, you just made, which will save you able to look back in the revision compile error. For example, suppose and it doesn’t bring any short- a ridiculous amount of time and history and find out where it broke. there is this method: Managers just want quick fixes and don’t value set_pos(float y, float x); the work required to maintain and improve code. Say that you want to change the Programmers just want to spend their time on order of the x and y parameters highbrow rewriting projects that make the code so that it is consistent with other beautiful, but don’t add any value to the company. methods. Instead of doing a global search (which may find lots of term benefits—two weeks spent anxiety. Get a test case. It’s the first Also, if you are anything like other methods named set_pos), cleaning code won’t add any new thing you should do. me, you will sometimes start down just rename the method to: features to your game, but might Unit tests are best, but not all a refactoring path (like removing give you some new bugs. code is amenable to unit testing. a stupid class) and realize after a set_pos_swapped(float x, float y); On the other hand, the long- Sometimes the amount of hoops you while that it wasn’t such a good term effects of never cleaning your would have to jump through to make idea, or that it was a good idea but Now all the old calls will give compile code can be devastating. Entropy is something testable is just insanely everything would be a lot simpler errors. As you fix those compile the code-killer. impractical. (Test fanatics, you can if you did something else first. In errors, you swap the parameters, Often this gets expressed as send me your hate mail now.) that case, you’ll want to be able to and when you are done, you can a conflict betweenmanagers and The next best things are quickly revert everything you just rename the method back to set_pos. programmers. Managers just want automated integration tests— did and begin anew. quick fixes and don’t value the work scripted tests that produce a Your company should have a required to maintain and improve predictable output. Check both the source-control system in place that Step 4 code. Programmers just want test and the output into source allows you to do these changes in Make one (small) change to spend their time on highbrow control, so that you can see if it a separate branch and commit as at a time rewriting projects that make the changes and how. much as you like without disturbing There are two ways of improving code beautiful, but don’t add any Any test is better than nothing. If anybody else. If it doesn’t, you bad code: revolution and reform. value to the company. you can’t do an automated test, do a should still use source control— The revolution method is to nuke

38 game developer | november 2012 INNER PRODUCT // niklas frykholm

everything from orbit and rewrite have a small amount of code that it from scratch. The reform method you need to check. If you start is to refactor the code with one doing a change and realize that it is small change at a time without ever bad, you won’t lose much work by breaking it. reverting to the last commit. If you This article is about the reform notice after a while that something method. I’m not saying that has gone subtly wrong, a binary revolutions are never necessary. search in the revision history will Sometimes things are so terrible let you find the small change that that you have no other option. But introduced the problem. people who get frustrated with the It is a common mistake to try to slow pace of reform and advocate do more than one thing at the same revolution often fail to realize the time. For example, while you’re full complexity of the problem, and getting rid of an unnecessary level Before you commit to fixing the code, ask thus don’t give the existing system of inheritance, you might notice yourself these questions: enough credit. that the API methods are not When you do a full rewrite, you as orthogonal as you would like Q How many changes do you expect to make to the code? often miss some of the nuances, them to be and start to rearrange A Is it just this one small bug that you need to fix, or is this special features, and bug fixes in them. Don’t do this! Get rid of the code that you expect to return to many times to tweak, the original code, and you end up inheritance first, commit that, and tune, and add new features? If it’s just this one bug, then with a system that is less useful then fix the API. perhaps it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. However, if this than the original one. Then, over the At first, this often feels like is a module that you will need to mess around with a lot, next few months, you have to add a slower way to work, but it then spending some time to clean it up now will save a those features back one by one. In is actually a lot faster. Smart lot of headaches later. the end, your new system might programmers organize the way be just as messy as the one it was they work so that they don’t have to Q Will you need/want to import upstream changes? intended to replace—and the Code be that smart. A Is this an open-source project that is under active Phoenix’s cycle of destruction and Try to find a path that takes you development? If so, and you want to pull the changes renewal can continue. from what the code is now to what made upstream, you can’t make any big changes to the The reform approach is a more you want it to be in a sequence of code or you will be in merge hell every time you pull. So ecologically sustainable method small steps. For example, in one just be a nice team player, accept its idiosyncrasies, and of code development. When you step you might rename the methods send patches with your bug fixes to the maintainer. reform, you know at each step what to give them more sane names. In changes you make. You can still the next, you might change some Q How much work is it? decide to throw out a little-used member variables to function A How many lines of code can you realistically clean in a feature in order to simplify the code, parameters. Then you reorder day? An order of magnitude estimate says more than but then at least you know that’s some algorithms so that they are 100 and less than 10,000, so let’s say 1,000. So if the what you are doing. You can look at clearer. And so on. If you start doing module has 30,000 lines, you might be looking at a each single change you make and a change and realize that it was a month of work. Can you spend that? Is it worth it? see that it is good. This doesn’t mean bigger change than you originally that you can’t do drastic changes thought, don’t be afraid to revert and Q Is it a part of your core functionality? to the code, just that you have to do find a way of doing the same thing in A If the module does something peripheral, such as them one step at a time. smaller, simpler steps. rendering fonts or loading images, you might not care that it is messy. You might swap out the whole thing relevant read: Step 5 for something else in the future—who knows? But you Don’t clean and fix should own the code that relates to your core competence. Stack Exchange co-founder Joel at the same time Spolsky has written a classic This is a corollary to #4, but important Q How bad is it? article about this called Things You enough to get its own point. A If the code is just slightly bad, then perhaps you can live with Should Never Do. Look it up here: it. If it is mind-numbingly, frustratingly, incomprehensibly www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ It is a common problem. You bad, then perhaps something needs to be done. fog0000000069.html start to look at a module because you want to add some new functionality. Then you notice that Q Do you have to clean all of it? The best way of reforming code is the code is really badly organized, A Perhaps you can clean just the high-level interface to make one minimal change at a so you start reorganizing it at the and leave the low-level code as it is. Dividing the time, test it, and commit it. When same time as you are adding the cleaning task into smaller, simpler steps makes it more the change is small, it is easier new functionality. manageable. It also provides useful checkpoints where to understand its consequences The problem with this is you (and your manager) can ascertain that the cleaning and make sure that it doesn’t that cleaning and fixing have progresses as planned, and abort if there are problems. affect your existing functionality. diametrically opposite goals. When If something goes wrong, you only you clean, you want to make the

www.gdmag.com 39 INNER PRODUCT // niklas frykholm

code look better without changing rid of it. Otherwise you will just changes how a completely different Broken programmers talk its functionality. When you fix, you waste mental energy on trying to piece of code behaves. People often about them in dusky bars, want to change its functionality to understand that comment each say that multithreading is difficult, their sanity shattered by something better. If you clean and time you read the code in the but really, it is the fact that the their encounters: “I just kept fix at the same time, it becomes future. The same goes for dead threads share mutable state that is scrolling and scrolling. I very hard to make sure that your code that has been commented the problem. If you get rid of that, couldn’t believe my eyes. It cleaning didn’t inadvertently or #ifdef’ed out. Get rid of it. It’s multithreading is not so complex. was 12,000 lines long.” When change something. there in the source repository if If your goal is to write high- functions are big enough, their Do the cleaning first.Then , when you need it. performance software, you won’t local variables are almost you have a nice clean base to work Even when comments are be able to get rid of all mutable as bad as global variables. It with, add the new functionality. correct and useful, remember that state, but your code can still becomes impossible to tell you will be doing a lot of refactoring benefit enormously from reducing how changing a local variable of the code. The comments may it as much as possible. Strive might affect a chunk of code Step 6 no longer be correct when you are for programs that are “almost 2,000 lines down. Remove any functionality done. And there is no unit test in functional,” and make sure you that you are not using the world that can tell you if you know exactly what state you Reference and pointer The time it takes to clean is have broken the comments. are mutating where and why. parameters. proportional to the amount of code, Good code needs few Shared mutable state can come in Reference and pointer its complexity, and its messiness. comments because the code different shapes: parameters that are passed If there is any functionality in the itself is clearly written and easy to without const can be used to code that you are currently not understand. Variables with good Global variables. subtly share mutable state using and don’t plan to be using in names do not need comments The classic example. By now between the caller, the callee, the foreseeable future, get rid of it. explaining their purpose. Functions everybody surely knows that and anyone else who might That will both reduce the amount with clear inputs and outputs global variables are bad. But be passed the same pointer. and complexity of the code you and no special cases or gotchas note (and this is a distinction will have to go through (by getting require little explanation. Simple, that people sometimes fail rid of unnecessary concepts and well-written algorithms can be to make), that it is only Step 9 dependencies). You will be able to understood without comments. shared mutable state that is Get rid of bad concepts clean faster, and the end result will Asserts document expectations problematic. Global constants Bad code doesn’t have to come be simpler. and preconditions. Comments are not bad. π is not bad. from bad coding. It can also come Don’t save code because should only be used when the code Sprintf is not bad. from bad thinking. “who knows, you might need it is not obvious to an experienced Sometimes, the programmer just someday.” Code is costly. It needs professional. And whenever Objects: Big bags of fun. doesn’t have a clear picture of the to be ported, bug-checked, read, possible, it is better to rewrite the Objects are a way for a large problems the code needs to solve, and understood. The less code you code so that it is obvious than to number of functions (the and ends up coding around basic have, the better. In the unlikely add a comment. methods) to implicitly share concepts that are off-kilter, with a lot event that you do need the old code, you can always find it in the When you have cleaned the code, how do you keep it source repository. clean? I don’t think that is completely possible. Rather, you should regard code cleaning as a continuous Step 7 activity, just like weeding a garden—but there are Delete most of the comments some things you can do to minimize the problem. Bad code rarely has good comments. Instead, they are often: In many cases, the best thing a big bag of mutable state of extra code that just compensates to do is just to get rid of all old (the members). If a lazy for that fundamental wrongness. // Pointless: comments, focus on making the programmer needs to pass For example, a horrible system // Set x to 3 x = 3; code clear and readable, and then some information around could use strings to represent // Incomprehensible: add back whatever comments between methods, she can dates and have a lot of weird code // Fix for CB (aug) pos += are needed—comments that just make a new member for dealing with the fact that “2012- vector3(0, -0.007, 0); reflect the new API and your own that they can read and write 10-01,” “2012-10-1,” and “1/10 12” // Sowing fear and doubt: understanding of the code. as they please. It’s almost all refer to the same date. // Really we shouldn’t be doing like a global variable. The Often, the problem stems from this t = get_latest_time(); more members and the more a single concept that has been // Downright lying: Step 8 methods an object has, the given multiple responsibilities // p cannot be NULL here Get rid of shared bigger this problem is. that don’t quite gel. For example, p->set_speed(0.7); mutable state consider the date struct: Shared mutable state is the single Megafunctions. Read through the code. If a biggest problem when it comes You have heard about them— struct Date { int year; comment doesn’t make sense to understanding code, because mythic creatures that dwell int month; int day; to you and doesn’t further your it allows for spooky “action at a in the deepest recesses bool is_repeating; int repeat_ understanding of the code, get distance,” where one piece of code of the darkest code bases. interval; };

40 game developer | november 2012 INNER PRODUCT // niklas frykholm

Here the simple concept of a date code’s support structures (for just like weeding a garden—but Here are some has been muddled together with serialization, reference counting, there are some things you can do practical ideas for the completely different concept virtualized interfaces, abstract to minimize the problem: getting rid of shared of a repeating calendar event. The factories, visitors, and so on) dwarf mutable state: result is a complete mess. the code that performs the actual Encourage a culture Finding bad concepts is not functionality. of responsibility and » Split big functions into always as straightforward as in Sometimes overengineering professional pride. smaller ones. these examples. Often, you need occurs because software to work with the code a lot to really projects start out with a lot Maintain a living discussion » Split big objects into smaller understand what it does—and more ambitious goals than what about design issues. Make ones by grouping members what problems it tries to solve. actually gets implemented. sure it stays focused on the that belong together. Only then can you see that some of More often, I think, it reflects big picture, and doesn’t get its fundamental concepts are not the ambitions/aesthetics of a bogged down in pointless » Make members private. very well thought out. Sometimes it programmer who has read books debate about trivialities. only manifests itself as a nagging on design patterns and the » Change methods to be const, feeling that something is wrong. waterfall model, and believes that and return the result instead of Remember there is no such I’ve found that discussing these overengineering makes a product mutating state. thing as throwaway code. things with other programmers is a solid and high-quality. Code always lives longer than » Change methods to be static, good way of clarifying thought and This kind of thinking often leads you expect. and take their arguments as finding where the real problem lies. to a heavy, rigid, overly complex parameters instead of reading When you have identified a model that can’t adapt to feature Keep the code simple, them from shared state. bad concept, you want to replace requests the original designer decoupled, minimal, and it with something better. Again, didn’t anticipate. Those features isolated. » Get rid of objects entirely, don’t try to do that all at once as a are then implemented as hacks, and implement the single monolithic change. Instead, bolt-ons, and backdoors on top Avoid the temptation of functionality as pure functions start by using the new concepts of the ivory tower, resulting in a complex, heavy, coupled without side effects. in the low-level code. Let the high- schizophrenic mix of absolute order abstract systems. level code continue to use the old and utter chaos. » Make local variables const. concepts, and write helper code The cure against overengineering And don’t forget to minimize to translate between the old and is YAGNI—You Ain’t Gonna Need It! shared mutable state. » Change pointer and new representations. Then piece by Only build the things that you know reference arguments to const. piece, move more and more code you need. Add more complicated That is all. Now, go forth, my over to the new concepts. stuff when you need it, not before. minions, and clean that code!

A cleaner future Niklas Frykholm is one of the founders Some practical Step 10 » When you have cleaned the code, of Bitsquid AB, where he is architecting a ideas for cleaning Get rid of unnecessary how do you keep it clean? I don’t high-performance multiplatform engine for out unnecessary complexity think that is completely possible. licensing. A recently released title based complexity: Unnecessary complexity is often Rather, you should regard code on the engine is War of the Roses from a result of overengineering. The cleaning as a continuous activity, Swedish developer Fatshark. » Remove the functionality you are not using (as suggested above).

» Simplify necessary concepts, and get rid of unneeded ones.

» Remove unnecessary abstractions, and replace them with concrete implementations.

» Remove unnecessary virtualization and simplify object hierarchies.

» If only one setting is ever used, get rid of the possibility of running the module in other configurations.

www.gdmag.com 41 pixel pusher // steve theodore

gogglesSeeing Through pyroland, surr ealism, and how your art can mess with players’ minds

“One shudders to think what inhuman thoughts lie behind that mask... what dr eams of chronic and sustained cruelty...”

Valve’s brilliant “Meet the Pyro” trailer for Team shared delusion with no solid existence of its standpoint. The surrealism of games lies less Fortress 2 is a masterful bit of black humor. own. Almost a century later, games are almost in their visual styles than in their essential The juxtaposition of fiery chaos and chirpy perfect embodiments of this basic idea—a set of insubstantiality; in the end, it’s all just pixels, cheer deftly eviscerates our industry’s endless artificially constructed realities that appear solid which we can splash on screen with all sorts of appetite for faux-operatic “epicness” with a well- and consistent, and yet are completely illusory. fancy tricks. We have the power to completely sharpened lollipop. As a game artist, however, I I don’t mean that games are surreal because rewrite game reality every 16.7 milliseconds. think there’s more beneath “Meet the Pyro” than they offer startling imagery. Sure, after two What’s remarkable is that we almost never just a gimmicky short (and its corresponding decades of real-time 3D we’ve finally gotten over actually use this power. Models and textures in-game Pyrovision mode). The contrast between the worst of our obsession with photorealism, and animations become, after a fashion, as the world the Pyro sees and the “real” world gives and now it’s easy to find games that toy with the solid and persistent as the objects and actions us a rare glimpse at one of the most interesting conventions of realistic graphics: exaggerated or they represent, even though this continuity is and least well-mined aspects of game art: the cartoon-style shading, color manipulation, and entirely voluntary on our part—and even when inherent surrealism of everything we do. If we painterly rendering, for example. Once-skeptical the models or actions are inherently fantastic. can examine and embrace this surrealism, publishers, reassured by hits ranging from World We worship consistency. We have the option of we may just find an extra tool in our palette to of Warcraft, to Borderlands, to Team Fortress 2, suddenly and radically rewriting reality whenever engage players with our art. no longer demand that every game look exactly and however we’d like. We just choose not to—at like a TV show. And of course, the renaissance of least, most of the time. Game artists as practicing traditional animation that’s accompanied the rise surrealists of casual, social, and mobile games has done a Persistence of memory » The original surrealists believed in subverting lot to broaden our palette. » André Breton would have salivated over being the realistic illusions of traditional art, even But even though we’ve outgrown slavish handed the chance to repeatedly rewrite reality. though they retained realist trappings that devotion to realism in rendering, it’s a stretch If Dalí had made a video game, it probably would other avant-gardists disdained. The goal was to suggest that Modern Warfare 3 has much have been a lot like Pyroland (or Catherine). If to convince people that reality itself was a in common with René Magritte from a visual one were feeling like an art critic, this would

42 game developer | november 2012 pixel pusher // steve theodore

be the place to point out that voluntarily BioShock occasionally used “ghosts” to lead That said, a surrealist approach to online surrendering the pretense of a stable external the player to plot points and set mood. Even games has fascinating possibilities. Modern reality is a powerful tool for deconstructing the Half-Life’s mysterious G-Man, who crops up game design has many sophisticated tools illusion of the game world, and inviting the player inscrutably in inexplicable locations, could be for encouraging different kinds of interactions to recognize the hopelessly problematic nature considered an example of the same genre. between players—to make them cooperative of game “reality.” In the film world, hallucinatory flash-cuts or mutually suspicious, to encourage them to But in the more philistine world of commercial have a long history—The Shining is practically share information or to work in secret, and so entertainment, we don’t usually have the option to a textbook on the uses of imaginary characters, on. However, many of these designs are not well pursue those kinds of ideas too far. Occasionally, temporary visions, and impossible spaces. supported by visuals. Instead, they’re being a masterpiece of postmodernist play also turns Because the tradition is so well understood, communicated through ham-handedly “gamey” out to be a great (and commercially viable) hallucinatory visuals in games are really more mechanisms like points or multi-key puzzles. game—Paper Mario was a brilliant meditation like cinematic vignettes or scripted sequences If we start from the surrealist position— on 3D graphics, and BioShock played plenty of than a radical break in the rules of the game that there’s no single authoritative view of the games with your head. Most of the time, however, world—particularly when it’s accompanied by a world that all players must share, but rather a working hard to yank the rug out from under your burst of discordant audio. shifting collection of individual perspectives players usually works the same way avant-garde This level of comfort with said hallucinations (each of which we can manipulate for effect), tricksterism does other media: A few people will makes this technique a very lightweight form then many interesting possibilities arise. love it, but most will stick to safer fare and keep of exposition, and a very efficient storytelling Allowing some characters fleeting glimpses of their philistine dollars to themselves. mechanism. The here-and-gone again “ghost” enemies (real or imaginary) that aren’t visible For developers who are more interested in visuals don’t require you to break in-game flow to others could promote communication—or mainstream success (and paying the mortgage) like a cutscene, and since they tend to draw paranoia, depending on the mood we want to the illusion of a stable, externalized reality attention to themselves, they don’t require the establish. NPCs who appeared subtly different remains a more or less obligatory part of the careful staging of a scripted sequence. Despite to different players in the same party could fantasies that we’re selling. Few players would this long track record, however, this technique provoke meaningful discussions about who be happy if they plop down $60 for the chance to is rarely seen in games outside the horror and could be trusted, as well as priming players with smite the minions of the Dark Whatchamacallit thriller genres, which is a shame. It’s easy to different emotional cues for events to come. And and suddenly found themselves bathing them in see how flash-cuts, in the form of conventional of course, asymmetrical views of the world are rainbows and candy instead. Not many players psychological flashbacks rather than a very powerful tool for shaping the perceptions (except, perhaps, ardent fans of Limbo) will be supernatural events, could fit into a conventional of different player races and factions. Does the happy to discover that the timing of their platform military shooter, a story-driven cop game like world really look the same to elves, dwarves, and jumps is hopelessly borked because the laws of Sleeping Dogs, or character-driven RPG. halflings? Or can we encourage a wider range of motion or perspective have changed midframe. experiences and interdependence among players Nevertheless, even games with no The lugubrious game by visually rewriting the world in the idiom of postmodernist theoretical pretensions can The inherent instability of game worlds is even each type of player character? find a lot of artistic opportunity in the ability to more obvious in multiplayer games. Despite Game artists love to complain that, unlike our subvert, circumvent, or just plain muck about our labors, shared online spaces are full of cousins in the film business, we have no control with the stability of the player’s world. To return to small paradoxes, errors, and lacunae. The over the player’s point of view. An animator I know Pyrovision for a moment, it’s obvious on reflection basic building blocks that we ordinarily use to once described his job thusly: “I’m supposed that the trick is not really new: Pyrovision is create a reality for our players—continuity in to make a great movie, except my director of just a variation on familiar gimmicks like night space, continuity in time, and the laws of game photography is a 13-year-old on his fourth can of vision, thermal vision, X-ray vision, and the host physics—all become unreliable when they have Red Bull who insists on crouch-jumping during of other special view modes that games have to be synchronized between multiple clients key scenes.” It’s true that we don’t have the kind served up over the years. What’s radical is neither over the imperfect medium of the Internet. We’re of compositional control and framing that make the sudden change of player perception, nor the unhappily inured to teleporting characters, movie stills so appealing, but it’s also worth tech behind it (though Valve provides a detailed unsynced animation, and conflicting views in remembering that we have all sorts of powers walkthrough of the technique on its developer blog online games—though I’m sure that somewhere that can compensate. We can change the laws of at www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=8502). in academia there are eager critical theorists the universe any time we want to, in pursuit of The innovation in Pyroland is purely artistic: a gleefully outlining how radically post-modern all the stories we want to tell and moods we want technique that’s usually deployed to support a those damn glitches are. to evoke. You don’t need to be a surrealist or a familiar shooter mechanic is instead used for Be that as it may, the imperatives of online theoretician to want to grab every one of those aesthetic effect, turning the already campy Team play have tended to make us look at online advantages when you can. And in the case of Fortress world into a brutal full-body takedown of reality as a problem to be solved, rather than an control over the player’s perceptions, it’s mostly a FPS pomposity. opportunity for artistic exploration. If you’re an matter of changing your own mental filters. Just animator tasked with multiplayer animations, put on these goggles and you’ll see what I mean— Exquisite corpse you’ll be hemmed in on all sides by technical it’s magical! Of course, satire isn’t the only way in which requirements meant to prevent the sort of clever teams can subvert game reality to make situation where one player thinks they’re safely Steve Theodore has been pushing pixels for more than an artistic point. Many titles with darker themes under cover while an opposing player has their a dozen years. His credits include Mech Commander, blur the boundaries of the “real” game world noggin in the crosshairs. Artistry and nuance get Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Halo 3. He’s by overlaying ghostly or possibly imaginary a lot less attention than network prediction and been a modeler, animator, and technical artist, as well as characters—the on-again, off-again specter of reliable hit resolution, which is why multiplayer a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He’s currently Alma in the Fear series is a classic example. animation is one of the toughest jobs in game art. the technical art director at Seattle’s Undead Labs.

www.gdmag.com 43 design of the times // soren johnson

How to Become a Game Designer Five tips for switching to the game design track

People enter the game industry for many different reasons. For some Use this prejudice to of low-hanging fruit that talented artists, programmers, and musicians, a game job is a great way one’s advantage and only becomes obvious after to employ their talents in a vibrant and creative field. Others simply enjoy volunteer for the job; release; focus on these being involved with one of their own hobbies and personal passions. game companies are improvements, and players However, for many, there can be only one reason to join the industry—to always looking for capable will respond positively. become an official game designer. developers excited to work on interface design. 4/ focus on feedback The simplest way to correctly to do design work, not strictly thought of as » Game design is part become a designer, of design work might just “game design” but actually 3/ volunteer for DLC talent and part skill. Noah course, is simply to start find you. are—user interface and » Downloadable content Falstein once postulated making games. Individual artificial intelligence. can be an easier way to that a disproportionate developers can take 1/ learn to program Artificial intelligence work directly on game number of designers advantage of more tools » Games are a very controls the behavior of design roles. The stakes are INTJ on the Myers- and distribution channels broad category, often non-human agents in the are inevitably lower for Briggs scale (meaning than ever before to make encompassing multiple art game world, and as such these smaller releases, and Introverted, iNtuitive, great games. Andreas forms (words, music, and it is so inseparable from a game’s official designers Thinking, and Judging), Illiger made Tiny Wings. visuals). Some games have gameplay that working on are usually too burned out which suggests that some Brendon Chung made strong story elements. AI is impossible without from the final push to even personalities are better Atom Zombie Smasher. Vic Some are almost pure daily interaction with the want to think about the suited to game design than Davis made Armageddon abstractions. However, the designers. If an AI coder DLC, so it can be a good others. However, talent Empires. Jonathan Mak one aspect they all share does a consistently good opportunity for aspiring will never be enough; you made Everyday Shooter. is that they are all based job and keeps asking for designers to step forward should actively develop You do not need anyone’s on algorithms. Code is the extra responsibility, game and demonstrate their your design skills, and permission to become a language of games, and design is the obvious ambition and potential. there is only one true way game designer. knowing how to code will next step. Companies want to see to do that—implementing Nonetheless, not help qualify you for a great This path is even their employees grow a design and then listening everyone has the variety of roles. more clear for interface into the role, as hiring to user feedback. My own resources, or simply Maybe someone work, which is on the new designers is a huge design education didn’t the guts, to go it alone. needs you to script enemy very forefront of the gamble; DLC provides a really begin until the day Unfortunately, for behavior, or your team user¹s experience. great, low-risk opportunity Civilization III was released, established companies, needs a scenario editor but Game mechanics are to train them internally. and players proved that starting game design jobs no one has time to build it. useless if they cannot Working on DLC many of my assumptions are nearly mythical; the Perhaps your game needs be communicated to design also has a huge about how the game played job simply requires too more random map scripts, the player, and UI is the benefit for the aspiring were completely false. much experience, and the or a senior designer needs most important tool for designer—namely, you A game is not an inert competition is too fierce. someone to prototype a solving that problem. don’t have to start out set of algorithms; it is a Most game companies are new idea for a game. All of Thus, interface design is trying to create fun from shared experience existing already full of developers these tasks could grow into game design. The best a blank slate, which can somewhere between who want to be designers, more established game part of the “interface trigger crippling pressure the designers and the so most new recruits design roles, but only a track” to game design for a new designer. Instead, players. Unless a game are hired because they programmer can undertake is that very few game you can simply continue to is constantly exposed to possess a specific skill, them. developers want to work iterate on the core design, a neutral audience, its such as coding or art. One on the interface. Senior while applying lessons design is only theory. needs to earn the position 2/ work on the UI artists and programmers you’ve learned after seeing Games should have as of game designer, and one or AI often view interface your game in the hands much prerelease public earns that position on the » There are two areas of work as only suitable of thousands of players. testing as possible; the job. If you position yourself game development that are for junior developers. Most games have plenty designer’s skills will only

44 game developer | november 2012 design of the times // soren johnson

Five tips for switching to the game design track

grow stronger with each the game designer’s job is no one takes seriously can Have you ever made a playing them. The set of successive exposure. not to follow one’s muse be immensely frustrating, video game? A scenario or people who enjoy making Aspiring designers or ego, but to choose a but the key is to maintain a mod? A board or games is much, much must find some way to vision and let the team lead the right attitude. If your card game? smaller than the group of experience this feedback the way. Designers need idea gets implemented, If you answered no people who enjoy playing loop. Releasing a simple to be humble listeners, don’t think that your idea to all of these, then you them. Designing a game mobile game or a mod to not persuasive orators. has won, think of it as should ask yourself if you can mean years and a popular game and then If a designer ever finds putting it to the test. The really are meant to be a years perfecting a single learning from the public themself arguing why a real work begins once the game designer. Painters concept and demands the feedback is much more playable game mechanic is idea is playable, and then start drawing when they strength to learn from all valuable than working on fun to a skeptical audience, it belongs to everyone. All are young. Musicians the criticism that will be some mammoth project then the game might be game teams have more learn to play instruments heaped upon the design. which is unlikely to ever in big trouble. Designers ideas than they will ever in grade school. Writers Ultimately, the mark of a gain an audience before still need to be assertive be able to implement, start to write. Actors true game designer is that, release. Even creating a and confident—or else no so developers should all act. Directors direct. given free time on some simple board game can one will ever take them ensure that the best ideas Young game designers random weekend, that improve one’s skills as seriously—but they also are pursued, regardless make games. If it’s a person will sneak in a few long as the designer can need to be humble enough of their origin. Indeed, passion—and it has to be hours of what he or she find a testing group to be able to see things as the origin of an idea is a passion to succeed— enjoys most—making a for feedback. they are, not how they wish usually forgotten; what is then designing games new game. them to be. remembered is who put in is something that you 5/ Be humble For aspiring designers, the hours to get it right. absolutely have to soren johnson was the » Personal humility is a of course, this rule counts do, not just want to do. A co-designer of Civilization III and key attribute for success double. Coming across as Should you be a true game designer cannot the lead designer of Civilization juan ramirez

in today’s game industry. A arrogant or too certain of designer? be stopped from IV. He is a member of the GDC Y B designer must accept that one’s ideas is a sure way » Finally, all aspiring game creating games. Advisory Board, and his thoughts

a majority of their ideas are to appear unready for the designers should answer Designing games is on game design can be found at TRATION S

not going to work. Indeed, job. Having a great idea that these simple questions: not the same thing as www.designer-notes.com. ILLU

www.gdmag.com 45

AURAL FIXATION // DAMIAN KASTBAUER

It’s Just a Jump to the Left Dynamic Animation Sound Now

The art of animation sound Can the mass or speed of the by Fallout 3, Mirror’s Edge, and The sound and position of these tagging in games has animated object change? several Prince of Persia titles, same feet can also wreak havoc in blossomed from single-sound among other games. certain situations―specifically when playback to a multilayered What perspective will the player This time manipulation is an in-game cinematic features feet mashup of dynamic sounds. have when hearing the sound? often reflected as a percentage moving up close. Imagine a scene of As game developers seek to variable plus or minus the normal the player’s feet moving stealthily match player interactions Should the sound be different playback speed of the game engine toward cover, or a cinematic that with ever-more-responsive when played indoors vs. or animations, and that variable is focuses on a player climbing a ladder, character representations, outdoors? often used (in addition to any other for example, you’ll immediately see sound is working toward the ______same dynamism. However, if we want sounds to take By leveraging dynamic aspects of in-game variables into account, the game and designing sounds that we’ll need to move the sound- can react accordingly, you can better authoring process out of the define your palette of animation- Digital Audio Workstation and based sounds and make sure the into the development pipeline, player feels your sound design is which means that you’ll need fresh, reactive, and diverse. to have a strong understanding Once your sounds are ready for of how these variables work so animations, you’ll need the ability you can pull your sound design to audition sounds within your together and make it sound animation tool to see how your like one cohesive whole. sound-animation interactions play Prince of Persia out in theory. Current-generation And Then a Step to the Right game development often depends specific audio mix-related changes) that sounds for explicit left- and right- » Fundamentally, a sound for an on a developer’s ability to iterate to pitch specific parts of the in-game foot positioning should be translated animation is played (or triggered) quickly toward a final result. In the sound in accordance with the to the correct speaker. This means based on a timing reference (either frame-to-frame immediacy of the timing change. That means that for that during animation tagging, you’ll seconds or frames) corresponding animation pipeline, this means animations playing back at a slower need to indicate the appropriate to the moment when the sound is you’ll need to play sounds from an speed, the sounds triggered via footstep sound and playback position intended to be heard, though how animation with different conditional animation often unfold under a sonic for a specific foot or foot bone. developers author this depends on combinations―such as footstep type microscope of detail that is usually their tools and pipeline. Sometimes, vs. surface type, spatial or positional undetected during normal playback. Let’s do the Time Warp Again this information is added as tags or considerations, and character or Depending on how you’ve designed » Our industry (and our audience) flags within an animation tool that outfit type, among others. your sound, this could be a very continues to demand more are then communicated from the good thing or a very bad thing. cinematic-looking games―which animation, and that animation tool Spaced Out on Sensation For example, when the player means more cinematic-sounding simply saves that information to a text » But the fun doesn’t stop there. is in control and able to creep games as well. Take advantage of file that tells the engine which sound Other game design elements can along at a snail’s pace, the need for your ability to tie your sound design file should play and when at runtime. expose different aspects of your separate heel and toe sounds can to the gameplay itself, and this Most of the time, playing a game’s animation pipeline―and thus, make or break the player’s feeling additional level of detail will help single sound is enough, but there its relation to sound. For example, of immersion during these highly your players favorably measure are a handful of regular in-game think about how your sounds would focused situations. Additionally, their in-game experiences against interactions that require additional play differently with factors like time there is always the possibility their out-of-game experiences. considerations: dilation, dynamic player movement of walk and run animations that speed, and extreme camera angles. “blend” from one to the other based “With a bit of a mind flip, you’re into Will the same animation be used You probably won’t ever forget on a parameter from the game the time slip, and nothing can ever with different characters, and the time you first saw the slow- defining the player’s speed. In be the same.” —The Rocky Horror if so, should the same animation motion bullet-time sequence in The these cases, the footstep sound Picture Show play different sounds? Matrix. The firstM ax Payne turned should ideally be exchanged when bullet-time (that is, the concept of the player transitions to a running Damian Kastbauer is a technical sound Should the sound change adjusting in-game playback speed) state in order to represent the design vagabond living out of a suitcase based on surface material or into a proper game mechanic increased impact of feet pounding at LostChocolateLab.com and is @lostlab clothing type? that we would later see echoed the pavement. on Twitter.

www.gdmag.com 47

THE THEBUSINESS BUSINESS // SANA // KIM N. PALLISTERCHOUDARY

TELL STORY, SELL GAME USING STORYTELLING TO CREATE BETTER PITCHES

In my role as the CEO of no numbers at all, leading instead the only game-focused with something generic like accelerator in the “We are a social mobile gaming business, I listen to a lot of company.” Both of these are pitches. Between pitches damaging to the pitch, since you from YetiZen applicants, have not presented something hopeful game developers novel or interesting about yourself at the YetiZen pitch or your team. competitions, hardcore When I point this out I hackers at hackathons, am often told: “We can’t share and game jams I judge internal company numbers—that or organize, I’d estimate is competitive information!” or I probably hear about a that “Our current numbers may thousand pitches a year. not be as good as those you are hearing thrown around by larger I learned early on that a poor pitch companies in the press. We need is not necessarily a mark of a poor investment to get there. Sharing entrepreneur. Pitching is a learned our numbers now will only make skill—and one that most talented us look bad.” If that’s the case, game entrepreneurs haven’t spent then you should... are clearly better than others. The the emotional moments in time perfecting. Because of this, type of story I recommend most the story. After all, nonverbal my team and I take signifi cant TELL ME A STORY for a pitch is the creation story. communication is 93 percent of all time to get to know the people » While the writing of numbers communication. (3) behind the pitch. In the last year has existed for over 40 thousand TELLING YOUR The mistake most alone we have had half- to one- years, the writing of language CREATION STORY entrepreneurs make after this hour conversations with a few has only been around for a little » A creation story is a story point is that they follow up by hundred potential entrepreneurs, over fi ve thousand years. (1) This that explains why you started talking about their product when many of whom were often rejected means that for the majority of your company. These stories are they should be using the story as a from the running by our fellow history, the way human beings generally characterized either by launching pad into compelling facts judges at pitch competitions. When communicated ideas and passed a painful moment, frustration, about the market. If you can show it comes to dealing with most them down from generation or a more positive and inspiring that the story applies not just to potential investors and publishers, through generation was through experience. Whichever you choose, you but many other customers like however, you won’t have that much oral storytelling. As a result, our it has to be followed by a deep you, you have effectively made the time to work with. If you want to brains have evolved to accept desire to create the reality of your leap from story to factual evidence. make your pitches more impactful and remember stories—our vision by forming your company. Only then can you delve into the in less time, you’ll need to start by very survival depended on it. For The key to an effective creation nitty-gritty of execution and your telling a story. other reasons on why stories story is that the listener must secret sauce. work please see my essay on understand the reason you formed There you have it. Try it out in STORIES WORK neuroscience and pitching (the your company at a core emotional your next few pitches. If you want » Most pitches I hear start out essay is not specifi cally on the level. You know you have hit this to talk about this further, you with either 1) market numbers use of stories, but many of the level if you see your audience know where to fi nd me. Do let me that are commonly known by neuroscience fundamentals apply respond with a “me too,” or “I get know how this ends up working those in the game industry, such to storytelling as well)(2). it!” or are otherwise intrigued and out for you! as the number of mobile games But before you start telling hooked by what you will say next. or the dollar value of the virtual stories all the time, keep in mind Note that this effect can SANA N. CHOUDARY is the CEO and goods market, or 2) by mentioning that not all stories are equal. Some be achieved with very few founder of YetiZen (www.yetizen.com), words. The length of your pitch which includes the YetiZen Innovation Lab footnotes is less important than the (a game-industry community space) and [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing_ancient_numbers use of appropriate emotional the games-focused YetiZen accelerator [2] http://yetizen.com/2012/07/04/avoid-nude-beach-pitches/ punctuation—use pauses, program. You can follow her and YetiZen at [3] http://humanresources.about.com/od/ interpersonalcommunicatio1/a/ silence, volume, and other yetizen.com/blog/ or ask her a question nonverbal_com.htm gestural mechanics to transmit on Twitter at @SanaOnGames.

WWW.GDMAG.COM 49 GAMEINSERT PLAN CREDIT // BRANDON // BRANDON SHEFFIELD SHEFFIELD

HOW DO YOU RECAPTURE VINTAGE MAGIC ON MODERN TOUCH DEVICES?

One of my current game projects is a 16-bit arcade-style racer for mobile In less-successful games, having too much devices, which puts me in the position of trying to marry an older aesthetic inertia in a platformer or imprecise hit boxes with newer input methods and design. Along the way, I’ve been playing in a beat-em-up ruins an otherwise enjoyable (and watching videos of) lots of games from the era, to try to catch hold experience. We see this comparison today, where of the vibe, while also seeing what works in modern times. Through the games like SUPER CRATE BOX on iOS have simple process, I’ve found there’s a lot that can be learned from what’s good and controls (left, right, jump, and shoot) that at fi rst what’s bad about older games. feel imprecise, but have a quick learning curve, and ultimately inform better play. This works because the environments are static, single- HOLISTIC DESIGN dressings, which live as billboards along those screen, and easy to navigate. You don’t need to » With older games, graphical techniques were a horizontal lines. This emulates the approach of wall-hop or do anything complex—just jump, land lot less sophisticated (in certain ways—I will still the older games, but is done for every scanline, on a platform that you know is always there, jump never understand how those assembly wizards since modern hardware is much more powerful. over an enemy, and shoot. On the other hand, managed to create THE ADVENTURES OF BATMAN While this may not wind up being our fi nal there are games that try to be full-on platform AND ROBIN on Genesis hardware). Because of approach, it’s interesting to see how neither game experiences, with triangle jumps and fl oor this simplicity and unity of hardware, you could fully old nor fully new approaches work perfectly stomps, and I’ve yet to see a one that didn’t create a game that felt completely self-contained when recreating the vintage look on new devices. frustrate me into wishing I had an actual controller. from start to fi nish, from its menus to its music. The main lesson here is that with a smaller The lesson here is to make sure your Everything was being drawn in the same way game, we have an excellent opportunity to control method informs your design. The simple by the same part of the hardware, there was create a product that looks very integrated and environments in SUPER CRATE BOX are a good usually just one sound chip, and the hardware’s internally consistent, but it can be challenging example of this. With scrolling and complex jumps, limitations often guided what could and couldn’t because newer techniques make it easier to the game just wouldn’t work as well as it does. be done. In many modern titles, the variety of create something that looks almost as good but Another great example is SUPER HEXAGON, which is shaders, textures, and lighting arrangements sacrifi ces that holistic feel. It’s actually tougher a twitchy, hardcore game that only lets you rotate that are possible make it tougher to keep menus, to do it the old way! left or right. It’s precise and accurate, meaning characters, text, and environments feeling like whenever you die, you know it’s your fault. they’re 100 percent part of the same world. For a retro game on modern hardware, this THAT OLD-SCHOOL FEELING ERRANIA -T

gets more interesting. For my racing game, it UB » More important than anything else is the would be far easier to create a 3D road—but S old-school vibe. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly how would that fi t with our pixelated cars and triggers that particular feeling in a player, but backgrounds? If you look at FINAL FREEWAY 2R on there are some common threads in the more iOS and Android, the 3D road feels very smooth successful older games. compared to a proper 16-bit approach, and the ability to can’t the camera as you turn makes Pattern learning through failure the pixels of the cars behave in odd ways as it Most good vintage games show you how to rotates in hardware instead of being redrawn. succeed by showing you how you can fail. That’s clearly what they’re going for—they’ve Missing jumps, knowing that spikes show up over used a variety of techniques to try to emulate FLOATY CONTROL red pits but not blue ones, realizing you can duck that old look, but for my purposes it can’t match » You’d be surprised how many of those old 16- to escape enemy fi re—these were the teaching the dirty, sketchy roads in ROAD RASH II on bit games that we remember as being so sharp methods of old. (And when you die, it’s back Genesis hardware, which make you feel like the and precise actually had rather fi ddly controls. to the start of the level with you.) It might feel road is the game. In good games like SUB-TERRANIA on the Sega slightly unfair the fi rst time, but usually if you’re Our current road approach is to slice the Genesis this was purposeful, and part of the quick enough, you can learn the pattern as it’s screen into small horizontal chunks, and as the challenge. Your ship was hard to control and had happening without too much actual punishment. camera moves forward, it looks for new chunks a lot of inertia, but was incredibly quick to turn, This kind of approach to learning and to render. This includes small bits of road, but meaning if you got used to the unique playstyle, diffi culty has fallen out of favor in modern also spaces out our sideline environmental you could master it. games, which have frequent checkpoints and

50 GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2012 insert credit // BRANDON SHEFFIELD

variable skill levels for casual players. But I think the hardcore nature of these older games contributes a substantially retro vibe, and as games like Super Crate Box, Super Hexagon, and Super Meat Boy prove, good control plus punishing difficulty and pattern learning can really engage players, even today. (Also, adding “Super” to your game title boosts sales.) Repetition bonds you with a product—that’s why kids still learn SAT words with flash cards. We remember the games from our childhood so well in part because we had to play through them so many times in order to beat them.

Distinctive music Many games these days (especially in the triple-A space) give music the backseat, and choose to let it linger in the background without major melodic hooks. may inform your players’ preferences; I’m a Uncharted 3, or an interesting poster in Call Super Mario Bros.’s music particular fan of sticky, inertia-free jumps in of Duty, but a better example would be Halo’s was fantastic because platforming and action games, but with flight or hidden, hard-to-reach cavemen. In the arcade it added ragtime to an driving games, I like a bit of wiggle room. racer Outrun 2, when you stay at the starting action game. Streets of line instead of driving off with your peers, the

Rage 3, composed by Easter eggs 3. flag waver will do stretches, breakdance, and alo

Motohiro Kawashima, One thing that is more H a host of other actions while you wait. There’s is an early study in difficult to represent no reason to do this—95 percent of players will progressive, experimental electronica. The in larger games is the never see it—but that kind of dedication to the unexpected sounds give these games an edge. little subtle nuances world really helps make it feel alive, and gives that made 16-bit the player a great feeling of discovery. Appropriate control games so charming. As previously hinted, precision isn’t necessarily Hidden paths and Retro future the hallmark of good control, but the control secrets in these living worlds led to a great » For the last decade or so, retro-inspired method has to be appropriate for the game. There feeling of discovery. In Bonk’s Revenge for the developers have pondered what makes these were six buttons (eight if you include select and TurboGrafx-16, enemies on a ship cook food and games feel the way they do. Ultimately, the vibe pause) on the SNES controller, but you didn’t wander about if you leave them alone. Sure, may come down to individual nostalgia—what have to use them all. Also, your game’s genre you’ll find a developer’s face in a portrait in resonates with that game’s director? To rekindle that feeling myself, I’ve been playing Genesis and TurboGrafx games daily, and encouraging my team to do that as frequently as they can as well. It’s been immensely informative, and I can’t recommend this enough for anyone trying to make a retro title. I don’t know if we’ll be successful in taking that vintage vibe and bringing it into the future, but the learning process is already showing me how much vintage titles have to teach about present and future games.

Brandon Sheffield is director of Oakland, California–based Necrosoft Games, and editor emeritus of Game .

ox Developer magazine. He has worked B on over a dozen titles, and is currently rate

C developing two small-team games for uper

S PlayStation Mobile.

www.gdmag.com 51 News and information about the Game Developers Conference® series of Events www.gdcONF.com

GDC NEXT, APP DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE COME TO L.A. IN 2013

The organizers of Game GDC Next and the App to present their best practices to Developers Conference (GDC) Developers Conference will debut attendees. have announced a brand-new as a co-located event at the Los Attendees will be able to sign event, featuring two market- Angeles Convention Center from up individually for the GDC Next leading conferences and a shared November 5-7, 2013. 2013 and ADC 2013 conferences expo floor, debuting in Los Angeles GDC Next focuses on what’s (November 5-7, 2013) or attend in November 2013. next in smartphone and tablet, both at a discounted price. Game Developers Conference social, independent, cloud, and The shared expo floor for the Next will be the reimagined other major forms of games. two shows will be open to all successor to GDC Online, whose Whether you’re a designer, From the creators of GDC, ADC attendees on November 5 and 6. final iteration took place in programmer, architect, producer, is a brand-new event focusing on For further information, please Austin this year from October artist, marketer, businessperson, the very best development, UI, visit the GDC Next website (www. 9-11. Meanwhile, App Developers or all of the above, the new show marketing, and business of apps. gdcnext.com) or the ADC landing Conference (ADC) is a brand-new will prove vital to making great Organizers will be recruiting the page (www.adconf.com). (GDC event dedicated to key takeaways in games and making money in the very best app creators, whether Next and ADC are owned and app technology, creation, business, most vibrant new areas of the they be on mobile devices, the operated by UBM TechWeb, as is and marketing outside of gaming. game industry. web, or beyond, and getting them Game Developer.) GDC CHINA 2012 ADDS BEJEWELED BLITZ, ZOMBIE GUNSHIP SMARTPHONE TALKS

The growing session lineup for this Managing Teams, Customer a handful of additional talks in November’s GDC China in Shanghai Relationships, Cloud Servers, the Smartphone & Tablet Summit, is quickly gaining steam, and the and 97 Other Things to Handle Main Conference sessions from show’s organizers have revealed Growth.” During this session, Volition and Naughty Dog, and three new talks in the Smartphone Mostafavi will examine Limbic much more. More information on & Tablet Games Summit. titles like TowerMadness, Nuts!, any of these sessions is available This time, these new sessions and Zombie Gunship, and will detail on the “Announced Sessions” include an examination of PopCap’s the technical and operational page on the official GDC China Bejeweled Blitz, a case study from challenges the studio faced as website (www.gdcchina.com). Limbic Software on the challenges its games began to grow. It’ll Be sure to keep an eye out for of mobile game growth, and Appy be a great chance to learn from even more updates on GDC China Entertainment on pivoting from Limbic’s experience and gain a in the weeks ahead, as show “premium to freemium” in the better understanding of how to organizers have plenty more to smartphone space. deal with rapid changes in scale. announce for the upcoming event. As part of the Smartphone Finally, Appy Entertainment For all the latest information on & Tablet Games Summit, these brand director Paul O’Connor GDC China, visit the show’s official sessions will run alongside the (SpellCraft School of Magic, Trucks website, or subscribe to regular rest of GDC China from November Bejeweled Blitz made the jump & Skulls) will present “Premium to updates via Facebook, Twitter, or 17-19 at the Shanghai Convention from Facebook to iOS, and became Freemium: Pivoting Monetization RSS. (GDC China is owned and Center in Shanghai, China, and will one of the platform’s most long- Method for Best-Selling Apps,” operated by UBM TechWeb, as is offer specialized content covering lasting success stories. Along the detailing how his studio “converted Game Developer.) the ins and outs of mobile game way, he’ll explain how other cross- two best-selling premium apps development. platform social game developers to freemium monetization and The full details on these new can emulate that success by increased their audience, grew Summit sessions are as follows: combining smart game design, their revenue, and made the games In “Bejeweled Blitz: One Year data analysis, and more. better in the process.” in the Life of a Top-Grossing Mobile Elsewhere, Limbic Software These talks join a number Game,” PopCap’s Giordano Bruno cofounder Iman Mostafavi will of other previously announced

Contestabile will discuss how host “Getting Out of the Garage: sessions for GDC China, including Conference Develoeprs courtesy of Game and LACCPhotos brochure.

52 game developer | november 2012 hiring news and interviews Hired someone interesting? Let us know at [email protected]! good job

whowhowentwhere went Designing A Whole New where? Type of Health Meter Game designer Derek Manning talks transition to health-care industry

Over the past few years, game designer Derek Manning has transitioned from crafting Tomb Raider levels to designing health and well-being apps at ORCAS, a 20-year-old health-care business that is now developing photo courtesy game developers conference of photo increasingly gamelike interactive health apps. We checked in with Derek to chat about developing games at what might be termed a nontraditional game company.

Alexandra Hall: What does company versus the time we started to see a few health- /// After 20 years with the company, Cliff it feel to leave triple-A have and try to create the related games, such as Wii Bleszinski (above) has resigned from Epic development? best look and experience for Fit or Your Health, but most Games. No word on what he’ll do next, Derek Manning: It was quite the user for each project. of them are solely focused other than move on to the “next stage of the transition. I think the on the exercise aspect. There his career.” biggest change was the shift AH: Were there any health- are many other ways of in demographic. Working related skill prereqs for this improving your quality of life /// BioWare cofounders Greg Zeschuk on a game like Tomb Raider job class? that we are just now seeing and Ray Muzyka have departed the RPG or Legions gave us certain DM: Yes, but more for my own products tackle. giant five years after its acquisition by expectations about the knowledge and benefit rather EA. Neither have announced further player’s skill level, and than any requirements from AH: Do you have a different game-related plans, though Zeschuk will you can make a lot of the company. I try to keep attitude about your work be pursuing a long-standing passion for assumptions. When it came up on the latest research on now that you’re making craft beers. to Facebook, there was such health and happiness in order games that aim to concretely a different crowd that for the to create products that will improve your players’ lives? /// Former CBS TV executive Nancy Tellem most part you couldn’t really have the biggest impact. DM: My degree is actually is heading up a new studio at Microsoft, make any judgments about in psychology. I was going which will focus on creating “storytelling the experience levels of your to school to become a experiences for the Xbox brand.” The recent user. A lot of them may have psychologist before I Kinect Nat Geo TV and Kinect Sesame Street just started playing games for switched to working in TV are two early results of this new direction. the first time on Facebook. the game industry. Ever Another big change since I was little I have /// Two more executives have resigned from was the smaller production wanted to help people to be social games giant Zynga. Infrastructure cycles. You usually have healthier, both mentally and CTO Allan Leinwand and chief marketing a couple years at least to physically. ORCAS provides and revenue officer Jeff Karp join COO John produce a big-budget console an amazing opportunity for Schappert and vice presidents Bill Mooney title, but Facebook games me to merge my knowledge and Brian Birtwistle, among others. only grant you maybe six to of gaming with the science nine months. However, the literature to make fun, upward trend in the quality of enjoyable products that Facebook games has that gap make life better. It’s great! new studios slowly closing. AH: Do you think we’ll start seeing more crossover AH: Has working at a health- /// Microsoft has created a new studio AH: How do your prior level- between the game and focused company changed that will focus on content for Windows 8 design skills apply to your health-care industries? your own self-care habits? tablets. The London-based developers, led current projects? DM: I think that very soon DM: Not surprisingly, it has. by ex-Rare staffer Lee Schuneman, will DM: The focus of your job we’re going to see a lot Most of the people here focus on the concept of “entertainment as is really the same, and that more gaming companies lead very active lives. We a service.” is making sure that you’re entering into the health even have an ultrarunner creating a fun experience field. Over the recent years on the game team. Being in /// Epic Games is opening a new studio in for the user. It’s all about our methods of engagement this kind of health-centered Seattle. As of this writing, the new studio looking at what you have with users has increased environment has definitely is currently unnamed and is in the early to work with. I used to look dramatically with things made me exercise more. stages of organizing and staffing. at the mechanics available such as the Wii, Kinect, in a given game and then tablets, smartphones, and AH: What’s your #1 health tip /// Mobile/social developer Mediatonic has try to weave those in a fun, devices like the FitBit. These for fellow game designers? opened a new studio in Brighton, England. unique manner for each level. are allowing endless new DM: Get a standing desk at The company plans to hire as many as 50 Now I look at the different possibilities for merging work. It does wonders for new positions over the next year. resources available in our games with health. We’ve your back!

www.gdmag.com 53 STUDENT game PROFILES educated play!

Of Light & Shadow http://oflightandshadow.at/ Of Light & Shadow is the game debut of 12 Angry Devs, developed over 18 months by a group of game design students at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. OL&S weaves puzzles into its platforming by letting the player switch between two characters, one of whom can only exist in light, and another who needs to lurk in shadows. We checked in with 12 Angry Devs (a misnomer on several fronts) to chat about the dev process, working with Unity, and making games in Austria.

Alexandra Hall: How did the Of developing a game engine. Unity is 12AD: As with other teams we Developer: 12 Angry Devs Light & Shadow project come to also an engine that can actually be know of, light and consequently Release date: 06/06/12 be? Were you all students? used by nonprogrammers as well shadows are amongst a set of core Development time: Roughly 18 12 Angry Devs: It started with (to a certain extent, anyway). The mechanics and gameplay ideas months, not full time eight MultiMediaArt students who editor works in a similar fashion that are obviously quite popular. Development budget: Just enough for wanted to create a game as part to 3D animation packages, so That being said, we think we didn’t Chinese takeout (seriously, we had no budget) of their MA course. They started our artists were able to integrate take an all-too-obvious approach A fun fact: In one of our levels the girl brainstorming, came up with the assets and build levels quite to that particular concept and of The Balloon Quest floats around in core mechanics, and pitched the easily. This of course helped us a iterated several times on the idea the background. Also, one of the first project to the programmers at lot with our workflow, because the of platforming combined with mechanics for Dr. Shadow was the MultiMediaTechnology. Four of programmers could focus on actual lights and shadows. Originally, Mr. ability to “flip” as seen inVVVVVV . Team members: Florian Jindra, Michael them jumped on board—and thus programming instead of integrating Light and Dr. Shadow would have Fuchs, Markus Huber, Martin Kenzel, we were “12 Angry Devs.” assets or tweaking values. been two separate characters Martin Klappacher, Vinzenz Mayrhofer, We started building a A downside of Unity (and with unique abilities and played in Sophie Müller, Clemens Stangl, Patrick prototype in March 2011, and its ease of use) is that if the turns, so you can see we’re quite Topf, Stefan Wiesenegger, Michael Kenzel, Manuel Hoffmann, Vedad Siljak, after that iterated regularly on engine doesn’t support a certain far off with the final gameplay now. Andreas Stallinger, Michael Webersdorfer the results. In January 2012 we feature (like a specific rendering Early in development we started had our first finished level, and technique, for example), you have to build a playable prototype and in June we released the game little chance of implementing it into constantly kept playing around with shader-based approach. with seven levels. Recently, we’ve the engine. We had this problem the mechanics, filtering out the fun Another tough nut to crack added more difficult versions of early on when we wanted to render parts of play, and cutting everything was the movement of the Dr. these levels to the game—and some dynamic volumetric lighting. that wasn’t fun in our point of view. Shadow character. Mr. Light has a we’re currently considering the But eventually we managed to pretty traditional movement, but possibility to apply for Steam work around these limitations by AH: Did you run into any Dr. Shadow needed to be able to walk Greenlight, using the resulting using some shader trickery. particularly tricky problems on walls and ceilings, to stick to and “deluxe version” of the game. These issues aside, we felt during the development process? to drop off those level parts. We had that Unity was pretty much the 12AD: The visualization of the a long and tough time of tweaking AH: Did you like working with way to go within a setting such as light cones was one issue that and adjusting the abilities of Dr. Unity? ours; you just have to be aware of kept us busy for quite some time. Shadow to make it work within the 12AD: The Unity engine offers a lot its limitations in advance. We experimented with several setting and for each level specifically. of functionality out of the box. That’s approaches like volumetric lighting something really useful if you care AH: How’d you come up with the and manipulating meshes, but AH: What’s the dev scene like more about developing a game than light/dark game mechanic? in the end decided to go with a in Austria? Are there many opportunities? 12AD: A lot of student projects Of Light And Shadow. are produced at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg because there are art and programming courses for game development. There is not a huge gaming industry in Austria, only a couple of companies that are mostly based in Vienna. So quite a few of the students end up going abroad to work after they graduate. Of course, we hope that this is going to change in the coming years because of all the young game development graduates who might to try to build up their own company. And Yet It Moves developer Broken Rules actually started this way, and more of that is sure to happen.

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WWW.GDMAG.COM 55 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT // MATTHEW WASTELAND & magnus underland

The Real Hollywood Mojo Getting better voice acting in your games

If you’re reading this magazine, you know that video games have surpassed Hollywood in emotional depth, breadth of subject matter, relevance, and, most importantly, revenue (take that, Ebert!). But if there is one area left where games might not yet totally be the equal of the motion picture, it is acting. And I should know! That’s the very stuff I deal with for a living as a voiceover director in the video game industry.

Yes, even though voiceover [recording begins] “...Great. Okay. recording has been greatly Now, you’re dying from a blunt improved by today’s technological instrument to your abdomen, even developments (motion capture, text- though you had a ‘Flesh to Iron’ spell to-speech technology, and so on), cast at the time. But it’s the ‘Flesh there’s still room for improvement. to Iron’ learned from the trainer near Great performances have always the SkyVessel docks, not the trainer been a hallmark of movies (who near the old guard tower that was could forget that orc who runs at burned in the Crisis of Hellistria Helm’s Deep’s drainage culvert in riots. So you’re kind of, like, sad, but The Two Towers?)—but they haven’t also angry at the same time. But always been a hallmark of games. still dying—the dying is important. Thankfully, the game industry’s The player needs to feel the dying. plan to win at every point-by-point Again.” [recording ends] comparison to Hollywood doesn’t have to be stymied by the unfamiliar Note how I’ve expertly woven in terms and methods of the art and the vital contextual information science of acting. With a few simple that the actor needs to hear while tips from yours truly, you’ll be able still focusing on the outcomes. to get the voices in your game (or Directing is no easy task, but that’s the “VO,” as we folks in the know like why directors are famous and get to call it) at a level where IGN will that make people sound different, understand what’s going on in the paid so much (except for me (just be hailing it as worthy of a dozen anyway. They have dials and knobs game. How are gamers going to be kidding (Bobby! Call me!!))). Oscars and Academy Awards! that can make someone sound like a able to understand the difference zombie or a pirate, or even a zombie between pre-Empire Maldichori That’s a Wrap Tips for Indies pirate ghost! GuardWalkers and post-Empire » I could talk forever describing » You’re probably thinking, “Hey, Oh, yeah: Don’t forget that Maldichori GuardStalkers if the more tips and tricks—like how to we can’t afford voice acting. you need a computer with a actress playing the Academician save time by making new lines We’re indies!” But it doesn’t have microphone. Most laptops have one who explains the difference can’t out of the ones you’ve already to cost anything if you’re clever built in these days. explain it herself? You know? recorded, how to navigate those and resourceful enough. Think After you’ve walked your arcane union rules, even the subtle about how everyone on the team Tips for Pros actress through the nuances differences between “grunts,” already has a voice. Can they can » In most cases the approach of the different societies, “exertions,” “exclamations,” and read words on a page and then above will work wonders, but if political systems, histories, and “heaves”—but it looks like we’re speak them? Well, that’s all a you’re big shots and rolling in mythologies of your game world, out of time for today. Look for my “professional” voice actor does, money (call me, Mr. Kotick! I can you’ll begin to really “direct” her as upcoming seminar to be held in the really, when you get down to it. help you!), you might think about she acts. Now, directing is truly a Activision headquarters parking lot! Now think about all the different hiring some professionals. Working mysterious art. I have been doing If anyone sees Bobby walking by, voices you have access to. It may with actors can be intimidating at it for over three months now and I let me know! seem at first like most of your first—you’ve probably heard all daresay I still don’t understand all characters will have to be young about how they make millions of of it. Some people think it consists matthew Wasteland writes about white males. But wait! Surely you’ve dollars, have temper tantrums on of sitting in a folding chair and games and game development on got a couple of guys on staff who the set, and make weird demands. yelling “Cut!” every so often, but his blog, Magical Wasteland (www. ez r love to do hilarious voices. Ask for a But a little confidence can go a nothing could be further from the magicalwasteland.com). email him at i m Sean Connery or Werner Herzog and long way to coaxing that perfect truth: It is highly engaged, active, [email protected]. uan Ra

J let diversity fly! (I suppose those guttural outburst from a star’s and exhausting work.

ion: ion: examples are also white males, vocal chords. By way of an example, I Magnus underland writes about games t a tr but hey, you get the idea, right?) The director’s first job is present a transcript from one of and other topics at www.above49.ca. email

illus Audio programs often have features to make sure the actors really my most recent sessions. him at [email protected].

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