Composition

            Composition is essentially the position of elements within an artwork. It involves all elements of painting, including:  tonal Forms, line, perspective, lighting etc. It is a complex and deep subject, that’s basics can be taught in minutes, but can take a lifetime to master.

            The first thought for composition, is the rotation and dimensions of the canvas, whether it be portrait, landscape or the aspect ratio, whether it be 4:3, 19:9 etc. The basic idea is that the subject should fit, and be the clear focus of the image. So taller things such as portraits go in portrait, and wide such as landscapes things go in landscape, hence their names, but it must be remembered that there can always be exceptions to the rules. The rotation and aspect ratio aren’t just subject to whether the subject is entirely in the image, they can also give many feelings to an image, weather it be to emphasize something, in the case of photographing a tall building, which would be an obvious candidate for a portrait layout, but for a sense of scale, landscape is used to compare it to surrounding smaller buildings or sometimes an intentionally odd rotation or aspect ratio to give the piece a sense of uneasiness. There are conventions in aspect ratios, these can now be frequently seen as aspect ratios of video, with the main of which are 4:3, being the old tv standard, 16:9 being widescreen and now standard, and 1:2.35 being letterbox or cinemascope. Then there are more conventional ratios for artwork, one of which now is 1:square root of 2, which is used in standard paper or the “A series”, then this is when we come across the “golden ratio” for the first time, which is approximately 1:1.61803398874989, it can trace it roots to ancient Greece, where it was first recorded and studied. It can be simply explained as when the ratio a+b is equal to the ratio of a/b it is the Golden ratio. In game art we have a relatively easy job in this respect, as everything pub character deigns, which are often portrait, all artwork is created in a 16:9 landscape formula, as this is after all, the artwork will be displayed in the game.

            The next decision is where the focus of the image should be placed. Symmetry has a comfortable look when placing the focal point, especially in landscape. So the focal point should not be cantered, but then not too far to one side, the usual “rule of thirds” works beautifully most of the time, so placing the focal point a third way from the top, bottom, or side, to give it a nice balance. Also the golden ratio can be used in placement for a slightly more central arrangement, allowing for surrounding details to create focus for the image.

            The next stage of thought should be on how the focal point of the image can be emphasized, by having the viewer’s eye draw to it. One of the easiest methods of doing this is basically drawing what are essentially lines, sometimes subtly, or blatantly into a piece, to not so much guide, but force the viewer’s eye to the focal point. Weather these be created by areas of light, tone or details, they are the most basic, but if used poorly can make an image feel to deliberate and formulaic.  Although you do want the views eye to be drawn to the focal point, if it is too direct, the rest of the painting can be ignored as it is just used as a means of emphasizing another part. To more subtly direct the viewer’s eye, and allowing them to read the image as a whole, less linier methods can be used, the main of which is by incorporating a Fibonacci curve around the focal point. As with most things in composition this should still be done subtly, to not make the image look to formulaic, but it can be achieved by the same methods as I spoke about before, by creating “lines”, weather there be lines of tonal contrast or colour etc.

            The final stage of composition to be discussed is balance, but like all of these stages, they must be considered from the beginning when creating an artwork, as it should be fundamental to the arrangement of as painting. Essentially, a sense of vague symmetry should be adopted for large block forms within the image, (excluding the focal point), usually at the extremities. This helps frame a image, making it feel contained, but not awkwardly cropped. At its most basic you want the viewer to feel that everything interesting happening in and around the subject, is within the image.

            Composition, after subject, is the most important part of a painting in terms of content, but artistically it is so fundamental to the success of a painting it could be argued that it is the most important. This is why many artists drastically alter the reality they are depicting to make a better painting. This is the skill which unquestionably separates the armatures from the masters. This is clearly evident in a painting that has been voted Britain’s favourite many times, and which is probably mine too, in J.M.W. Turner’s the “Fighting Temeraire”: Where turner has altered many aspects of reality to improve the image. First off, he would only have been a child when the event depicted occurred so artistic licence is undoubtedly used, like re-adding the removed masts, to make the ship look grander etc. But some changes are much more significant: has stretched the reflection in the water of the steam tugboat, to angle the reflected bowsprit, (the protruding front part of the ship) directly in line with the Focal point; drastically moving the buildings on the river’s edge at the right hand side of the image, below the water line of the ships, which in reality is physically impossible, but which creates a directional shape, leading the eye yet again upwards to the focal point; but most notably for me, he refrained from adding excessive detail and tone to the focal point, the Temeraire, to give it a ghostly ethereal appearance, as if it is the last of the magical all sail powered ships, before the seas are filled with the dirty and noisy ships of the steam age. 

http://www.j-m-w-turner.co.uk/images/The_fighting_Temeraire.jpg

Bradgate, Year 2

A few weeks ago we revisited Bradgate Park for the third time to sketch and paint the landscape there. I also took my camera to help record the lighting, colours and textures. To record the incredible light and colour changes properly throughout the day, and to also catch the tail end of the deer rut I arrived at 7 am. When I arrived the sun still hadn’t risen, and didn’t rise for another half hour or so. The sound was extraordinary as I made my way further into the park, as many of the stags were still rutting, and producing their loud and deep calls. The best part of the day happened whilst I was sitting next to the stream, when a kingfisher flew by, and landed on a branch about ten meters away. I managed to take a photo of it, but I was unaware the manual focus was still on, making the photo out of focus, which created a dodgy bigfoot style photo which none the less verified what I had seen. Here’s a few of the photos I took throughout the day:

Planning and Concepting

Planning and concepting have multiple and vital roles in the production of any visual media, but especially videogames, where the environment is entirely man made, and test shots of locations characters and props cannot be done.

Planning is vital in video game development, as time and resources mean money, and when it runs out, your publisher will drop you, and you’ve got an entire developer with no means of income. So efficient planning is pretty worthwhile. In the games industry, this is done by setting deadlines for reaching specific parts in the development, called “milestones”, these can range from the completion of whiteboxing levels, to the completion of a debugging stage.

Concepting can mean different things, from design to prototyping and visualization. Most people’s idea of concepting is warped by the very polished concept art games companies release for publicity, but it’s fact 99% of the time nothing like this. Primarily it is used as a low cost way of visualizing the art style, lighting design or layout of an environment or asset without having to make anything in 3D.  But as it is a highly skilled job concept artists are traditionally paid more than usual artists so concepting can still be a relatively expensive task.  To get around this, many companies employ very small amounts of concept artists permanently and frequently use contract concept artists for short periods of time.

More this ...

... Less this

After reading the Meerkat’s concept process and planning document, which seems to be aimed at more publicity concepting, and not initial stage concepting, it is clear how in-depth a concept artists has to research and consider their subject, even before beginning their Piece of artwork, although I do not agree that the painting techniques Meerkat uses, I do agree with their thought processes for giving the work story and depth, but I think the final piece fails to live up to the complex process, is it’s composition seems a little to deliberate, especially with the flying birds on the left hand side, which also break the theme of cool stillness that the image tries to create. I also think that the colour scheme fails to add anything to the image. As although colour should be the least important part in terms of composition, the orange/brown colours on the character and sky could have been balanced better by adding soft blues to the snow, and deeper blues to the cast shadows. Although this would create an admittedly cliché cyan/orange colour scheme found in virtually all modern action films, it would help compliment the warm colours present in the painting, and help draw the character into the environment, as she currently looks a little awkward and “pasted” into the image.

I began this course with an opinion that being a concept artist is the pinnacle of art in games, and any other path, would simply be a stepping stone to get into that roll.  But now my view is that much of a game art disciplines it is still just one part of the whole system, and is less of a visionary role I quite imaginative to be which in truth, is more of the role of the art director in the game development process.

Reflection on year one, and ambition for year two

            Overall I am pleased with my first year as a game art student. I think my skills developed at a reasonable pace, but could have been better with relatively little more effort, by just applying more substantial organization .looking back I could have further improved my abilities by working on some personal projects alongside the coursework. As there were lulls in my work load as my time management was adequate for brief periods.

For this year my priority is going to be much more on planning. Although I didn’t see it as a considerably large problem last year, I found that during my summer project the use of plans for every aspect of the project led me to feel more confident about achieving more advanced milestones and because of this, to tailor the amount of effort and thought, in addition to time I put into individual tasks. I must be mindful not to over plan though, as at some points I was making overly specific plans during my summer project which included daily work schedules, which went down the explicit detail of setting my own lunch hours. This was clearly not going to work, and it didn’t. As so many minor tasks were accounted for, just an hour’s delay on a single aspect would throw off and disrupt many tasks further down the line, causing unnecessary stress due to the self-administered sense of minor failures and lack of control. I’m also going to have to focus more on planning, as this year depends much more on self-directed working. As fundamental skills are now in place, all of the game production projects have been set at the beginning of the term, but with deadlines still arranged throughout the term. This may not be entirely independent sounding, but it is preparation for the comparatively entirely independent (as in independent from tutor input) Group project next term.

I welcome a more independent work and organisation style, as I have always been quite and independent learner.  I value teaching something to myself highly, as it requires more attention, and so tends to give bigger rewards. This method can easily go awry though, if not at least partially mentored or assessed, as focus can easily be lost from the correct path. This is where vital self-assessment comes in, which is arguably THE most important skill to have. As to be able to look inwards without partiality, and judge yourself honestly, will without fail always lead to improvement whatever the topic. When I reference “independent learning”, I don’t consider it a solitary act, as my view is that independent learning is essentially research, as opposed to just asking someone for the direct, but brief information.

So to round up, This year is considerably more focused on Self-directed planning and assessment, and capitalizing on good planning by using my free time to “Further my learning” independently by either setting relevant personal projects and learning exercises or just trying to go above and beyond the call of thingy. 

First Year Review

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first year of the course, and so far I’ve been very impressed with my own progress. Especially in game production, as I was quite inexperienced with 3d modelling before starting the course, although I was reasonably confident I could learn the 3d, I was much unsure if I was going to enjoy it, and I felt that that was much more important, as eventually it was going to be the basis of my future career. I thought the course had a great introduction, and the all-important relevance to industry was apparent very early on. The tutors are up to date with knowledge about the industry and have a keen interest in a wide range of aspects of the industry. I was also happy to learn that the tutors are taking an active role in industry wide government review of the games industry in the UK. In addition to the tutors having knowledge about games, they are also engaged in researching advanced teaching theory and techniques, with the purpose of improving the quality of the students they produce. Also the constant self-evaluation is very promising, proven by the fact I’m having to write this! also tutors regularly asking us our opinions of the course.

The primary aspect that had the largest detrimental effect on my experience this year were the large groups, and lack of space this caused, the course does deal with it as well as it can, and it seams to be out of their control, but the fact remains that it was a bit of a thorn in the side. It seemed to have little effect on the game production side of the course, but the lack of space in life drawing, and the short seminars we had for critical studies were a shame. Although we were meant to receive one for game production, and it was out of the course’s control, it was a shame that there were no industry set projects incorporated directly into the course, although there where externally set projects and some great internships offered through them. Not being notified about absent tutors when absences were planned was frustrating, although personally i wasn’t effected as much as others, as I only lived across the road, and frankly I could go back to sleep. I was aware it was affecting others, as some students who live at home travel quite far to come into university. Another problem is the lack of a third term, which I was unaware of when starting the course. It seems to be another problem caused by the university, and not the course, but it doesn’t make much sense that we have an academic timetable, when were clearly an art course. Ideally we could be given some larger scale or more advanced projects to nicely end the year with, or just have the summer projects formerly marked. As currently the summer projects are optional and unmarked, but all students benefit and get useful formative feedback if they were marked. I’ve heard of the idea of adding a full summer term, and shortening the course to two years, but I’m not convinced of the idea of just cramming the three years into two longer ones would work, as I think being beasted for two years would leave many students mentally exhausted, and not allow us time to practice and revisit projects, as I know many student do to great effect.

Overall I think the course is fantastic, and from what I saw of the rival courses I visited before choosing this course, this is clearly the course to be on if you want a job in the industry.

Example of how my work has developed:

Limbolo

I regularly trawl concept artists and designers blogs to try and find some interesting new artists, in a process where I’ll probably spend about 5 mins looking through an artists blog, and saving the link if it’s any good, and then selecting a few links they have to other artists there interested in, ill then pic my favourite one out of them and repeat the process. A lot of the time this process can leave me at dead ends, as many artists seam to keep themselves in communities of very similar artists, making some quite dull and repetitive sessions. But one artist that I found that really shone out from the overly dingy, cliché concept art was the work of “Limbolo” http://limbolo.blogspot.com/. Limbolo is the a pseudonym for Neil Campbell Ross. Who’s a British artist working in the film and animation industry. He’s worked on many films including The Golden Compass, Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Corpse Bride. Has also has work displaying in galleries internationally. His work is quite unconventional for an artist who primarily works in a digital medium, as his style is loose and expressive, with bold uses of colour and sharp angular forms, with a clear use of layers and brush strokes, which is quite impressionist, and a million miles away from the “I spent 20 hours just painting the daemon’s fiery voodoo horns” school of concept art. He also has a blog devoted to art and photography he’s interested in, called “Gibbon” http://gibbi.blogspot.com/ and a website showing more of his work. http://web.me.com/limbolo/neilcampbellross.com/index.html I often find that discovering the inspirations behind peoples work, can add a great amount of depth into peoples work, as you can see how and why the work looks the way it does.

GAME DESIGN PART 4: ENVIRONMENT

There’s no doubt that an incredible amount of thought goes into creating environments for video games. The player needs to be able to navigate and perform elaborate actions within the environment, so the environment must be easy to understand, so the player does not get lost, but still give the player a sense of freedom so they don’t get the feeling of mindlessly running through corridors. Although essentially 99.9% of game environments are corridors, they be decorated and tweaked a bit to create any place imaginable. The corridor may have trees in it, making it a jungle, bullet ridden walls in a war torn city or have walls made of carrots in some kind of vegetable based horror game. Different developers have pretty varied levels of skill in creating environments, in some games, the sense of “corridoring” is blatantly obvious, making the player feel too constrained and claustrophobic, I found this most notable in Treyarchs attempts at the call of duty franchise. Where every level just consisted of ten minute corridor sections, strewn with objects placed so obviously it may have well had a sign on saying:(this is really great cover for taking on the snipers nest which is coincidentally without any cover at all) so the feeling of the chaos of battle was utterly destroyed, making it seem as though the fight had been pre-arranged by both sides so nobody would be too protected, or have to excitedly run too far until they came across a perfectly placed, super-bomb-proof pile of rubble. Even in Gears of War, which is a game I love, but admittedly is full of level design clichés just stuck together by duct tape, I’m a big fan of the cover mechanics, but it then causes the level designers to constantly have to come up with reasons why there 70x200cm blocks of impenetrable material everywhere, so huge blocks of broken buildings, wood and chunks of metal lie perfectly parallel all over the levels, making them feel more like paint ball firing ranges, than destroyed cities.Last year I bought Valve’s orange box, containing Half Life 2, it’s two episodes, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Apart from the awesome games it contained, the most interesting things were the developer commentaries which could be listened to whilst playing through the levels. The vast majority of them discussed the environments themselves as it became clear that the biggest struggle the developers were having was trying to implement their great ideas, but then having to constantly micro adjusting every single aspect until they would work and still be noticeable to even the most vacant of players. Which for the most part were thought out and implemented very well, but occasionally the ideas had been diluted so much that they fell apart and were removed entirely.

There are a few ways that a developer can approach designing a level, sometimes the developer can instantly go into boxing out a level, to create interesting areas and obstacles for the player to move around in, or they can take real life environments and just recreate them as accurately as possible. but both of these can have drawbacks, as the level that was just designed for player movement, and was just decorated to look like say an Italian renaissance street, it will most likely be unbelievable, and seam to disjointed. And then if the developers just recreate

existing streets, they may for not be easily negotiated or understood by the player. For the best designed levels, developers research real life environments, then by taking existing features, use these as inspiration and building blocks for interestingly laid out levels. In Assassin’s Creed, where historic cities were heavily researched, but when they were built in-game, the designers took some subtle artistic licence to make the environments more playable, by making back streets wider to stop the player from getting lost, and main streets narrower so the payer could believably leap over them.

GAME DESIGN PART 3: CHARACTER

I’ve recently started watching the HBO drama “The Wire”. It’s incredible, But it took four episodes until I could even explain why it was any good. It was the realism, in not referring to the authentic gang language, or the heavily researched police practice, as it was written by a former police reporter, so that was all there, it was the characters. The characters behaviour and responses to situations were believable. The suspension of disbelief is so important in any story, but it can be so easily ruined. When the focus is on everything else being hyper realistic, but the characters. Say for example if somebody creates a film about the epic battle of Stalingrad, using special effects to accurately depict the destroyed city, and authentic clothing weapons and equipment are used, the entire production would be pointless if a character’s behaviours an reactions don’t reflect the intense and doomed plight of the 6th army. So he might as well be wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying a lazer gun, running around Loughborough. Or for another example, with the early series of csi, (at the point where the technology being used to solve cases was still reasonably believable, and the depleted uranium powered, genetic laser scanning hyper computer hadn’t been used to analyse a dodgy stain on a pair of boxer shorts yet.) The story was still entirely unbelievable because the characters where constantly trying to hard look cool and sexy, even wearing their designer sunglasses and spurting out unbearably corny one liners at three in the morning, whilst probing a pile of guts they’d found in a dust bin. I think too much focus is also put onto solely appearances of character to create plausibility, as many times characters personalities are matched with visual clichés, where the clever but socially awkward computer guy will wear ill-fitting jeans his mum bought him and have a serious sight problem, and the wise character has to have a beard and stare randomly into the distance, when delivering any of their lines. And yet another example of horrendous characters is Roland Emmerich‘s film “2012”, it’s about as enjoyable as finding an unexpected lump in your scrotum, even the massive explosions are ruined when the protagonist’s only reaction to witnessing an entire city set on fire and fall into the sea, is raising his eye brows and exclaiming “oh god” plunging the already bad film into just a three hour long sequence of vaguely connected explosions. But that was bound to happen with the film, when the studio’s focus was on just bucks and not brains. So like with “The Wire”, which is completely at the other end of the spectrum the series had to be produced and written intelligently, as it would have nothing to stand on. It’s clearly, in part due to the fantastic actors cast in the wire, that the characters are so good, but more than ever before I notice the incredible importance of the fantastic writing. As before if I saw a character do something clearly out of character, I’d blame the actor, but ultimately it’s both the script and the actors which have to work seamlessly with each other to create a believable and enjoyable experience. This is easy to say, and relatively easy to achieve when making a film with a bit of thinking involved, but with video games there’s quite a mountain to climb. As in scripted cut scenes or portions where the player is held by the hand, the game developer can retain the players suspension of disbelief by controlling the players actions, so npc’s reactions are believable, but problems arose when the payer is given too much freedom, and either the game just doesn’t react to the player, or hundreds of branching reactions needing to be created, the former is clearly the easiest, and most frequently used, I admit I’ve probably spent way too long in games shooting innocent characters and generally acting like an arsehole just to piss off the npc’s, but to no avail. But when I even a relatively believable reaction happens from an npc, in say a game like mass effects, I start getting pretty excited. I’m confident that video games are currently the right track for making more engaging stories and characters, and with advanced mocap in games like Enslaved now LA Noire were getting to see how the tech in games can improve characters, and not just cover them up with yet more advanced explosions.

MY IDEAS ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S IDEAS ON IDEAS IN GENERAL

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” Albert Einstein, date

No idea is divine, it will always have been formed from many external ideas, our minds need input to create any output at all, so whether consciously or unconsciously, were constantly dipping into our own mental bank of information. Like with literature and music, art and design frequently shares ideas to propagate development of new ideas to move the industry forward, but this sharing of ideas can come in different forms. There’s healthy, occasional exchanging of ideas in the form of inspiration, and then there’s the blatant exchange of entire design concepts, effectively creating a closed loop, or in another terms, design incest. Where good ideas go to die, and crap ones are born.

I’m all for any industry sharing ideas for inspiration, but when this force becomes destructive, its no longer viable and Industry clearly needs to start looking outwards. Industries should look outward for inspiration to prevent ideas current ideas to dilute and die and for new ideas to come in. A clear example of the closed loop of creativity can be found in the automotive world, with ex BMW design head, Chris bangle’s revolutionary Flame surfacing “design language”, which was inspired by the postmodern architectural movement of Deconstructivism, applied by much of Frank Giery’s work. The flame surfacing first appeared in the x coupe concept, which later evolved into the first generation z4, the car was very forward thinking, and it caused a great ripple in the car design world. It was beautiful car which was unmistakably modern because of it’s fresh and original styling, but It has now been taken as inspiration for so many cars from different manufacturers since, but few executed it successfully, as the original design’s basis was lost in translation, and its just became a design gimmick, carelessly applied to countless middle of the road concept cars, just built to fill car sized gaps in motor shows ever since.

This isn’t just happening in the car design world, its been happening in the entire creative industry since the dawn of time, but it worries me how frequently it happens in video games. Where still a young industry, so we shouldn’t have this sense of, “oh, everything new has been done”. So we might as well just tread water like the rest of the world. The forward motion of the games industry is pretty relentless, but for crying out loud it’s slow. Last year millions of gamers went utterly mental about Limbo, which could be mistaken as Mario played by a suicidal child on an old tv, but don’t get me wrong though, I thought it looked great and had an awesome atmosphere, but I think it was still a bit of a baby step in comparison to the way it was portrayed as the best invention since penicillin. I shouldn’t really give it a tough time because it was an indie developer, and at the moment there clearly the market leaders in new ideas, just unfortunately not the actual market leaders.

GAME DESIGN PART 2: ART DIRECTION

In a Games developer, the art director is the most senior member of the Art team. He is responsible for the overall aesthetic of the game, this encompasses every artistic decision which is made during the games production. What colour pallets will the assets, characters or levels have, what art style the graphic design and UI design should take and even down to minor technical decisions like are these goblins’ legs to short?. The art director works meticulously with the game design team as all assets must be coherent to the games setting and story, the player needs to be able to recognize what certain objects are, and what they do, and also to be on hand to edit or create new assets for testing new ideas on the fly. I defiantly see the art directors role as a creative one, as his ideas form the basis of the game’s entire appearance, and his job, although senior is not overly bogged down with technicalities and admin tasks. Whereas the Lead artist would be dealing with the technical side of the game’s Art and primarily trying to make the art department be as productive as possible, such as creating texture and modelling budgets, technical specs for assets and planning the workflows/processes for creating in-game assets. The lead artist also converses with leads from other departments, such as programming to discuss complications with inputting assets into the game.

The Art Director/ Lead relationship is similar to the relationship between a Director and a Producer in film production, where the director is the creative force behind the film, and the producer “makes it happen” by overseeing the project and managing major aspects of the films production. Although The roles of art directors and leads in the film industry differs quite significantly to the game industry, in the games in terms of art, the director is top dog, whereas in film the art director is 2^nd in command to the production designer. The roles are effectively re-named as the Game’s lead artist has a similar job description to the film industry’s art director, as his role is much more managerial, involving administrative tasks and coordinating the art department, along with a designated Art department Coordinator. Also the production designer’s role of being the overall artistic visionary for the film is comparable to that of the game industry’s Art directors’.

For me to become an art director in the future I think I’m going to need to broaden my sources of inspiration, and also my knowledge of different design principles. I have interests in architecture, fine art, product, and automotive design, which may be very useful, but still I think they need broadening, or at least I need to get into the habit of researching and collecting reference for subjects I’m not accustomed to. As a successful art director would have be able to bend and stretch their own specializations to be able to coherently envision an entire universe for a video game. I’m aware design and concepting tasks are handed out to teams of artists, so content can be designed efficiently, but the art director needs to competently oversee all aspects of the design, for example having to make decisions regarding design styles of buildings, to patterns printed on an npc’s socks, where one is clearly more important, but both need competent consideration.

Last November we were set a project in visual design where we were asked to sketch the landscape of Bradgate park. After a day of sketching there I didn’t feel as if I’d produced enough work to develop a final piece, so I decided to visit again. I arrived at around half 9 on an incredibly foggy day, I assumed the fog would clear by midday like it had the previous day, but I was incorrect. I was initially pretty peeved about the conditions, as it made sketching the open landscape impossible, but as I wandered around the park I realized the remarkable of the situation. I had visited Bradgate park many times before, as I live locally to it. I’d seen it in thick snow, bright midsummers and bronze autumns, but I had never seen it this stunning, the thick fog reduced visibility to about 75 meters, but was surprisingly bright, as the fog was hugging the ground at a thickness of only about 10. I continued to sketch and paint, but I felt to photos would document the atmosphere much better, so with my compact digital camera I began snappin’ away. I took over 200 photos, so here’s just some of the best ones.

© Robin Smith, November 2010

GAME DESIGN PART 1: FROM PONG TO NEXT GEN

When referring to video games, Gameplay is the term used to describe the players experience when playing the game. This encompasses how the player interacts with the game, how the game then responds to the player, and then how the player reacts to the game. Arguably the greatest game designers are the creators of the primary genres, this being “Space war” as the first shoot ‘em up, “let’s play tennis” being the first sports game and Pacman being the first survival horror/drug collection game. But the best developers currently are the one’s who are making the most significant advances in the pre established genres. Nobody can deny that Infinity Ward’s work on the call of duty franchise has been incredibly successful, but is far from ground breaking, it has been more of a fine tuning of the fast paced first person shooter genre, non the less very successful. But the current leading lights are developers such as Naughty Dog and Bioware, who are creating games with engaging narratives, rivalling any other medium, or Epic Games or Crytek with leading game technology.

Although many developers may have “celebrity” lead designers, such as Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux or Konami’s Hideo Kojima, game design is far from one person’s responsibility. Initial ideas for games can come from research by publishers, a developers dedicated design team, or in small developers it could be any member of the team. Undoubtedly the design process will always continue throughout the games production, where input of ideas can come from any team member, or occasionally even testers. Sometimes themes, features or even entire game designs can be demanded by publishers, making the designers job more of a problem solving task than a creative one. This usually occurs after an exceptional new game is released, and there are a slew of copycat games or copied features ride on any minor change, such as regenerating health, which was not invented by, but popularized by the call of duty series, which has become the staple health system in almost all shooters.

I play a wide variety of genres of games, but to generalize, there are a few key features I really admire in video games. I’m a keen player of engaging single player campaigns, so any feature that can make the game world that little bit more believable, no matter how subtle is always going to excite me, but there are some major features I always look out for. The use of humour to create some three dimensional characters is always appealing, even the members of B company in Dice’s Bad Company have so much more charm and personality, making the experience so much more engaging, just by bringing a bit of humour into the game, and making anything differ from the immensely dull characters from most shooters, who’s only concern is their dwindling supply of ammo. Another game which used some simple humour and personality to great effect is Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: the sands of time, The humour admittedly isn’t even that witty, but it makes the characters believable. Another great feature of Prince of Persia has to be it’s incredible art direction, with its use of light and atmosphere, but mainly it’s epic scale make it a fantastic place to hop, skip, jump, wall run and generally move in an energetic manner around in. A more recent title that I really admire for it’s art direction is Bioware’s Mass Effect, borrowing it’s style from many 80’s sci-fi movies, and more precisely, and quite heavily, taking inspiration from my most favourite Concept Artist, Syd Mead. Another feature I admire from mass effect is it’s not afraid to challenge the player mentally, with some brief detective sections, and some relatively complex moral decisions. Other games I enjoy for their capability to stimulate my brain are the impressive puzzles in Valve’s Portal and the complex tactical decisions required in Creative Assembly’s Total War series.

But a game can still be great, even if it has none of these, as long as it has an engaging and unique selling point. This can be well demonstrated by the Wii which is entirely based on the single feature of motion control. Proving that brand new ideas coming from left field still happen, and can be very successful. Ultimately what any game should really do is just provide some unique and engaging entertainment, or on the other hand just let you blow stuff up.

Reviewing Games Journalists Reviewing other stuff

For many years I subscribed to the unofficial Xbox magazine “xbm”. I basically used it as a buying guide, as it was my only source of information about new games apart from word of mouth. I enjoyed reading the in depth and humorous reviews, which had a sense of honesty and less reliance on a game’s overall “score”, and more about the games unique features and a more personal explanation of their playing experience. I eventually ended the subscription as the price was gradually rising, and I was beginning to rely more on game websites for news and reviews. After the transition from printed media to gaming websites, I began to use the media in a very different way, I began reading the articles less and less, partially because of the new video content, but mainly because of the dull subjective writing styles. The old style journalism can be forgiven in news articles, as facts are simply being regurgitated, but in the original content such as the reviews, the writing was just charmless and dull, ending up making the score the only valuable information to ascertain. Whereas with game magazines, I’d read reviews and previews of terrible games id never play, purely because of the sharp and funny writing it would be worthwhile to read the entire magazine, but this couldn’t be said for many mainstream video game websites. Id also read more articles in magazines it because I had paid £3.50 for it admittedly, so I might as well, but now the web has created a sense of throw away content due to it being free. The fact you don’t directly pay for the content also makes a new problem, as it needs to get most of it’s revenue from advertising and, it being a game website, advertises new games, which will be being reviewed at the same time, creating uncomfortable situations where a journalist may have to bite the hand that feeds in order to create an honest review, or alternatively lie in order to fulfil a contract with a publisher. This situation must undoubtedly occur all of the time, but one well documented “uncomfortable situation” was with the website Gamespot. It involved The Editorial Director Jeff Gurstmann, reviewing Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which was simultaneously being heavily advertised all over the website. The game universally received disappointing review scores, and being a respectable journalist, Jeff scored the game appropriately to his opinions and gave it a 6/10, but then found that his employment had been terminated afterwards. The obvious assumptions were made and rumours spread fast around the internet, prompting Gamespot, and their parent company CNET to publish their denial that he was fired due to the review, but could still not give information on why. Subsequently Ryan Davis, Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro and Brad Shoemaker, all fellow editors for Gamespot left, Due to their lack of trust for the company, and that they had given into corrupting pressures. A few months later Jeff Gurstmann and Ryan Davis joined together to set up the gaming blog “Giant Bomb”, which later became a full website. Vinny, Brad and Alex soon joined the team, which now frequently post entertaining video features, articles and podcasts. Because of the main team being comprised entirely of ex Gamespot employees, they intentionally try and avoid the old journalism style of Gamespot and other large gaming websites, and try and make much more engaging content in a more open-minded and witty way. Giant bomb features a game related wiki, which champions user generated content, in addition to users being able to submit their own articles and reviews. User generated content can have vastly different results, its sometimes interesting to read differing opinions on games, or get news from different sources, but other times, and admittedly most of the time the content is utterly worthless apart from being able to laugh at how bad they are. This is demonstrated perfectly with the user created review of prg3 from Eurogamer by the user named boomboxdan. He may either be very young, or have something wrong with him, so what I’m about to say may be very offensive, but for the point on this blog post ill just assume he’s just a few mushrooms short of a Mario game. My favourite quote is when he’s describing the graphics, saying “Every location in the game has been rendered superbly, even London looks nice, and when night falls they look superb with lights and all that...”, it’s true even the dive of Westminster or the oversized broken council house that is Buckingham palace looks good. It’s ok to be a bit crap when writing for the first time, but try and not write anything offensive to over a million people lets say, well at least for your first review anyway. Also we need to consider why users feel the need to make their own content, it’s either they think their own opinion in unique and needs to be heard, or will be found very helpful by fellow users. This is where another great piece of user generated content is found, where users review reviews, with the feature: “did you find this review helpful?”, where nobody has said yes. The precise style of this review is quite ambiguous, and probably wasn’t even considered when it being written. For my personal writing style I’d write in a style closer to new journalism, as I’d find it a more engaging and natural way to write in the way I speak about games, And the experiences I have playing them.