What topics for a Game Design Podcast? The gauntlet was thrown.

The sky is blue. This is something that you occasionally like, and possibly agree with on days with clear weather.

 

Damnit. I may have a problem.

 

You and me both buddy.

 

I will not click the Like link. I will not click the Like link. I will NOT click the Like link...

 

Ya'll rock! +1
Gigi

 

So just finished the second episode. Aside from running out of hands near the end, I quite enjoyed it. Its got me thinking about what I can do in my new game.

 

@Schneider21 , maybe you need to do an analysis of the use of hooks in each gdz episode to see why @Gigiwoo has managed to get you to bypass your own rules in the real world & then use the same in your own life (forget games, imagine if you could use them to get your boss to supply donuts each Friday)

 

Rock Band 4 arrived. And it was broken. OMG! So much angst! Fortunately, before I opened the box, I recorded a new episode.

008 - Total Biscuit, Experience, and the Indiepocalypse

And, I'm first this time! Hah!

Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo, some criticism on #008.

On the whole #indiepocalypse thing...I think you presented Jeff Vogel's assertion on the situation incorrectly, even though you certainly used his exact words (well, some of them.)

Jeff Vogel didn't say, "THE SKY IS FALLING! THE END IS NIGH! THE INDIE SCENE ARE DOOMED!!!1!one!!!" In the article, he says he didn't say that. Due to how the part was worded, though, I interpreted the part about the indiepocalypse as saying that.

What he did say, is the natural order is re-establishing itself. In the old days, selling games was hard. People have a limited amount of money, and personal biases. Steam and the iPhone platform, for a time, made it possible for Joe Nobody to write a game/app, and make reasonable money. That is no longer the case; as the market has reached saturation, the old problems have returned - people have limited resources and limited time.

The so-called "Indie Golden Age" was not the natural state of the industry - it was the aberration.

It does reinforce that you have to have a good experience - something I've struggled with, historically, and something I'm working on solving in my next Unity Short - but the point Vogel was making, was to drop your expectations. Don't succumb to Survivorship Bias! Expect you will fail, but don't be disappointed if it succeeds.

 

Okay I think your getting better at this I skipped to episode 8 and it was pretty great. Now I didnt actually driving around from mission in GTA5, I remember just taking the taxi and using the auto complete to get from mission to mission, that was also something I really hated in metal gear5 -- where you couldnt just go from mission to mission I thought it actually screwed up the flow.

 

I agree. He's come a long way since #001.

 

How would you visualize it? I got that note above, from one of my listeners. And, he's exactly right. In order to stay sane, I visualize standing in my office, talking to members of my team, making doodles on my whiteboard. Or sometimes, in a classroom, as an invited speaker to share some lessons with a room of coders, artists, and designers. Those are things I know. His point makes perfect sense - the tone comes out, exactly as I visualize it - so perhaps Kudos to me! And, also, here's an opportunity to try something different. Though, I'm not sure what other real-world settings make sense.

Gigi - aka Curtiss

PS - This goes out to @Schneider21, @Asvarduil, @Aiursrage2k, @JoeStrout, @tedthebug, @BoredMormon, and all who've given so much insightful advice already.

 

I listen to supergreatfriend and he only did a few podcasts, but when he does it he does like hes talking to the audience (IE you).

 

The intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation is an interesting subject. I'm not sure how you actually approach it in practice. As you note - the line becomes pretty blurred at times, as you can clearly note in RPG quests. You can sort of arbitrarily draw a line at the 4th wall. Achievements are extrinsic because it isn't directly involved in the games world/narrative/experience/story/whatever. But this is really pretty arbitrary.

The take away here is - make sure your game is as fun to play as possible and don't try to dangle rewards in place of making your game as fun as you can. And yes, this is useful, but with such a blurry line in so many games - where the rewards are such a core element of the game play experience, it becomes less useful to use the 'intrinsic vs extrinsic' line as being fundamentally different. One could argue that equipment in Diablo is extrinsic for instance, when equipment is absolutely core to Diablo's game play loop.

I think that maybe instead of these being two ideas with one being superior to the other, it may be better to look at it as when they're both working together to make a game as a whole more complete. Good meta progression systems expand out the players options in how they play the game and enrich the experience - good reward systems do this as well.

FTL is a great example, your meta progression is rewarded with new ship designs which can pose new challenges and open new doors. The meta progression enhances the core gameplay.

 

In game achievements are something I usually ignore unless it unlocks some sort of advantage. I wonder how much the need for achievements in games was altered from a reward for doing something unusual to just another "meh" thing by the need to include them due to stipulations by some platforms if you wanted to release on it? I have heard that MS made people put a minimum # of achievements in games if they wanted it released on Xbox. Happy to be corrected if this is actually wrong but it would fit in with the general degrading of in game achievements that I think has happened.

As to the tone, @Gigiwoo , I can see the arguments for both sides. As a student I don't mind the lecture style as it fits with my learning what I don't know. The more conversational style could work as well but it alters the listeners mindset. A feedback episode might work as a trial; people send in short questions based on elements from the previous episodes & you have 1minute to answer each, sort of like a panel at a convention, which is informative but more conversational.

 

This is tough. I was also initially a bit put off by the tone, but didn't put into words why. I've since gotten used to it, and even find the tone a bit endearing now. If nothing else, it's a unique characteristic of the show that gives it a personality.

I do have to agree it can feel a bit pandering at times. Which would be fine if the audience was strictly young, amateur aspiring game designers who don't have much real world experience. But it seems to me the show is quite popular with semi-professional and professionals as well.

Me, for example: I'm a professional web developer who has made and released one hobby game so far. I know it can be better, and I want my next game to be more fun, not take as long, and eventually more successful so I can make a third, a fourth, and so on. I follow the game industry closely and have a general understanding of what makes a good game, but need a more research-based and organized understanding of those concepts, along with advice from an experienced individual (you) who has learned these concepts and how to apply them.

So I guess if it's a matter of what mindset to put yourself in when recording, I'd to picture it as you giving a presentation at Unite, or an invite-only session at GDC (or whatever conferences are actually for game developers anymore). Something that's squarely aimed at your peers, but still more of that lecture-style content. To clarify, I like that the show is targeted to amateurs and beginners. I just don't want to be talked to as if I'm a beginner (even though I clearly am).

All that said, I'm a huge fan of the show either way, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge and wisdom with us no matter what tone of voice you use to do so.

 

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to #7 and #8 yet because of all the other podcasts I'm still catching up on.
I don't think the "problem", if you want to call it like that, lies with the setting you visualize while talking. From what I remember you saying in earlier episodes I wonder if maybe that is just how you talk to people. You once said something about having spent a lot of time training yourself to end sentences on a down note, at least that's how I remember it. To me that sounds very very artificial when you do it constantly. It's a thing of broken expectations. I'd expect even a talk in a formal setting to have a more natural and less "deliberate" flow. And the thing the other listener mentions, where you create these high-tension dramatic buildups, as if you are about to reveal your cure for cancer, can't always live up to the expectation you are creating there. Not only does that irritate me as unnatural, but also it's disappointing if for example after such a buildup you say something that I already knew or that sounds rather trivial/obvious. I'm failing to find a good comparison to how I'd think it would work better though. "Just be more natural" is often useless advice that many can't get anything out of, so I'm trying to avoid it. I'll let you know if I find better words for it. Maybe use "emphasis" more sparingly, cut down on the dramatic pauses, imagine talking to a friend instead of a classroom and focus more on what you say instead of how you say it?

 

@Schneider21 - I'm in the same boat as you. I'm a professional web developer, who has released four web applications at my current day job. That's not counting my prior work with a Windows application widely-used by the U.S. Army, which includes the app itself, as well as various automation-testing stuff using the Ranorex framework, and some custom in-house tools for validating data sources. My three public games are merely cherries on top of that.

It's still helpful to me, because while on an intellectual level games shouldn't be different than software (games are software), they're not. Games are challenging because they're more like a theatrical production than they are something for Accountants to do their jobs with. As a result, I have a hard time with writing games (as you can see from any of my three works.) The earlier two are due to lack of experience and getting Dunning-Krueger'd in the face in nearly all possible areas. The more recent one, due to failure to deliver and not recognizing crippling problems inherent in my mechanics. The reason I am studying game design more seriously is to learn to solve all of these problems.

I agree that @Gigiwoo's discourse still sounds a bit artificial - he's trying very hard to solve that, and in #008, when he's talking about Guitar Hero and stuff he genuinely cares about, it shows. It's organic. That part had my attention, not because it was useful to me in any way whatsoever - in fact, I recognize it was merely an introduction, and safely skippable. No, I paid attention because while I knew there was a purpose behind it, there was more than just carefully-controlled words; a person - one passionate about games - was talking. As a professional who is also passionate about games, I couldn't help but listen.

I think that the delivery of the episodes has a deeper problem unrelated to ending on a down note, though. What was it that was said?

...There's the problem! Do you see it? The problem is that your delivery has a flat interest curve.

Imagine a graph with two axes: the X axis is time, the Y axis is 'impact'. The problem the person is talking about, I think is that the podcasts start with low impact, but then rapidly reach a high value on that Impact axis...and then, stay there. There's nowhere to grow. Every Truth is an Ultimate Truth™.

If I can quote The Incredibles: "When I retire, I'll take my gadgets, and sell them. Everyone will be Super! And, when everyone is Super? No one will be."

The reason #008 felt better, is because of the opening part that serves as nothing but a sounding board for Gigi's emotions. The episode started with low impact. By the end of the opening section - about 8 minutes worth of talking - it had ramped up to a reasonable level. From that point, Gigiwoo began discussing things as Ultimate Truths™, but the change in tone felt better, because I had time to prepare to accept Ultimate Truths™.

Gigiwoo - Not everything you say is an Ultimate Truth™. Not everything you say should be an Ultimate Truth™. Remember #002 - Flow. Use the concepts to shape your delivery, so that when you do reveal an Ultimate Truth™, we the audience feel it as it's intended - the result of trials and travails, not a flaw in delivery.

 

I listen to retsupurae (a two man group) I listened to yatzee and gab do "let's drown out", maybe if you brought another person on the podcast it might seem like less of a lecture (if thats a problem).

 

I don't like the idea of a team or guest star or something. I'm happy with the format as is. I second @Asvarduil's comments, phrased much better than I managed.

Also, I think I'm terrible at giving critiques on other people's work when I know they put a lot of work into it. Just saying.

 

I guess another person to try to look at is total biscuit, I can listen to him monologue about anything really.

 

Funny, considering the title of Ep. 008 is "Total Biscuit, Motivation, and the Indiepocalypse".

 

The best part about having a busy weekend is getting to save a fresh episode of GDZ for my Monday commute! I'm now all caught up, and I have a few things to say.

• Episode 008 is definitely way better in tone. There's still a few Ultimate Truth™ moments, as Asvarduil calls them, but overall, the tone is much more organic and relatable. I forget which part it was at, but I even laughed out loud in my car at one point.
• This intrinsic-extrinsic stuff is blowing my mind. I have a project at work that's been eating away at me. It's a Phonics game that seems to be resisting taking shape, and I just realized after listening to this episode that it's because it's not a game. It has zero intrinsic motivation. Excited to bring this up and sound smart at our meeting today.
• Mentioning Total Biscuit in the title was total click-bait. He's literally mentioned once and it was "... it even got mentioned by Total Biscuit..." I have this condition where I desperately avoid things that are hugely popular until well after everyone else is over them (I just played Crossy Road for the first time last week), so I'm not even totally sure who Total Biscuit is, but I know I've seen his name a lot recently and this title naming seems to be a way to snag a few new listeners through search, which is fine. Just wanted to point it out.
• I'm also super sorry to hear Rock Band was busted, @Gigiwoo. It was so evident how excited you were to play. When are you getting a replacement?!

 

What questions would you ask? Fire away!

Gigi

 

I couldn't wait to try this out. My wife agreed totally with you guys. You may remember in one of the episodes, I mentioned that she suggested I don't emphasize 'this' and 'that' so much. In hindsight, she said you guys captured the problem way better!

This weekend, I tried out my new style in Ep9. It felt like a hybrid of lecture + casual, with a very casual tone. Like I was just talking, sharing what I have learned, as oppoosed to looking for universal truths in every sentence. It was both easier and more fun to record. Did the whole thing in one take. And even though the material is nothing earth shattering, it was by far my favorite! I can't wait to publish it.

Thank you for helping me find ways to make these even better. Try; Improve; Repeat. You guys rock!

Gigi

PS - I have great respect for Total Biscuit. He is a master of his craft.

 

What do you think? Kensai challenged me to be more conversational. You guys helped me iterate. Here's the result.

Episode 9 - What's a Game? I've Got A Great Story - Not Sure What's Next

Gigi

 

He's back!

 

Vocal range is definitely more consistent, so approved. Much less ambling around registers, but still not monotone.

 

Honestly, I think you should break these out to multiple threads.

These podcasts are getting really good. There are very interesting discussions that can happen from them and I think that a these increasingly deserve their own spotlight. I think that they can also help to better shape some of the discussions that we should have more of in this forum. Bunching them all into a single thread doesn't do them justice at this point.

 

Huge improvement! I really liked the last two episodes, keep up the great work!

 

Seconded. Until that happens, though, I'll continue to post here.

Just got to listen to Ep. 009 on my way into work, and I'm amazed that something wasn't brought up. With Ted Brown's definition of a game, I immediately recognized the similarity between what defines a game:

1. Goals
2. Ways to achieve those goals (mechanics)
3. Feedback
4. Stop there!

with the recipe for Flow:

1. Clear goals
2. Feedback
3. Balanced difficulty
4. No distractions

Obviously Goals and Feedback are more or less 1-to-1 the same. 'Stop There' is pretty similar to 'No distractions', in that adding extra content might muddle the game and distract the player. Mechanics are a bit more complex, and are sort of a hybrid between the balanced difficulty, the choice limitation rule, and a variety of other subjects I'm sure Gigi will cover in the future.

Anyway, just had that burning in my brain the whole drive in and had to get it out there. And I love the tone of Ep. 009. Casual while still feeling professional.

 

You know, something else has been bothering me, too!

I don't agree with the suggestion that having a story before knowing what kind of game you make is inherently problematic. I think that a creative individual could successfully blend any story with any game genre and make a compelling game. A high fantasy FPS could potentially work. Or an RTS about time traveling hippies. Hell, game jam games have been assembled with much wackier mashups, I'm sure.

Not only that, but in the early days of game development, there were no such thing as genres! I doubt Miyamoto sat down and said "I'm going to make a platforming game." The term probably didn't even exist back then. I also don't think game mechanics need to be the first thing you nail down. At the risk of falling victim to survivor bias, Halo started off as an RTS. The story was there, but the game itself took shape based on iteration and design changes. Not only that, but adhering to the idea of "I'm going to make an FPS with RPG qualities" is how we get stuck in the same ol', same ol' mentality. Genre-bending -- and even new genres entirely -- come about when your mechanics are defined based on a need to achieve a specific goal.

I feel like @Gigiwoo sort of copped out on this question. I think a better way to approach the situation would be to ask:

What do you want the player to experience?
The example provided referenced a ship lost in space, with anything and everything going wrong. While it's true a number of genres could serve this story to a player, certain mechanics are going to cause the player to experience that story differently. Maybe a first person perspective could cause players to empathize with the PC more closely. Perhaps some inspiration from time management games as they struggle to keep up with exploding panels will convey the overwhelmed feeling of being the ship's only engineer.

Any number of twists could subvert or alter this experience as well. Despite being first person, if you played as the ship's repair bot, invulnerable to the leaking radiation that prevented human crew from servicing vital ship systems, you would likely feel less vulnerable. And if the robot doesn't speak English and can instead only communicate with the ship's AI, the player may feel less empathy for the humans and more for the ship itself.

My point is that story and gameplay, while sort of unrelated, are both pliable enough that you can make one type fit any type of the other. Sure, certain story types and genres may inherently go better together (and others a tough fit), but some of the most creative game's I've ever played have combos a lot of people wouldn't think of. This may have been Gigi's point all along, but I don't feel like it was presented that way. Maybe I just want it to be talked about more so that I don't feel like I alone have spent too much time thinking about it.

Side note: I've been pronouncing Gigiwoo incorrectly in my head all this time. I've been reading it "Jiggy-woo", not "Gig-ee-woo".

 

Ahh, yeah... there might be an issue with your viewpoint. If story and gameplay are two separate things, they can both be safely trashed. It's not that story can't be stormed up first, but there is a problem if the story doesn't intrinsically dictate what aspects of gameplay should be. Having a full story without any idea about the game means there is absolutely no thought about the player and what they will actually do, so you can throw it away. If you still think it's a good story, then write a novel, but it will still be a S*** game story.


There are other pitfalls, too, which are mostly related to people's mindsets. Starting with a story can frequently mean the story is sacred, and anything being sacred in development is likely to become a train wreck.

 

I think maybe you're inferring too much from what I'm saying. Or I didn't state my opinion clearly enough.

I'm not saying you should write the full script and set it in stone before even a single line of code is conceived. When I say story, I mean more generally. Like "This is a game about rodeo clowns who have retired from the business to start their own leather goods store in Arizona. They get a huge order placed on their website, only to find out it's a bunch of bull. Now the CFO is having a cow, and if they don't act quickly, the entire business may tip. Everything is at steak."

This doesn't give a clue as to what the gameplay could be like. Maybe it's a business management sim. Maybe it's a detective/mystery adventure, and you don't even play as one of the clowns, but a private detective (who is a cow, of course). In any case, the story can be the story, and the gameplay is the gameplay. A successful design will marry the two well, but they're separate things. And no, that doesn't mean you can just throw one or both out... I mean, you could, but you'd have to replace it with something else. But that doesn't mean the game will be any less than what it'd be otherwise. It would just... be a different game.

Obviously you have to be flexible in any project. You may need to cut content that doesn't serve the game's goals. You may need to totally rewrite elements, or change major mechanics if you discover 3/4 through that they're not fun. The point I'm trying to make is that a creative developer could get a story handed to him (a story, not a script, mind you), and think up gameplay mechanics that would work nicely within that context.

 

More of an elevator pitch that sets the broad bounds/world of the game rather than the actual scene by scene story?

 

For me it was "Jijiwoo" until I heard him say it himself.

I think maybe a division between story and setting could be useful here. A setting can inspire gameplay and is more unlikely to get in the way. As soon as characters start doing things and the setting evolves into a story it can get complicated to keep everything together. I'd say it has to be a sensible back and forth where you make changes to both until you end up with a cohesive experience for the player.

 

Fair enough. The word story suggests a fully thought out narrative. However, the poster of the thread in question said story/setting, and it seems by the way he phrases things that it's much closer to setting than fully fledged story at this point.

So back on target, I absolutely think it's fine, and maybe even a good idea to have a premise/setting/loosely assembled story before having a clue what the game will be. And how to take that idea and find the right game to fit it is a more interesting conversation to me than arguing over word selection or copping out and saying "Think of the game first!"

You're up, Gigi.

 

Let me preface this by saying I think most to all game stories are S***, pure and absolute S***, because they are nothing but a wrapper for context. They are just there to describe the role of the player, but they never become something the player has to wrestle with tangibly. It's entirely passive.

Look at Ico. Any explanation of the story will inherently mention what the player is doing, and not just in the sense of long term objectives, but in mechanics the player must constantly interact with. The story isn't detached from gameplay, instead it's integral.

 

I think if you wrote a noire story im pretty sure you could stick it in any type of gameplay

 

I could say the same about most movies. The story is often a contrivance to get Vin Diesel to drive a car off a bridge, or to have Liam Neeson shoot a guy.

I don't disagree. But I think you could tell the story of Ico using other gameplay elements as well. You could tell the same story with a point and click adventure game, or even a platformer a la Braid. It would be a DIFFERENT game, sure, but the story could still exist without that specific gameplay.

 

I didn't walk in intending to plug, but this sentence right here is one of the primary reasons why I started the Game Mechanics Pokedex in the first place. Mechanics are varied things that have to be created and tuned individually, yet act together to form a coherent system of play. More importantly, mechanics represent the tools that we give the player to achieve their goal, as well as the limitations that make them strive to achieve it at all.

 

I'm behind on my forum. The last week, I was in Korea - visited 4 cities, in a land I'd never seen, added to the flights and yer looking at one tired mo-fo. Apologies for the delayed responses.

PS - I just posted Ep 10. Some of you probably remember the inspiration for this one.

Gigi

 

@Schneider21 - Love your analysis, analyses, analyseses, ... ?! ... 'things'. And, I struggled with my name. My kids invented the name, Gigiwoo - as a character for Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Then, my son said it would make a great name of a game studio, which is when it shrunk to Gigi. Though, when you shorten Gigiwoo to gigi, the sound has to change.

Dumb English!

Gigi

PS - It's a journey. A dynamic, learning, changing experience.

 

This week, I'm early. While I was in Korea last week, I ended up talking to a Naval officer. Somehow, the topic of League of Legends came up. 6000 miles away, it's still relevant. Plus, with the world championships this weekend, it was fun.

Ep 11 - League of Legends Versus Heroes of the Storm

The trip was awesome! All of a sudden, I'm rooting for the Korean teams - course, both the finalists are Korean, so - I win!

#SKTWIN

Gigi

 

The man's got to take care of his country at some point.

 

Any chance of publishing the episodes on something other than ITunes?

 

He has them on his website (link in his sig block)

 

Hey Gigi, I'm looking forward to the new episode! When I read the title I thought of this video:

I see now that I have confused the two game titles so this isn't relevant at all, but I'll post the link anyway because I really liked that pax talk.

I wanted to suggest a new topic for the podcast, inspired by this article:
http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/why-i-avoid-blender-forums/
"The Law of Averages"
Do you think this could be interesting to talk about on the show?

 

I read this the morning too and thought the same thing! I defiantly want to read more about it.