Different Games
hosted a mini-conferences for all the ambassadors to introduce themselves and
their work/research on the day before GDC opened which served as a great way to
begin some conversations that would last the week as we bump into each other at
different north east south west halls of the Moscone Center half zombified. I
started off GDC by attending most of the level design workshops and the rest of
the week was filled with other level design related talks and a few narrative
and storytelling talks. I consciously chose to go with more workshops as oppose
to social and political talks. Not to diminish the importance of politics and
activism in games and games industry (it was a good year for that too
#unionization), and of course in my academic work I write extensively about the
political dimensions of video games and play as a necessarily counter to capitalism,
I just felt like since I have been to many academic conferences in my life and
I will be presenting at the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference in
Regina later in the year, I would do something different. Some highlights
include:
- They had originally finish designing the whole map, and then discovered that the mechanics of the AR memories/characters were a really interesting aspect of the game but that they didn’t fit into the flow of the existing space.
- The team redesigned the space for the mechanics instead of working the mechanics into the old space.
- Designing flow and space that made sense but still allowed for discovery
- The HUD played a massive role in helping player navigate the sheer amount of material they were presented.
- They team designed a system were players had to “upload” memories into a drive in order to progress the game. The drive was on purposely slowed down which allow the character to wander and discover while uploading.
- I have to be super honest - I haven’t fully played Tacoma although I intend to. I bought it on Steam but was in the middle of my semester so I was already highly stressed and I didn’t find the game all that easy to understand (not because of the game itself but because of external factors). I remember finding all the AR stuff and text really overwhelming at the time. I was a huge fan of Gone Home and spent hours listening to all the audio recordings and reading all the text and objects
- After thought, perhaps the claustrophobic space of a spaceship just didn’t mesh well with the highly claustrophobic sensation of academia, I probably should chosen to play an open world game instead. I do hope to give the game another go soon though!
- This was in two parts, first blockmeshing by Robert Shaver then lighting tips by Robert Yang
- Both talks introduced sort of the basics of each topics. For someone like me who isn’t enrolled in a traditional game design programme, it was super useful for me.
- One thing that stood out to me from Shaver’s talk was the idea of working backwards. Going from big to small - so build landmarks first, then the details such as archways after.
- Robert Yang was insightful as always, I have a background in photography and film so most game lighting concepts were pretty similar. One thing that definitely stood out for me was a very brief slide on the politics of lighting.
- Using Skyrim as an example, Yang showed how “white” characters were perfectly lit whereas “black” or dark skinned characters were poorly lit.
- Of course, as someone who spent many years studying photography, I am well aware of the racist history of the photography industry, see https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard
- A really incredible photography project on this subject by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/25/racism-colour-photography-exhibition
- I really enjoyed this talk because Andrew Yoder is a fantastic and engaging speaker
- Offered a really great history of multiplayer game maps ranging from the Unreal Tournament, Quake, Halo, Counter Strike, .
- Differences and similarities between the competitive and casual multiplayer communities and how to create maps that could serve both.
- Interesting points on player psychology and needs: skills, mastery, teamwork, map complexity, competition
- Actually bring name or business cards, people still exchange them
- I did most of my “networking” at the satellite events and parties. I hate this word networking because I honestly just wanted to meet people for the sake of meeting like-minded folks in games and not for future opportunities. In the end I met wonderful folks at the LGBTQIA in Gaming, it was a daytime event so no pressure to drink!
- Try to do some of the parties, but also don’t burn out! The GDC talks are worthwhile to attend even after the first two days (because honestly who’s actually gonna go back to the Vault to watch all the talks they missed) and the expo on the last few days are very overwhelming, you don’t wanna exhaust yourself too early in the week.
- I didn't get to play many games unfortunately, but some memorable ones include The Untitled Goose Game, Baba Is You, A Way Out and Light Fingers.
Level Design
Workshop: Designing for Non-Linear Story Discovery in ‘Tacoma’ by Steve Gaynor
and Nina Freeman (Fullbright Studio)
Level Design
Workshops: Invisible Intuition: Blockmesh and Lighting Tips to Guide Players
and Set the Mood by Robert Shaver (Naughty Dog) and Robert Yang (NYU Game
Center)
Level
Design Workshop: The Holy Grail of Multiplayer Level Design: Maps for Casual
and Competitive Play by Andrew Yoder
Some other
thoughts/tips on GDC:
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