Elements of Game design, part 3: character

While I said earlier that game play would be the main thing that effects how successful a game is, it is true but pure game play alone gets boring eventually. But that’s where immersion within the game is so incredibly important after the game play. The games of the modern era usually always have a plot line nowadays and a character development of some sort.

It’s just become an essential in the world of game design. Games like Mass Effect and Dragon age, while not being the best games in terms of game play and mechanics, certainly make up for that fact with the sheer amount of depth, story and character gone into those games.

I love a game with a good character and story, or one that can connect to me on an emotional level.

From a guy who’s played WoW for 5 years I can tell you how important immersion and character are to game design. I mean... It kept me paying £8.99 for 5 years, isn’t that enough evidence already?

It wasn’t the game play that kept me in, that got boring eventually. It was being in a huge undiscovered world with tons of things to do and since you were your own character you had the choice of how it developed for yourself. But I have already explained this before in my previous blog post.

I really loved the characters in Team Fortress 2, the whole game was screaming out character to me. And it was really funny and enjoyable hearing Heavy mow down people with his machine gun and Pyro muffling through his gas mask. It’s cartoonish atmosphere and art style had a special charm about itself which kept me playing.

Another interesting gamasutra post talks about immersion and characters that are real to the game developer itself:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10216

“To create a truly immersive game experience with a compelling fantasy world, you have to populate that world with real characters. Not just characters that behave realistically on the screen, but characters that ARE real to you, the game’s creator. The more you know your own characters, the more real they will become, and the more they will help draw the player into your game’s imaginary word. It’s not enough for your characters to have distinctive speech patterns and tics. They need actual histories, motives, dreams, and secrets. Then they will have real depth with which pull the player in, and your fantasy world will become a real place that the player loves to visit, and can't wait to get back to when they leave.”

I thought about this quote and thought how cut scenes link into making the characters come to life to your eyes, showing storylines and character developments in Hollywood fashion, are almost common place nowadays in game design. In fact I sometimes only watch game plays of certain games just to watch the storyline specifically, such as “StarCraft 2: Heart of the swarm” and the new “Tomb Raider” game as well as all the Devil May Cry games which I’ll mention later.

Character Personalisation and customisation in games have also become a huge factor in game design too, to fully immerse the player and to make them feel like its their own character, tons of personalisation and customisation has been added into new games, which is a brilliant idea. It really immerses the player and gives a sense of belonging and attachment to your virtual character, as well as achievement, linking in with the reward system I talked about in my earlier blog post.

Games like Blacklight Retribution, WoW, Skyrim, Dragon Age, and many more really do a fantastic job of giving a sense of value to your character. More and more game companies are learning that customisation and rewards are one of the things that keep the player hooked. Heck even a game like Fruit Ninja had me addicted to it, since I wanted to collect all the different styles of blades and swords they had to offer. And the beat my 8 combo streak of fruits I just blitz.

I remember when I first heard of devil may cry and saw its amazing brilliant sword fighting mechanics and game play, but what really sold me and brought me into the game was the Characters, Dante, a Bad-ass half demon slaying demons and protecting humanity as well as being the coolest funniest calmest character in the game really entertained me. And I’m now a huge fan of the franchise just for the character and story developments. I saw the behind the scenes footage for the devil may cry 3 cut scenes and they had all these stuntmen from Hollywood doing crazy action and jumping scenes wearing motion capture suits just for the cut scenes because it was that important.

The industry is changing and for the better, with better characters visuals, story lines and more immersion and customisation than ever, as well as the ability to attach players to their characters emotionally, it’s where the industry is heading and where I want it to go further.

Elements of game design Part 2 – Art Direction for games

As I mentioned earlier that one of the main elements of game design is Immersing the player into the world. Now someone has to direct the art for the game, and that person is the Art Director.

The job as the art directors includes the monumental responsibility for the whole visual style, quality and tone of the game, as well as the objects, level, effects, and character. So yeah it’s kind of scary to think you might be working on million dollar budgets so you have virtually no margin for error. But also fun, because in a way it’s the director’s image of the game coming to life.

Here’s another interesting article on gamasutra

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3115/common_methodologies_for_lead_.php

Diana Davies talks about the roles an art director has and one of the main things that struck me is the amount of communication, organization and teamwork skills that were key to being a director. For a game to be successful the artists and programmers MUST communicate well and work as a team rather than blame or resent one another for doing something wrong. But being In the world of geeks and recluses who had probably spent most of their lives in front of screens getting better at 3D or programming, means that they lack in some communication skills, which could cause problems later down the line.

“For the most part, I haven't experienced too many cases where I could not approach a programmer and work with him or her to resolve a technical issue. I've always made it clear that I respect the person I'm approaching for help and admit freely when I can't work something out on my own.”

Time management is essential to the job and everything must be pretty organised and written down just to keep everything in order and  a simple thing like not having all the files correctly would increase the amount of time taken on the project by a vast amount and leave it in a jumbled pile of mess.

She goes on to say the toughest job for the artist is to evaluate their skills and effort in the job and if they aren’t meeting up with expectations they have to make them aware and motivate them to work harder because essentially that’s time and money being wasted. But with all of that comes the stress and problems within the team.

It’s also the art director’s job to keep the morale up and keep everyone working as a team and to solve petty conflicts swiftly without any hiccups.

You have to take in the team member’s level of stress and to never lose your temper. It certainly isn’t an easy skill to master but it’s very important for directors and lead designers for any job for that matter. The games industry works with a lot of trial and error and there can be consequences for forgetting a step or doing something stupid because of that. So being able to spot and fix mistakes is key to being a great manager.

They need to sell their game as well, because as most people nowadays, they judge the game by its visuals and cover rather than the game play. Their job is to make sure the whole team creates visually stimulating environments, characters, and artwork in general.

So yeah the job as an art director is pretty huge and risky and takes a very strong minded person to run it. Its pretty similar to being a film or TV director in the way of having the same responsibilities for your team and coming up with the idea’s and structure of the game/movie/show.

One day maybe I’d like to give the art director job a shot, but that would be after years of experience within the industry as a normal artist and when I have the confidence and determination to lead a group of people. But it certainly won’t be easy at all.