Saturday, March 13, 2010

Operation: Get a Job at GDC (part 1)


I went to GDC on Saturday with the intent to talk to some developers, show my portfolio, and get a general sense of what I need for a level design position. Here's what went down and what I thought of it:

A student pass is $75 USD and gets you onto the main expo floor. It's kind of a rip-off. I mean, if your goal is to wait in line for 20 minutes to play the newest Call of Honor or Medal of Duty or whatever, it's great...

But for me, I wanted to talk to developers at the "Career Center," a shadowy set of booths relegated to the side of the show floor... and there were maybe 5-10 studios there, at most, who were interested and willing to talk to students. The rest of it was a bunch of schools, both the reputable (Art Institute, Digipen, Guildhall) and the less reputable diploma mills (Digital Academy of Arts or whatever they call themselves). These "career enhancers" took up 60-70% of the floor. It was some lame and misleading advertising on the GDC's part to say that "40 companies" or something were gonna be there.

But still, shit went down. I visited some booths. Here's how a typical exchange goes:
Me: Hi, my name is _______.
Them: Hey, I'm ________.
Me: Are you hiring for any level design positions? [Shows CV.]
Them: Well... not entry-level. [Hands back CV.]
Me: Oh.
Them: But here, take my card, and watch our website for openings.
Me: Alright... Thanks for your time.
... Which is fine. I expected that. With all these developers closing down, good talent getting fired, competition is only going to get worse for people trying to break-in like me. "It's a buyer's market" as they say. But I had a few interesting moments... here's how they went:

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Liner Notes: Polaris and how it works


SPOILER ALERT: "Liner Notes" discuss levels in Radiator. You should play Radiator first -- or if you don't care, read on.

Polaris began in an "introduction to astronomy" course, when we were assigned to go stargazing. Generally in the United States, the easiest constellations to find are Orion and the Big Dipper. With the Big Dipper, you can easily find Polaris, which points north.

My first instinct was to create a giant forest and see if the player can navigate a foreign landscape using Polaris. So that's what I prototyped.


... It didn't really work out.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Radiator 1-3 trailer up + thoughts on NPCs

I hate the "media release" practice endemic to the mod community -- periodic spurts of weapon renders and half-baked concept art. Yes, it's what the big professionals do, with ShackNews copy-and-pasting press releases and screenshots. But a mod has more important things to worry about -- like releasing something playable. That said, I guess I'm somewhat of a hypocrite, because here's a trailer for the upcoming episode of Radiator:



My intention with the trailer was three-fold: to show that this is a Different Kind of Mod, yet also to warn people that if they didn't like the trailer then they probably won't like the mod. And lastly, to introduce and emphasize the two main characters -- James and Dylan.

The style is derived (almost directly) from the technical limitations of recording movies in Source on my computer: the sound almost always de-syncs drastically when I record, so I never use the in-game sound. Instead, I fool around with the FOV and record short clips in the maps. It's interesting what happens when you just let the camera film an NPC for a minute, they do things you wouldn't really expect. For instance, the brief shot of the therapists' office when they're both looking out the window and then they look at each other? Totally unscripted and weird. I wonder if the AI is programmed to do that in its idle routines? Or was it just a happy coincidence?

People will always cite the robustness of the physics implementation as Half-Life 2's main strength and innovation, but I think it's actually the dramatic capacity of the NPCs. We treat them less as blocks with guns and a health value, but rather as an actual actor: where they look, we look. Much like how we assume in most FPS games that shooting at the ground won't deform it, we expect NPCs not to react to our playing. But Alyx covers her eyes as you shine the flashlight at her -- that makes so much sense, yet I don't think any other FPS game (with a flashlight) did that at the time.

What if shooting a gun near Alyx makes her cover her ears? What if Alyx avoids walking through puddles? There's an entire universe of human expression, untapped right there. Okay, we might bridge the visual uncanny valley in our lifetime, yes -- but what about the uncanny valley of behavior? It's about 5.98 billion miles wide.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

What is Design? (Level Design Course, Week 1)


(This is taken from the first day lecture notes for my "Video Game Level Design" course. The goal was to introduce level design as merely a subset of larger field of design, emphasizing that people have shaped the clothes / packaging / built environment around us and how level design reflects our world.)

What is design?

You hear the word thrown around a lot: fashion design, web design, interior design, graphic design, urban design, industrial design... and game design. What do all these fields have in common? They all focus on users, their behavior and how to influence that behavior -- whether it's to get more clicks or to reduce crime or to get you to buy another cheeseburger. People will use a thing depending on how we make it work.

At the supermarket, where are the daily staples -- stuff like milk and eggs -- usually found? In the back of the store, right? But to get to that delicious quart of low-fat white gold, you'll have to walk through another aisle -- oh, look, cereal! Cookies! Did I mention you brought your kid with you? Your kid wants some of that Killing Floor Krunch or Chocolate Zombies or whatever. It'd go great with your milk. By putting your goal in a distant area, supermarkets entice you with all this other crap and influence your purchasing and spending habits.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

So... What Does a Non-Interactive Video Game Look Like?

I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Hypertext.

But first, let's back up here: Lewis Denby issued his response in what Kieron Gillen termed an "experimental modder knife fight" -- and now, by virtue of being American and having been indoctrinated by a national myth that idolizes the "underdog," I too am also interested in side-stepping the debate of who's better because I've already won, so now I'm wondering about the same question that Denby's wondering: how can you have video game-like elements without incurring all those pesky expectations of a video game?

In discussing Increpare's "Home" and Tale of Tales' "The Graveyard," the always eloquent Emily Short analyzes such "non-interactive" art games...

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Implied Player



So while complaining about "Post Script" and the like, it struck me that these mods heavily rely on a certain notion of an "implied player" -- the ideal player, the one who won't mind walking across long stretches of terrain and who will listen to every voice over and read every note and ponder the deep meaning of everything. (I wish I could do this, but usually when I play I'm trying to pick everything apart.)

The closest comparison that I can think of is how literary criticism has held the notion of an "implied author" and "implied reader" for some time now...

Friday, January 8, 2010

The Game Industry is Dangerously Misunderstood

I was linked to a recent fluff piece by NPR in which they catalog the entire state of the video game industry by (a) profiling one of the largest, most successful developers, (b) taking some misleading stats from a press kit at the ESA, and (c) getting a 10 word sound bite from a professor at CMU. Riiiight.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Mod Auteurs: Adam Foster (Cargo Cult)



Adam "Cargo Cult" Foster. The man behind MINERVA: Metastasis. If modders were celebrities, he'd be the most famous. Men want to be him and women... uh, and men want to be him! His work is smart, literary, and quite playable. He was courted by Valve to go work for them. He has intelligent things to say about everything.

First, the man made some Doom 2 WADs or something. I think? Whatever. It's not important. (Just kidding; everything he does is important. I just don't know anything about them.)

Then in the years 19XX-2001, he started working on Parallax for Half-Life 1, of which we have 2 beta maps floating around the internet somewhere. Even though it's only 2 BSPs, you can already see Adam's emerging style: giant sprawling maps with sizable outdoor areas, interconnected, neatly constructed...