Lunch with Peter Hu

Peter Hu, another of the ex-Blizzard Northers, called us (us being the ex-Blizzard portion of the office) up out of the blue last week to go to lunch with him. He's currently working for Flagship Studios, the other game development company that was born out of the great Blizzard departure.

One of the things we talked about was the game development process. Often, people will compare making a game to creating a movie. This could not be a more inaccurate analogy, however, a lot of publishers and game development houses have been following the movie philosophy by requiring game design documents, detailing out every single bit of the game before a single line of code is programmed, or a single pixel is generated on the screen.

This is an incredibly stupid way to design a game due to one major fundamental difference between a movie and a game: interactivity. Movies are non-interactive entertainment. The entertainment comes from watching the movie, following the characters and the plot develop until it reaches it's conclusion.

Games are about interaction. It's the gamer interacting with the objects on the screen and making choices. Which path to go down, which special ability to use, which direction to rotate the piece, etc. Sure, you could design the game from beginning to end, but it's a pretty rare talent to be able to design that without making changes based on user feedback.

Why is user feedback and play testing so important? It's only through people playing that game that one can determine if the game design works and is fun to play, or if changes must be made to accomodate the player.

A few years ago, I tested a game which the majority of the work had been outsourced to Russians. The story behind the project went something like this. The game developer had a huge hit on their hands, and the publisher came to them and said: "You have a huge hit on your hands. You should use the strength of that franchise to create a new game. We just spent a great deal of money on this adventure game engine, we can crank out a new game for you in 6 months, and you will have complete creative control. We will have a Russian studio that can do the art for you. All you have to do is hand us a game design document detailing the events and scenes."

The game developer thought about this for a moment, and greenlighted the project. Fast forward two years later. This game somehow slipped up in production somewhere, and went through several revisions. The game engine that the publisher touted wasn't nearly as robust as it was claimed to be. The game, in total, turned out to be 50 scenes, and the game (minus any non-interactive cutscenes) could be completed in the player's first try, in about 15 minutes.

A 15-minute game, no matter what franchise, publisher, or game developer, does not sell. A 15-minute game, would be panned in all the game magazines, and the companies responsible for the game would be a laughingstock.

So, what happened? How did this project turn into a 15-min game? The first problem was the overall design of the game. The game design docs detailed that this game had to fill in the gaps of what happened after the last game of this series. So, there was a plot, but the plot only ran from point A to end point B. The plot didn't wander or meander, and you never got sent on a quest you didn't need, nor did you ever pick up an object you never used. It became too simple.

It was pretty clear to me that if anyone had actually sat down and played the game while it was being developed and gave some feedback on the ease of the puzzles, the game wouldn't have just been 15 minutes. They would have realized that players were getting through the game quickly, and that something had to be added as a timesink to the game.

It wasn't fun, for various reasons, such as repetitive dialogue and menial tasks. Part of it was that the game designers never decided why the game should be made and what made the game fun to play. They were driven to make the game for no other purpose than to make money.

In the end, one the studio heads used his power to cancel the game. It was never released, and only a few CDs of the completed game remain in existence, locked away, never to see the light of day. It was an expensive lesson for all to learn that some documentation is good, but games cannot be designed in a vacuum.

Keeping it Local

U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries

Even though this doesn't directly impact the games industry, it does impact the hi-tech industry, which is where many of the game programmers and artists come from.

A lot of the best game artists and programmers didn't start off as being game artists and programmers. They learned their trade either from other programming occupations or from other experiences in Computer Animation, including working for animation or movie studios. A job working outside the games industry can really prepare one for the challenge of creating a game, even if there is differentiation between the needs of an animation studio and a game studio.

Still, the problem exists that as we grow more dependent on outsourcing, our internal resources grow stagnant. Without new jobs, the young artists never gain the experience that they need to gain employment in our highly competitive industry.

Although I know of relatively few outsources to Indian game developers, I am aware that Russian game developers do handle outsourcing. The Korean game developers are becoming a force to watch -- their ability to create high quality clones makes them an ideal candidate for overseas outsourcing.

Even when we were starting up this office, we posted job ads, and got many more responses than we ever expected. Additionally, a fair chunk of our resumes came from overseas, including Russia and India, which surprised everyone.

Killographic

CNN: Group warns parents about 'killographic' games

I guess the term "killographic" is defined as the "graphic depiction of brutal violence." This is where all the super-realistic or gory portrayals of death and violence is clumped in. Games like "Mortal Kombat" or "Carmaggedon", I assume would fit into this category.

Job Titles in the Games Business

One of the problems I commonly experience in my dealings in the games industry is that job titles are not standardized. For instance, the title "Senior Artist" can mean two different things: either the "Senior Artist" is someone with years of industry experience or an artist who has responsibilities above that of, say a "Artist". The title "Producer" is also a nebulous one. I've seen "Producers", who did nothing more than have their name in the credits, and I've also seen "Producers" who handle everything in the game that Programmers and Artists do not. A "Technical Artist" is sometimes a person who handles the fine details of artwork, but they can also be someone who basically functions as a Programmer for Artists.

At some point, these titles will need to have standard definitions.

Introduction

Who are you?

My name is Michael Huang, and I've been in the games industry for as long as I can remember. When I was going through high school and college, I was part of a game development group which created some minor shareware games. I even wrote a few games of my own. Thankfully, these rather embarassing pieces of code have been lost in the vast sea of the internet. Upon graduating college, from August of 1997 to July of 2003, I was employed at Blizzard North, the Northern California-based studio of Blizzard Entertainment. I currently work for one of the two studios that was formed after the entire upper management of Blizzard North left in July of 2003.

What is this blog about?

This blog contains my personal thoughts about game development and the games industry in general. It'll mostly be about me talking about games, what makes them work and what makes them not work. I'll try to cite my personal experiences in when I can.

Why blog this?

I often find in the course of the day, I'll find something interesting about the games industry. Rather than lose that piece of information forever, I want to have someplace to preserve it.