Games: technical or creative?

1
Games technical or creative?

• 1 Games are technical
• Technical support costs everyone money
• Many games platforms have technical standards
• Same development tools as everyone else
• Development logistics inevitably gets technical
• 2 Games are creative
• Duplicate an existing game, and youll sell 0
  copies
• Like books/films/music, constant need to innovate
• Layout of a game forms an implicit language

2
The Technical-Creative Hinterland

• 3 Games are technical-creative
• Devise solutions to hard technical problems
• Consoles arent expandable, so have hard
  constraints
• but games need to improve year on year!
• PCs arent much better - a viciously competitive
  market
• So a constant supply of technical innovations
  needed!
• 4 Games are creative-technical
• Technical constraints restrict creative
  expression
• memory, speed, tools all act as glass ceilings
• 3d modelling needs to work with existing tools
• These limitations do not kill us, they make us
  strong!

3
Observations-

• So, Creative and Technical are not either/or...
• ...but are separate interacting dimensions.
• Many other dimensions of expression, including-
• Tactile/Input
• Interactivity/Responsiveness
• Story/Backstory
• Milieu/Genre
• Licence/Brand - using or originating
• Financial
• Publicity/Promotional
• etc

4
Technical reuse vs Creative reuse 1

• Technical reuse Design Pattern!
• Pros-
• Excellent for team-working - teams are larger now
• Our previous project needed 5 core, now needs 10
• Best for new architecture - reengineering is
  painful
• Some Antipatterns you cant fix, regardless of
  resources
• Cons-
• Not a magic bullet!
• Needs collaborative framework good
  communication
• Only a short-term fix 0-5years, then will be
  orthodoxy
• Long-term complexity curve will kill us all all
  our tools
• Engines need to be reinvented every few years
• Techniques have appropriate life-spans
• We should be sensitive to the time-scale of reuse

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Technical reuse vs Creative reuse 2

• Creative reuse quotation/cliché/plagiarism!
• Pros-
• Developing an implicit visual language is a major
  issue!
• Visual expression help make games a rich
  experience
• Cons-
• Seen it / Done it biggest criticism of games
• 1 Antipattern!
• Using someone elses visual language is
  plagiarism!

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Technical reuse vs Creative reuse 3

• Conclusions-
• Engineering and innovation interact
• ...often bringing conflicting interests to the
  table
• The two overlap in a technical/creative
  hinterland
• where reuse is a very double-edged sword
• The two need managing in separate ways
• Different type of risks, different type of
  activities
• Where they overlap, what is your strategy?
• Prioritise? Integrate? Infight? Thrash?

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Tales from the Hinterland 1

• Design Patterns aggressively anti-innovation
• So are they applicable to content integration?
• Users know when media reuse content
• Films are often the worst offenders
• Music too has ultra-short-term bandwagons
• Games take longer than most CDs and films!
• Was 9 months, now is 18 months and rising
• Difficult to build in innovation over long period
• Long-term development, but short-term sales
• Development lengthening, shelf-life shortening
• Obviously theres a bit of a paradox going on
  here

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Tales from the Hinterland 2

• Similar structural problem with middleware
• (My company sells a middleware movie player)
• You pay licence fees for technical reuse
• But this locks you into a particular process
• So youre paying money not to innovate
• High risk when innovation is part of your
  business!
• Antipathy towards middleware is natural
• Design patterns are collaboration middleware
• they just happen to be free (well GoF
  49.95).
• Less development risk ! less publishing risk

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Tales from the Hinterland 3

• Innovation ! Perceived Innovation
• Innovation can be promoted, regardless of size
• A small innovation is now as saleable as a large
  one
• Many end up as bullet-points on unsold boxes
• The illusion of novelty is the story of the 90s
• See 95 of Internet companies, for example
• Overlap of technical and promotional dimensions
• Spin is the new rocknroll, allegedly
• Games have become areas of dense spin

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Development perspective...

• Games are becoming like movies
• Comparable budgets and time-scales
• Involving the work of many professions/talents
• Art/Music/Design/Animation... Content, for
  short
• Integrate well to get more than the sum of the
  parts
• Integration used to be the programmers work
• Back then, it was assembly rather than
  integration
• Integration is the same, but with more bugs
• Now we have specialist jobs devoted to
  integration
• Producers, Content Engineers, and Level Designers
• Content engineering is as risky as software
  engineering
• The rest of this is about Level Designers.

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Level Design Patterns 1

• (and about time too)
• 3d Level Design is halfway between-
• software development (GoF territory) and
• architecture (Christopher Alexander territory)
• so (like me) youd think it would benefit from
  Design Patterns. I have three words for this-
• Wrong
• Dead wrong!

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Level Design Patterns 2

• Most Design Patterns we identified were-
• 1. Deep storytelling patterns (AKA Heros
  Journey)
• Allegedly deriving from myths and legends
• Joseph Campbell The Hero With A Thousand Faces
• 2. Overused pre-existent motifs (AKA cliches)
• 3. Pre-existent structural problems (AKA gotchas)
• 4. Ways to get it really wrong (AKA bad design)
• The Heros Journey is as close to a Design
  Pattern as we got.
• All the others are basically Antipatterns.

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1. Storytelling Design Patterns 1

• Some well-known examples-
• Hero / Shadow / Threshold Guardian
• Functions played by people/elements within the
  story
• Roles can be duplicated, overlapped, or shared
• Character Arcs
• The idea that each participant should develop
• Should be comprehensible from each point of view
• Call to Adventure / Return With The Prize
• Functions for the overall arc of the story
• Again, lots of overlap possible

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1. Storytelling Design Patterns 2

• The Hero With A Thousand Faces set of ideas has
  now virtually taken over Hollywood
• Many similarities with Design Patterns
• Disney were (supposedly) first to use this
• cf Christopher Voglers The Writers Journey
• However-
• Screenplays are now utterly formalised
• a lot like 3-Act 120-page haiku
• Just as many bad films coming out as ever!
• Many analogies to spread of Design Patterns!

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2. Overused motifs...

• An example Crate Puzzles
• You need to give the player an item...
• A self-timed goo bomb, or whatever
• but you dont want to make it too obvious...
• Sitting around on the floor is a bit cheesy
• ie, thats what we were doing two years ago
• so you stick it in a crate for them to blow up
• This puzzle has been done to death
• Games will still use crate puzzles in 200 years
  time
• because all the alternatives are time-consuming
• We used a few! (not too many, though)

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3. Structural problems-

• An example Kill The Scientist
• The game Half-Life is where this came up in
• which has many similarities to our current game
• If a character dies who shouldnt, what to do?
• how to reconcile narrative continuity with free
  movement
• Half-Life solution stop the game and fade out
• irritating, but theres no easy fix for the
  problem
• Usually a manifestation of a deeper problem
• Here, the problem is really how to build
  top-down narrative with bottom-up design tools?

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4. Ways to get it really wrong-

• An example Crazy Quilt
• AKA Texture Diarrhoea
• Too many different textures in close proximity
• Quake is full of this! (IMHO)
• Its not a victimless crime - my eyes hurt!
• Too many other perpetrators to name
• Underlying problem no clear stylistic lead
• Similar to when programmers design levels
• Often happens with programmers websites
• Many portals exhibit the same symptoms
• Its not brashness, its just bad design.

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Level Design Patterns Conclusions...

• Level design is-
• an expression of ideas via a novel visual
  language
• a frozen moment of time in the evolution of games
• In level design (and in creative projects)-
• If you can identify design patterns really
  early...
• youre probably doing something wrong.
• Design patterns should be your target...
• ...not the starting point!
• The lifetime of a set of creative design patterns
  should be exactly 10 minutes!
• the 10 minutes after you complete it, before it
  becomes a set of cliches for other people to avoid

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Deep structure-

• Structure of Patterns
• Design Pattern a pattern that works
• Antipattern a pattern to avoid
• Structure of Ideas
• Cliché Last years idea
• Anti-cliché Cliché, with a fresh coat of paint
• Ironic cliché Two year-old idea, freshened up
• Novelty Todays idea (next years cliché)
• (Similar to patterns, but with a time dimension)

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Summary (Ill be brief)...

• Did we identify Level Design Patterns?
• Not really - but we gained a lot from looking.
• The underlying story is that projects - of all
  types - are getting larger and more complex.
• So the future is increasingly one of
  collaboration.
• IMHO, design patterns are simply one way of
  coordinating effort and language to improve
  teamworking on such large projects
• Many other technologies and ideas will emerge
• Using patterns as a target helps team coherency
• Absence of patterns ! lack of communication!