It has been a long time...

Hello there everyone...

My last post on No Rules Required was an apology for why I haven't been posting so much. The reason, apart from working very hard to complete my Masters, is because I have been busy setting up my own game design studio White Paper Games and designing our first title named Ether. 


The past few months have been pretty tough with working at a day job and for White Paper Games but everything is finally coming together well. We have started production of our demo that hopefully we will have ready to show you around September time and maybe some screen shots even sooner. We have also been trotting around the UK and attended this years Develop Conference which was a great chance to meet people in the industry and make some new friends.

So yet again I apologise for no posts but would like to reassure you all that this is still my personal blogging site and that I will be uploading weekly blogs relating to both my academic career and my adventure with White Paper Games.

So if you haven't already you can visit us at www.whitepapergames.wordpress.com, follow us on Twitter and join our group on Facebook to see what is going on and what we have been up to!

The NGP and the Smart phones revolution.

With the announcement of the NGP it seems that the effects of the smart phone are finally seeping into what many would consider to be the core game scene. Sony’s announcement of Android compatibility shows a new way of thinking for a company that helped shape the gaming world of today and it will be interesting to see whether this business model will be as supported as say Apples app store. Yet as a designer and someone who interested in games development I am more interested in what this “compatibility” will open up for smaller game developers. With both the iPhone, iPad and Android Smart phones we have seen a huge rise in “bite” sized gaming that has allowed smaller developers to reach larger audiences as well as make decent sized profits, something that is becoming more difficult in the traditional games market. Unless you are a guaranteed big seller like Call of Duty or Fifa it can be a huge financial risk making a game for the console market whereas with the downloadable model it costs developers and publishers less to create, make and market their product.

So have Sony finally hit the nail on the head? Well it depends on how they approach the situation. If they focus on easy access and a simple model that allows gamers to simultaneously have a game on their PS3, their Android phone and their NGP with saving that carries between the different hardware then they could be onto a winner. Yet if they just throw a load of indie titles and old PS stock into a “new look” market place we could have another Xbox live indie store that suffered from lots of below average titles and a few shiny gems which was also difficult to navigate. Apples app store works on the basis of the top 25 lists that allow consumers to see what is hot making it easy for them navigate as well as buy. A similar approach from Sony would be beneficial as the current PS Store suffers from a layered design that can easily alienate consumers from finding titles and exploring the market place.

Its these small design ideas that really can make and break many design teams desperate to get their game noticed and if Sony want to attract and keep a large number of developers creating games that are cross platform they will need to prove that their Playstation Suite is indeed the place to market your game rather than Apples successful App store. To combat this it has been said that their "NGP is a developer's dream – Sony is finally doing the things developers have been crying out for years". This is exciting news for developers who want to work and make games quickly, easily and professionally and with the inclusion of a front and rear touch panels could be potentially used for extremely innovative titles, titles that could sell well if the Playstation Suite is as accessible as for mentioned.

For me I am interested on how Apple decides to expand on their current success and how the current major console companies combat this. Sony seems to have made the first move and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft follow with such confidence. Nintendo on the other hand seem to be in favour of their traditional tactics that won over many consumers and developers with the DS. Will this be replicated with the 3DS? I guess we will have to wait till March 25^th when the first of the next generation hand held’s is released.

List of things that I want to achieve before I am too old to really achieve them in the game industry.

(These are in no particular order)

Work in the games industry for other design companies for 5-10 years to gain valuable experience.

To set up my own games design studio before I am 35 years of age.

To write 2 books around the subject of games design and the artistic talent and potential it has.

To help set up a website in the future to help graduate/ up and coming games designers to integrate themselves into the games design community.

So there you are, a small list of obtainable goals that I would like to achieve in my career. Not too interesting for you guys but at least I have it written down somewhere!

On other news I have also now set up a blog page at Gamasutra and will be writing there shortly about various game design topics, theories as well as my progress with gaining a career in games design!

Why Shutter Island Is The Best Silent Hill Movie Not Based On Silent Hill.

Spoiler Alert

If you have not seen Shutter Island and want to DO NOT READ

Most of my blogs on here are either to do with my progress as a games designer or to do with my news stories with ifmenhadwings. Its not often that I like to be overtly critical of something that I have seen unless I am actually reviewing it, yet after watching Shutter Island last night I feel an overwhelming desire to speak my mind.

The reason for this is quite simple, Shutter Isalnd is the closest thing I have ever seen to what I feel a Silent Hill movie should have been like. Now I’m not saying that Silent Hill the movie was a particularly bad movie, on the contrary I quite enjoyed watching the paper thin plot and fantastical scenery, yet it never really touched upon what makes the original Silent Hill games special. It’s also something that I feel has gotten lost in the many incarnations of the game on modern consoles such as the scandalous Silent Hill: Homecoming.

The thing that I speak of is madness.

Similar to Lovecraftian tales and Poe like horror Silent Hill 2 isn’t a game about a man who goes to a creepy and scary town with horrific creatures and monsters in it. It is a tale about a man who is trying to avoid his own madness by suppressing his own guilt, and through this the apparitions of monsters and the town come to be. Shutter Island offers a similar palette of story with our “hero” Teddy Daniels going to an island to investigate the disappearance of a murderess who killed her children by drowning them in a lake behind their house. A simple enough story to wet the appetite, but it isn’t before long we, as viewers, start to notice that things are not right and the madness starts to shine through. Walking dreams give us glimpses of horror that seems to tie our protagonist to this island in a more prominent way than just a Marshall on a case. In Silent Hill 2 this is done through the encounters that James Sunderland has such as Maria who is the spitting image of his late wife. These moments of surrealism use strangeness to lure the viewer or player out of their comfortable shell to give them a glimpse of the truth, never to little but never too much.

Depicting madness must be no easy feat as many of us have never been there and if we have usually not for very long. But these two tales share so much in terms depicting madness that they have both captivated audiences worldwide. Both protagonists are fighting for a cause that represses there own guilt and are only left in peace by their demons when they accept their actions as well as their fate. In both these cases realisation is the door to the truth for the viewer, which often leaves them shocked as they have become accustomed to their protagonist’s quest and goals. In Silent Hill 2 it is when we find out that James Sunderland killed his own wife and in Shutter Island it is when we find out that Teddy’s wife is the person who killed her children and that he killed her before going mad and becoming an inmate at the Island.

Both cases do not base themselves on cheap shocks or overly gory moments to produce that sense of dread. Silent Hill 2 in my opinion is the least distinctly horrific in terms of visual design in the series (apart from shattered memories perhaps) yet is quite easily the scariest. The same with Shutter Island, many a horror film I have watched of late and most are gory, slash fests that leave little or no indent in my life., yet Shutter Island frightened me.

At the end of the day, new developers of Silent Hill games do a great job of instilling horrific imagery and great graphics in the series, yet somehow miss the point that people are more afraid of madness and uncertainty than a bloody severed head. The same with the Silent Hill film, the look was there indeed, no one could deny that. Yet something was missing from the film entirely, the thing that made Silent Hill 2 shocking, powerful and sad.

...madness.

Where Have I Been?

All right, sorry there have not been any posts for a little while on the blog. Things have been pretty busy of late and have seen me struggling to juggle all the various bits and bobs that I do. But with that behind us I am making significant progress on some of my projects and have just managed to gain some more so I can concentrate on jobs like this very blog and ifmenhadwings.

First off for those that do not know, I am currently developing and designing an iPhone game. This said iPhone game has been making some pretty slow progress of late due to various other work and so on. But over the last week it has suddenly gone from being a quiet and ever present pain in the back of my head to yet another exciting prospect in my design life. This is mainly due to my programmer buddy getting back off holiday and wanting to get the game done in a month, which is awesome, and another good friend agreeing to do my animated cut-scenes for me. double the awesome! So as you probably can tell I am thrilled to be back on with the chase and have currently completed designing my first three worlds as well as completing all of the sprites for each of them.

Unfortunately at this moment in time I cannot show you the progress of the game due to the commercial side of things but what I can do is keep you up to date on the progress of the aptly named Aliens Stole My Cat! so come back soon for more info!

Differences in research – The obvious and not so obvious

One day you hand in that final piece of work for your first MA year before it seems to fast forward to the day that you receive your module marks to suddenly discover that you are in fact in the middle of the summer and that the beginning of your final (and most important) term is only three months away. Three months away? Surely that is plenty of time to enjoy the glowing summer months, to stretch ones feet and bask in the warm weather? Not so it seems when I realised a few weeks ago that I would have a dissertation to write as well as plan a final practical project that must showcase my work in a professional and academic manner. So with this impending doom lurking over me I decided that it would be a wise idea to start researching into material that would benefit the direction that I have already started to take, and thus the first question arises. What books and materials should I pursue in the name of video-games research?

This at first seems like a simple question. Obviously I want to look at material that is relevant to my design discipline and in the case of games design this could mean a number of things. Naturally my first port of call would be to look at various “Games” themselves be that video-games, board games, playground games or role-playing games, before moving onto literature that has been published surrounding my given subject. Chances are these have been written by professionals and academics that have a word or two to say about how a game should or should not be designed. Now there are plenty of great and interesting books out there that are written by well-respected games designers, narrative designers and level designers that are worth reading to gain some insight into how the professional world works.

 One that springs to mind is the collaborative text book “Game Writing: Narrative Design for Video-games” edited by the renowned Chris Bateman, which showcases many different ways to implement narrative into video games successfully as well as talk about the problems that narrative designers face when writing for a game, a great title to draw points out of for what has and hasn’t worked in the past. Another title that I found interesting was that of “The Ultimate Guide To Video Game Writing and Design” by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten which not only talks about writing for games but the design of them as well, a decent book which again serves as a guide of sorts to creating video-games.

Yet this is where I start to have a problem with my research direction. Many people may feel that this sort of research is enough and maybe at an undergraduate level it is, yet at a master’s level of study surely we should be pushing these writers theories or at least pursuing our own ideas into what creates a ‘better’ video game? This thought process is a new branch of independent thinking for me where instead of looking further into the subject for research inspiration you dare to look away from the discipline to search for new points of interest to aid you in your design work.

So we embark on a research journey of not so obvious research material. One of my main influences to turn away from using games and video games texts as my only research came in the form of an interview in ‘Edge magazine’ with Jenova Chen, lead designer at Thatgamecompany.  During the interview Chen talks about his design philosophies and why he thinks they are highly relevant to keeping his games unique and his creativity at a maximum. “People who write games design books make traditional games, so its not really theory. I find things that are already proven, more well-developed – architecture, psychology or sociology – help games design more”. It is from this quote that my mind got thinking about how games are made, why they are made in certain ways and what is to say that we as games designers have to conform to what has been done in the past. Surely as a design discipline that at times even borders on art we should be looking at new and involving ways to make games and push the boundaries of what we played when we were growing up.

So from that point onwards, without dismissing traditional games design texts and games themselves completely, I have been looking into more philosophy and sociology to help me understand what people will find fun and emotionally engaging. Looking outside of games themselves will also help me avoid making games that have already been or games that are similar to those that are already on the market. People don’t want another game like Gears of War when they already have Gears of War, Gears of War 2 and they are looking forward to Gears of War 3 coming out next year.

Thus I ventured online and started to look at texts that I had spoken to a friend who has a masters in philosophy about a few years back and branched to new texts from there. The first two that I have picked up are that of “Flow” and “Creativity” both by renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The first text talks about the theory of ‘Flow’ and how and why people are (as well as not) happy. This so far has provided me with a huge amount of insight into what people find engaging and why they feel certain emotions which, as well as helping myself, allows me to craft stronger ideas for better games.

The second text ‘Creativity” talks through how ‘flow’ can help explain the creative process and show how creativity can enrich people lives. This obviously applies to myself as well as giving me insight into important psychological processes that affect all of us. There are also a number of other books such as “Homos Ludens” by Johan Huizinga, “Emotional Design” by Donald Borman and “The Laws of Simplicity” by J. Maeda that I am looking at picking up and reading to help build up a research base that I can then refer to when I start my dissertation. I also believe this research will help me when building up my practical project and the direction I want to head in with that.

At the end of the day it is always important to see what designers before you have done so that we can analyse what is still relevant and what is not. Yet it is even more important for us as designers to stray beyond the path and explore other streams of thought so we can design stronger, more fun and individual games whether large or small for people in the future to enjoy.

So Why A New Blog?

So, I have started a brand new blog to chronic my thoughts, ideas and general games design gibberish in a seperate place to that of my reflective diary, To Play or Not to Play. Why you may ask, must I have more than one blog displaying and discussing my work? Well let me explain a little bit. Over the past few weeks I have been doing quite a bit of work out side of academia developing an iPhone game as well as writing news articles, reviews and previews for a gamer website If Men Had Wings. With this additional work on top of my current academic design research I feel like I have started a new beginning of sorts, and with this feel the need to start something new and seperate to accompany my new fully video-game orientated lifestyle.

The basic gist then is that this new blog is going to cover my entire life in games design, professionally and academically week in week out. This will include on going projects as well as ideas, theories, critical responses to games and their designs, links to stories I have written or have found interesting and of course things that amuse me in the world of games.

So keep posted and subscribe to my feed if you are interested in video-games and the design of them, and thanks for visiting.