MIGS 2011 Day 1

Before you read this new blog post, listen to this epic song.

That song was composed by Tom Salta, who was a speaker at MIGS 2011. He explained his story of breaking into the game industry as a game music composer, and the moral of the story was to network with many people. Unfortunately at the start of his presentation, the audio stopped working, which stuck him dumb as "how could you have a presentation on game music without audio working". He tried doing the presentation without audio, but immediately after the decision, he asked for an extra three minutes to get the audio working again, as it was working right before the presentation. Eventually he and a few helpers fixed the problem, and he was able to deliver his presentation - and what a great presentation it was. He explained that at the beginning of his career, he wasn't involved in the game industry. But as he played video games, he was captivated by how much emotion they invoked from himself and his kids, as such music reflected the struggling ventures of the character that the player steered. Notibly games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Prince of Persia, and Halo. Eventually he decided to make music for games, despite not knowing many people in the industry. He later explained the notion of networking with people, and that early in the career, he drew out a network chart of people who he met through others. He also highlighted the "assholes", and explained that even though it sucks to meet them, sometimes they'll actually benefit you in regards to meeting other more important people. He added now that today we have services like LinkedIn and Facebook, there's now no excuses not to do this. When he composed the song for Red Steel (the song I asked you to listen to earlier), he acquired three Japanese girls to sing. Unfortunately for Tom, they sung just like any regular singer. He then asked them to sing in a higher pitch more like what one would find in traditional Japanese music. One of them laughed, saying that that type of music was popular 2000 years ago. He responded, "Yeah, can you do that?". The audience chuckled. This reminded me that when it comes to artistic works, sometimes content doesn't need to be consistent with actual fact, rather it needs to be consistent with theme, emotion, and feel.

Although Red Steel takes place in modern day Japan, its musical score was composed with a traditional Japanese theme to accompany the game's aesthetics.

Anyway, that was only one of many presentations I attended at MIGS 2011. This is my third time attending MIGS, and so far this was the best MIGS I've ever been to. We started off with a keynote from Naughty Dog co-lead game designer of the Uncharted series, Richard Lemarchand. He went over the improvements made throughout the series, and also made a side note that if an idea arises while the project is well underway, "put it in your back-pocket and save it for the next project". He also touched upon stories in games, and hopes that some day dynamic player-revolving stories will come out of the game industry. He calls Uncharted a "wide linear story", since although he acknowledges that the story starts from Point A and ends at Point B, much of the dialogue occurs during gameplay. He gave one example of such an implementation, and explained that his team worked very hard to program the AI of the NPC that Nathan Drake (the protagonist) was talking to, so that that NPC and camera system were syncronized with the dialogue. In other words, the NPC wouldn't veer off too far away from the player, and the camera system would also keep the player and the NPC in the picture as much as possible (From what I remember him saying). He also explained that if a cut-scene can be done through gameplay, do it; and gave an example from Uncharted to accompany that explanation.

I also took a picture with Richard Lemarchand. What an amazing gentleman!
Photo credits to Daniel Buckstein.

After that presentation, I attended a presentation called "Cardinal sins of programming" or something like that. Its content was incredibly difficult for me to grasp, and went over some programming content that I was very unfamiliar with. The only message I got from it was to keep all important data in a lump and parse it using an algorithm, instead of searching through addresses which increases loading and compilation times. Two-thirds through the presentation, I decided that the information was not benefiting me, and I left to another presentation called "brain dump" where a few people went to a podium for five minutes to explain some views of the game industry they had. Too bad I missed the majority of them, as I heard that the ones from the beginning were the best.

Following that was lunch, and I stumbled upon two French-Canadian gentlemen wanting to shoot an interview in a hallway. They asked me to shoot it for them, and I agreed to. After that, they asked if they could interview me. I was shocked by this and unprepared, but I said yes anyway. I explained where I am from, that I am a third year student at UOIT, UOIT game dev's curriculum, my own game dev portfolio (I said I made a couple of non-spectacular games, but it's a start), the fact that I am a Toronto Maple Leafs fan (as they did ask, and were disappointed by my response, lol), and mentioned my Twitter and YouTube channel. After lunch was Tom Salta's presentation explained earlier.

This is what people in Montreal DO NOT want to see.

Following Tom’s keynote was a presentation by Manveer Heir of BioWare Montreal. He went on to explain implementation of ethical scenarios in games. He first made a disclaimer that his presentation is not a means to confirm what will be implemented in Mass Effect 3, rather it is to represent what he feels should be implemented in games in the future. He then went over the story and ethics system found in Mass Effect 1 and 2, how ethical scenarios invoke player decision at particular discrete moments. He explained that although such a discrete branching story system (like a choose-your-own-adventure book) is a good game design method, it’s still not the ideal method of having a truly player-driven story. He gave a few ideas on possible ways to achieve this, some from his own thoughts, and others from secondary sources he sought; but disclaimed again that he doesn’t have the perfect algorithm to implement such an ideal game system, and is hoping that “a more intelligent person than he is will utilize his ideas to find the true method” or something like that. That sentence alone gives away that he’s a passionate and humble man, as I believe that he must be quite intelligent to analyze and create starter ideas on creating such a system. I’ve actually been thinking of how to implement such a system myself, even before his presentation; and a lot of his material actually supported and built upon most of my beliefs on how to achieve such an ideal system.

The morality choice system in Mass Effect is a step in the right direction, but is still limiting in regards to creating a true fleshed out ethical story system. without need to design every single scenario.

One method was to implement “messy systems”; systems that overlap each other and don’t work in a synchronized fashion. The outcome of such a philosophy will spawn many unique scenarios that revolve around player choices throughout every moment in gameplay. It will also eliminate the need to design and program every single scenario (which is what a discrete branching story needs), and allow a single design/program to encapsulate the endless amount of natural scenarios which are a result of this system. To be honest, it’s difficult for me to visualize such a system, however I would imagine that if each entity in a game has a bunch of variables that dictate AI behaviour, and change based on behaviour of the player, and behaviour of surrounding NPCs, then we would have a virtual world of unique characters and scenarios. Another method was to hide the “morality bar” to prevent players from making ethical choices solely for the sake of progressing through the game. He noticed that if a player starts off on the good path, in-game benefits can only be achieved by the player continuing on that path. Same thing goes for the evil path. The bar doesn’t reflect the human player’s actual ethical stance in life, instead it’s just used to achieve “gamer points” and improve a player’s in-game arsenal. Besides, can we really declare everything as moral or immoral in a black and white fashion?

Mass Effect makes use of a morality bar, but according to Manveer Heir, it is only used in regards to player advancement in the game, not in regards to their real life morality and stance on ethics. So his solution is not to get rid of it, but hide it from the player.

Then he mentioned how low-fidelity graphics can actually benefit the player’s experience with the game, as they paint vague pictures that require the player to insert his life experiences to fill in the gap. That method instantly reminded me of when I analyzed Jason Rohrer’s game Passage, which implemented such a method perfectly; as it did invoke a desire from me to put my own thoughts and emotions into the game, resulting in my output of manly tears. Ahem. He then gave us a scenario of The Sims, which is a player-driven game. Although it doesn’t have stories designed by story writers, it provides the base system of what could be the method of ethical choice-making by the player based on her real-life ethical values. What if the player is able to steal things from other people’s houses, and then sell them? Let’s say that there’s an economic depression and the player cannot find a job. Money goes down, the house is downgraded, etc, etc. Eventually the player still doesn’t have enough money to buy food, and the kids are constantly saying that they’re hungry, etc. Now the player has a choice to try to wing it, think hard about how to provide food for the kids, or steal. If the player chooses the steal, she may or may not get away with it. If she does, that sim will be in jail for maybe a few months, and then return let’s say after the economy recovers. Now the player will have much less friends, a constant watch by police, and increased hostility by surrounding neighbours.

What if you can steal in The Sims?
What if it could be for ethical or unethical reasons?
What if there are different accompanying outcomes depending on succeeding scenarios?

Finally Manveer explained what brought him to make the presentation he did, so he delivered another scenario that he actually was involved in with the game Fallout 3. In that scenario, there were a group of people affected by the radiation of the atomic bombs (or something like that), and wanted to get in to a hotel contained of healthy humans. The humans didn’t want them in, and the outcasts didn’t want the humans in there. They wanted to wipe each other out. So instead of wiping one or both groups out, he tried to make peace between them, and allow them to live in the hotel peacefully with each other. Mission complete. Eventually after completing a few other missions, he received a new mission, this time a part two of the scenario he explained before. He goes back to the hotel, only to find the outcasts inhabiting the hotel, and no humans are around. He then asks one of the outcasts where the humans are, and they said that things didn’t end up working out with the humans, so they wiped them all out. This angered Manveer himself, and he personally set out to kill all of the outcasts. He said that never has a game invoked frustration to that degree (as he worked hard to make peace between the two groups), and hopes that games in the future will hold more of these scenarios that invoke true player emotion. Now personally I don’t condone revenge and such, and like to promote forgiveness; but the point he was trying to make is that the scenario truly invoked his personal emotion, and that is what we need to strive to achieve from players in future games. He said that using the systems approach to ethical decision making (that he explained earlier) to invoke true thoughts and emotions of the player (like Fallout 3 did, albeit not using the system Manveer explained before) will be the way of the future of game story design, and is hoping that in the future he’ll figure out how to implement the system, or that a more intelligent person will. These are what I remembered from that presentation, and as you can tell, they're very important to me.

Manveer's reaction to the zombie-like people after they killed all the humans.

Coincidentally after Manveer's presentation, I bumped into Richard Lemarchand again, and he remembered my name (as the Mario cap I was wearing the whole time at MIGS helped everyone remember me, lol). We had a small discussion, told him that I go to UOIT, that I’ve been thinking of how to implement dynamic stories that Manveer was talking about, how we need more women and people of other cultures to present different mindframes for the game industry, etc. He then asked me if I made any games. I told him that I made two (since of what I made, what counts as a game and what doesn’t is kind of iffy), but they’re of poor quality. I didn’t want to give him the link to my polished 15-minute game Happy Culture Shootout, since many people I presented it to were offended by it. Although it consists of shooting transportation nodes to send people to Happy Land to end war and discrimination, some people got the wrong impression, thinking that the player’s shots are to kill them, and then deemed the game racist. Some were also offended by the stereotypical quotes of the people in the game when its intention was to poke fun at the actual cultural stereotypes themselves. Besides, the game was intended to be "the stupidest game ever created" as I was just trying to prove to myself that I can program a game in C++. So I left that game out. The other game I could have brought up was Desert Racer, which is the game I worked on for my second-year GDW. Since I had to rush the game like a madman (if you want proof, then read my second-year blog posts), it came out like crap, and I don’t know if putting it in my portfolio would be detrimental to my career. So I had to leave both my games out of the picture. Other games would include an incredibly glitchy Genetic Experiement which is a program Mathieu Comeau and I made for the international game jam back in January 2010 using OpenGL. I’d call it a simulation rather than a game. Although the game’s designs that Mathieu thought of were intriguing, I think explaining it would take up too much of the little time I had with Richard to begin with. So I just told him that I made two games. He then asked me what programming language I code in to make games, but I just said that I program in C++, forgetting to mention that I’m also skilled with OpenGL, and that I’m learning WildMagic. I then told him that I planned to make a game during the summer with a group of mixed men and women to present new ideas for game development, but unfortunately the project fell. In response to that, he told me to make a lot of small games, instead of trying to make one big one, so as to build my portfolio quickly, as I have little to showcase at this time. He also said that it’s great that I know how to code too, since a many game designers in the industry don’t know how to code. To that, his ex-coworker Philip Morin added that he teaches game design at a school to students taking a game design course path, and that course path doesn't require student to learn how to program; it's not often the case where a school teaches design and programming equally. Shortly afterward the conversation ended, and I went off to the next presentation.

Most people will likely get this wrong idea of this game, as I am not racist.
So I'm not going to promote this game much... :|

Afterward was a presentation by Lee Perry of Epic Games, who spoke about how prototyping your games using existing assets is a better way of conveying design ideas to other people, rather than write long walls of text about your game ideas. To design ideas for Gears of War 3, he and many other people working on it used some Unreal Scripting language to take existing animations, models, and such to create new rough ideas, and sometimes accompany them with a much shorter design document. This allowed quicker production of the game as the protoyping only took around eight hours per idea, and it conveyed information a lot more conveniently, and more people were willing to see it; which resulted in many ideas being implemented in Gears of Wars 3. After his presentation, I asked him how I should prototype ideas if a particular game is a first in its series. He told me that I should use assets from the internet, for example clip art, animation files, etc.


Finally, I attended "building a studio culture" by Dorian Kieken of Bioware Montreal. Unfortunately I started to doze off a bit throughout the presentation, not because it was boring (as it was very interesting), but because I was lacking sleep. Although I absorbed most information, I had to ask some friends of mine what I missed to make it all come full circle. Dorian spoke about three crucial things: Artifacts, Values, and another thing (but I know its definition). The "artifacts" that he spoke of were in regards to the aesthetic look of your studio, and mentioned that some studios have creative, unique, and visually abstract looks to them. It's only natural to assume that the artifacts need to compliment your company's values, much like how aesthetics in game design need to compliment the game's mechanics. Now the values are somewhat self-explanatory; the company has one or more beliefs that they publicly state. For Bioware, one of their values is to provide unique games that offer a player-oriented story experience. Now for the definition of the term that I don't remember, it's basically an intrinsic and subtle value that is unspoken of, but is naturally practiced though the very actions of the people. For example, if the CEO and other top executives strive to memorize and get to know each and every worker in the company, and such a venture allows everyone to feel like they're part of a family.

In the development studio, aesthetics, corporate values,
and underlying people practices shape studio culture.

Anyway, I realize that this blog post has gone way too long, so I'm going to cut it short. Next blog post will be about Day 2 of MIGS 2011, and what I learned from it. Throughout the trip, I recorded a small documentary of it, but since I was talking on the spot, my videos turned out to be boring. So in the future (possibly during Christmas break) I will do a video summary with small clips taken from the trip as means to show how MIGS looks like. In the meantime, I will finally start working on my portion of the GDW, which consists of implementing shaders and save/load state system into the game, as well as programming toolkits to help progress of the game; and that's not all, so I have a lot of work to do. Sorry for making this post so long, and hopefully I can pull off making my next post more concise.


Thank you, and see you next post! =)

Next blog post will start off with Jason Rohrer's presentation called The Challenge Renaissance.
Of course I asked questions, and of course I ended up making myself look like a fool! =P

References:

"YouTube Video." Photograph. Red Steel [Music] - Katana Giri Theme. Ubisoft, Web. 7 Nov 2011.

Photograph. Amazon.com: Red Steel: Video Games. Web. 6 Nov 2011.


"2010-11 Team Previews: Toronto Maple Leafs." Photograph.d072831039.jpg. Kevin Burgundy. The Score, 2010. Web. 6 Nov 2011.


"YouTube snapshot." Graphic. Mass Effect Tali and Ashley BOTH kill Wrex. BioWare, 2010. Web. 6 Nov 2011.


"telavasirparagon." Photograph.Mass Effect. BioWare, Web. 7 Nov 2011.


"Burglar." Photograph. Burglar - The Sims Wiki. Electronic Arts, 2009. Web. 7 Nov 2011.


Photograph. Design Rampage. Web. 7 Nov 2011.


"Bioware Austin entrance lobby." Photograph. TOR-Talk: Fan Site Summit II. Web. 7 Nov 2011.


"Jason Rohrer." Photograph. Game Developers Conference 2009. Web. 7 Nov 2011.