Paranoid Ramblings

It wouldn’t be game development if there weren’t some last minute changes. For my “Brain Dump: Dark Secrets of Game Development” session at PAX, Raphael van Lierop unfortunately can’t make it, so SOF Studios creative director David Sears has agreed to step in to help us out.

David and I toiled together at Ubisoft for years on the Rainbow 6 Patriots project. In the distant past he was the original Creative Director on the SOCOM franchise for the PS2 and once before that worked on the computer game adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Most recently he and his team at SOF successfully hit their Kickstarter fundraising goals for the new tactical military game H-Hour: World’s Elite.

I’m certainly bummed to have lost Raph, but David’s a fantastic speaker. You won’t be disappointed.

theblackichigo:

Cant wait to play this game!

Nels Anderson and I sorta-almost worked together without knowing it. When I first started at Microsoft, they gave me a polished alpha build of Mark of the Ninja to play. I wrote up some notes to give to the publishing team, but they were pretty positive. Of all the games I played back then, it was the most solid from a mechanics standpoint, one of those rare games that instantly feels great to play from a kinesthetic standpoint. My positive vibes were then validated when it shipped and became a dark horse contender for game of the year.

Today and tomorrow you might find Nels Anderson wandering the halls of PAX. If you don’t run into him, you can find at my session “Dark Secrets of Game Development” on Monday, where he’s going to tell you how easy it was to make this great game. Wait, no, that’s not it, turns out it wasn’t easy at all… It’s never easy.

Hi Richard, I'm still using your great Game Design textbook for my game programming course at Hawaii Pacific University. Just wanted to say thanks again, and ask if you had any thoughts on a MOOC based on your book ...

Anonymous

I had to look up what a MOOC was - fascinating. Always good to feel hip to the newest lingo. For a few minutes, anyway.

Glad people are still digging the book - I tried to write it in a way that wouldn’t date it too quickly, that seems to have worked. Games keep changing, but at their core they’re still about interesting systems dynamics, responsive controls and interfaces, feedback to the user, etc. It just keeps getting remixed into new games.

Ever since I first heard about Project Spark (then called Dakota), I was glad for the diversity it brings to the games we’re making here in Redmond. Then seeing it all gussied up for E3 I fully realized what a big and ambitious piece of software it was for a console. Sure, there have been content editors for console games before, but never at anything near this scale. Nothing even close.

When I was putting together my PAX panel (plug plug, “Dark Secrets of Game Development”, plug plug), at first I didn’t have any other Microsoft people (in the interests of diversity, don’t you know). But I thought it’d be cool to have someone from the Spark team on there. And at GDC this year I saw the awesome #1ReasonToBe session (watch it free on the GDC vault) so naturally I thought, “Hey, that Kim McAulliffe, she knows how to do a good talk, she’s on the Spark team, perfecto!." And she just sent me her slides and I’m super glad I got her on this crazy thing.

Being concise. I’ve long thought it’s the hardest thing about video game writing, and something plenty of projects get very wrong. God of War had this figured out from the start. I’ve always liked the opening of the original God of War because it does so much with such a short scene, and then throws you right into the gameplay. You learn who you are, you learn that big things are afoot, and then bang, you’re playing. And it’s all badass. Perfect.

Marianne Krawczyk wrote that scene. And hey, what do you know? She’s going to be on my PAX session “The Brain Dump: Dark Secrets of Game Development.”

We live in a society where violence is controlled, it’s kind of written all out of our body because we no longer need to be violent. But instinctually, we are born with the desire of it, but it’s through art that we can exercise it in a nondestructive way.

“

—	Nicolas Winding Refn (via harvey1966)

The first ever drawing of Atomic Sam, now framed and hanging on the wall in my office. Drawn, of course, by Steve Ogden. Somehow, after all the challenges of working on a Centipede remake together, he willingly worked with me again.

I’m super glad, eight years since we worked on the second edition of my book, we’re finally working together again, now on my PAX session “The Brain Dump: Dark Secrets of Game Development.”

I give you a clip from The Who’s “The Kids are Alright” film:

In a GDC talk once, Dan Teasdale shared a great story about the origin of the tone, feel and look of the original Rock Band game. They’d apparently been wandering in the weeds for a while when someone found this clip from The Who’s “The Kids are Alright” concert film. Everyone quickly realized that was what they all wanted to make. Watching it now, it’s amazing how clearly it maps to Rock Band’s now famous style. And it’s an obscure enough point of inspiration that no one would call it theft. Most importantly though, I always thought it was a great example of that one breakthrough moment on a project where a team finally coalesces on what they’re making.

And I should mention Mr. Teasdale is going to be speaking at my PAX Session “Dark Secrets of Game Development” in one week, where his insights promise to be a bit… darker.

brianmichaelbendis:

Adam Hughes gallery