Thoughts from a (girl) Gamer

So I had all intent on posting everything about Chris’s power point on here… but I seemed to have lost my notes. I still have the power point though, so if anyone is interested in seeing it I can email you. So, yeah. Tara.tefertiller@gmail.com. Peace out.

Zeb’s presentation was pretty cool, as everyone got to ask questions while he was talking. Somewhere in the middle we got on a huge segue involving DLC, so that was pretty cool. To keep my notes more in order I moved anything that was DLC related to the end since it really wasn’t part of his speech. For more information about this presentation see And We’re Back – InterFaces 2009.

Notes:

What is content: It’s everything that player does and interacts with
Why do we have content: Because it makes the player involved

Note: Traveling is never content. Do not make the player travel. It doesn’t keep them involved, it makes them bored.

There are 3 types on content:
Designed/Designer content, User Created Content, and User Generated Content
each have their own benefits and drawbacks

Design content

Benefits:

• it’s often defined and well polished

• well thought out, themed

• worked on by a team

• defines what the user can and cannot do

Drawbacks:

• it can be pricey

• it can spend years in development

• player is limited to what the designers thought of or had the time to make

User Created content:
this is similar to Spore or City of Heroes.
Benefits:

• The designers only have to make the tools the the consumers will use.

• Designers don’t have to work on as much content, and it can be cheaper because the consumers will make the content for free

• Map editors are very popular

Drawbacks:

• creating content is hard, which is why people have jobs that are creating content

• Only 10% of consumers will actively work to create their own content

• 95% of what they will make is going to be crap

• Making sure the tools are fool proof is hard. It the consumer uses your tool in a way you didn’t intend them to be used and they break something, it’s still your fault

• When you give people the tools to make something, they will make penises. Always.

User generated content:
This doesn’t have to be included in the game itself, but is really anything that give your game a sense of community or allows the player to generate more meanings for themselves. it could be guilds, writing online reviews, chatlogs, pvp/multiplayer modes, or forums.

Benefits:

• Allows the player to become more involved with the game and offer them a different experience each time they play with out the player consciously choosing to create

Drawbacks:

• There will have to be moderators for any forums or chat logs.

• Depends on the players interacting with each other.

On DLC:

DLC is something that is useful. It can extend the life of a title and continue generating money, but should not be overused.

DLC is not a substitute for making a new game. If you just keep releasing DLC and not a new game, your fan base will feel used and grow bored. When this happens you aren’t making money anymore.

DLC should be something added when the game feels complete. You shouldn’t need DLC to make a game feel like a whole.

Sometimes DLC is used to add missions that the designer wanted to put in but couldn’t because of time constraints.

Marc Acero’s Presentation notes: for more information on this presentation see And We’re Back – InterFaces 2009

Marc’s presentation was a little all over the place because his computer died so he didn’t have a Power Point presentation, but he still made some awesome points. A lot of it seemed like common sense, but it was still good to be reminded of.

Notes:

Teams are important:

When in a team not every choice is going to be yours to make, so make all of your choices count.

You have to keep everyone in the loop at all times. Be sure to have up to date design documents so that any one can check them for reference at any time.

Be sure to listen to everyone. Do not get an idea stuck in your head and make it unchanging. When a lot of people’s views are challenged they immediately start thinking of ways to tear down the other person’s side instead of just listening to it.

If a team member tells you something isn’t working, don’t immediately scrap the idea. working together you can find out why it isn’t working and then make they needed changes.

With the help of a team you can make sure that you are designing for everyone and not yourself. Teammates can help you make sure you’re designing for you audiences and designing to match your resources.

Use your teammates to get an idea of how much work would be needed to implement an idea before pitching it

Design for the masses:

Don’t underestimate how stupid people can be

• you may have to make things obvious

• make sure that you give clear direction and teach the game mechanics early on

To make a game successful you have to design for the noob, but add something extra to keep the expert players interested.

• examples: Gears of War reload mechanic. Noobs can just let it go and it will reload, but experts can take pride in having the skill to do the quick reload

• Tekken vs Street fighter: Anyone can play Tekken, even if they don’t understand the mechanics, by button mashing and seeing cool things happening on screen. Experts can understand the combos and do things on purpose. Street Fighter is expert only, because you can’t button mash. You actually have to begin to learn the game mechanics to see cool things happen on screen

Always remember the 3 C’s

characters- stories, appearances, personalities
camera- first person, third person, is the camera high above or over the shoulder?
controls- need to feel natural

quick time events suck (because Marc isn’t good a them, on a side note, neither is Max Voelker)

Design an awesome difficulty curve:

having a larger number of the same enemy is not a good difficulty curve, it’s annoying.
Similarly, it has to be more than just adding hit points to enemies and giving them new attacks

Punch Out for Wii is design 101. It starts out with the opponents having the weakness shown to the player in the little cutscenes right before each match, then as the game advances the player has to figure it out themselves during the matches. In addition, new patterns and less chances to attack make each opponent harder