This November 16-18, I'll be attending the inaugural Pittsburgh Game Jam. If any readers of this blog happen to be in the area, drop by and say hi!
This is exciting on multiple levels for me. For one, I haven't been back to my alma mater since I graduated (the ETC didn't even exist last time I was on campus, and I hear we eventually got a new Student Union too). Also, for all the talk of how great Game Jam events are, and even though I've coordinated one of them, I've never actually been a participant... and I'm looking forward to seeing what I'm capable of under extreme duress. Lastly, this particular Game Jam requires making games for young children -- a demographic I haven't had much experience with to date, so it will be nice to gain some additional understanding of the design constraints for this market.
Strangely, I'm signed up as a Programmer, not as a Game Designer. An event coordinator told me that they have a shortage of Programmers, which surprised me -- back when I was an undergrad, even the English and Humanities majors knew some programming (not typical of most college campuses, but CMU is a haven for computer geeks of all stripes). This is a school where they gave out free floppy disks to boost attendance at football games. And there's a programmer shortage? Well, it gives me an excuse to learn Python, which I've been putting off for a couple of years now, so I can't complain about the hand I'm dealt.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Textbook Review: Break into the Game Industry
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Break into the Game Industry: How to get a job making video games" (Ernest Adams)
I almost didn't want to review this book. After all, it's obviously a vocationally-oriented book that has no place in the classroom as a text, right? While there is certainly a strong focus on the "breaking in" aspect, it turns out this book has a surprising amount of overlap with my Game Industry Survey course topics, suggesting that it may have more use than the title suggests.
This book starts with a reasonable (if brief) look at the history of the industry and then goes right into the bits of how the industry is structured today: platforms, game genres, business models, job roles and responsibilities within a developer. This is important stuff for any aspiring developer to know, and it takes up about half of the book.
About a third of the book is devoted to what the title implies: what kind of education and experience to give yourself, and the actual process of applying for a job. This strikes me as the kind of thing that students should read on their own, rather than something that's part of any course material.
Lastly, the book ends with a short section on the minimum everyone should know about legal issues (IP, NDAs, and how to read an employment contract) and a final wild guess on the probable future direction of the industry.
It should be noted that this book was published in 2003. This has the obvious implications: some of the information is woefully out of date. Notably, this was written before the downsizing of E3 and before the ea_spouse letter. Some of the companies mentioned are no longer making games. That said, a surprising amount of the practical information in this book is still valid, although it is definitely living on borrowed time -- I'm not sure how many more years it will be useful before the obsolete material outweighs the usefulness of the rest.
Students: If you are interested in getting into the game industry or you'd just like to know a bit more about what it's like behind-the-scenes, this is a great book to read. I can't say that it's fun to read exactly, but the information contained within is obviously practical and useful which might give you the incentive to keep reading anyway. At least for now, most of the obsolete material involves things that can easily be checked online, so for any specific piece of information you'd do well to confirm it by firing up your browser.
Instructors: It doesn't have any end-of-chapter exercises so you'll have to make your own, and you'll have to supplement it with modern history (the current generation of consoles, the effect of World of Warcraft, etc.), and it has a title that will make other academics glare at you if you use it as a required text in a class. But it still has a lot of useful information about the industry, so if you teach a class about the game industry you might at least consider making it an optional text in your syllabus. And if you have no industry experience, you could do with reading it yourself to supplement your existing course materials.
Professionals: If you already have a job in the game industry, then you probably know most of this stuff already, so it's not really worth your time to read the whole thing. That said, if there are aspects of game development that you don't know much about, this is as good a primer as any to show you what the heck it is that those people in that other department are doing all day; I learned tons about art and game audio, which were always something of a mystery to me.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Emergent Design: Freedom is constant?
Had an interesting discussion awhile ago with a student where we came up with a theory that has probably been discussed elsewhere, though I'm not immediately aware if it has (the subject came up recently in another class I'm taking, and it reminded me of this):
The sum total of the freedom of a game designer to create the world, plus the freedom of the player to alter that world, is a constant.
An RPG like Final Fantasy that has more or less a linear, established plot gives the player relatively few choices in terms of affecting the game world; the player may have different strategies for beating monsters over the head with sticks as efficiently as possible, but at the end of the day they're going to save the world, rescue the princess and kill the evil wizard all the same.
Compare to Fallout or the Elder Scrolls games where the player has more control over the game world, but now the game designer is constrained: it's easier to create a world, but harder to tell a compelling story within that world.
I think this is, by and large, the difference between Eastern and Western RPGs.
The sum total of the freedom of a game designer to create the world, plus the freedom of the player to alter that world, is a constant.
An RPG like Final Fantasy that has more or less a linear, established plot gives the player relatively few choices in terms of affecting the game world; the player may have different strategies for beating monsters over the head with sticks as efficiently as possible, but at the end of the day they're going to save the world, rescue the princess and kill the evil wizard all the same.
Compare to Fallout or the Elder Scrolls games where the player has more control over the game world, but now the game designer is constrained: it's easier to create a world, but harder to tell a compelling story within that world.
I think this is, by and large, the difference between Eastern and Western RPGs.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Textbook Review: Chris Crawford on Game Design
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Chris Crawford on Game Design" (Chris Crawford)
Chris Crawford is an interesting character of the industry. He's been in the industry since its very beginnings. He is so animated as a public speaker that it is physically impossible to be bored while listening. He is outspoken, highly opinionated and quite curmudgeonly. He can be egotistical at times; some would say he's earned the right. The industry owes him a debt of gratitude for starting the first incarnation of GDC in his living room. (Personally, I considered this debt paid in full when, at GDC 2006, he told a room full of game developers that games were dead as an artistic medium. Which left me to wonder what he was doing in the Game Developers Conference if he no longer wishes to be a game developer. But I digress.)
It is important to understand at least a little bit of the man when reading this book, because the author projects a lot of his personality into it. This is not a stuffy, academic textbook by any means; this is 100% pure Chris Crawford opinionated ranting. In short, the book is exactly what the title says -- no more, no less. This makes it worthy of study, but also of limited use.
So, what is in this book? Roughly the first half talks about general game design concepts: the nature of play, challenge, interactivity and so on. The second half includes a chapter on every game that Crawford ever designed, and the lessons he feels he learned as a designer. Somewhere in the middle there's a chapter devoted to recommended books to read, and another on games to play, for the aspiring designer -- which both include an overly-biased dose of Crawford's own work. The book ends with a wonderfully entertaining (if not necessarily educational) chapter called "Old Fart Stories".
Anyone who reads this book needs to keep a box of salt at the ready, to take one grain at a time with each sentence. Some of Crawford's assertions are bathed in wisdom. Some are a bit off the mark. Some appear to be the ravings of a madman. It is not immediately clear which are which; readers must make up their own minds. As such, it helps to have a solid academic foundation (if not outright experience) in the field before reading this book; you'll need it to make your own informed opinion.
All that said, it's an easy read, so it's probably worth the weekend that it takes to skim through it. Different people will get different things out of it, but it's worth at least taking a look at so you can decide for yourself what nuggets of brilliance (if any) are embedded in the book. Unless you have absolutely no respect for Chris Crawford, in which case you're not going to buy this book anyway. (I've met developers who worship Crawford, others who despise him, and a few who are in between. Hmm. Maybe you should try meeting him in person before deciding whether to read his book?)
Students: Do not read this until you've already done a lot of other study and practice; otherwise you're likely to just get confused when the things that he says start contradicting what you'll learn in later classes. When you think you're ready, go ahead and read it, being prepared to have your own debates with him in your head.
Instructors: Since this is not a comprehensive text (nor even a particularly focused one), I can't see it being used as the basis for an entire course. As part of a higher-level theory course where students are expected to compare and contrast various designers and their rhetoric, this could be one of several books... although depending on the length of the course, again, it may not be practical to have students read more than an occasional excerpt (and forcing them to purchase five or ten books just to read one chapter from each is just cruel).
Professionals: If you work in the industry you probably know the author, by reputation if nothing else. If you've seen him speak at GDC, imagine all of that dropped into a book and you know what you're in for. You'll probably read about some obscure games that you've never even heard of (mostly Crawford's own) which I suppose has value in itself, and debating the finer points of this book with other designers could be an interesting exercise if you can convince them to read it at the same time. But due to the large amounts of questionable material in this book, I'd leave it until after you've covered the more important works.
"Chris Crawford on Game Design" (Chris Crawford)
Chris Crawford is an interesting character of the industry. He's been in the industry since its very beginnings. He is so animated as a public speaker that it is physically impossible to be bored while listening. He is outspoken, highly opinionated and quite curmudgeonly. He can be egotistical at times; some would say he's earned the right. The industry owes him a debt of gratitude for starting the first incarnation of GDC in his living room. (Personally, I considered this debt paid in full when, at GDC 2006, he told a room full of game developers that games were dead as an artistic medium. Which left me to wonder what he was doing in the Game Developers Conference if he no longer wishes to be a game developer. But I digress.)
It is important to understand at least a little bit of the man when reading this book, because the author projects a lot of his personality into it. This is not a stuffy, academic textbook by any means; this is 100% pure Chris Crawford opinionated ranting. In short, the book is exactly what the title says -- no more, no less. This makes it worthy of study, but also of limited use.
So, what is in this book? Roughly the first half talks about general game design concepts: the nature of play, challenge, interactivity and so on. The second half includes a chapter on every game that Crawford ever designed, and the lessons he feels he learned as a designer. Somewhere in the middle there's a chapter devoted to recommended books to read, and another on games to play, for the aspiring designer -- which both include an overly-biased dose of Crawford's own work. The book ends with a wonderfully entertaining (if not necessarily educational) chapter called "Old Fart Stories".
Anyone who reads this book needs to keep a box of salt at the ready, to take one grain at a time with each sentence. Some of Crawford's assertions are bathed in wisdom. Some are a bit off the mark. Some appear to be the ravings of a madman. It is not immediately clear which are which; readers must make up their own minds. As such, it helps to have a solid academic foundation (if not outright experience) in the field before reading this book; you'll need it to make your own informed opinion.
All that said, it's an easy read, so it's probably worth the weekend that it takes to skim through it. Different people will get different things out of it, but it's worth at least taking a look at so you can decide for yourself what nuggets of brilliance (if any) are embedded in the book. Unless you have absolutely no respect for Chris Crawford, in which case you're not going to buy this book anyway. (I've met developers who worship Crawford, others who despise him, and a few who are in between. Hmm. Maybe you should try meeting him in person before deciding whether to read his book?)
Students: Do not read this until you've already done a lot of other study and practice; otherwise you're likely to just get confused when the things that he says start contradicting what you'll learn in later classes. When you think you're ready, go ahead and read it, being prepared to have your own debates with him in your head.
Instructors: Since this is not a comprehensive text (nor even a particularly focused one), I can't see it being used as the basis for an entire course. As part of a higher-level theory course where students are expected to compare and contrast various designers and their rhetoric, this could be one of several books... although depending on the length of the course, again, it may not be practical to have students read more than an occasional excerpt (and forcing them to purchase five or ten books just to read one chapter from each is just cruel).
Professionals: If you work in the industry you probably know the author, by reputation if nothing else. If you've seen him speak at GDC, imagine all of that dropped into a book and you know what you're in for. You'll probably read about some obscure games that you've never even heard of (mostly Crawford's own) which I suppose has value in itself, and debating the finer points of this book with other designers could be an interesting exercise if you can convince them to read it at the same time. But due to the large amounts of questionable material in this book, I'd leave it until after you've covered the more important works.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Evaluating textbooks is easier than game engines
It just occurred to me why I've had no problem reviewing dozens of texts for my classes but I haven't gotten around to evaluating even a single game engine for classroom use (even though I have about five on my to-do list).
Evaluating a textbook is easy. I'm already familiar with most of the content I'd be looking for, so I can skim chapters. I'll typically read a few key areas closely (those that I plan to emphasize the most in class), which gives me a good idea of the author's general approach. I can usually get through a textbook this way in an afternoon or two. If I'm assigning readings in a course, I can read the passage myself the night before we talk about it in class, so the details can be spaced out.
A game engine, by contrast, demands that I learn something that I'm unfamiliar with (the particular capabilities and syntax for that engine) and then create a couple sample projects with it in order to get a feel for how easy it is to develop with. It takes me an afternoon or two just to read the documentation, and then another couple weeks or so to get used to developing games with this particular tool. And if I'm going to demand (or even suggest) the use of a game engine in a course, I should be proficient from the beginning since students will likely have some advanced questions as soon as they start. So, the time commitment is much larger and also must be given up front -- two things that are the bane of a full-time teacher.
I haven't yet found a way around this. I'm not sure there is a way around it; I (and the other teachers I've talked to) use the tools in class that we're familiar with.
Evaluating a textbook is easy. I'm already familiar with most of the content I'd be looking for, so I can skim chapters. I'll typically read a few key areas closely (those that I plan to emphasize the most in class), which gives me a good idea of the author's general approach. I can usually get through a textbook this way in an afternoon or two. If I'm assigning readings in a course, I can read the passage myself the night before we talk about it in class, so the details can be spaced out.
A game engine, by contrast, demands that I learn something that I'm unfamiliar with (the particular capabilities and syntax for that engine) and then create a couple sample projects with it in order to get a feel for how easy it is to develop with. It takes me an afternoon or two just to read the documentation, and then another couple weeks or so to get used to developing games with this particular tool. And if I'm going to demand (or even suggest) the use of a game engine in a course, I should be proficient from the beginning since students will likely have some advanced questions as soon as they start. So, the time commitment is much larger and also must be given up front -- two things that are the bane of a full-time teacher.
I haven't yet found a way around this. I'm not sure there is a way around it; I (and the other teachers I've talked to) use the tools in class that we're familiar with.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Textbook Review: Introduction to the Game Industry
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Introduction to the Game Industry" (Michael Moore)
(No, this wasn't written by that Michael Moore. I think he's generally too busy making movies to do much game development. Not that there's anything wrong with a documentary filmmaker creating a video game.)
Now, with that out of the way...
From the title of this book, I would have assumed it would be looking at the past, present and future of the game industry (without getting into the gory details of actual game development). But it turns out this book is more like a "lite" version of Rabin's "Intro" tome... with a stronger focus on game design, production and business. There is some history of gaming, but it is more of a sidebar to the rest of the book.
The timing on this book's publication was unfortunate. It was finished in late 2006 and published in early 2007, at a transition point in the industry (with the upcoming release of the Wii and PS3 and downsizing of E3, among other things). This means that any modern examples in the book already appear dated, and the poor book hasn't even been out for a year yet.
Maybe I'm a stickler for details, but I was disappointed at the editing of the book. There were a number of embarrassing mistakes; in the first few chapters I saw a comment on the steady decline of the physical boardgame industry in the 1990's, without any mention of the Eurogame resurgence; "A game is a series of interesting decisions" was attributed to Sid Meiers; and the heroine of Tomb Raider is apparently named Laura Croft. These may be little things, but they're exactly the things that end a conversation between a student and some professionals. I could understand sloppiness from an author with no experience who just wanted to cash in on the whole games-in-education trend; I would expect better from an industry veteran who teaches at DigiPen.
Perhaps more dangerous is that in 2007, this textbook largely teaches that games are created through the Waterfall model. It does acknowledge rapid prototyping very briefly, but makes no mention of Agile development that was all the rage as of the time of printing (and still is, to my knowledge).
On the bright side, there are a variety of exercises at the end of each chapter that range from basic multiple-choice regurgitation of the chapter content to some nice design exercises and thought-provoking questions. Also, this book introduces a fairly complete set of industry jargon, which is important to a student who wants to hold a conversation with a professional; however, the terminology is scattered throughout the book and has no unifying quick-reference table or glossary as a reminder.
Students: If you're looking for a basic, high-level overview of game design or production with a little understanding of what those strange artists and programmers are doing (without having to actually learn art or programming), this book will give you a reasonable starting place. As you read, make sure to not take anything as gospel; this book has equal parts good and questionable advice. I'd recommend reading this only as a supplement to other texts, either to fill in some blanks or as a second opinion.
Instructors: Use of this book in the classroom has similar problems to Rabin's book: by covering all disciplines of game development it can't really fit in any of them. Added to the other problems above, I can't see this being useful as a textbook for any course. However, I would definitely recommend picking up an evaluation copy for yourself and taking a look at the end-of-chapter exercises for the chapters that apply to your classes; you may find a few good questions and activities for class discussions, exams and homeworks.
Professionals: As this book explains the game industry to the uninitiated, you are really not the target audience. If you're a programmer or artist who wants to know more about production or game design you might give those sections a read, but you're probably better off finding other books that go more in depth into those respective fields.
"Introduction to the Game Industry" (Michael Moore)
(No, this wasn't written by that Michael Moore. I think he's generally too busy making movies to do much game development. Not that there's anything wrong with a documentary filmmaker creating a video game.)
Now, with that out of the way...
From the title of this book, I would have assumed it would be looking at the past, present and future of the game industry (without getting into the gory details of actual game development). But it turns out this book is more like a "lite" version of Rabin's "Intro" tome... with a stronger focus on game design, production and business. There is some history of gaming, but it is more of a sidebar to the rest of the book.
The timing on this book's publication was unfortunate. It was finished in late 2006 and published in early 2007, at a transition point in the industry (with the upcoming release of the Wii and PS3 and downsizing of E3, among other things). This means that any modern examples in the book already appear dated, and the poor book hasn't even been out for a year yet.
Maybe I'm a stickler for details, but I was disappointed at the editing of the book. There were a number of embarrassing mistakes; in the first few chapters I saw a comment on the steady decline of the physical boardgame industry in the 1990's, without any mention of the Eurogame resurgence; "A game is a series of interesting decisions" was attributed to Sid Meiers; and the heroine of Tomb Raider is apparently named Laura Croft. These may be little things, but they're exactly the things that end a conversation between a student and some professionals. I could understand sloppiness from an author with no experience who just wanted to cash in on the whole games-in-education trend; I would expect better from an industry veteran who teaches at DigiPen.
Perhaps more dangerous is that in 2007, this textbook largely teaches that games are created through the Waterfall model. It does acknowledge rapid prototyping very briefly, but makes no mention of Agile development that was all the rage as of the time of printing (and still is, to my knowledge).
On the bright side, there are a variety of exercises at the end of each chapter that range from basic multiple-choice regurgitation of the chapter content to some nice design exercises and thought-provoking questions. Also, this book introduces a fairly complete set of industry jargon, which is important to a student who wants to hold a conversation with a professional; however, the terminology is scattered throughout the book and has no unifying quick-reference table or glossary as a reminder.
Students: If you're looking for a basic, high-level overview of game design or production with a little understanding of what those strange artists and programmers are doing (without having to actually learn art or programming), this book will give you a reasonable starting place. As you read, make sure to not take anything as gospel; this book has equal parts good and questionable advice. I'd recommend reading this only as a supplement to other texts, either to fill in some blanks or as a second opinion.
Instructors: Use of this book in the classroom has similar problems to Rabin's book: by covering all disciplines of game development it can't really fit in any of them. Added to the other problems above, I can't see this being useful as a textbook for any course. However, I would definitely recommend picking up an evaluation copy for yourself and taking a look at the end-of-chapter exercises for the chapters that apply to your classes; you may find a few good questions and activities for class discussions, exams and homeworks.
Professionals: As this book explains the game industry to the uninitiated, you are really not the target audience. If you're a programmer or artist who wants to know more about production or game design you might give those sections a read, but you're probably better off finding other books that go more in depth into those respective fields.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Textbook Review: High Score!
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"High Score! the illustrated history of electronic games (2nd Edition)" (Rusel Demaria & Johnny Wilson)
I've used this book in my Game Industry Survey class, but it's not a textbook. It even says on the cover that it's a coffee table book for game geeks, and that's exactly what it is: a trip down the memory lane of the game industry, in full color, featuring much box art, screenshots and developer photos. The authors give a very candid look at the industry, talking not just about the games but also the developers: what it was like to work at Atari in the early days, for example. The writing style is conversational, not academic, making it an easy read (not to mention that the subject material will be interesting to most student game developers).
This book has two glaring weaknesses, and neither is the fault of the authors. The first is that it was published in 2004; the current generation of consoles did not exist yet, nor did World of Warcraft, so there is a period where the information just stops. Second, the book is unfortunately out of print, which makes it impossible to use as a required text. (Luckily, it can still be found used on Amazon and the like, as of the time of this posting.)
Students: If you're a game geek, you'll probably enjoy reading this book anyway. The fact that you'll actually get a great sense of the history of the industry (which will help you appear serious when you start applying for jobs) is purely accidental.
Instructors: If you teach a course about the history of the game industry, this is a great supplement. Being out of print means it's not required, but you might at least pick up a copy for yourself to supplement your lecture material, and suggest that interested students find their own copy for out-of-class pleasure reading.
Professionals: This is more of a game geek book, so it won't exactly help you make better games. You might like to pick it up for fun, or not, depending on your personal taste in books.
"High Score! the illustrated history of electronic games (2nd Edition)" (Rusel Demaria & Johnny Wilson)
I've used this book in my Game Industry Survey class, but it's not a textbook. It even says on the cover that it's a coffee table book for game geeks, and that's exactly what it is: a trip down the memory lane of the game industry, in full color, featuring much box art, screenshots and developer photos. The authors give a very candid look at the industry, talking not just about the games but also the developers: what it was like to work at Atari in the early days, for example. The writing style is conversational, not academic, making it an easy read (not to mention that the subject material will be interesting to most student game developers).
This book has two glaring weaknesses, and neither is the fault of the authors. The first is that it was published in 2004; the current generation of consoles did not exist yet, nor did World of Warcraft, so there is a period where the information just stops. Second, the book is unfortunately out of print, which makes it impossible to use as a required text. (Luckily, it can still be found used on Amazon and the like, as of the time of this posting.)
Students: If you're a game geek, you'll probably enjoy reading this book anyway. The fact that you'll actually get a great sense of the history of the industry (which will help you appear serious when you start applying for jobs) is purely accidental.
Instructors: If you teach a course about the history of the game industry, this is a great supplement. Being out of print means it's not required, but you might at least pick up a copy for yourself to supplement your lecture material, and suggest that interested students find their own copy for out-of-class pleasure reading.
Professionals: This is more of a game geek book, so it won't exactly help you make better games. You might like to pick it up for fun, or not, depending on your personal taste in books.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
The Field Widens
I recently found that there are now two other blogs about teaching game design:
Boardgame designer and professor Lou Pulsipher has a new blog at http://teachgamedesign.blogspot.com/,
and game programmer Mark Doughty apparently created a blog at http://teachinggamedesign.blogspot.com/ (although this one is currently inactive).
I'd like to welcome these new players to the field. (I say "new" somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as Lou at least has been teaching far longer than I have.) I originally started this blog because there were no other resources for teaching game design on the Web; it looks like pretty soon there will be!
Boardgame designer and professor Lou Pulsipher has a new blog at http://teachgamedesign.blogspot.com/,
and game programmer Mark Doughty apparently created a blog at http://teachinggamedesign.blogspot.com/ (although this one is currently inactive).
I'd like to welcome these new players to the field. (I say "new" somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as Lou at least has been teaching far longer than I have.) I originally started this blog because there were no other resources for teaching game design on the Web; it looks like pretty soon there will be!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Textbook Review: Introduction to Game Development
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Introduction to Game Development" (Steve Rabin)
This ginormous book is a fairly comprehensive look at all aspects of game development: art, design, programming, production, audio, business and even a little bit on academic game studies. (As with the rest of the industry, QA is largely ignored.) It's actually a collection of essays and articles written by a wide variety of experienced game developers; Rabin is the editor, not the author. The list of topics was developed according to the IGDA Curriculum Framework and there are exercises at the end of each section; newer editions include a CD-ROM with pre-fabricated Powerpoint presentations ready to use in the classroom... if you're the kind of teacher who likes to read bullet points off of slides. Anyway, this was very clearly meant to be a textbook, possibly the textbook (as in, One Textbook to rule them all, or perhaps the Ultimate Textbook Of Ultimate Destiny).
As might be expected, Programming and Art get the most attention; those disciplines are more quantifiable, have more direct and better understood application outside of game development, and they are the most common entry-level positions (other than QA). As a result, most academic programs already focus on either Programming or Art, so a grand-unified-theory textbook such as this would want to put its attention on the same areas that schools do.
The book's size and scope is in some ways a disadvantage. No single course can cover the entire text, and its sheer bulk is inherently intimidating. It is expensive, and its generality means that any given course probably has other textbooks with a tighter focus that are more relevant.
On the other hand, if several instructors collaborate and agree to use the book in all of their respective courses, this one text could serve as a constant companion to students across an entire curriculum. While Introduction is inherently weak in some areas (notably game design), it gives a solid list of references to other works; any question that a student may have about any aspect of game development is probably either answered in this book, or in one of its direct citations.
Students: Personally, I think every student should own this book as a reference guide, the same way everyone used to own a dictionary and thesaurus before the Web made those obsolete. That said, I went so far as to make this textbook required (and even assigned some readings from it) in several of my courses last year, and for the most part my students ignored it -- whether from the intimidation factor or the expense, I don't know.
Instructors: If you require this book, be prepared to go all the way with it: make sure there are enough assigned readings and problem sets that supplement your existing course that it's worth the trouble. Ideally, work with other professors so that the book is used across several classes. That said, for game design in particular, I think there are better books out there; this is best used in a more general program, or especially an art- or programming-focused curriculum that has a Game Design course on the side.
Professionals: Even at the professional level, this is still a decent reference text. It would come in most handy if you're asked to do something outside of your specialty (a graphics programmer being asked to do some AI, for example) or if you just want a better understanding of what your co-workers do all day. It's probably best to just ask your manager to get a shared copy for the office, rather than having to own your own personal book.
"Introduction to Game Development" (Steve Rabin)
This ginormous book is a fairly comprehensive look at all aspects of game development: art, design, programming, production, audio, business and even a little bit on academic game studies. (As with the rest of the industry, QA is largely ignored.) It's actually a collection of essays and articles written by a wide variety of experienced game developers; Rabin is the editor, not the author. The list of topics was developed according to the IGDA Curriculum Framework and there are exercises at the end of each section; newer editions include a CD-ROM with pre-fabricated Powerpoint presentations ready to use in the classroom... if you're the kind of teacher who likes to read bullet points off of slides. Anyway, this was very clearly meant to be a textbook, possibly the textbook (as in, One Textbook to rule them all, or perhaps the Ultimate Textbook Of Ultimate Destiny).
As might be expected, Programming and Art get the most attention; those disciplines are more quantifiable, have more direct and better understood application outside of game development, and they are the most common entry-level positions (other than QA). As a result, most academic programs already focus on either Programming or Art, so a grand-unified-theory textbook such as this would want to put its attention on the same areas that schools do.
The book's size and scope is in some ways a disadvantage. No single course can cover the entire text, and its sheer bulk is inherently intimidating. It is expensive, and its generality means that any given course probably has other textbooks with a tighter focus that are more relevant.
On the other hand, if several instructors collaborate and agree to use the book in all of their respective courses, this one text could serve as a constant companion to students across an entire curriculum. While Introduction is inherently weak in some areas (notably game design), it gives a solid list of references to other works; any question that a student may have about any aspect of game development is probably either answered in this book, or in one of its direct citations.
Students: Personally, I think every student should own this book as a reference guide, the same way everyone used to own a dictionary and thesaurus before the Web made those obsolete. That said, I went so far as to make this textbook required (and even assigned some readings from it) in several of my courses last year, and for the most part my students ignored it -- whether from the intimidation factor or the expense, I don't know.
Instructors: If you require this book, be prepared to go all the way with it: make sure there are enough assigned readings and problem sets that supplement your existing course that it's worth the trouble. Ideally, work with other professors so that the book is used across several classes. That said, for game design in particular, I think there are better books out there; this is best used in a more general program, or especially an art- or programming-focused curriculum that has a Game Design course on the side.
Professionals: Even at the professional level, this is still a decent reference text. It would come in most handy if you're asked to do something outside of your specialty (a graphics programmer being asked to do some AI, for example) or if you just want a better understanding of what your co-workers do all day. It's probably best to just ask your manager to get a shared copy for the office, rather than having to own your own personal book.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Textbook Review: Fundamentals of Game Design
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Fundamentals of Game Design" (Ernest Adams, Andrew Rollings)
This book covers the core concepts of the field of game design, and for good measure adds an in-depth look at a large number of currently-popular genres and the design elements specific to each.
I love the structure of Fundamentals; the topics flow nicely into one another, and the exercises at the end of each chapter make it easy to design lessons around. The coverage of game genres may be unique to this book; on the other hand, as new styles of gameplay are invented and others lose favor, this book will eventually date itself.
As for the content itself, the majority is (more or less) the sole opinions of the authors, and as such should be taken as a set of theories – not scientific laws. Like a programming code or religious text, this book is meant to be interpreted and discussed, not blindly followed.
Students: This book is absolutely worth reading once you’ve already studied the basics of game design and want to get into specifics. Do not read this as your first book; you’ll be tempted to assume that everything in here must be taken as gospel, and it has the danger of tainting your own artistic vision for years until you un-learn it. But as your study advances, you can properly see this as one approach of many, and the content will give you a valuable perspective.
Instructors: The worst way to use this book is to lecture directly from the text in an introductory course. I have great respect for the authors, but our industry does not need a new generation of Adams and Rollings clones; it needs creative people who can think for themselves. My preferred use of this book would be in an advanced, conceptual class where students already have a foundation in conceptual and practical game design; class time would consist not of lecture, but of moderated discussion. Everything in the book is subject to heated debate (even from the beginning with the definition of what a “game” is) and the debates in an advanced class would be wonderful.
Professionals: Experienced game developers will probably get little out of this book. If you have always been highly specialized and want to learn more about other areas of design then this book can help you, but that’s about it.
"Fundamentals of Game Design" (Ernest Adams, Andrew Rollings)
This book covers the core concepts of the field of game design, and for good measure adds an in-depth look at a large number of currently-popular genres and the design elements specific to each.
I love the structure of Fundamentals; the topics flow nicely into one another, and the exercises at the end of each chapter make it easy to design lessons around. The coverage of game genres may be unique to this book; on the other hand, as new styles of gameplay are invented and others lose favor, this book will eventually date itself.
As for the content itself, the majority is (more or less) the sole opinions of the authors, and as such should be taken as a set of theories – not scientific laws. Like a programming code or religious text, this book is meant to be interpreted and discussed, not blindly followed.
Students: This book is absolutely worth reading once you’ve already studied the basics of game design and want to get into specifics. Do not read this as your first book; you’ll be tempted to assume that everything in here must be taken as gospel, and it has the danger of tainting your own artistic vision for years until you un-learn it. But as your study advances, you can properly see this as one approach of many, and the content will give you a valuable perspective.
Instructors: The worst way to use this book is to lecture directly from the text in an introductory course. I have great respect for the authors, but our industry does not need a new generation of Adams and Rollings clones; it needs creative people who can think for themselves. My preferred use of this book would be in an advanced, conceptual class where students already have a foundation in conceptual and practical game design; class time would consist not of lecture, but of moderated discussion. Everything in the book is subject to heated debate (even from the beginning with the definition of what a “game” is) and the debates in an advanced class would be wonderful.
Professionals: Experienced game developers will probably get little out of this book. If you have always been highly specialized and want to learn more about other areas of design then this book can help you, but that’s about it.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Rant: The Need for Accreditation in Game Design Programs
I just saw a job posting on the HR website of a university that I will not name here, for a "Digital Game Design Faculty".
Requirements for the position:
The really sad thing is, these people probably have no idea what they're doing, nor will the person that they hire. And this will ultimately be a black mark on all education, not just this particular school, as the industry sees just how many schools mis-name their academic programs... and if the name isn't even right, what would you assume about the quality of instruction?
The only way I see out of this is industry accreditation, probably through the IGDA. Because universities can only be honest with students if they know enough about the subject material to proceed honestly in the first place.
Requirements for the position:
- Bachelor’s degree in education with experience in graphic design and animation.
- Proficient with Maya, Swift3D, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Final Cut Pro, Motion, and DVD Studio Pro.
The really sad thing is, these people probably have no idea what they're doing, nor will the person that they hire. And this will ultimately be a black mark on all education, not just this particular school, as the industry sees just how many schools mis-name their academic programs... and if the name isn't even right, what would you assume about the quality of instruction?
The only way I see out of this is industry accreditation, probably through the IGDA. Because universities can only be honest with students if they know enough about the subject material to proceed honestly in the first place.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Textbook Review: Game Design, Theory & Practice
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Game Design, Theory & Practice (2nd Ed.)" (Richard Rouse III)
This relatively well-known book was an early stab at a book about game design for non-designers (by “early” I mean that it’s more than five years old, thus predating many of today’s college curricula and the majority of other textbooks I've reviewed). It includes an eclectic mix of game analysis, best practices, and interviews with influential designers.
Most of the content is at a pretty basic level, making it an easy read. Of course, this also limits its usefulness to more experienced designers. Each chapter is mostly self-contained; this also makes it easy to read (one chapter at a time, and if you put it down for a few months you don't have to repeat old sections that you'd forgotten) but also makes the book feel a bit disjointed.
Students: This book is a great place to start for self-study if you know you want to design games but you don't know where to begin. It will help you understand the field, by showing you how some designers approach their craft, and you will come away with a variety of new perspectives on how to make games.
Instructors: It’s probably my own inexperience as a teacher, but I haven’t figured out how to include this book in a class (much as I’d like to). The topics don’t flow well, every chapter seems disconnected from the others, and there are no exercises or questions at the end of any chapter, so using this book would require a lot of extra prep work on the part of the instructor. This is perhaps not so surprising; it was never written for the express purpose of being used as a classroom text, after all.
Professionals: If you’ve already got a couple of shipped titles under your belt, most of the practical advice in this book will be nothing new to you. You may still find it entertaining, but it will probably not be of great help in honing your craft.
"Game Design, Theory & Practice (2nd Ed.)" (Richard Rouse III)
This relatively well-known book was an early stab at a book about game design for non-designers (by “early” I mean that it’s more than five years old, thus predating many of today’s college curricula and the majority of other textbooks I've reviewed). It includes an eclectic mix of game analysis, best practices, and interviews with influential designers.
Most of the content is at a pretty basic level, making it an easy read. Of course, this also limits its usefulness to more experienced designers. Each chapter is mostly self-contained; this also makes it easy to read (one chapter at a time, and if you put it down for a few months you don't have to repeat old sections that you'd forgotten) but also makes the book feel a bit disjointed.
Students: This book is a great place to start for self-study if you know you want to design games but you don't know where to begin. It will help you understand the field, by showing you how some designers approach their craft, and you will come away with a variety of new perspectives on how to make games.
Instructors: It’s probably my own inexperience as a teacher, but I haven’t figured out how to include this book in a class (much as I’d like to). The topics don’t flow well, every chapter seems disconnected from the others, and there are no exercises or questions at the end of any chapter, so using this book would require a lot of extra prep work on the part of the instructor. This is perhaps not so surprising; it was never written for the express purpose of being used as a classroom text, after all.
Professionals: If you’ve already got a couple of shipped titles under your belt, most of the practical advice in this book will be nothing new to you. You may still find it entertaining, but it will probably not be of great help in honing your craft.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Textbook Review: The Game Design Reader
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"The Game Design Reader" (Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman)
This companion to Rules of Play is simply a collection of important essays and other written works about games. It includes pretty much everything that I'd call "foundational" to the field: Costikyan's I Have No Words, Church's Formal Abstract Design Tools, Bartle's Player Types, and so on.
Unfortunately, it tries to be a little of everything; there's some New Games Journalism, some pieces on players and gamer culture, and other things that don't really have to do with designing a game. And most of the articles are freely available online anyway, making me wonder why I should force my students to pay some exorbitant amount of money for a textbook.
This is not to say that the articles (design-focused and otherwise) aren't useful. They are still important works in their own right, many people in the industry have read them already, and any serious student should read everything in this book. It's just that no matter what the subject of the course, the majority of the works in this book won't be relevant. I suppose you could build a course around the book, "Important Readings in the Game Industry," but I'm not at liberty to do that right now. An alternative is to require this book for several courses in game design and game studies, with each course covering different readings… but that requires a bit of coordination between professors to ensure minimal duplication, and pity the poor students who take half the courses only to have to purchase the same book again if it ever goes to a Second Edition.
Students: If you’re serious about games, you should have at least a passing familiarity with everything in this book. Buy it on your own and read it over a summer when you’ve got nothing else to do. Or, if you’re on a tight budget (and what student isn’t?), find the book in your local bookstore, copy down the table of contents, and track down all of the articles online. For those few readings that can’t be found online, you should be able to check out the appropriate works from a library, or just read them in the bookstore.
Instructors: I’ve gotten by with just assigning relevant online readings, without forcing students to buy this book. I do suggest to my students to track down additional relevant readings from the book on their own time.
Professionals: At the very least, take a look at the table of contents and see how much of it you recognize. If you haven’t seen anything mentioned, you’ve got some wonderful reading experiences ahead of you. More likely, you’ll recognize some important works that you’ve encountered before, and the rest won’t be relevant to you. Take a look and decide for yourself.
"The Game Design Reader" (Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman)
This companion to Rules of Play is simply a collection of important essays and other written works about games. It includes pretty much everything that I'd call "foundational" to the field: Costikyan's I Have No Words, Church's Formal Abstract Design Tools, Bartle's Player Types, and so on.
Unfortunately, it tries to be a little of everything; there's some New Games Journalism, some pieces on players and gamer culture, and other things that don't really have to do with designing a game. And most of the articles are freely available online anyway, making me wonder why I should force my students to pay some exorbitant amount of money for a textbook.
This is not to say that the articles (design-focused and otherwise) aren't useful. They are still important works in their own right, many people in the industry have read them already, and any serious student should read everything in this book. It's just that no matter what the subject of the course, the majority of the works in this book won't be relevant. I suppose you could build a course around the book, "Important Readings in the Game Industry," but I'm not at liberty to do that right now. An alternative is to require this book for several courses in game design and game studies, with each course covering different readings… but that requires a bit of coordination between professors to ensure minimal duplication, and pity the poor students who take half the courses only to have to purchase the same book again if it ever goes to a Second Edition.
Students: If you’re serious about games, you should have at least a passing familiarity with everything in this book. Buy it on your own and read it over a summer when you’ve got nothing else to do. Or, if you’re on a tight budget (and what student isn’t?), find the book in your local bookstore, copy down the table of contents, and track down all of the articles online. For those few readings that can’t be found online, you should be able to check out the appropriate works from a library, or just read them in the bookstore.
Instructors: I’ve gotten by with just assigning relevant online readings, without forcing students to buy this book. I do suggest to my students to track down additional relevant readings from the book on their own time.
Professionals: At the very least, take a look at the table of contents and see how much of it you recognize. If you haven’t seen anything mentioned, you’ve got some wonderful reading experiences ahead of you. More likely, you’ll recognize some important works that you’ve encountered before, and the rest won’t be relevant to you. Take a look and decide for yourself.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Textbook Review: From Blue Sky To Green Light
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light" (Deborah Todd)
This relatively short book covers everything that happens in preproduction; it gives a reasonable treatment to game design documents and the iterative process, and it even has a section on pitching a game to a publisher. It also covers the creative aspects of game design that I myself am weakest at: storytelling, character design and level design.
Overall, the book delivers what it promises, and not much else. You won’t find a lick of material on technical game design, content development during the actual creation of a game, or anything like that.
The only real weakness of the book is that it’s extremely current and uses a lot of very recent examples (as of the time of publication). This means it is likely to obsolete itself in a fairly short time, as the games within become dated and the business of the industry (hopefully) moves beyond the developer/publisher royalty-with-advance model. Although perhaps that’s intentional, if the author hopes and expects to make new editions every few years.
Students: Odds are, the first project you work on will already be in full production by the time you’re hired. Preproduction work, concepting and pitching are usually reserved for experienced design leads (not always, but usually), so this will not be immediately applicable to your first job. That gives you time to read it after you break in to the industry, if you're the procrastinating type. But if you’re curious what the early stages of a game project are like, you’ll get a pretty good overview by reading this book. It’s also not terribly big or intimidating, so reading it while still a student might not seem like such a daunting task.
Instructors: This book is rather specific to the earliest phases of game development, making its use limited in most classes. If you’re teaching a practical game design course where the deliverables include a one-page game concept, a slightly larger game proposal, a game design document and a verbal pitch to a “publisher” (i.e. the instructor), this book will cover you. If the only practical development course you teach involves all of that in the first three weeks and then it’s straight into prototyping, you might not have enough time to make the book worthwhile as a required text.
Professionals: Designers in the industry are still very guild/apprentice-like. If you do indeed start your first design job in the middle of a project, you’ll probably experience a few preproduction cycles vicariously through your leads before you’re forced to do it yourself. Depending on how you look at it, that either makes this book redundant with your experience, or it will reinforce it. In any case, it’s probably worth a read just to see what others have to say on the subject. And if you happen to find yourself in a small studio where you’re thrown into the role of Lead Designer on your first job fresh out of college… then you should read this just so you have some experience backing you up (even if it’s not your own).
Friday, August 31, 2007
Naches / Kvell
I just received news that one of my students (well, ex-student now, I suppose) just got his first game industry job as a designer. That makes two success stories total. Given how difficult it is to find an entry-level game design job, this makes me feel fulfilled in exactly the way I was hoping to be when I first became a teacher.
Interestingly, the two students who are now working as game designers were also the only two students of mine who attended GDC this year. I don't believe this is a coincidence at all. I tell all of my students that GDC is pretty much a mandatory step for anyone who wants to "break in", and now I have stronger evidence than just my own say-so.
Much as I'd love to take total credit for being such a great teacher, my students this year were pretty amazing. All I did was point them in the right direction, but they did all the legwork to reach their destinations.
For those unfamiliar with the terms Naches and Kvell, a description can be found here, on page 6 (the rest of the document is well worth reading too, especially if you're a game design student).
Interestingly, the two students who are now working as game designers were also the only two students of mine who attended GDC this year. I don't believe this is a coincidence at all. I tell all of my students that GDC is pretty much a mandatory step for anyone who wants to "break in", and now I have stronger evidence than just my own say-so.
Much as I'd love to take total credit for being such a great teacher, my students this year were pretty amazing. All I did was point them in the right direction, but they did all the legwork to reach their destinations.
For those unfamiliar with the terms Naches and Kvell, a description can be found here, on page 6 (the rest of the document is well worth reading too, especially if you're a game design student).
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Textbook Review: Rules of Play
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Rules of Play" (Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman)
I’m really glad this book was written. It was the first book ever written about game design that actually looks like a textbook. It’s big, it’s heavy, it has lots of small-print writing with exercises at the end of each chapter and a bunch of appendices at the end. Its very existence gives the entire field some modicum of academic merit.
The content does not deal so much with how to design games per se, but instead gives many different ways to critically analyze games. For example, if you consider a game as a system of rules, you are going to see it differently than if you look at that same game as a narrative, or as a sociocultural activity, or… well, you get the idea. It is therefore useful to game designers only in the most abstract sense of gaining a deeper understanding of what these things called “games” are, these things that we work with every day.
As a bonus at the end of each of the four sections, there are the rules for a game you can play (I found most of them to be quite good). In addition to the game itself, we can also see the designer’s notes about how the game started out, what kinds of things were found in playtesting and how (and why) the designer addressed the game’s shortcomings. This insight into the brain of a designer-in-motion is most interesting, and practically worth the (hefty) price tag of the book on its own. There’s also an essay by Reiner Knizia, which also makes for great reading, even if it doesn’t necessarily fit the theme of the rest of the book.
Unfortunately, this book has a few weaknesses in its presentation. The writing is a bit on the long side. As a game designer, I found that if I just read the bullet-point summary at the end of each chapter, I usually got all of the information I needed; actually reading the chapter itself was a waste of time. (Yes, I read every chapter first, just to make sure.) I’m not sure if this is just from my experience; if there are any students in the audience who can say whether this was true for them as well, please post in the comments.
Also, the authors have this unfortunate tendency to create their own vocabulary. Their new terminology mingles liberally with established industry jargon, but with no mention of which is which. I can’t fault the authors for this (what else could they do?) but it does make it more difficult to use this as a textbook: my students who go to GDC should know what an Avatar is, but if they start talking about “schemas” and “constitutive rules” and “transformative social play” they’re just going to embarrass themselves.
Students: I doubt any student would choose to read this on their own. Most of you don’t enjoy reading to begin with, and a book this abstract would probably bore you to tears. You may be forced to read it as part of a game design class (and if so, you have my sympathy) but otherwise, you’re safe avoiding it for the time being if you want to be a game designer. If you’re more interested in game critique or game studies, you’ll probably find this quite useful and fascinating. I could never figure out game studies people.
Instructors: This book would be perfect for a “Critical Game Analysis” class that acts as a dual requirement for Game Studies and Game Development students. I’d expect it to be an upper-level class, simply because of the highly academic writing in the text. For any course focused entirely on game design, there are better texts; as noted above, this book does nothing to explain how to actually design games.
If you do use this book for a class, be sure to differentiate between the terminology used that already exists, versus that which was created by the authors. Your students should be able to speak clearly about games to people who haven’t already read Rules of Play.
Professionals: This book took me about half a year to read through from cover to cover (in my spare time, granted). You can get all the same benefits in a fraction of the time by just skipping to the end of each chapter and reading the summary, then going back and looking up anything that doesn’t make immediate “well, duh” sense to you. Also read the Knizia essay and commissioned games, of course. Do that and you’ll finish reading it in a few days.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Textbook Review: Game Design Workshop
This is part of the series on book reviews.
"Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping & Playtesting Games" (Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, Steven Hoffman)
This book covers the core concepts and best practices of game design. It is organized into three parts. The first part gives a formal description of all of the different aspects of games, to build a framework for discussing how to design them. The second part talks about the iterative process as it applies to game design (in particular, how to prototype, focus test and playtest, and respond to feedback); in fact, this is the only game design book I've seen so far that does so. The last part gives an overview of the game industry and the job roles and responsibilities of the game designer.
The first part of the book gives a reasonable breakdown of games into their component parts. The second part gives great practical advice on the process of game development from a designer's point of view. The third part is easily the weakest link; it starts out worthless (everyone reading a book like this already knows what a game designer is, why else would they read it?) and proceeds into the realm of actively damaging (giving the waterfall model of production, and a design document template as examples of best practices). It is best for everyone with this book to just pretend the third section doesn't exist; thankfully, the rest of the book is worth the price of admission.
Sprinkled throughout the book are numerous interviews with famous designers, offering many (often conflicting) perspectives on the field; these make great discussion fodder for classes, and also provide some insight into what aspects of game design are universal (where many designers agree) versus those that are a matter of personal style (where designers give opposing answers to the same questions). They don't seem to have much relation to the section of the book they appear in, they're just diversionary sidebars... but they make interesting reading nonetheless.
Students: You can read this book on your own, but you'll probably get the most out of it if you take a class that uses it as a textbook. If no such class exists, reading the first two parts is still a worthwhile use of your time -- certainly better than nothing.
Instructors: The book contains many exercises, some highly conceptual and some quite practical, making it very easy to use as the basis for an intro course in game design. This is, in fact, the book I used myself for just such a class, and I was quite happy with it. I found that, while it does involve a lot of reading, the reading goes quickly; the students taking a game design class are already motivated, and this book contains the material that they want to know. I encouraged students to read those parts of the book that we didn't get to during the course, on their own time... except for the third part of the book, which I advised them to rip out of the book on the first day of class.
Professionals: The first part is worth a read if you're a practicing game designer; many of the concepts will probably not be news to you, but it might give you a few new conceptual ways to think about the design of games in the abstract. The second part is worth reading for both game designers and producers, especially if you're not working at Maxis or Firaxis or some other place that already embraces iterative design; it gives great practical advice for doing so. The third part is even more worthless than it would be for a student; you're already a practicing game designer, so the last thing you need to be taught is "what it's like in the game industry".
"Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping & Playtesting Games" (Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain, Steven Hoffman)
This book covers the core concepts and best practices of game design. It is organized into three parts. The first part gives a formal description of all of the different aspects of games, to build a framework for discussing how to design them. The second part talks about the iterative process as it applies to game design (in particular, how to prototype, focus test and playtest, and respond to feedback); in fact, this is the only game design book I've seen so far that does so. The last part gives an overview of the game industry and the job roles and responsibilities of the game designer.
The first part of the book gives a reasonable breakdown of games into their component parts. The second part gives great practical advice on the process of game development from a designer's point of view. The third part is easily the weakest link; it starts out worthless (everyone reading a book like this already knows what a game designer is, why else would they read it?) and proceeds into the realm of actively damaging (giving the waterfall model of production, and a design document template as examples of best practices). It is best for everyone with this book to just pretend the third section doesn't exist; thankfully, the rest of the book is worth the price of admission.
Sprinkled throughout the book are numerous interviews with famous designers, offering many (often conflicting) perspectives on the field; these make great discussion fodder for classes, and also provide some insight into what aspects of game design are universal (where many designers agree) versus those that are a matter of personal style (where designers give opposing answers to the same questions). They don't seem to have much relation to the section of the book they appear in, they're just diversionary sidebars... but they make interesting reading nonetheless.
Students: You can read this book on your own, but you'll probably get the most out of it if you take a class that uses it as a textbook. If no such class exists, reading the first two parts is still a worthwhile use of your time -- certainly better than nothing.
Instructors: The book contains many exercises, some highly conceptual and some quite practical, making it very easy to use as the basis for an intro course in game design. This is, in fact, the book I used myself for just such a class, and I was quite happy with it. I found that, while it does involve a lot of reading, the reading goes quickly; the students taking a game design class are already motivated, and this book contains the material that they want to know. I encouraged students to read those parts of the book that we didn't get to during the course, on their own time... except for the third part of the book, which I advised them to rip out of the book on the first day of class.
Professionals: The first part is worth a read if you're a practicing game designer; many of the concepts will probably not be news to you, but it might give you a few new conceptual ways to think about the design of games in the abstract. The second part is worth reading for both game designers and producers, especially if you're not working at Maxis or Firaxis or some other place that already embraces iterative design; it gives great practical advice for doing so. The third part is even more worthless than it would be for a student; you're already a practicing game designer, so the last thing you need to be taught is "what it's like in the game industry".
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Teaching Licenses
I've been thinking about how to best use a license when designing games, since long before I was teaching. Everyone has their theories but no one has an official industry-wide best practice. But when I'm running a class on game design, I feel obligated to say something about it, because it's something that comes up so often in industry.
The first time around, I got through this by mediating a class discussion. (Ha ha, I don't need all the answers, I can just have my students provide them!) We listed a lot of licensed games that were either really good or really terrible, and then looked for common themes. We agreed mostly on two general rules: respect the license (something that a certain dog food company would do well to understand), build a game in the fictional world without trying to recreate the original fiction, and choose a game style and genre that are appropriate to the license. The class then went on to create short pitch documents for a game that used the Care Bears license.
I thought about this again earlier today, when I saw a new Scrabble-branded instant-win game at Subway, and I wish I were teaching class right this moment so that I could lead a discussion on this. It's an interesting case in that it's a game license in reverse: a game itself is a license being used to promote an entirely different product, rather than the other way around. But I assume many of the rules of using a license well still apply. I have to wonder: was this a good use of a license? Okay, it's obviously competing with the Monopoly game from McDonald's. But Monopoly is at least a game about money, so a game where you (theoretically) win money makes sense. And collecting all title deeds of the same color has meaning from within the game, so it makes sense that doing so in an instant-win game is meaningful. I don't see this with Scrabble. In the game I get points, not cash; and I'm not collecting one letter at a time to spell words, either. Neither license has anything to do with fast food. So, I don't really see the use. I have to wonder whether this promotion will have a greater effect on sales of sandwiches, or Scrabble sets.
All that said, it will be a happy day for me if I ever see a big fast-food franchise running a Settlers of Catan scratchoff game.
Feel free to leave other comments on common themes of games that make good use of licensed material.
The first time around, I got through this by mediating a class discussion. (Ha ha, I don't need all the answers, I can just have my students provide them!) We listed a lot of licensed games that were either really good or really terrible, and then looked for common themes. We agreed mostly on two general rules: respect the license (something that a certain dog food company would do well to understand), build a game in the fictional world without trying to recreate the original fiction, and choose a game style and genre that are appropriate to the license. The class then went on to create short pitch documents for a game that used the Care Bears license.
I thought about this again earlier today, when I saw a new Scrabble-branded instant-win game at Subway, and I wish I were teaching class right this moment so that I could lead a discussion on this. It's an interesting case in that it's a game license in reverse: a game itself is a license being used to promote an entirely different product, rather than the other way around. But I assume many of the rules of using a license well still apply. I have to wonder: was this a good use of a license? Okay, it's obviously competing with the Monopoly game from McDonald's. But Monopoly is at least a game about money, so a game where you (theoretically) win money makes sense. And collecting all title deeds of the same color has meaning from within the game, so it makes sense that doing so in an instant-win game is meaningful. I don't see this with Scrabble. In the game I get points, not cash; and I'm not collecting one letter at a time to spell words, either. Neither license has anything to do with fast food. So, I don't really see the use. I have to wonder whether this promotion will have a greater effect on sales of sandwiches, or Scrabble sets.
All that said, it will be a happy day for me if I ever see a big fast-food franchise running a Settlers of Catan scratchoff game.
Feel free to leave other comments on common themes of games that make good use of licensed material.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Analogy: Learning as Painting
I heard an interesting analogy today that I hadn't encountered before: we learn in coats of paint.
First we get a general big picture with broad strokes, then as we revisit the material we add finer and finer details. This is why there's so much review in school; the first time you learn something like integral calculus it's all very new and confusing, but the third time around it gets a lot easier.
Interestingly, this is also how we play video games. At first you have a basic idea of what's going on -- the basic controls to make things happen on screen. After playing for a little while you find additional layers of strategy (or increase your skills) to the point where you understand finer details about how the game works. We even have a name for this: the MDA framework. The broad brush strokes (from a player's point of view) are the aesthetics, the feeling you get from playing the game. The medium-level details are the dynamics, the way that various components in the game interact with one another. The fine details are the mechanics, the underlying rules of how everything is actually resolved by the computer.
If this is, by its very nature, how we learn new material -- learning it once formally and then revisiting it multiple times until we finally grok it -- that has a number of implications for structuring a class. Among other things, it means that any individual course shouldn't be designed in a vacuum; it should have a lot of connections to other classes within the overall curriculum, so that each later class reinforces the material from the earlier ones. (I ended up doing this in a lot of my classes last year, not by design, but more because I thought some topics were important enough that I should make sure all of my students encountered them, even if they only took one class and not another.)
People who have Ph.D.'s in education probably have a theory named after some famous person in the field to describe all this, but I'm still just figuring it all out as I go...
First we get a general big picture with broad strokes, then as we revisit the material we add finer and finer details. This is why there's so much review in school; the first time you learn something like integral calculus it's all very new and confusing, but the third time around it gets a lot easier.
Interestingly, this is also how we play video games. At first you have a basic idea of what's going on -- the basic controls to make things happen on screen. After playing for a little while you find additional layers of strategy (or increase your skills) to the point where you understand finer details about how the game works. We even have a name for this: the MDA framework. The broad brush strokes (from a player's point of view) are the aesthetics, the feeling you get from playing the game. The medium-level details are the dynamics, the way that various components in the game interact with one another. The fine details are the mechanics, the underlying rules of how everything is actually resolved by the computer.
If this is, by its very nature, how we learn new material -- learning it once formally and then revisiting it multiple times until we finally grok it -- that has a number of implications for structuring a class. Among other things, it means that any individual course shouldn't be designed in a vacuum; it should have a lot of connections to other classes within the overall curriculum, so that each later class reinforces the material from the earlier ones. (I ended up doing this in a lot of my classes last year, not by design, but more because I thought some topics were important enough that I should make sure all of my students encountered them, even if they only took one class and not another.)
People who have Ph.D.'s in education probably have a theory named after some famous person in the field to describe all this, but I'm still just figuring it all out as I go...
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
The importance of a Game Industry course
I taught a course last year called Game Industry Survey, sort of a who's-who and what's-what of the industry. Recent events highlight why such a course is inherently useful.
See, there was this game called Guitar Hero, and if you haven't heard of it, it became a surprise hit, originally launched in 2005 with a sequel the following year. The original and sequel were developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane. Then, things got complicated. RedOctane was purchased by Activision, and development on Guitar Hero 3 was handed to Neversoft (of Tony Hawk fame). Meanwhile, Harmonix is focusing its efforts on Rock Band, an iteration on the same basic concept.
What needs to be understood about this mess?
See, there was this game called Guitar Hero, and if you haven't heard of it, it became a surprise hit, originally launched in 2005 with a sequel the following year. The original and sequel were developed by Harmonix and published by RedOctane. Then, things got complicated. RedOctane was purchased by Activision, and development on Guitar Hero 3 was handed to Neversoft (of Tony Hawk fame). Meanwhile, Harmonix is focusing its efforts on Rock Band, an iteration on the same basic concept.
What needs to be understood about this mess?
- There is a difference between the Developer and the Publisher. (Briefly: Developers make games; Publishers make money.)
- Intellectual Property is often tied to a specific Developer or Publisher, but it can also be its own separate entity, as is the case here.
- Ditto with the code base for a game series, which is often tied to the IP (and the Developer) but not always... as in this case.
Why is understanding these things useful?
- A lot of people in the game industry are following this unfolding story with great interest. A lot of us like the original games, you see. So, if you're talking to a developer and you don't understand this stuff, you're likely to have a foot-in-mouth moment that could cost you a job opportunity.
- Even if you're not interested in joining the industry, if you're just an avid game player who likes the series, understanding these things lets you make better purchasing decisions. "I likes the first two Guitar Hero games, so I'm guaranteed to like the third one" is no longer given if the people actually making the third game are different from the ones who made the originals. If you follow the developer and not the publisher, you'll usually find more consistency in product lines.
My thanks to the industry for making my job easier. For once.
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