So What Makes A Game?

What I’ve referred to as “week one” on this project was in actuality only two days and weekend, so this is still only really the first week of development. For simplicity’s sake I’m not going to start adjusting my weeks so that they begin on Thursdays as I don’t really think that’s going to help anyone. The little weekly headers are in correlation to the time-plan I’ve set myself in my Learning Agreement, which is something I’m hoping to have finished by the end of the week. Once we are all agreed, I can properly delve in.

So, I’m really still revolving my thoughts around last weeks goals, which were to research and refine ideas. I’ve already thrown out a few ideas about subject matter, but before I properly convert my theme into a game I want to make sure I’ve got a few questions answered about what a good game actually is. Unfortunately, no matter how deeply I look into this, there is no definite, resounding answer.

I’ve been especially enjoying this book Rules of Play recently. The book is designed to provide developers with an insight into the theory behind development choices and processes, without suggesting any sort of development framework to follow. The book begins by attempting to define the general term “game” by combining definitions provided by a selection of theorists. To reference a few…

Reduced to its formal essence, a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context. A more conventional definition would say that a game is a context with rules among adversaries trying to win objectives.

~Clark C Abt

A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.

~Greg Costikyan

Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a context between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.

~Elliot Avedon & Brian Sutton Smith

The consensus is:

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.

Simply put, a game is something which must be “played” in order to achieve the objective. The emphasis of the book is obviously on the rules which exist in games, that the developer and the player must follow. As human beings, we understand the things which happen to us in our daily lives because of the natural and unquestionable rules which surround us. If a game does not follow rules, or consistently breaks its own rules without reason, it will not feel natural to play. From a developer’s perspective, making a “good game” is to create a sound system and a consistent set of rules, preferably ones which aren’t in conflict with the desires of the player.

In the online extra for Indie Game The Movie which I posted about a couple of days ago, Super Meat Boy was complimented for its natural playability. The objective of the game is simply to get from starting point A to finishing point B without getting killed by the severe obstacles which lie in your path. Ultimately, a simple goal.

System
A group of interacting, interrelated, or independent elements forming a complex whole.
Here, the system is the strange setting and world of Super Meat Boy, including its inhabitants. The way it looks and the way all the elements interact with each other create the “system”.
Player
The player is introduced to the system by being allowed to move within it, and interact with it. The player is represented by the main character Meat Boy.
Artificial
The game world in this case only exists within an artificial space, and has no correlation to reality. The player can expect the unexpected.
Conflict
The underlying conflict of Super Meat Boy is between the playable character and nemesis Dr Fetus over possession of female character Bandage Girl. I did mention this is a very strange game. It’s the typical “girl gets captured, girl must be rescued” scenario.
Rules
The rules are touched on briefly by the developers, who discuss the aspect of wall-jumping. The unique game physics are part of the rules which all game elements must adhere to, as well as the outcomes of various actions etc. Every action has a specific reaction.
Quantifiable Outcome
To put it simply, either the player wins or loses. Meat Boy may die on his quest, or he may reach his goal in every level and eventual re-acquire his kidnapped girlfriend.

Super Meat Boy is incredibly challenging to play, but consistency within the game allows the player to really get to grips with the gameplay mechanics and methods of play. By mastering control of the game, the player will eventually recognise its systems and rules in order to advance.

Hanami

If my last post has left you going “Wait…Hanami…What?” (and I hope it has!) then here is a little insight into Hanami. I can’t remember quite how I discovered it, but as I often have Otaku tendencies it managed to come up in some routine internet browsing recently. I love all things Japanese. Originally introduced through video games and cartoons, I’ve extended my knowledge of Japanese culture to pretty much every aspect, and I even speak a little bit too ^_^. I’d love to visit some day, and experience the culture and lifestyle first-hand.

Hanami literally means flower viewing, but generally refers to watching cherry blossoms or ume blossoms. It has become a custom in Japan, where cherry blossoms bloom and fall within a short one or two week period around the end of March or early April. People go outside for parties and picnics, simply to enjoy the short period when the blossoms are on the trees. Japan-Guide.com states:

Hanami can be just a stroll in the park, but it traditionally also involves a picnic party under the blooming trees. Hanami parties have been held in Japan for many centuries, and today are held in public and private gardens and parks across the country. Famous cherry blossom spots can get very crowded, and the best picnic spots are fought after.

After reading about this for a while, I started to wonder what happens at the end of Hanami, if there is such a thing as the end. My imagination immediately flashed up images of parks and streets void of people, where everyone has simply retreated back inside. I imagined a world where the blossoms just drifted on the wind and sat on the ground before eventually completely disappearing. At first, I assumed it might be quite a calm and peaceful scene, but after thinking about it a little more I thought “perhaps it would be lonely.”

I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ve seen enough photos to realise how beautiful it can be. This sense of beauty comes across well in anime set in Japan, where backgrounds are typically exaggerated. In 5 centimetres per Second, the falling blossoms are compared to falling snow, and are placed floating around ordinary objects to make them appear nice than they really are!

I think this kind of imagery would work well within a game, immediately any object can be stylised with the addition of a slightly pink hue and an array of blossoms! There are plenty of other typical Japanese objects which could be applied to give any game world a far-Eastern feel, without having to recreate actual Japan.
This video is a compilation of photos after a man’s one year stay in Japan. It helps give a good, personal sense of what makes Japan different to anywhere else in the world, and with a little help from the music suggests an sense of calmness and serenity. There’s a huge difference between Japan’s big cities and rural areas, but these are often brought closer together with the help of things like Sakura blossoms in urban areas.

I don’t think Japan is really a lonely place, which is why it might be so poignant to portray it as deserted and eerily quiet. The objective of a game set in such a place would probably be dispel its loneliness…

EMP First Thoughts

Clues about my intentions for the Extended Major Project may have cropped up somewhere in the preceding posts! We were given the official briefing for the EMP at uni yesterday, so now the clock is counting down to that fateful day in mid May when my latest creation will appear to the world.
My thoughts have turned recently to questions like “what makes a game?” and more importantly, “what makes a good game?“. I read a lot of books on game theory over Christmas and I’ve been left in one of those states of existential pondering… I’ve been asking myself “what makes a good game developer??” which has a lot to do with why I decided to write seven posts on some really awesome ones.

So I guess the theme underlying all else throughout this project is:
How can I use characteristics from “good” existing games to create a brilliant, contemporary, unique new game?

The aim is to create something new, but which echoes games past. The final outcome will emerge in the form of a 2D platformer, so already it has (or should have!) echoes of the great platformers of the early Nintendo years…
This kinda sums up my thought patterns so far:

In answer to my questions about good game developers, the release of Indie Game The Movie is on the horizon, and this little online extra was released a couple of days ago. Unfortunately I can’t embed the video for privacy reasons(or something), so watch it at the link below. I think this immediately separates the exceptional from the ordinary:
Indie Game The Movie Online Extra

It feels to me better than Mario, which was in my mind the perfect way for a platformer to feel. It feels like Mario, but in a lot of ways a lot of aspects in it feel better. It feels faster, it feels like I have more control, especially in the air. I feel like I have complete control over the character. And that’s number one with a platformer.

The movement code for meatboy is nothing that isn’t nature. And it’s totally just scripted, fixed, duct-taped stuff, but there’s so much of it, and it’s so often that it actually feels pretty good. I think it’s just because I complain.

You can’t make a platformer and when somebody dies they say:
“aww, the fucking game feels stupid”
“aww, it killed me because the button feels dumb”

Advice accepted. That’s going straight onto my list of goals!
For this project, I’m revolving my research and development around a theme rather than a genre or aspect of gaming. Before, I vaguely asked “how can I make a game which simulates a strange experience?” This time, I’m saying “let’s make a game about the Japanese custom of Hanami.” All I have to do to create the game is apply the characteristics I discover from researching good platformers and combine this with some sort of objective, eg. “collect all the cherry blossoms that fall post-Hanami.” And then obviously there’s the complicated technical and arty parts to work on, but that’s what the next 18 weeks are for…

EMP Countdown 7- Last Words…

Nitrome

Nitrome is a London-based games development company who specialise in free pixel-art browser games for the casual player. They release short games frequently, designed to provide short bursts of play. As a result, the company has ended up with an archive of over 100 individual games each utilising graphical style slightly differently, and showcasing a huge range of game types. To quote weird, artsy indie dev Pippinbarr;

even within pixelly looks there are different approaches.

So what’s helpful about a company like Nitrome is it’s insight into all these styles which they’ve showcased over the last few years, from the very refined contemporary look to the rough, jagged classic look. I’ve picked out these specific game for their divers approaches to pixel art:

Nitrome Must Die - The 100th Game

This style is probably most common amongst Nitrome games. Foreground sprites are set apart from the background with black outlines, while irrelevant background objects are less-contrasting in comparison. The level is made up of tiles and blocky objects which are strictly aligned to a grid.

Steamlands

This isn’t the greatest example of isometric pixel art, but it is simple enough to see what is going on! The isometric approach is often applied to game backgrounds and is a popular choice for the artist eboy. The map here is laid out at a 45 degree angle, so that the player always sees three faces of any block as opposed to the one you would normally see when playing a 2D game.

The Bucket

In contrast, this style looks a lot more classic that the outlined style. Objects are made of basic shapes, with no outline. Detail is avoided to avoid shapes becoming lost within each other, and the bright colours used contrast each other to determine separate objects.

Super Treadmill

This example uses the traditional non-outlined approach, although in this case the artist has added unusual vertical lines to the imagery. At first I thought they may have been put there to represent scanlines, except that they run the wrong way… So to me they just give a corrugated card effect.

Looking at a broader perspective, Nitrome have a job page which describes their perfect game artist. For me, this acts as a pretty good check-list for qualities I feel I should have.

By the end of the project, I hope I can say that I fit the criteria quite well! I’ll be keeping track of my progress.

EMP Countdown 6 – 2 More Days…

Interestingly enough, over 50% of my chosen Indie heroes are Canadian. Today I’m broadening my world a little by focusing on Daisuke Amaya, the Japanese creative genius behind Cave Story.

Cave Story has been brought to the attention of the masses in the last year, gaining a make-over for the Wiiware and Steam versions of the game, and a complete conversion to 3D for the upcoming 3DS release. But years before all of this, Cave Story was a simple 2D shooter which gained appreciation from a small cult audience. It was this audience who created an English translation patch for the game, gradually spreading the phenomenon worldwide.

And this all happened way before the whole retro pixel-art movement really took off (in the Western world at least!). The chosen graphical style was an echo of the game’s genre and functions- ultimately the player is required to traverse a 2D world acquiring weapon upgrades in order to shoot and gain experience from anything in the way, very reminiscent of early Metroid games. There is a story to follow, and if the player wishes, gameplay can be quite linear. However, if the player decides to backtrack at certain times, progress can twist and turn and secrets can be revealed. It has an exploration undertone which adds a layer of enjoyability to the game.

From these you can see how Cave Story adheres to traditional development, therefore appealing to the player’s sense of nostalgia….
1. Indoor shots contain the player in a small space, surrounded by a black screen.
2. Outdoor shots show a full-screen world. Text boxes showing dialogue appear at the bottom of the screen. If a non-playable character is speaking, then quite often a character portrait would appear next to the text. Noticeable in this example: the HUD disappears while a message is displayed.
3. Powerups appear as capsules and health pickups appear as hearts. It’s just tradition. The HUD here allows the player to scroll through each weapon, and also displays weapon progress and player health stats.
4. The inventory menu allows the player to scroll through carried items and weapons, displaying information on each.

Rumour has it that Cave Story took years for Amaya to finish as he took on every production role personally. The game was then released as PC freeware, which I think is because Amaya creates for love not money. As fortune would have it, his game went to gain huge commercial success… And it’s success is probably due to its nature. It is a very traditionally made game, with all the features of a traditional side-scrolling shooter, however it surprises the player with unpredictable additions, which occur if the player chooses to play non-linearly.

Links for Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya:
Amaya’s Online Development Log
English Cave Story Fan Site
Official Japanese Cave Story Website
Cave Story+ on Steam

EMP Countdown 5! 3 More Days…

Apologies for the inconsistent post titles, I can’t ever remember what I used before and nothing seems to sound right.

Day #5: Jonathan Lavigne (& a bit of Paul Robertson too)

Jonathan Lavigne or Pixeltao is a devoted developer/pixel artist who is responsible for the great look of several awesome games. Despite my fondness for exciting, experimental, rule-breaking, risky indie developments, I love Lavigne’s game making rhetoric. On his blog he says:

I love every aspect of the process involved in making video games: pixel art, coding, game design and drawing. I don’t have any pretentions about being original or experimental. What I’m really into is creating simple, fun and well designed games.

Ninja Senki was the first of Lavigne’s games I came to discover, drawn in by its strikingly colourful pixel-art and and subtle retro-references. Just as he describes, there’s nothing unpredictable about this game- the player really knows what to expect. It’s just a rehash which plays like a multitude of enjoyable games. Which makes it successful!

Lavigne’s next big creation was Wizorb, another retro rehash. Wizorb just takes elements from all over the place, from classic RPGs to action and adventure games, and combines them with a classic “block breaking” style main campaign. Lavigne points his potential players towards games they may have played in their past such as Breakout and Arkanoid. Personally, I had a clone of something like this on an early Windows PC! The twist on this clone is that there is a story plot set in a fantasy world, and as well as playing in this breakout style, the player can use items they’ve gained whilst playing to purchase new skills etc. which breaks away from the arcade-style high score objective. In my opinion, by remaking a collection of old games and merging them together, Lavigne has actually created something quite new and exciting.

Lavigne’s biggest success has to be his work on Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Videogame, where his ability to clone really comes to light. The game takes the style of a Streets of Rage style beat ’em up, including many of the same gaming cliches which are common amongst this genre. The game is the perfect accompaniment to the comic series and the motion picture, which use a lot of retro videogaming themes and throw in references all over the place. The game includes the character art and animation of Paul Robertson, an anime inspired pixel-artist with some… strange tastes. Robertson uses frame-based animation to create his 2D game-sprite like animations, however the game itself is not made in a completely traditional way, evident in elements such as the large non-tiled background images.

One of Robertson’s few animations non-obscene animations, depicting the film Attack The Block. Most of Robertson’s images/animations either directly or indirectly reference retro videogames in some way!

Links For Jonathan Lavigne:
Official Pixeltao Blog
About Scott Pilgrim on the PixelDrip Gallery

Links For Paul Robertson:
Paul Robertson on Livejournal
Scott Pilgrim Sprites on Game Set Watch

EMP Countdown Day 4: 4 Days…

I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been writing about these games and wondering if the info I’ve provided will actually be beneficial to my EMP. Obviously, each one of these provides me with an accumulative drive which I need to kick-start this project, and I can learn from each one even if I haven’t made it obvious whilst showcasing them. Over the past four days I’ve been ploughing through Gabriel Verdon’s Devlog on TIGcourse (currently on page 44) and taking pages of notes on the direction of development and the stages he went through, stealing many of his production images to help me with my own. I’m hoping that somewhere between concentrating on these other great games I will end up with a resulting brilliant and solid idea of my own, which is something I’m unfortunately lacking. And the project start is looming…

I think how these games will really help me will be evident when it comes to applying the useful stuff to my own creation. It’s easy to look at how other developers are using sprite sizes and resolutions for example, as well as art direction and the implementation of Game Maker functions in the case of GM made games. So I will probably be constantly referring back to this list during my own development, or that’s the plan.

Today, something slightly different. So far, I’ve looked at a lot of home-made side-scrollers from some really inspirational guys, however Fez by Polytron inspires me in its hugeness and uniqueness.

I’m pretty sure I referred back to this all the time during the specialist project, as this is another game currently in development and its nice to be able to watch it grow. The main reason I like Fez is its art style, a unique application of pixel art into a world of squares and straight lines (even the clouds are made of blocks).

Like Sword & Sworcery EP, Fez adds to the pixel style with anti-aliased shapes and lighting, evident mainly in the gradient across the sky. In his TIGsource devlog, Gabriel Verdon admits to using similar shading techniques in The Archer, especially to add a sense of depth to platforms. What’s mostly interesting about this game is that it is actually 3D, with only 2 dimensions ever appearing on screen at once unless the view is being rotated. It’s the first time something like this has ever really been attempted, which has resulted in an unexpectedly long development time. It would appear through the complex nature of the game that it probably uses large textures rather than tilesets, although tiles appear to have been used on some of the textures as homage to the old games which have inspired its pixel artiness. The main character Gomez also never rotates and always appears in 2D, so it’s probably that he has been animated using frame-based animation, as well as many other animations throughout the game.

The style of imagery works so well in Fez because it is consistent. All object have been made to look very square, and small colour-ranges have been applied to any one scene. Here, the colour scheme uses many bright blues and greens, but in more hostile areas darker colours have been applied. It would seem that commitment to the style entirely is key to gaining recognition.

Links for Fez:
Fez on the Polytron website
Fez on Vimeo
Fez on Indie DB
Creator Phil Fish talks about Fez on Gamasutra

EDIT: I’ve also just discovered that a TIGsource devlog exists for Fez, and I am now more than excited to go through those 145 pages…

EMP Countdown 3 (5 Days To Go…)

Today’s inspirational indie hero is Dan Fornace, creator of games like Super Smash Land and Blackfoot (among others!).

I discovered Fornace after the release of Super Smash Land a “demake” of the Super Smash Bros series made for Nintendo systems. The Smash bros games take characters from Nintendo games and allow the player to battle them in cross-game setups. Fornace’s game does this in a similar way, however instead of creating state-of-the-art 3D graphics, Fornace decided to use a retro style for his “demake”.

Super Smash Bros Brawl, the latest instalment of the series available on Nintendo Wii.

Super Smash Land by Dan Fornace, available for PC.

The green/grey low-resolution setup is reminiscent of the dot-matrix display from the original black and white Gameboy and various other handheld devices. This gameboy allowed 4 shades of “grey” to define colours, although in reality these were very green and has resulted in this green pixel style. What amazes me (but does not necessarily surprise me) about this game is its ability to appeal to players as well as the original Nintendo series, whilst incorporating this pixel style which is incredibly simplistic. The graphics are inspired by 3D graphics, not the original low-resolution games that the characters are taken from. This is useful to me when thinking about how to convert large concept images into very small low-res images. This example has just handled this wonderfully.

Wikipedia says this about these so-called game demakes:

Although remakes typically aim to adapt a game from a more limited platform to a more advanced one, a rising interest in older platforms has inspired some to do the opposite, adapting modern games to the standards of older platforms, sometimes even programming them for dead hardware.

As well as this backwards development process, Dan Fornace manages to apply some very advanced GUI into his games (generally created using Game Maker software…) which a lot of bedroom-coded games fail to do so successfully. His menu systems work well and are graphically well-designed. Blackfoot, a side-scrolling platformer about weasels, uses this menu to demonstrate level and character progress within the game:

GUI (Graphical User Interface) and HUD (Heads Up Display) design were pretty non-existent in my last project, but I would definitely like to apply them more efficiently from now on as a way of using some of the graphic design skills I’ve picked up over the last couple of years. It’s always beneficial to the player to see important info as they are playing and to be able to change settings etc. by accessing a pause menu.
Dan Fornace has made a selection of really great pixel-art games, but Blackfoot is one of my favourites as the concept is just so weird. You can check out the stuff he does at his website here.

links for Dan Fornace:
Fornace’s online Portfolio & Website
Fornace’s Yoyo Games Profile
Official Super Smash Land Website
Super Smash Land on IndieGames The Weblog

EMP Countdown Day 2

The Archer Gabriel Verdon

This is another persistent source of inspiration for me for several reasons. For a start, the game is currently in development and it just keeps getting better. The reason I can make comments like this is because the creator of the game, Gabriel Verdon, has been keeping a constant online development log since the very beginning. Even if the game turned out to be awful, this 77 page backlog of development is a pretty good tool for someone like me who is still working on finding the perfect game design structure. As a bonus, the game is being made in Yoyo Game Maker 8.0, so most of the development is really relevant to me. As well as a constant update on how things are going, Verdon has found the time to produce several devlog videos which really show how the game is coming along…

From these videos, you can see the full scale of this project. The game must really push the limits of the software in terms of graphics, although I believe the physics are fairly basic for the most part. The development log for The Archer introduced me to a Game Maker document called the Grandma Engine, which works as a 2D platformer engine within Game Maker. The document comes with a simple range of assets and physics, ready for the developer to add graphics and music etc. This is great for non-coders, but has been made in a way that the settings can easily be tampered with to make slight changes.

These images show really early development of The Archer, using the provided assets from the Grandma Engine and a custom playable character. Later, custom graphics are added to the level design and the solid black blocks are set to invisible. So although I really like where this game is heading in terms of inventive gameplay and a lovely pixel-art visual style, what makes this really inspirational to me is its devlog and again, for providing a showcase of software capabilities and possibilities. It looks likely that I will implement something like the Grandma Engine into my next project, especially if it takes the form of a side-scrolling platformer.

Links for The Archer:
The Archer Official Website
The Archer on Indie DB
Online Development Blog on Tigsource
Gabriel Verdon’s Blog

EMP Countdown… 7 Days 7 Games

Unfortunately, the “EMP countdown” is not nearly as epic as it sounds. But perhaps it is as ominous and suggests a certain impending doom. The briefing for the Extended Major Project is exactly one week away, so I’m using each day of that week to break down 7 of the most influential games/games developers in my life right now. The product of this project will be a culmination of the inspiration I’ve taken from these titles and the people who made them, so I think it’s important before going into any development of my own to take a few steps back, play some games and scribble down everything which I feel makes them great. The panic begins in a week’s time.

I’m beginning this list of greatness in a similar way to the previous Specialist Project, with my ultimate multimedia hero Craig D Adams, creator of the visuals for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP for iOS. I focused a lot on this game for the Specialist Project, so for now I’ll talk a little about one of his lesser known side-projects.

Alpinist

This game is currently vague and segmented, existing only in little pieces all over the internet (as far as I can tell!). I’m not entirely sure if it’s a genuine project or simply a part of something which has now passed, but all this cryptic-ness (which can only be expected from creator Craig Adams…) is one of the things that got me really interested in this project. The game takes the form of a traditional side-scrolling platformer, where the player must climb a mountain through a blizzard. These screenshots are scale representations of some of the game rooms, taking on an unusual widescreen shape which complements the long stretches of horizontal gameplay:

Like most of Adams’ creations, Alpinist is slow-paced and blocky, yet pleasing to the eye. The game incorporates his trademark illustrative style, which in this case is very minimalist and un-cluttered. The gameplay also takes on a type of minimalism; to reach the goal the player must either run or jump to avoid obstacles. Despite the games ultimate simplicity, I’ve chosen this game as the starting point for my EMP because unlike S:S&S EP which was coded by professionals, Alpinist was created by Adams himself using Yoyo Game Maker. For me, this acts as an insight into the possibilities of the software and its diversity. Even with my limited experience of the software, straight from the start I can see moving backgrounds, custom room transitions and foreground layers in place. Though I know these things exist, watching them in a game made by some one else helps me see how I can better utilise these functions!

It is obvious that the game is meant to be a visual delight rather than a demanding challenge for core gamers, and it’s good to know that this is achievable and works successfully with the software I also plan to use over the next project. My real focus will be on getting the visual style and feel right, and in a way which suits the game.

Links for Alpinist:
Alpinist Download from TOJam.com
Alpinist insight from Offworld
More from Offworld
About Superbrothers