Laurie N. Taylor, PhD (University of Florida), studies digital
media, visual rhetoric, and video games, focusing on horror
video games, comics, interfaces, and computers. She is
currently an instructor at the University of Florida, and has
contributed articles to sites such as Gameology, Alternative
Games, and GamesFirst. For more information please visit her on
the web at
LaurieNTaylor.org Laurie was given a copy of the Video Game
Design Pro program and asked to routinely blog about her
experiences with the software. Being from the educational
sector of video games, we are confident that she will shed light
on the program's ability to possess a multidisciplinary approach
to design methodology. Please bookmark this page and routinely
check back for new blog entries. Readers are also encouraged to
post their comments and feedback via the form beneath each
entry.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Download - 31 KB
Initial Review of Video Game Design
Pro
Like other software, games follow Brooks’ law. Fred
Brooks postulated Brooks’ law as the mythical man-month in The
Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. In the
book, Brooks details the problems with software project
management. Specifically Brook’s law explains, “Adding manpower
to a late software project makes it later.” Game development
follows Brooks’ law, and the best way to prevent the problems
that require projects to add people late in the cycle is to plan
ahead. Far too often with any large project, important
components are forgotten or neglected. The Corpament’s Video
Game Design Pro presents a convenient means for pre-planning and
continued planning during a project.
Because my background is in academia, my primary
interest in Video Game Design Pro is its completeness. Game
design encompasses various discrete, but interrelated components
and students/designers need an overall sense of this
organization. Video Game Design Pro is essentially an annotated
content management system. The content management system is
useful, particularly given the many components listed, but the
annotations are especially helpful. At the primary level, and
this is editable, Video Game Design Pro contains; Cover, Table
of Contents, Version History, Game Overview, Gameplay Mechanics,
Camera, Controls, Saving and Loading, Interface, Menu and Screen
Description, Game World, Levels, Game Progression, Characters,
Non-player Characters, Enemies, Weapons, etc.
For instance, concept art designers probably won’t help
draft the business plan, unless the project has a small core
team. Yet concept designers may benefit from being aware of the
design treatment or business plan in structuring their designs
for both the development team and for external marketing. For
all project components, Video Game Design Pro’s wizards are
particularly useful because they require users to explicitly
state what items will do and where they belong.
The software is presented in an accessible and easy to
use format. I would have preferred an easy means for changing
the help text from Comic Sans, and a different starting font. An
easy method for changing the font may be available, but my help
files did not load in the evaluation version. On my Comic Sans
bias, I teach my students not to use Comic Sans since it is so
overused and so often badly used, so the font choice presents a
minor problem for me. Overall though, Video Game Design Pro is
exceptionally accessible and well organized. Because I haven’t
used it in a production environment, I’m not aware of any
problems with stability, file corruption, or any bugs in
general. Video Game Design Pro does allow users to export files,
so back-up files would be available. Instructors could use
Video Game Design Pro to require students to walk through the
different aspects of game design and then the steps within the
design process. Not all designers will need to know the business
side of design, but doing so would mean that the designers would
have a better understanding of the business needs and
constraints on a particular project. Further, designers would
then be better able to approximate their own positions within
the development team to aid in development, and even to argue
for more money if their positions are more integral to the
game’s development than they realized. Video Game Design Pro
would be useful for cross-disciplinary student projects drawing
team members from various majors for particular game development
components. Because of Video Game Design Pro’s inclusive
approach to game development, it could also be used in writing
classes to help teach script writing, dialogue writing, business
plan writing, and more. Perhaps most interestingly for
class application, semester-based student projects require
planning. Normally, instructors do much of the planning to
ensure a better chance of student project success. However,
software this organized can take some of the burden off
instructors and can, in turn, better prepare students for large
project development.
© Copyright 2006. Laurie N.
Taylor. All rights reserved. The Corpament is granted
permission to display the above writing on their website only.
This document cannot be edited without express written
permission.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
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Game Industry Growth and
Coordination
As gaming continues to grow as a mass media form, with
tie-ins to other products and as an influence on other products
like the game-like aspects of the films Final Destination and
Stay Alive, more non-gamers and non-game designers need to know
more about games. The Corpament’s Video Game Design Pro allows
non-gamers and gamers alike access to a better sense of how
games are designed. Because Video Game Design Pro operates as a
game-specific content management system, with questions and
explanations of each component of game design, Video Game Design
Pro aids by visually explaining the different components of game
design and their relationship to each other.
Systems like Video Game Design Pro are particularly
important because of the way knowledge and learning is normally
emphasized. As a teacher, I’ve seen many students who grasp
particular components of information, but not the overall
structure and the implications of that structure. In fact, many
educational systems teach students to grasp the particulars
instead of a system instead of an overall vision of the system
itself. In Florida, the FCAT standardized tests in elementary
and high school emphasizing memorization instead of critical
thinking and many educational systems function similarly. Higher
education systems often speak of critical thinking, which refers
to the analysis of particular data and then the process of
connecting that data to larger systems for further evaluation.
Like education, journalism stories also sometimes
emphasize discrete information rather than the implications of
that information. The prevalence of news stories on crimes are a
good example of this—they focus on the particulars of a single
crime instead of relating that crime to overall crime trends,
governmental changes, and social systems that may relate to the
particulars of a crime. News blogs were able to easily grow in
popularity because they are not constrained by the same time
constraints of traditional media, and so they can more easily
connect stories to larger trends and implications. For
connecting data to the systems in which that data operates and
the other systems the data relates to, visualization has proven
particularly useful. Seemingly traditional formats, like
outlines and graphs are good ways to illustrate individual
systems and their connections. Video Game Design Pro does not
show the connections of a particular game to the video game
industry as a whole—a daunting task—but it does show how an
individual game breaks down into components and how those
components connect within the larger system of the game. The
business plan section, though, does ask the users to make the
larger connections to the game industry and it does explain how
to do so. For seasoned game designers, the visualization of an
entire game in a format that can be completely viewed at a
single time allows designers a greater sense of any individual
project. The usefulness of Video Game Design Pro’s structure
lies not only in its ability to aid game designers, but also in
its ability to present a useful visualization of how a game
operates to non-gamers. With the game industry’s incredibly
growth, it’s likely that many new workers in the industry will
lack experience with games. Whether or not game executives, game
company website designers, game industry marketers, and game
industry journalists have a rich background in gaming, they may
or may not have a sense of the larger system of gaming or
individual components of game design. Video Game Design Pro
offers an annotated visual structure that could show anyone less
intrinsically involved in the game design process all of what is
involved. Then, the larger structure and explanations can also
show certain demands must be met and how other demands can
create problems. For instance, how features added late in the
game development process are a problem. In essence, Video Game
Design Pro acts as a road map, and map legend explaining the
different mapped components, for people new to gaming and game
design.
Game designers should have a sense of the industry,
normal game conventions, and so on, but games are a growing
media form and so it’s impossible to know everything. Knowing
the core components—which Video Game Design Pro
outlines—provides a grammar for games so that players and
designers can see parallels and make comparisons from known
games to new games. This grammar effectively allows all involved
in gaming to see how games operate and to then map aspects of
one game to other games to make comparisons and to see the
connections and differences. Many games and gaming industry
workers could benefit from these mappings to avoid previous
errors. After Grand Theft Auto III was released and gained
phenomenal popularity, many mature rated games followed.
However, many of those games were poor games that were marketed
as parallels to GTA III and subsequently failed. The mapping of
game aspects and the overall concerns of game design would aid
in showing how a particular game operates and how that operation
relates to gaming more globally. While game designers and game
industry professionals can certainly benefit from Video Game
Design Pro’s mapping of games and gaming, so can game studies
students and others in related fields. For game designers and
game studies students looking to understand pragmatically how
games operate in connection to other media, Video Game Design
Pro proves to be a major asset. For those looking understand how
games operate in conjunction with other media and language more
theoretically, a number of game studies books are also
available, including Ken McAllister’s Game Work: Language,
Power, and Computer Game Culture.
© Copyright 2006. Laurie N.
Taylor. All rights reserved. The Corpament is granted
permission to display the above writing on their website only.
This document cannot be edited without express written
permission.
Saturday, October 7, 2006
Download - 34 KB
Design Constraints and Project
Development
When starting any new project, one of the most
difficult tasks is organization. Constraints—budgetary,
systematic, chronological—aid in defining project boundaries.
The boundaries help define the general scope, requirements,
supplementary concerns, and these can lead to an organizational
scheme for project development. Whether the project is building
construction, web development, physical fitness, or game design,
the project constraints help shape the project itself. Video
game development needs similar constraints to help define the
larger project and the individual components within the project.
Unlike many other projects, however, video game
development often follows a changing set of constraints. In the
early years of gaming, video game development was constrained
financially and technically by gaming technology and game
interfaces. Now, game development has fewer constraints and the
open arena of game development makes defining a project more
difficult in many ways. Where games were once limited to certain
styles of visual representation, games can now utilize
photorealistic 3D graphics, sprite graphics, cartoon imagery,
watercolor effects as Ôkami highlights, and more.
The ever-increasing technical possibilities often seem to remove
design constraints as more and more options are added. However,
certain constraints—user expectations, budget, and timing—remain
even as other options expand. The increase in options and
blurring of current constraints requires that designers have a
global sense of a project’s scope as well as a sense of the
individual components necessary to implement the project. As the
options change, maintaining a sense of the larger picture and
the supporting modules becomes more difficult. College courses
often artificially create this sort of project definition in
terms of time (semester-long) and in terms of goals. For
instance, writing classes often cover writing research papers as
the larger project and then also cover grammar, argumentative
structure, research skills, and citation in order to support the
larger research paper form. As a class project expands from
individual work into group work, the dynamic changes and the
work must change. Video game development offers a large scale
parallel, albeit one with shifting options and shifting demands.
Because game development requires that developers have
an organized sense of the global and the local aspects of the
project so that the project can be altered as needed for
different variables (new systems, new controllers, new
schedules, and new budgets), a method for this organization is
needed. Some projects use wikis or blogs for organization, like
the wiki for “I, Mario”
.
While wikis and blogs can be useful, neither form is inherently
well designed for game development. Content management systems,
like The Corpament’s Video Game Design Pro, are more useful on
an initial level because the more linear structure clarifies the
connection between the local and global. While any customized
content management system could be useful for game development,
Video Game Design Pro is designed with current game design
constraints in mind. Video Game Design Pro boasts both the
content management organizational structure and the relevant
components for game design, thus addressing both the global and
local concerns.
As design constraints alter and expand, the need for
organization increases. Video Game Design Pro answers these
needs and even anticipates future needs, by providing a section
for “future features” and even by providing details under the
section for “controls.” While many games may only expand by
having additional features added or by having expansion packs in
subsequent releases, other games may have changes to the core
design in re-releases or in the initial game.
While the larger issues of design constraints and
project organization apply to a variety of projects, the details
within each project structure and project component varies based
on the type of project. For video games, a standard set of
constraints do exist; however, those constraints are often
difficult to define as other constraints shift. Video Game
Design Pro provides both the structure and the details. The
details aid by shaping the local constraints as they relate to
the larger project.
For instance, the “controls” section in Video Game
Design Pro is particularly interesting because it foregrounds
current constraints and the potential for expansion. For
instance, most games currently assume a standard controller or
keyboard and mouse control scheme. Others—like Guitar Hero, the
Eye Toy games, DDR, various Nintendo DS games, the upcoming Wii
games, and others—are expanding those traditional control-based
design constraints. In addition to these, other constraints can
also shape game design controls when users with disabilities are
considered.
Video Game Design Pro’s “control” section opens by
explaining the relevance of the components to the overall
design, stating: In describing the character’s movements,
identify the physical commands that the player needs to execute
in order to accomplish them. Describe the different modes that
the controls will have, for example, the buttons in a combat
screen will be drastically different from those within the main
menu. To accomplish this quickly and easily, it is recommended
that you run the Controller Wizard, select the console or
platform controller that the game is being developed for, then
enter the corresponding button command references. The wizard
then brings up a screen that asks which system. That question,
in turn, leads to an image of the controller for that system and
a list of controls which designers can map to functions. The
list of controls is important. In terms of design constraints
and project definition, however, the opening statement on how to
describe the player in relation to the controls is even more
important because it shows how the constraints shape the project
and how they can change the project.
The 2006 Retro Remakes Competition asked game designers
to shift their game design constraints to include a single
switch interface to create “Good remakes of good games that
anyone can play, regardless of their ability” (http://retroremakes.com/comp2006/).
In order to remake an existing game as the competition asked
developers to do, the developers had to have an organized and
detailed outline on all aspects of the game in order to see how
to change the control while keeping the game playable.
Competitions like this one, and others that ask designers to
create games within a week, can be beneficial because they
enforce artificial constraints—as many classes do—that help
define the overall project scope. While artificially created
constraints can be beneficial, all projects already contain
certain constraints. The challenge for game design is being
aware of and organizing those constraints in relation to the
project at hand. Video Game Design Pro aids in listing the
constraints, with details, to help organize the project
development by listing the normal constraints on game design.
Clearly, some game designers are using wikis, blogs, and other
methods for content management. However, the most useful systems
should contain the existing constraints for game design as well
as a sense of how those constraints may change.
© Copyright 2006. Laurie N.
Taylor. All rights reserved. The Corpament is granted
permission to display the above writing on their website only.
This document cannot be edited without express written
permission.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
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Software Start-Ups
Tim Ryan’s 1999 Gamasutra articles on the anatomy of a
design document (Part 1
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991019/ryan_pfv.htm and
Part 2
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991217/ryan_pfv.htm)
explain the core components needed in a game design document.
Any large project needs documentation and a planned method of
organization for that documentation. This is true for those
writing book proposals for academic books or textbooks, those
writing business plans for new companies, and those working on
existing projects.
For game design, the larger design documentation aids
the development and in marketing particular games because the
design documentation allows everyone who reads it to have a
consistent vision of the larger project. Currently, a number of
other projects aid in different aspects of project creation and
organization. Alienbrain aids in asset management, various
Content Management Systems aid in general organization like
Joomla, and sites like A List Apart offer explanations of how to
write business plans
http://alistapart.com/articles/business1/. Other helpful
products include Blogs, Wikis, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and
other collaborative tools. Most of these tools are very
open-ended, which is useful because the products can then be
customized for a variety of projects. Unlike these, Video Game
Design Pro is already customized and does not appear to have any
direct competitors that are also customized and available on the
market for use in game design or for use in other technology
projects. [As an aside, please contact me if there are other
similar projects so that I can research them.]
Video Game Design Pro’s structure is useful because it
is already customized and specialized for use in relation to
game design. Video Game Design Pro could also be used, with some
customization like other CMS projects would require, for other
technological projects like for a new software product or for a
web application. Video Game Design Pro would be useful for these
other projects because it is already customized to work for
technological project development and because it includes a
business plan component.
After the Dotcom boom and bust many potential new
technology companies realized the importance of a strong
business plan and strategy. Video Game Design Pro offers an easy
means for planning and developing such a strategy in connection
with the project itself. While video gaming is still a strong
business, gaming is now facing a number of new problems like
longer development cycles and increased costs. Clear business
plans—in addition to quality products—are critical to the
continued success of any business. With the recent sales of
MySpace and YouTube, new web products that rely heavily on
socially interactive aspects are proving that a new Dotcom boom
is possible. Those sites, with their emphasis on user
interaction represent part of the change from Web to Web 2.0
products. For developing similarly interaction applications,
good design and planning are critical to success, as is a good
business plan. Video Game Design Pro, while currently only being
marketed for video game development could also help new
technology companies in organization project development,
writing a business plan, and making sure that others (new team
members, potential customers, and potential investors)
understand their products.
© Copyright 2006. Laurie N.
Taylor. All rights reserved. The Corpament is granted
permission to display the above writing on their website only.
This document cannot be edited without express written
permission. 
