Game.Developer.2009.11.pdf

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Game Developer - November 2009
VOL16NO10 NOVEMBER2009
THE LEADING GAME INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
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POSTMORTEM
CONTENTS.1109
VOLUME 16 NUMBER 10
22 5TH CELL'S SCRIBBLENAUTS
S CRIBBLENAUTS is a pie-in-the-sky concept come to life, and there's
a lot for developer 5th Cell to be proud of. Plus, in a game where the
object is to write anything and have it come to life on the screen,
what could go wrong? A whole lot, of course—from QA to localization
to controls, all facts are laid bare.
By Joseph M. Tringali
DEPARTMENTS
2 GAME PLAN By Brandon Sheffield
[EDITORIAL]
To Be Continued
FEATURES
4 HEADS UP DISPLAY
[NEWS]
7 GAMING IN THE CLOUD
Companies like OnLive and Gaikai are promising the gaming world
on a platter with cloud computing-supported game services. But
how viable is it, really? Programmer Jake Cannell takes a look at the
technical and financial logistics behind this emerging space.
By Jake Cannell
Good Old Designs, Sense of Wonder Night 2009, and more.
34 TOOL BOX By Zoltan Erdokovy and Bijan Forutanpour
[REVIEW]
Luxology's Modo 401, and Real Time Cameras book
38 THE INNER PRODUCT By Mick West
[PROGRAMMING]
Jump To It
13 THE GAME DEVELOPER 50
In concert with our advisory board, we've highlighted 50 important
achievements of the last year-or-so, and associated them with specific
persons in order to acknowledge individual work. It's no easy feat to
distill the work of many into a few names, but we attempted it here.
By Brandon Sheffield, Jeffrey Fleming, and Simon Carless
42 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore
[ART]
Most Likely to Succeed
46 DESIGN OF THE TIMES By Damion Schubert
[DESIGN]
The Art of Fun
50 INTERVIEW: NAOTO OHSHIMA
Ohshima is best known as the character designer for S ONIC THE
H EDGEHOG and director of N I GHTS INTO D REAMS , and here we investigate
his motivations, thoughts, and his fascination with time.
By Brandon Sheffield
49 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin
[SOUND]
The Magic of Misdirection
56 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT By Matthew Wasteland
[HUMOR]
Stack Trace Industry Detective
COVER ART: EDISON YAN
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GAME PLAN // BRANDON SHEFFIELD
Think Services, 600 Harrison St., 6th Fl.,
San Francisco, CA 94107
t: 415.947.6000 f: 415.947.6090
TO BE CONTINUED
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
FOR INFORMATION, ORDER QUESTIONS, AND
ADDRESS CHANGES
t: 800.250.2429 f: 847.763.9606
EDITORIAL
PUBLISHER
Simon Carless l scarless@gdmag.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Brandon Sheffield l bsheffield@gdmag.com
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Jeffrey Fleming l jfleming@gdmag.com
ART DIRECTOR
Joseph Mitch l jmitch@gdmag.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Jesse Harlin l jharlin@gdmag.com
Steve Theodore l stheodore@gdmag.com
Mick West l mwest@gdmag.com
Soren Johnson l sjohnson@gdmag.com
Damion Schubert l dschubert@gdmag.com
ADVISORY BOARD
Hal Barwood Designer-at-Large
Mick West Independent
Brad Bulkley Neversoft
Clinton Keith Independent
Bijan Forutanpour Sony Online Entertainment
Mark DeLoura Independent
Carey Chico Pandemic Studios
ADVERTISING SALES
GLOBAL SALES DIRECTOR
t: 415.947.6227
MEDIA ACCOUNT MANAGER
John Malik Watson e: jmwatson@think-services.com
t: 415.947.6224
GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER, EDUCATION
AND RECRUITMENT
t: 415.947.6241
COORDINATOR, EDUCATION AND RECRUITMENT
t: 415.947.6223
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Robert Steigleider e: rsteigleider@ubm-us.com
REPRINTS
WRIGHT'S REPRINTS
t: 877.652.5295
THINK SERVICES
CEO THINK SERVICES Philip Chapnick
GROUP DIRECTOR Kathy Schoback
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Cliff Scorso
CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Anthony Adams
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
GROUP DIRECTOR Kathy Henry
LIST RENTAL Merit Direct LLC t: 914.368.1000
MARKETING
SERVICES MARKETING COORDINATOR Laura Robison
UBM TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER David Levin
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Scott Mozarsky
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER David Wein
CORPORATE SENIOR VP SALES Anne Marie Miller
SENIOR VP, STRATEGIC DEV. AND BUSINESS ADMIN. Pat Nohilly
SENIOR VP, MANUFACTURING Marie Myers
RETHINKING PLAYER DEATH
ARCADES HAVE BROUGHT US A LOT OF SIGNIFICANT
advances over the years. From the industry's
beginning through the mid-90s, arcades were still
where you’d find the best game graphics, and the
best multiplayer experiences. A great many excellent
design rules and guidelines were forged in these
fires. Every so often though, I notice a trope carried
over from the arcade days that just doesn’t seem
to fit anymore. One of those is the concept of lives,
continues, and player death.
The thought occurred to me while playing T EENAGE
M UTANT N INJA T URTLES : T URTLES IN T IME R E -S HELLED for
Xbox Live Arcade. I played with three friends, and aside
from none of us being able to tell which character
we were about 75 percent of the time, I noticed that
the game defaulted to unlimited continues. Playing
essentially amounted to mashing the attack button
and hoping for the best, with no real consequences to
death, though the game did keep a tally of who among
my friends had died the most times.
It really stuck with me—in a scenario in which
death essentially means nothing, why have death at
all? Granted, this was a port of an arcade game, but a
number of kids’ games operate under a similar basic
principle. Dying either places you right back where
you were, or it does so until you run out of lives, and
then you continue and start at the beginning of the
level, lives fully restocked. The game is basically
testing your ability to complete the same actions
again and again, rather than your skill. Except in
outlying cases, it’s testing your willingness to
persevere, and not to adapt.
are conceptually relevant. So many games employ
outlandish sci-fi or fantasy scenarios that it seems
death could be explained away in simple terms—or
even better, with some entertaining gameplay.
Continues and their progeny are usually not a
nuisance, they just seem unnecessary—evidence of
the early framework around which games have evolved.
When a developer intends it, player deaths can be
entertaining, they just need to be given weight. If you
don’t care if you die, the stakes of play seem rather
minor. In L EFT 4 D EAD , you feel like you’re letting your
teammates down, so death has weight. But in G EARS OF
W AR , which I otherwise like very much, death is just an
annoying setback, and I have to watch cut scenes again
and traipse back across the same shattered landscape
just to get killed again by the same stupid Troika.
We’ve had articles in the magazine (see “Press A
to Jump,” Game Developer , October 2009) that cite
death as a good time to provide positive feedback
for players, and add tutorial hints. Considering the
fact that games are meant to be won, the player is
essentially invincible in the grand scheme of things,
requiring, again, nothing more than perseverance
and the occasional GameFaqs hint. Why not try
to create a game that contains similar challenges
to standard games, but completely avoids death?
If the end result is the same, and meaningful (or
humorous) consequences aren’t built in, why is death
even part of the equation? It isn’t really death, after
all, it’s really just the proverbial “flesh wound.”
These days we have a buffer against death in
games anyway—most first- and third-person shooters
have regenerative health, whether it makes sense for
the world or not. Once the player’s regenerative health
is depleted, they crumple to the ground momentarily,
only to have time magically rewound, with players
finding themselves transported to a very familiar
(usually identically instanced) checkpoint save state
from their recent past.
RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE
» This extends in a mild way to the checkpoint
systems in modern games. Most AAA games have
rid themselves of the idea of continues, or even the
concept of limited lives, but death is still not so much
a punishment as it is a setback—you simply lose a
few minutes’ playing time, and probably learn some
strategies in the meantime. So why represent this as
“death,” rather than in some other way? It could well be
because we’ve always done it that way, rather than for
any reason anyone spent time thinking about.
D EMON ’ S S OULS is going to be a hot topic discussion
among alternative journalists and academics for some
time, perhaps rightly so—the way that game deals
with death is well thought out, and actually has an
in-world reason behind it. If you die, your (weaker)
soul must go out in search of demon souls with which
to reclaim your physical body. In A SSASSIN ’ S C REED ,
“death” is explained as a de-syncing of the player from
his host body in history. In P REY , players must fight
their way back from the valley of death, to reclaim
their place among the living. Even Silicon Knights’
drawn-out resurrection sequences in T OO H UMAN
THE DEATH (OF MY INTEREST)
» Of course if you’re not careful, alternate methods
of “death” can be even more annoying. Lengthy
resurrection sequences (in fact cut scenes of any
kind) will take the player out of the action. Death- or
loss-related minigames need to be fun and relevant.
Almost any time not playing the game is time waiting
to play the game—and that’s generally time wasted.
Innovative ways of dealing with player death
aren’t just for the wacky indies, or the fringe
titles—which is why I deliberately didn’t mention any.
High-end games are starting to change the way they
deal with what lies beyond, and it seems high time
that more developers start to confront their own (in-
game) mortality.
— Brandon Sheffield
2
GAME DEVELOPER | NOVEMBER 2009
HEADLINE
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All trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. Adobe screen shot reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated.
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