Hey,
I know I'm around a year behind but I finally played and beat Portal. I'm really bad at sitting down and completing a game so it took me a while before I finally got around to Portal. After completing the game I fully understand why it won so many awards. They managed to merge a great story with an innovative mechanic making an excellent game. Obviously I'd heard a lot about the game before getting a chance to play it but the game still managed to surprise me.
The start of the game made it seem like the game would be short and quick and simply show off the portal mechanic and mock you as you move through each floor. The only really surprising thing I ran into was the companion cube. I knew you had to kill it and maybe that made me feel no attachment but everyone else who has played the game felt bad about it. For me as soon as I realized I had to kill the companion cube I did it.
The supposed end of the game was when the real game began for me. I had no idea that the game wasn't supposed to end and I thought I had just found a cool secret area that led nowhere. It was perfectly done and accomplished a great balance of player skill and reward. I was completely confused and didn't understand why the game kept letting me explore. I eventually realized that I was supposed to keep going and quickly realized the great depth of the game.
I loved the ending and thought it wrapped the game up great. Hearing Glados telling me not to kill her and having her voice change as each piece was destroyed was great. The song that was rolling during the credits was even better. The story was very simplistic but it had this great comedic quality to it that made the game very endearing. You somehow feel connected to the game world and feel like your actions affect what is going on.
Although the game is very short it is a very hard experience to recreate. Most games can hold the quality that Portal does for short bursts but it never encompasses the whole experience. In WoW the quests often alude to other games or are easter eggs and you get the same feeling that Portal does. Figuring out how to create this experience in a full rpg should be a goal for designers.
Cyaz
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
The Game Pitch
Hey,
My last post really focused on pitching my game idea to my class and coincidentally Game Career Guide also had an article about pitching a game idea. http://www.gamecareerguide.com/news/21322/gamecraft_teaches_students_art_of_.php
The article really hit home on the problem with the majority of the pitches including my own. We all had the mindset that words could acurately describe our games. This was completely the wrong approach to pitching a game. Instead we should have found as many visuals as possible and used these to sell our game idea for us. Visuals are very easily understood and would have communicated our idea across much more strongly. The idea of designing the box for the game while designing it is a great one for getting the team to make the game concept into something understandable.
The other difficulty in pitching our games was that we did not have any prototype to show. Over the summer during my internship my boss was preparing for the green light of the project we were working on. This is different than the initial proposal but still similar in a few ways. She had to prove that the game was actually worth continuing to produce. She prepared sales figures of past games in the franchise, had a complete rough draft of the game design document, concept art for each scene, and a short playable demo. This is way too much to have expected from us in our class but shows that having a prototype available is invaluable to showing off a project.
Next time I have to give a proposal I will focus on making my game idea more understandable and increase the amount of excitement surrounding it. Looking back I realize that although my game idea was easily understood the game was not as exciting as some of the other less understandable games.
Cyaz
My last post really focused on pitching my game idea to my class and coincidentally Game Career Guide also had an article about pitching a game idea. http://www.gamecareerguide.com/news/21322/gamecraft_teaches_students_art_of_.php
The article really hit home on the problem with the majority of the pitches including my own. We all had the mindset that words could acurately describe our games. This was completely the wrong approach to pitching a game. Instead we should have found as many visuals as possible and used these to sell our game idea for us. Visuals are very easily understood and would have communicated our idea across much more strongly. The idea of designing the box for the game while designing it is a great one for getting the team to make the game concept into something understandable.
The other difficulty in pitching our games was that we did not have any prototype to show. Over the summer during my internship my boss was preparing for the green light of the project we were working on. This is different than the initial proposal but still similar in a few ways. She had to prove that the game was actually worth continuing to produce. She prepared sales figures of past games in the franchise, had a complete rough draft of the game design document, concept art for each scene, and a short playable demo. This is way too much to have expected from us in our class but shows that having a prototype available is invaluable to showing off a project.
Next time I have to give a proposal I will focus on making my game idea more understandable and increase the amount of excitement surrounding it. Looking back I realize that although my game idea was easily understood the game was not as exciting as some of the other less understandable games.
Cyaz
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Human Body Presentation and Rambling
Hey,
Today my group got to presented our game to a panel. The first day of presentations our class had a developer from EA with a few years experience and a video game analyst who has studied the industry for many years and has years of experience. The second day of presentations we were supposed to get a past editor of Computer Gaming World and been a part of the video game industry for a lot of his professional life. He was unfortunately unable to make it and instead two graduate students sat in for him.
The project is very similar to one I have done before so I had some experience before we started it. The assignment is to write up a concept document for an original video game idea then to pitch the idea to a group of panelists. My past experience was a good one. I enjoyed working on an original video game idea with a group of people but not everyone was excited and enthusiastic as I was. Also during the pitch I realized how hard it was to explain a full AAA title to a group of people who had not participated in the design process. It was even harder because the game was not even fully fleshed out in our minds, the actual designers! For this time around I decided to design a flash game with a significantly smaller scope and planned it as a student developed project.
I feel like the concept document came out better this time then it did the last. The handicap of having students who are not as excited and enthusiastic as me was significantly lessened because I made the game design one that anyone could understand. It was very easily translated into a language that a non-video game player. I did this with the thought in mind that for the presentation I would easily be able to explain our idea making it hard for the panel to find faults in our core concept.
On the first day of presentations the core concept is exactly what the panelists focused on. They might have commented on the details but they focused on the core concepts. One of the panelists went so far as to award the game that he thought was the worst simply because they did the best job of communicating their core concept across. He brought up a very stark fact, of the video game industry, that a lot of the executives in charge, of deciding which games are made, are not gamers.
On the second day of presentations the graduate students did not focus on the core concepts. They focused on the details and the flimsy details of what the games would be. I've heard all of the pitches twice and still had only vague ideas of what the core game play was for some of the games. The graduate students have the same optimism as many of the students and did not focus on the fact that the game play was never really explained. It was really frustrating to watch and to deal with. At the end the other two games were chosen as better presentations and better games.
I've been trying to take an outside approach as to why my game was not liked. The only conclusion that I have made is the one I made before. The difference between an experienced game developer and an unexperienced one is that an experienced developer knows the reality of the video game industry. They realize that good game play is the core of making good games. They also realize that explaining what game they are making is the most important skill to have. I am still extremely optimistic for the video game industry but I accept and am excited to work to overcome the harsh realities. The other students that understand this are the ones I like talking to and enjoy working with.
Cyaz
Today my group got to presented our game to a panel. The first day of presentations our class had a developer from EA with a few years experience and a video game analyst who has studied the industry for many years and has years of experience. The second day of presentations we were supposed to get a past editor of Computer Gaming World and been a part of the video game industry for a lot of his professional life. He was unfortunately unable to make it and instead two graduate students sat in for him.
The project is very similar to one I have done before so I had some experience before we started it. The assignment is to write up a concept document for an original video game idea then to pitch the idea to a group of panelists. My past experience was a good one. I enjoyed working on an original video game idea with a group of people but not everyone was excited and enthusiastic as I was. Also during the pitch I realized how hard it was to explain a full AAA title to a group of people who had not participated in the design process. It was even harder because the game was not even fully fleshed out in our minds, the actual designers! For this time around I decided to design a flash game with a significantly smaller scope and planned it as a student developed project.
I feel like the concept document came out better this time then it did the last. The handicap of having students who are not as excited and enthusiastic as me was significantly lessened because I made the game design one that anyone could understand. It was very easily translated into a language that a non-video game player. I did this with the thought in mind that for the presentation I would easily be able to explain our idea making it hard for the panel to find faults in our core concept.
On the first day of presentations the core concept is exactly what the panelists focused on. They might have commented on the details but they focused on the core concepts. One of the panelists went so far as to award the game that he thought was the worst simply because they did the best job of communicating their core concept across. He brought up a very stark fact, of the video game industry, that a lot of the executives in charge, of deciding which games are made, are not gamers.
On the second day of presentations the graduate students did not focus on the core concepts. They focused on the details and the flimsy details of what the games would be. I've heard all of the pitches twice and still had only vague ideas of what the core game play was for some of the games. The graduate students have the same optimism as many of the students and did not focus on the fact that the game play was never really explained. It was really frustrating to watch and to deal with. At the end the other two games were chosen as better presentations and better games.
I've been trying to take an outside approach as to why my game was not liked. The only conclusion that I have made is the one I made before. The difference between an experienced game developer and an unexperienced one is that an experienced developer knows the reality of the video game industry. They realize that good game play is the core of making good games. They also realize that explaining what game they are making is the most important skill to have. I am still extremely optimistic for the video game industry but I accept and am excited to work to overcome the harsh realities. The other students that understand this are the ones I like talking to and enjoy working with.
Cyaz
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