EFG magazine 2012.1

Looking back to 1987Eye For...

Awesomenautsconcept artConcept art

Patrick Liu from teacher to producer at DICEInterview

Eye For Games is about game design and development • • www.efgmagazine.com

cover art Marlies BarendsNetherlands, Weesp

Rob Lawrencemember at EFGMember’s eye

When did you notice that you wanted to move on with your passion for art design?When I began my study, the game industry was exploding. Massive productions in epic proportions were published every month. And slowly, information about the actual production began leaking through the internet. Parallel with the film industry, concept art, designs, and sometimes even actual making-of videos started to appear. These designs weren’t to be used as finished images in itself, they were to be used as blueprints to build the most beautiful fantasy worlds you could imagine! From the biggest city to the smallest seam on a wizard’s robes - everything had to be designed. From then on, all I wanted was for my designs to give life to these imaginative worlds.

Why did you choose to pursue a career in the game industry?After I learned the existence of art studies I began seeing the enormity of art application within various industries. Animation, films, games and even books all use an immense amount of art for their visualisation. I did not like the tedious frame-drawing involved in traditional animation as much as I did actually designing the

title after I kept confusing various game-types... Tower Defense!

What inspired you to make this art?Actually, it’s this magazine! The word ‘eye’ in Eye for Games made me think of being ‘watchful’ and ‘on the lookout’. I wanted to draw a guard, being caught (pun intended) off-guard by an immense horde of - zombie-like creatures? He has already sounded the horn hanging at his side and lit the beacon high up in the tower to ask for reinforcements - his torch thrown away to grab his sword and defend himself when the horde already comes crawling up the stairs... I sure hope those three lions on his shield might make him feel a little braver. In any case, when I finished the image, I couldn’t help but think: could it be that we were that horde? Crawling like a bunch of zombies to get our hands on this magazine? Well, that’s up to you - but at least I had a lot of fun designing it!

Are you looking for any work in the game industry? I am always looking for both freelance projects and industry jobs, so if anyone has an interesting adventure I could embark on, please let me know!

characters, so from that moment on, I shifted my direction from movement towards design. I battled against the school rules to get into the Game Design classes, gain an internship at Ronimo Games, and finally work on a project for Guerrilla Games. My animation background served the smaller game projects well, and that provided leverage to specialize my art direction for the game industry. Ever since, I felt right at home.

What software/hardware do you use?My pride and joy is my Wacom Cintiq 12WX. I have worked for many years with the Intuos 3, and still do when I need to be on the road, but after a while I couldn’t get my sketches to be of sufficient detail. I really needed smaller brushsizes and tighter control. The Cintiq gave me that opportunity by allowing me to actually see my hand when I sketch. I still work on Photoshop CS3, an oldie but sufficient for how I use my brushes. And I will leave my laptop out of the picture. It’s positively ancient...

Does the cover image have a name?Funny you should ask! I was thinking about that for a while, but a friend of mine actually came up with a fitting

MARLIES BARENDScover art design

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved to draw, trying to capture the world around me and visualizing imaginative worlds. Still, I didn’t pursue a career in art until my final year in high school. Up until then, I believed that artists were very secluded people living in some dusty attic while trying to create their one masterpiece that would take them up to thirteen years to finish... You can imagine how happy I was when I discovered the immense possibilities of art schools! Finally I decided on the study of 2D Animation, where I could learn both drawing and film production skills. After I graduated for my Master I tried desperately to get a job in the industry - but when every application was turned down, I decided to take matters into my own hands by becoming a freelancer under the name of Works of Heart.

E-mail: marlies@worksofheart.nl Portfolio: www.worksofheart.nl / worksofheart.deviantart.com

2 EFG

cover artist

Lead Director

Rai Sewgobind

Text Editor

Peter van Groning

Writers

Michiel MeijndertJerry Kline

Cover design

Marlies Barends

Eye For Games is about game design &

development. For more information you can mail

us to: contact@efgmagazine.com

This edition is a print edition, but can also be

found online on the website.

Edition support

GamistryRonimo GamesOpen Mind GamingJeff StewartOganalp CanatanPatrick Liu

Member’s eye

Rob LawrenceRogier van de BeekSamuel DenHartogMarlies TeunissenAnthony Thomas

I F YOU ARE WITH THE

Y O U A R E W I T H

w w w. E Y E F O R G A M E S . c o m

CONCEPT ART - AWESOMENAUTS • 24

map of pages

PIXEL THIS! Space Invaders invaded Taito

JEFF STEWART: Freedom to Choose, or “I. Kant Play This!”Some games celebrate the choices they give players. Some games are really just toys, a vast sandbox of player choices. Still some offer no real choices other than to participate or stop playing the game.

BLOG contribution

INTERVIEW with Patrick Liu from DICE

GAMISTRY 6company profile

MUNCH TIME 7process interview

THE ART OF 10GAME DESIGNbooks

SO YOU WANT TO 11BE AN AUDIO GUY FOR GAMES?game music & sound

ENVIRONMENT, SWORDS 15AND TANKSmoodboard

LOOKING BACK 22TO 1987eye for...

AWESOMENAUTS 25process interview

WHEN EFG ASKED 29ABOUT - LEVEL DESIGNERprocess (Qpoll)

RED DEAD 32REDEMPTION process interview

GARRUS VAKARIAN 39who is?

Rob Lawrence Samuel DenHartog Anthony ThomasRogier van de Beek Marlies Teunissen

MEMBER’S EYE

16

35

30

18

map of pages

In 2009, the Netherlands welcomed a new developer, established by classmates who studied Game Design & Development. Gamistry already created a serious game called ‘Pitcher’, an arcade game on the iPhone by the name of ‘Sticky’ and their latest success ‘Munch Time’ for iOS.

FoundersDjégo: “We started Gamistry in January 2009 with five people, Aaron Oostdijk, Alex Kentie, Laurence Candel, Ka Wai Cheung and Djégo Ibanez. The five of us were classmates at the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU), we studied Game Design and Development.”

DeveloperDjégo: “Gamistry is a development company, we develop mobile-, web-, and B2B-games. We work with publishers, for example Chillingo and Electronic Arts. With B2B, publishing is considerably different from regular games. Those are custom made products for another company. The most common case with our clients is that they host the game internally based on a license. We provide services to help implement, host and publish those products depending on the requests of our clients. In that case we are also a publisher in some sense.”

Primary goal on projectsDjégo: “The most obvious answer to this question would be, to finish the concept. However I am going to say a first playable is what we strive

towards. The process from concept to first playable is very important. During that process we will have done multiple iterations over design, prototypes and art. Those iterations will merge into the first playable. This will give us developers the first chance to try out our concept as a whole. The ideas we came up with, and several prototypes tested separately, can now be experienced together. For the first time we are able to see some art and the core features of the game and find out what doesn’t work. I’m emphasizing what doesn’t work, because there is always something that doesn’t work that you thought would. Otherwise you wouldn’t need to work with iterations in development; you would get it right the first time. In our experience this is never the case. Critical major changes surface after playing with the first playable. Which is good at this stage because it’s early on in the process and we can still change a lot. From this point on we strive towards alpha, and so on.”

FutureDjégo: “Gamistry is currently working on more iOS games and in the future, projects large enough for a PC release. That’s excluding our B2B-projects.”

www.gamistrygames.com

6 EFG

company profile

process interview

What were your first few thoughts about this game, the characters, environment, and the theme?“We initially started the game as a concept about 2 mountain climbers, who were connected by a rope. Players would need to swing one character at a time and move through an area.”

Why did you guys choose to make a game for iOS?“The iOS platform is a relatively low threshold into the game industry as a start-up company. The costs aren’t that high and the development is relatively short even with a small team. When we started it was an exciting new platform with a lot of potential. We have created several products for iOS, and felt it was a good idea to build upon our experience as iOS developers.”

How did you come up with the name ‘Munch Time’?“The character for the game is a chameleon, and he has a very specific animation when he's eating, which we quickly identified as “Munching”, so we named him Munch. Since the whole game revolves around his Lunch, it was an easy step from Lunch Time to Munch Time. It should come as no surprise that we thought of the name during our lunch break.”

Were there any other suggestions for names?“We had ideas such as Lunch for Munch, also revolving around the Munch and Lunch themes. Feeding Habits was another name we had thought of. Cute but Hungry was a name we quickly dismissed, but a funny and perhaps inappropriate name we thought of was a very literal interpretation of the core activity: Lick the Flower.”

How many different things can happen with the chameleon? We’ve already seen that he can change color.“Munch can change color by eating color flies that are sometimes found in levels. There are currently 5 flower types. The normal flower allows Munch to swing from it. Another flower will rotate on its own and Munch will continuously swing in circles when latched onto it. Then there is a flower that acts as a cannon, from which Munch can launch himself into any direction. Lastly there are two flowers that will float up or down, like a helicopter and parachute respectively, when Munch latches onto them, allowing players to traverse larger distances.”

The art style By Alex Kentie

We went for a crisp, stylized art style to appeal to a broad audience. We knew from previous experience with these types of games that we needed a large cute factor for the main character and a natural vibrancy to the environments.

While designing Munch the chameleon we had to create a character that stood out from the crowd, but was still very believable as a chameleon.

We decided to go with a not too bright in your face color green, with some very recognizable orange features.

We designed several patterns for Munch, which where all a bit too complex and decided that it just had to be toned down to stripes and circles.

I designed the game so that it would be a nice blend between super cartoony and cute, with some more realistic and atmospheric backgrounds. I looked a lot at the way Disney complements these two in their movies and tried to recreate that effect in our game.

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interview

What more artistic ideas did you have, but were scrapped?“We had a few other ideas like falling ground-tiles which where replaced by flowers simply because it’s more appealing and fun. We also had different colored ground tiles in the beginning. When Munch would land on such a tile, he would change to that color. However, when we tried to use more colors to make things more interesting, the levels would become a disco and all the play-testers would be completely lost.“

Did you already know what the main character would be like? Or did it change continuously at the drawing table?“It changed very organically during initial development. At first it was two characters linked together but this proved to be too difficult and confusing as a casual game mechanic, so we decided to stick with one character. In order for him to attach he could shoot a rope

and sling from suspended patches of land. Eventually we decided to introduce specific anchor points instead of letting players attach to the ground, which proved too random and error-prone. From climber we changed to a chameleon because of his long tongue. The anchor points became flowers to which the chameleon could latch onto. The ability to change color sparked our interest for gameplay features to work with, which ended up being the core puzzle mechanic. The color bugs were used to user-initiate color changes (it was very important that users always felt they initiated any changes in the game), and we started coming up with different flowers to make interesting puzzles.”

Were there any gameplay functionalities you wanted in the game but just didn’t fit?“Aside from the fact we initially started with two characters, we did experiments with gameplay. For example, we experimented with removing the ability for Munch to walk, which would reduce the number of options players had and would streamline their user experience. This caused a number of problems with the gameplay, which outweighed the benefits of a more condensed user experience, so we decided to reintroduce this again at a later time.”

Did Munch Time have any particular programming challenge towards the programmer(s)?“There were a few things that were a bit challenging. One of them was rope physics. There weren’t any decent rope physics approximations we could find anywhere, that simply featured one fixed point and a distance-constrained object, so we had to write our own. Most of the examples we found were multi-segment simulations that relied on the engine’s physics. These solutions were way too slow for iOS devices, and they introduced a lot of things we really didn’t need. In the end our system manages to simulate a rope sufficiently accurate for our needs with only a few lines of code.

The biggest challenge, however, was our camera system. We wanted to have as much clarity and control over what players would see, but since

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interview

our levels were so varied in shape and size, we couldn’t stick to a fixed camera size. For this reason we created a system that would find and categorize points of interest based on a priority system, and would then select the best possible set of these items to zoom in/out on, based on a minimum/maximum zoom size for each supported device. iPad’s, for instance, will allow for a larger zoom-out than iPhone, since the screen is so much larger. Balancing the priorities and code for that system so that all users on all devices had the best possible view of the most important things in every level proved to be quite a challenge.”

With what kind of bugs did you have to deal with?“Bugs are always a problem, but sometimes they can be very funny. Most of the issues we had involved the game’s physics, which we needed to keep on a tight leash. In the end we decided to not use any of our engine’s physics simulation, and coded all of the necessary physics ourselves, relying only on the engine’s collision framework. This made the whole game a lot more stable.

One particularly troubling bug was a performance issue we encountered with the dynamic meshes that we were using to draw all of our sprites. It appeared that the engine was locking the vertex buffers, which make up the object that is being drawn, while they were being drawn. These locks could last as much as 7 milliseconds, which is a huge amount of time if you consider we try to do everything in 16 milliseconds to achieve a smooth 60 frames per second. This locking tended to persist in subsequent frames, which caused problems when you wanted to change this information every frame. Typical situations that would cause this were our animating sprites, since they change shape every time they change frame, or things that were scaling to fit other objects. In the end we had to produce a work-around in which we created two meshes for every object, and always altered the one that was currently not being drawn. This process is known as double buffering, which essentially means you’re swapping the active and inactive meshes every frame to prevent the GPU from locking your entire game.”

Looking back at the process, did the team learn any new things?“The introduction of a sprite engine with automatic atlassing of source textures changed a lot for us. We could add more content and it improved the overall art pipeline, since the artist could get art done more quickly because it no longer mattered in what tool he worked to produce the animation frames.”

Were there any big issues during the entire process that took a little while to properly deal with?“We decided on the beginning of the course of our game that our development time could not take longer than 3 months. One of our problems however was that we had trouble deciding whether or not we wanted to release our game through a publisher as we did with Sticky, or if we wanted to go Indie.

We decided to check out what publishers had to offer, but were disappointed by the amount of extra development time it would

Players use Munch's super strong tongue

to latch onto various flowers that produce

different acrobatic effects, and guide him

to his Lunch. Players can get stars placed

around the level if they perform difficult/

graceful moves.

Help Munch get to his Lunch

take us to please them. We set up a good marketing strategy and decided to release the game ourselves to see what the game would be capable of doing in our hands.”

How long did the team work on Munch Time? “The core development process took approximately 3 months, but we had some delays here and there and ended up working a total of 5-6 months to complete the project.”

Did the team have to take in account an agreed budget?“Our budget is essentially our time. We started out with the task to try and have the game finished in 3 months. Even though we did roughly meet this deadline, that wasn’t the end of the development process and we needed to spend more time to fine tune things and get the game ready for a proper release.”

9EFG

interview

THE ART OF GAME DESIGNA book of Lenses

Title: The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

Author: Jesse Schell

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann (1 edition)

Type: Educational

Subject: Game Design

Pages: 512 (Paperback)

Release year: 2010

The book focuses on viewing your game through many

different perspectives as the player experiences them and

to use methodologies based on these perspectives. Schell

divides these methodologies up in a hundred different

lenses throughout the book. By putting the focus on

what is needed to make a game interesting for the player

Schell tries to give a deeper meaning to the small details

that can mean the difference between your game being

either a failure or a success and the reasons behind it.

“Anyone who makes decisions about how the game

should be is a game designer” – ‘Jesse Schell’

Author

Jesse Schell is the founder of Schell Games, founded

in 2004. He specializes in the design and development

of interactive experiences using design methodologies

that were developed during his time at ETC. These

methodologies would form the basis for his Art of Game

Design book. Besides his career in the game industry he

also teaches Building Virtual World and Games Design at

Carnegie Mellon University.

Other books on EyeForGames.com

Title: Casual Game Design: Designing Play for the Gamer in ALL of Us

Author: Gregory Trefry

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann

Type: Educational

Subject: Casual Game Design

Pages: 400 (Paperback)

Release year: 2010

Title: Mass Effect: Revelation

Author: Drew Karpyshyn

Publisher: Del Rey Books

Type: Novel

Subject: Mass Effect

Genre: Science fiction

Pages: 323 (Paperback)

Release year: 2007

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books

cont r ibuted by : Ogana lp Canatan

First of all, you have to realize that audio is rather a big concept just to learn. There are lots of side branches, some leaning towards programming, some leaning towards engineering and some focusing on composing or SFX.

You can work on all these fields, sure. But you have to understand that each of these audio fields are quite distinct in characteristics from each other, they need lots of studying and hard work to polish. Working on all three means more.

What I will talk about now is the composing, music side of things as a musician. We will try to forecast our needs to start producing music for games. This part will be about what we need as a very, VERY basic setup.

DON’T TRY TO BE THE NEXT JOHN WILLIAMS

This is what I saw on the web when I was first into music sountracks. It is a rather discouring advice, isn’t it? Well, the truth is, it is golden. First thing you have to learn is that you need to step on your feet. You can be the next John Williams, sure, but at the moment, no one really knows about it nor they care before you prove yourself.

So, we will start from scratch as a newbie career musician, and will work our way to a moderate production level.

What we first have to understand, besides the obvious talent and knowledge for composing and having the music ear, is that listening to music is a cheap hobby nowadays. Music production is not. You need programs, equipment, instruments, time and most importantly, the will to work on it. It is quite reasonable to assume that you will be composing, engineering, producing your tracks in total and submitting them to your clients, website or prepare them as a demo reel at this stage. In the future, you can just compose and oversee the mixing and be done with it, leaving it to your engineers or mastering studios to handle the rest. This can happen when you are big. Though, probably by that time, you would be so much into this audio thing that it would be impossible to leave the studio.

Please note that this article assumes that you are familiar with general audio terms like “track”, “mixing”, “mastering”, “MIDI” and such and its main aim is to tell you that it is easier to start working on audio productions for games than it looks but it is

harder than it seems to come up with something good. This will be a general guideline to the world of game audio production and its aim is NOT TO teach you all about audio from scratch. Music production for games is the same as music production for anything, its a seperate profession integrated to this field.

If you are not aware of anything related to music production, you have to start from core audio information that can be found at audio production websites or books, as it is a HUGE, SEPERATE world. These articles will have some information about general audio production but they will also asume that you know certain things like how to record a guitar track or how to take vocals.

Alright, it is time for me to give you some encouragement. Yes, you can produce most of the music you hear on AAA titles at your home. With a reasonable budget, you can create a home studio and work on stuff. This was not possible 10 years ago because of the obvious need of hardware and live players but since the boom of VSTs (Virtual Studio Technology), you can emulate a lot of things such as hardware and instruments so that you can come up with quite good results. Obviously, live recordings are still better than computerized productions but with proper work and expertise, you can create REALLY good music that can match with many of today’s releases.

SO YOU WANT TO BE AN AUDIO GUY

FOR GAMES?

Well, don’t...

Just joking! EFG encourages you to take your part in gaming universe whether it be a developer, musician or a plain gamer. Know this though, nothing, NOTHING is as easy as it seems.

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game music • sound

cont r ibuted by : Ogana lp Canatan

Relying seldomly on headphone monitors or reference monitors is a bad way to work on audio.

Now, after you get the boost, its time to discourage you to help you slow down and take it step by step. In order to be able to do this, you need to get experienced. You cannot produce a perfectly engineered song in your first try. Actually, you will probably need a few years to get that “engineer ears” but each step will take you closer to your career goal. Each step will open new doors.

LET’S GET STARTED, SHALL WE?

Alright, we said you need the equipment. Some stuff can be handled by software but you need some core equipment to work on your audio recordings, productions.

Reference Monitors are one. These are studio monitors, loudspeakers that we use to work on our music. Unlike the normal Hi-Fi systems, monitors are designed to have a flat, linear phase and frequency response. This means, they are meant to help you notice and find mistakes in your mix, recordings, mastering etc. You cannot rely on a hi-fi set to mix as hi-fi systems are meant to boost various frequencies to give you the feeling of what you are listening. They are meant to tweak the frequencies so that the output will have a pleasing feeling. They are for listening, not for professional use. Hi-fi systems are used to check how your work sounds after the production stage as a checklist item. You don’t have to go big at first but most studios have several reference monitors with

different characteristics so that the engineer can have a wider range of tools to find and fix problems of a recording session. If you use a hi-fi system to finalize your work, it may sound pleasing to you on your system but it may be a total disaster on another set just because your hi-fi system covered up for your mistakes in your mix.

You also need headphone monitors for additional reference options. Headphone monitors have a bigger frequency response range than normal headphones and they are good to catch specific mistakes.

Relying seldomly on headphone monitors or reference monitors is a bad way to work on audio.

The previous three paragraphs mean 1.000 Euros to 10.000 Euros to you in means of numbers. Expensive is not better in this case. You have to get proper equipment according to your room needs. Remember, you are working with sound. Even your room shape is important. You have to explore and dig out a bit to learn about these. But, no rush, we are building a career here!

Next item on the list is a powerful computer. Considering that we will start with a small home studio, we won’t be going for sound cards with DSP racks and such. Don’t care much about the abbreviations at this time, you will have plenty of room and interest to get acquinted to them over this process.

Anyway, we need a powerful computer because VST libraries are like small programs we run under our DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation). DAW is the program where we record, edit, mix our projects. Perhaps you have heard of the famous name ProTools before? It is a DAW and it is today’s industry standart. Just like any other capable program, DAWs look confusing and intimidating at first. Don’t rush, it takes time to get used to them. They are different from each other but most of their features are similar. It takes some time to find the suitable DAW for your needs. There are lots of good DAWs out there like ProTools, Cubase, Nuendo, Sonar, Logic, Ableton and many many more.

Today, most of these programs are close to each other’s capabilities. You have to look for their specifications and pick the one that suits you best. I am using Cubase series for some time now since most of my work involves MIDI and VST instruments, I found that Cubase is the best one that I can communicate with ease. On the other hand, my band’s producer is a ProTools guru and he would suggest me to use it any time, any day. As you can see, it is a matter of taste and applications.

Computer should be powerful. What audio business needs most is RAM because each VST channel you run, each plug in you add puts a pressure on the computer and RAM is where you will be pushed hard most. For example, a standart 4 GB RAM Phenom 9xx series computer usually

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game music • sound

stalls after 14-15 channels of VST instruments running at the same time. Again, don’t get too caught with these details. I am simply trying to give you a figure, we will come back to these technical side of things later on in the near future where we will discuss the details in full with “why” and “how to” applications.

Another thing we need is a decent sound card. I am not talking about those gaming sound cards that supposedly work for audio production. Don’t believe that, it is a marketing “flexibility” of specifications. You need a professional sound card. There are LOTS of options out there and you have to find the one suitable for your needs. AVID’s Mbox series is a good start and Mbox Pro 3 is probably a card more than enough for a mid size soundtrack studio. I have seen more done with less and I believe it is a fitting card to use. Of course, you can check other options and get a hold of things as well. Actually, it is quite necessary to follow things and I will try to give some suggestions about where to follow stuff at the end of this article. Please note, we are talking about small productions at the moment. If you want to record a full scale live orchestra, the shape of things change a lot.

Now that we have a computer, a sound card, a monitor, headphones monitor and a DAW, we can start writing the basic songs. At this stage, it is important to note that VSTs are seperate products. Some are sold for various prices, some are free to

download. They are like modules you add to your DAW. Most of the DAWs come with a core setup. You can do the production there but you need additional tools, VSTs to get better results. VSTs also have a varying price range. Most of the useful tools range from 100 Euros to 800 Euros. There are also very high-end libraries like the Vienna Symphony with an approximate price tag of 10.000 Euros.

At this point, before going on forward, I encourage you to read the following book(s) and magazines to get a better hold of this world as starters. Again, music production for games is the same as music production for any other thing, its a seperate profession integrated to this field.

- The Complete Guide to Game AudioFor Composers, Musicians, Sound Designers, and Game Developers by Aaron Marks. The technology in this book is somewhat outdated in means of tech specs. However, this book covers almost all the essential things you need to learn about game audio business and it is a must-to-have source for anyone thinking professional. The book talks about the production stages, contracts, possible problems you can face while working with developers and such. This was the book that encouraged me to start working on game music soundtracks.

- Future Music MagazineThis is probably the biggest and best music magazine aimed towards

producers and engineers. You can learn a great deal of tips and tricks about DAWs, mixing, mastering, editing and other production details as well as any new equipment coming to the scene. If you will be working on the engineering side of things, which is very important to know if you ask me, you have to follow this magazine. Their video tutorials are also gems for newbies and you can learn a lot from their expert technique videos.

- Computer Music MagazineThis is another release of Future media and similar to Future Music Magazine, this one is also focused on production side of things. However, as the name suggests, it is more computer oriented than the other one I have suggested and so, it gives a better insight to programs and VSTs. This one also has great sample libraries and video tutorials coming up with each issue. A great magazine to read. A must for everyone.

- Harmony-Central.comThis is probably one of the oldest websites about everything music on the net. You can find all kinds of information related to anything music. From music business to writing MIDI, from equipment reviews to guitar lessons. It is a great source for those who are in need to polish their general audio knowledge and skills before going into a more professional field.

We will continue on how to use our DAW and MIDI in general to write a simple track in the next part of this article.

cont r ibuted by : Ogana lp Canatan

DAWs look confusing and intimidating at first. Don’t rush, it takes time

to get used to them.

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game music • sound

NEW ADVERTISEMENT PRICES

Graduated students and Freelancers who are looking for a job can now place an advertisement in EFG magazine or the NewsMag, a new method to advertise yourself and your qualifications. EFG can design this advertisement for you!

Publication: NewsMag and EFG MagazineFor: Students, Freelancers.

$50

Indie developers or companies related to the game industry can already advertise in the monthly bulletin called NewsMag.

Publication: NewsMagFor: Developers, Companies related to the game industry.

$75

EFG publishes two magazine editions a year. This publication is also being spread around on events, conferences and more. Advertise now for this price and get the second placement for free!

Publication: EFG magazineFor: All related to the game industry.

Why the low prices?EFG is supporting the game industry, which means that we also support it in the advertisement opportunities. We will keep the low prices no matter what the circumstances. With these prices we hope to widen the gap between you and the current crisis.

These prices are only for FULL PAGE advertisements.For the advertisement specifications you can contact us at adver@efgmagazine.com

$90

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moodboard

SPACE INVADERS

invaded tAITO

16 EFG

pixel this!

Designer Tomohiro Nishikado got inspired by the game ‘Breakout’ from Atari and it was the classic book ‘The War of the Worlds’, which inspired the art design. Besides these two inspiration sources, there was a third one that still had to come out in Japan, it was the movie ‘Star Wars’. Eventually this combination of inspiration formed a video game concept, which would form the foundation for many video games in the future.

CONCEPTThe video game ‘Breakout’ inspired Nishikado to put a video game with the same goal-achieving levels with complex graphics. On the first few sketches you could find some tanks, battleships and combat planes. But it was especially the book ‘The War of the Worlds’, with the so called ‘Martians’, which looked like octopi from outer space. With this motivation Nishikado made bitmap images of the octopus and other sea creatures like the crab, squid and jellyfish. The movie ‘Star Wars’ was on its way to be released in Japan and this movie inspired Nishikado to use space as a theme for his video game. It also appeared that at that time a song was released with the title ‘Monster’ and Nishikado used this title, but later it was eventually changed to the name ‘Space Invaders’.

DEVELOPMENTNishikado wanted to use airplanes in his game but simulating flying objects was difficult with the technique they had access to in 1970. He even thought about replacing them with humans, but that thought was soon taken away since Nishikado found shooting on people was immoral. This wasn’t his only backfire, because the microcomputers at that time in Japan weren’t strong enough for the design and programming of ‘Space Invaders’. This situation led to the toughest part of the whole development process because Nishikado ended up with making his own hardware development tools, still the programming procedure was a challenge.

RELEASEThe development of ‘Space Invader’s took about a year and was made by Tomohiro Nishikado alone. The game was released in June of 1978, it was a black-white title and published by Taito (Midway, America). A new video game genre was born and today it’s more commonly known as ‘shoot ‘em up’ and ‘top-down shooter’. This genre became vital to the image of the shooting games of today.

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pixel this!

Rob Lawrence - United StatesM o d e l e r / A n i m at o r

I’m an aspiring Environment Ar tist looking for my chance to break into the game’s industry.

I’m passionate about games and ar t and look forward to oppor tunities to work with and

learn from the pros.

Portfolio: http://roblawrence.daportfolio.com/

Member’s eye

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member’s eye

Rogier van de Beek - NetherlandsC o n c e p t a r t i st & I l l u st rat o r

I’m Rogier, I currently work as a freelance concept ar tist & illustrator. I star ted drawing/

painting seriously about 3 years ago. Before that I could barely draw a stickman, so my key

work these last years was just to develop myself as an ar tist and try to get as good as I

can, in the shor test amount of time. Next to drawing and painting, I try to run or cycle once

in a while. I love to go to the movies and just to chill and hang with friends.

Portfolio: http://beek-art.com/

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member’s eye

Samuel DenHartog - MexicoD i re c t o r o f C re at i v e D e v e l o p m e n tat E n s e n a S o f t

I am the co-owner and Director of Creative Development at EnsenaSoft where

we make fun and challenging arcade, board, word and educational games!

EnsenaSoft apps are now available for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Mac, Nokia

Meego phones, Android tablets, Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble NOOK,

Windows 7 systems, and Windows 8 Metro systems.

Portfolio: http://www.ensenasoft.com/

Marlon Teunissen - NetherlandsA r t i st | D e s i g n e r a n d i l l u st rat o r

Freelance designer and illustrator for various media :) loves playing videogames and

everything that has anything to do with games.

Portfolio: www.dreamchasergallery.com

Member’s eye

Anthony Thomas - United StatesL e a d D e v e l o p e r at C l i c h é S t u d i o

At Cliché, we provide a number of services for authors, publishers, businesses, board game

developers and educators.

Portfolio: http://www.clichegames.com/

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member’s eye

contact@efgmagazine.com | www.efgmagazine.com

In the near future we will have the space for veterans and professionals to share all they know and have been through within the industry. Through our new blog system, contributors will be able to dispense everything they have in their minds. If it is industry related of course. Maybe you would like to talk about how you’re handling lighting in your art, or describe the things you have done in order to become a sound designer, or programmer.

If you have a contributor account and linked your blog to your profile, it is possible that EFG will spot an interesting blog article to publish this on the frontpage. It is also possible that the blog will get published in an EFG publication, digital or printed.

You can already contact us to keep updated about this opportunity. We’re already keeping an eye on some bloggers posting interesting articles.

Eye For Games offers a special opportunity for studios that are about to publish a brand new game. Using a process interview, a company profile and a third article by choice, our readers will be able to learn more about the development of the game.

Happy with the way your game sounds? We will create an article focusing on that aspect. Got some

great art to share? It will be featured prominently on the front page.

These articles will be presented in a 3-a-day deal, meaning that all three will be published on the same day, preferably on the same day as the release of the game. There’s also a chance that the articles will be used in other EFG publications, both digital and print.

GOT A GAME THAT’S ABOUT TO RELEASE?

GET YOU BLOG ARTICLE PUBLISHED ON THE FRONTPAGE!

DO YOU LIKE TO SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE?

• Blog articles• Columns• Tutorials• Keynotes• Lectures• Dev diary

For companies directly related to the game industry, we offer something quite unique. Whether you’re a small studio consisting of just one person, or a developer with over 150 employees, for each company we will create a company profile just to get your name out.

Through a series of questions, people will get to know the history, the present and the future of your business. When you are ready, we will share your profile with the world so that everyone can get to know you on a more personal level. And yes, it is a free opportunity!

GET A FREE COMPANY INTRODUCTION ARTICLE

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In January, Nintendo released Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Famicom Disk system in Japan only.

Enix (now known as Square Enix) released Dragon Quest II (Dragon Warrior II) for the MSX and Nintendo Entertainment System.

Konami released two titles, both of which haven’t been forgotten ever since; On February 20th, Contra was originally released for the coin-operated arcade systems. On July 7th, Metal Gear, an action-adventure video game, released for the MSX2 in Japan and some parts of Europe.

On July 5th, Sierra Entertainment (now known as Sierra On-Line) released Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. It was originally developed for DOS and Apple II, but was later ported to different platforms.

On August 30th, Capcom released its first competitive fighting game, Street Fighter, as an arcade game.

LucasArts released Maniac Mansion in October, a graphic adventure game for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. It was the first game to use the SCUMM scripting language coded by Ron Gilbert.

Capcom also released a second game in this year, this time for the NES. Mega Man was released on December 17, 1987 and is also known as Rockman.

Being in the year 2012 inspired me to look back, about 25 years into the

past. As I discovered what the history of the industry was like in 1987, I

realized that I had to share this with you. Not only great titles were being

released, but also business events took place that each had their own

influence on the game industry.

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eye for...

The year also brought the industry some new companies like Maxis, that started as an independent developer in 1987. Maxis is the creator of the famous ‘The Sims’ series and, of course, the ‘Sim City’ games. Currently Maxis is a subsidiary of EA.Florida welcomed a video game publisher, well known for publishing video game adaptations of game shows in the early 1990s. In 1997, GameTek filed for bankruptcy and closed down the year after. Apogee Software Ltd. (currently known as 3D Realms) was a game publisher and former video game developer. It is best known for popularizing the shareware distribution model and also for its franchises such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D.

Batteries Included (BI) was a computer software and hardware company and was well known in the 1980s for its PaperClip word processor. In 1987, Batteries Included was purchased by Electronic Arts.

Electric Transit closed its doors in 1987, due to a lack of profits to fund new development. The software entertainment publisher was founded in 1985 and specialized in first-person 3D games for Apple II and IBM PC computers.

Starting in 1987, Atari Games continued to manufacture arcade games and units under its Tengen brand name, which was a video game publisher and developer created by Atari Games.

The year also witnessed an Entertainment Lawsuit between Nintendo America and Blockbuster – a home video and video game rental service. Nintendo sued Blockbuster for photocopying complete NES manuals for its rental games. In the end, Nintendo won the suit and Blockbuster included original manuals with its rentals.

Joel Billings, founder of SSI, acquires the license to the Dungeon and Dragons role-playing games from TSR. This led to the creation of the Gold Box D&D game series, which was one of the bestselling video game franchises in the 1980s and 1990s.

Square was facing bankruptcy and decided to make one last game named Final Fantasy. The success turned the company around and Final Fantasy would later get many “sequels” and spin-offs.

On December 20, Sega released Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System in Japan. It was notable for being one of the first games featuring a female protagonist.

The arcade got a new beat ‘em up game developed by Technos Japan Corp. Double Dragon was distributed in America and Europe by Taito Corporation.

Ocean Software developed and published Head Over Heels, an arcade adventure for the Z80-microprocessor-based home computers. Due its success it was later ported to other platforms.

With 40.000 copies sold in its year of release, Dungeon Master became the ST’s bestselling product of all time. It was developed and published by FTL Games.

Namco released its own arcade system board called, Namco System 1 and by the end of the year they released the second board, Namco System 2.

A new video console was released in Japan under the name PC Engine, but it was also known for its full name, TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem. The video console was developed by Hudson Soft and NEC.

The first ‘low-end’ Amiga was released by Commodore, the Amiga 500. It was popular with hobbyists, but its most widespread use was as a gaming machine, particularly in Europe. Amiga 500 would become the best-selling Amiga.

The Video Graphics Array (VGA) first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers, gave the PC the potential for 256-color graphics.

AdLib released the first mass market PC soundcard for computers using FL synthesis (YM3812 chip by Yamaha).

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eye for...

“Our main source of inspiration for Awesomenauts are old school Sunday morning cartoons like: Earthworm Jim, Bionic Six, Mask, Galaxy Rangers etc. We also are big fans of the guys from creaturebox.com.

Generally we take inspiration from lots of things, this can be a Disney movie or a movie like 300, sites like conceptart.org, a museum or just a walk in the city. Each of us also brings his own inspirations which get combined into the Ronimo style.”

Gijs Hermans, Lead Artist:

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concept art E X C L U S I V E

process interviewAWESOMENAUTS

How did you guys come up with the name Awesomenauts?Jasper: “After we decided to go for an ‘80s space cartoon vibe, we held a meeting to decide on the name. Of the few names that we gathered in the previous weeks, Blastronauts stood out. Unfortunately we found out there already existed a game called Max Blastronaut. Still we felt something ending in ‘nauts would be very suitable for the game. After riffing on those for a while, we came up with Awesomenauts which stuck with us right away. It was even better than the original Blastronauts, because somehow it feels like its more about individual characters instead of a unit and it also fits better with the over-the-top style of the game.”

Was everybody happy with this name or did you had to convince some to use this name?Jasper: “Everybody was pretty enthusiastic right from the start. So hardly any convincing was needed. I think its one of the few decisions during the whole process where we reached unanimity this quickly.”

What were your first few thoughts about this game, the characters, environment, theme?Jasper: “Personally I wanted to make a multiplayer game where Pirates would face off Ninjas in a big side scrolling level. On one side there would be a ship, on the other side there would be a Japanese castle. Each side would have unique classes. But the theme was deemed too generic, and having classes bound to teams was also highly impractical. But we all agreed that a 2D MOBA would be awesome and a great fit for the downloadable console platforms.

Especially since we were heavily into DOTA at the time, and were looking forward to League of Legends.

We’ve also considered to make it Zelda style, but we felt the platforming would better showcase our characters and also make the movement more fun.”

The art style By Gijs Hermans

On Frustrating Moments“I can’t pinpoint specific frustrating moments with the drawings. Although there is always this cycle of getting stuck on a design and feeling a little frustrated. But you just go on adding more stuff and doing more sketches and then having that eye opener and seeing something you like in those crappy sketches and that gives the drive to continue.”

On Designing As A Team Effort“At Ronimo nothing is a one man decision, all of the art is created as a team with everybody bringing something to the table. We start out with a few sketches and then we will have a meeting or put them on our internal forum to get input and this way we iterate until we have a final design.

Also a lot of the work is in the end a co-creation, one might make an initial sketch while another artist will finalize that design in Photoshop and another does some of the animations while someone else will do the sfx.”

Fans of old-school Saturday morning cartoons can, in May 2012, download a brand spanking new title

based on famous cartoon shows like M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, The Transformers and much, much more. Thanks

to Ronimo, we can relive those days through their quirky characters, one of them even reminds us of

Bucky O’Hare, and fun filled gameplay.

But what led to the creation of this game called Awesomenauts? Lead designer Jasper Koning and lead programmer Joost van Dongen inform us about their creative process, their biggest challenges and whether or not they learned anything from developing their latest “awesome”title.

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interviewE X C L U E X C L U S I V E

Was this game planned to be an Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network game from the start?Jasper: “Those two platforms were part of it from the start, yes. Though we knew we would need a publisher to get it on XBLA. Initially we also considered WiiWare, but we felt the online infrastructure was just too restricted to make it work. This also meant that we could focus on HD graphics from the start, resulting in a better looking game.”

So was it a fast decision to make this a multiplayer game? Or did you still have second thoughts about adding single player?Jasper: “The multiplayer was always the focus. Though at some point, we considered making a single player campaign to introduce all the characters and concepts. Eventually we decided against a big single player component because we wanted people to head online as much as possible. We have a tutorial at the start of the game that demonstrates the basics which can be skipped as well as replayed

What challenges did that decision bring to the table?Jasper: “Up until then we were also unsure about the pacing of the game. One of the possible visions we had for the game was that it could become a more tactical, slow moving game, possibly with a cover mechanic. But from then on out the challenge was to continually push the game more and more over the top. Movement and ability use needed to be as snappy and responsive as possible, and have a high visual impact.”

What more ideas did you have, but were scrapped?Jasper: “At one point we had ideas for a more objective based mode, where players needed to progress beyond certain points to move their base of operations forward. As a result of this we still have 3 very different levels that have their

process interview

to suit players’ needs, and we have a practice mode that is basically the same gameplay as online, but against bots. The bots can actually provide a nice challenge and sparring ground to test the waters before heading online. You can even progress your account using this practice mode, but you’ll progress a lot faster when playing online.”

How did you come up with the idea to base the game on ‘80s cartoons?Jasper: “The initial vision was a fairly dark style, set in a kind of Asian fantasy setting called Shangri-La. But it became pretty apparent early on that the hectic gameplay required a more bold style. By this time we only had concept graphics, in game the graphics were still sprites from Swords & Soldiers. So we sat down to talk about possible styles, and somehow the discussion got sidetracked. Someone mentioned Galaxy Rangers and put up the intro video to the cartoon. Pretty soon we were all gathered around reveling in the nostalgia from great series such as M.A.S.K, Thundercats, Dino Riders, C.O.P.S and Starcom. Seeing how we all loved that optimistic style and vibe the decision became clear. It also ties in with our love for 16-bit gaming.”

Development screenshot from 2009 Animationsheet: Bull

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interview

own unique gameplay elements. The item system also received a lot of iterations. Initially we envisioned a sort of catalogue where players could order upgrades. Each upgrade would have nearly the entire screen to give gameplay and background information, but the book style navigation was way too clumsy and slow.”

When it comes to the amount of playable characters and levels, when and how do you decide that you will stop with adding new ones?Jasper: “It’s hard to point to the exact moment, but I think it was somewhere around the end of the 1st year. The game has taken almost 3 years to develop. But it did take us a lot longer to nail compared to Swords & Soldiers.”

Was this related to how big the game can be?Jasper: “Not really, it mostly came from the realization that the core

Whereas with Swords & Soldiers the vision was very clear and simple right from the start.”

Did the team have to take in account an agreed budget?Jasper: “Yes, very much so. DTP informed us of the budget we had fairly early on, and we’ve been trying to maximize that budget as much as we can. They’ve been very supportive of our efforts so far.”

With what kind of bugs did you have to deal with?Joost: “All kinds, but mostly around matchmaking. So things like joining and leaving games, host migration and inviting friends. This is just incredibly complex with a game like Awesomenauts that features drop-in-drop-out. Handling all rare and exceptional situations is

gameplay was going to be awesome and didn’t need a lot of content to work. In the beginning we were afraid that we wouldn’t have enough bullet points on the back of box so to speak. But at that point we realized we didn’t need them, and polishing up the elements that we had would be more than enough work in itself.”

Were there any gameplay functionalities you wanted in the game but just didn’t fit?Jasper: “Well at the start we wanted all kinds of functionalities, like different modes and such. But as I said, once we realized how awesome the main gameplay could become we decided to focus all our efforts to make the core as solid and balanced as possible.”

Were there any big issues during the entire process that took a little while to properly deal with?Jasper: “It took us a lot of time to synchronize our visions of the game. Early on we all had very different mental images of where the game was, and where the game was headed. Only after a few iterations did we come to something that everybody was very enthusiastic about.

Eventually we decided

against a big single player

component because we

wanted people to head

online as much as possible

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interview

just really difficult. What to do if you try to join a match that is won right at that moment, or, even worse: what to do if you are busy joining a match when the host leaves and host migration needs to happen?”

Was there a particular bug that gave you more problems than usual?Joost: “Not really one in particular, it was more a large amount of bugs that all caused a bit of work. This is pretty much unavoidable for a game as complex as Awesomenauts. On especially irritating bug was when we tried to find an extremely rare random crash in the game. In the end it turned out this happened because the computer that was connected to the game went into sleep mode when it wasn’t touched for 20 minutes. Usually a programmer uses that computer, so this happened really rarely. And since this bug turned out to be something outside the game, we were looking in completely the wrong place for days.”

This game had some beta testing days with people from outside the company. Was this helpful?Joost: “We have two kinds of testing with outsiders, and both were incredibly helpful. Most importantly, we invited lots of people to come play the game for a couple of hours and give feedback on whether they liked and understood it and such.

After a while we ourselves get so used to how the game plays, that we start overlooking some gameplay flaws. So we bring in lots of people who have never played the game before, simply to hear outside opinions. The other kind of testing we did is ‘normal’ QA: testing for bugs. This was done by a company in India, and they found lots of issues that we needed to fix, so that was really important as well.”

Were there bugs that weren’t found by the team itself?“Lots! When we made Swords & Soldiers for Wii, we did all the testing for bugs ourselves, and that worked well enough. However, Awesomenauts is so much more complex, that we really needed an external testing team to try all the weird combinations of things that can happen during the game.”

Looking back at the process, did the team learn any new things?Jasper: “We’ve learned tons of stuff. Mostly that we’re way too optimistic in planning work. Even though we did the same thing for Swords & Soldiers. We also structured ourselves a bit too rigidly, resulting in an each discipline turning into an island that was a bit too separate from the rest. Nowadays we try to tie people more close together across discipline. Finally we’ve learned the joys of having someone on board that actually doesn’t do anything on the game. We call him a producer though I’m not sure that’s the proper term. He deals with a lot of the formalities of running a company. Stuff we used to do on the side and that took us away from the actual developing of the game. Last week we looked back at the way our time was spent during the last few years, and he made a very nice and noticeable dent in our time spent on business stuff.”

For more informationhttp://www.awesomenauts.com

Playtesting

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interview

Level design has the function of making the most out of the particular game's strengths, minimizing its weaknesses and making a game's primary game mechanic pivotal to completing the level.

Chris Skaggs, CTO / CCO at Soma Games

Many students are under the impression Level Design is just opening a level editor and putting blocks together. It's much more than that and until more students see that, they will be hindered by their own mindsets of what makes a good Level Designer or World Designer.

Glen Swan, Senior Assistant Community Manager at Funcom

As a summary sometimes level designers can be a jack of all trades doing all the work from layout, visuals and scripting (usually seen in the mod community where individuals make entire levels).

Awais Ahmed, Level Designer at Gearbox Software

Sometimes there's a plain Level Builder/Designer as well, who builds the main layout and handles most of the gameplay, sometimes this role is merged with the Scripter or Artist. Rickard Edén, Games and Level Design Consultant, and Developer

I.e. the Level Designer has to understand how the player interacts with the game world and how to combine the existing features in the best possible way to make the game mechanics work, to create a nice game flow, and later on "polish" everything to improve the quality of the whole game experience. Boris Bauer, Senior Gameplay Programmer at Rocksteady Studios Ltd

Specific mission design tasks can include creation of level terrain and structures, placing objects in an environment, setting up encounters with characters and puzzles, and using scripting languages to control the moment to moment state of what the player is experiencing in the level. Sean Phillips, StaffingConsultant

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process

“If you have free will, turn to page 101. If not, turn to page 101.” - Unknown

BioShockIn BioShock, the player encounters a collection of young girls who have been rendered immortal, joined genetically with a regenerative slug from the sea floor.

Upon cornering one of these creepy cuties, the player learns that these slugs contain the genetic material “Adam,” the progress points of the game. The choice is given to the player, kill the children or save them? Killing them results in immediate points, saving them results in a few more points at a later time.

The choice that is being presented has almost nothing to do with the one actually put before the player. It is an illusion. The player knows that the collection of animated vertexes before them

Blog: http://designface.blogspot.com By: Jeff Stewart

Some games celebrate the choices they

give players. Some games are really just

toys, a vast sandbox of player choices.

Still some offer no real choices other than

to participate or stop playing the game.

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contributed blog

has no connection to the real world. The girls aren’t real, and so there is no natural moral law against harming them.

There are actually two choices here. Both exist and have outcomes in the game world only.

• Choice of story arc. Does the player wish to experience the story from the standpoint of murderer or hero?

• Choice of reward schedule. Does the player want fewer points now, or more points later? This makes the game a bit preachy, since saving the girls results in more total points in the game.

But what if you consider the choice as a moral one? The illusion of choice surrounding the girls is also integrated into the game as a whole. “A man chooses, a slave obeys.” repeats the city’s founder, as you beat him to a pulp (probably after choosing to save the girls).

Philosopher Immanuel Kant concluded that the only objective basis for moral value is the “rationality of the good will, expressed in recognition of moral duty.” In other words, a person can only act in “free will” if they are acting out of duty (a law they have given themselves) and not in response to their situation.

According to Kant (and from a meta-game standpoint), the player who reacts directly to stimulus, by taking upgrade points, may be considered a slave. The player who applies his own “real-world” morality to the game world (which has no intrinsic morality) could be exercising free will.

The choice in this game received a lot of flack for being once of those classic gaming black and white choices. The irony here is that, according to Kant, only players who chose the “obvious” route of not killing children (even in a morality-free environment) seem to be displaying free will. All the rest of us are child killing slaves.

“We must believe in free will, we have no choice.” - Isaac B. Singer

Even when we discover (thank you spoilers) that more points total may be gleaned by not killing the children, we can load a saved game and reverse our decision, thereby proving again that our decisions were never based on a moral duty, and we’re in it purely for the points.

Mass EffectThe Mass Effect series has a certain dichotomy to it. In the first Mass Effect, there exist similar choices to the choice in BioShock. Many situations require you to make (virtual) life or death choices for the in-game characters. One of the most notable being responsible for either the salvation or genocide of an entire race.

But Mass Effect 2 is somewhat different. All, or at least most, of your choices revolve around you as a leader. By acting as leader, you are responsible for the situations you place others in. The bulk of your choices stem from diligence and duty. Not many games let you experience this element of leadership.

Part of your duty is to upgrade your ship and gain the loyalty of the crew, in an effort to ensure the maximum safety of everyone. Failing to to do

so dooms one or more of your crew mates to death. Upon a second play-through, you have begun to achieve some level of prescience. You know that laziness or failure is not an option.

While the ignorance of a first play-through of the game absolves you of the “meta-moral” ramifications of some of these choices, playing the game repeatedly raises the “meta-morality” bar.

The philosopher Kant would have us consider categorical vs hypothetical imperatives. Namely, that you cannot judge the morality of an action based on its hypothetical effect. For an action to be moral, it must be made by duty without regard to its effects.

In other words, when you replay the game (with a theory of what might happen based on the previous play-through) in an effort to better perform your duties as leader, your imperative is hypothetical. Your moral duty is usurped by your desire to achieve a better outcome. You are not exercising free will, you are being a slave to optimization.

“I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” - Charles Dickens

Using a walk-through or having knowledge of what will happen also robs your actions of weight. So although they could be perfectly reasonable, and therefore perfectly moral, they are valueless. The only way you can really win, morally, is to have played and won the first time through.

By: Jeff Stewart Blog: http://designface.blogspot.com

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contributed blog

RED DEAD REDEMPTIONCONCEPT STORY

John Marston is a man with a troubled past. John is an outlaw sent to hunt other outlaws. He’s a prisoner of his past-and the U.S. government. As the United States settles into what we now know as the modern era (1911 to be exact), the Wild West starts to become tamed. The man who used to be an outlaw is now a pawn of the government.

Set in 1911, the era of the Wild West is ending. The locomotive has connected the country, and even nations. Early automobiles have appeared, and while basic in nature, will soon outperform horses. Weapons are getting more powerful in nature. Buffalos are nearing

extinction on the plains, but bears and cougars are still threats to settlers in the West. John Marston starts out desperate to hunt down Dutch, his former comrade and partner in crime.

John first has to find out where Dutch is, which means attending to each of his fellow posse members first. These were John’s former allies, before he retired from crime to settle down and raise a family. One by one he must take each of them out, before moving on to Dutch himself. Since neither of his ex-friends is going to co-operate, that leaves John no choice but to use violence as a means to an end. He’ll end up fighting his way to them, riddling hundreds of people full of bullets in the process. Whether on the U.S. or Mexican side of the border, no one will be safe from Marston’s guns.

Each encounter gets John a little closer to his final encounter with Dutch van der Lind. Tidbits of information are doled out as he encounters the former members of Dutch’s gang: Bill Williamson and Javier Escuela. Of course, it isn’t as simple as John just tracking them down. In addition to other outlaws, John will also find himself fending off wildlife such as cougars and bears, never mind being thrown into the middle of the Mexican revolution.

The circle of violence is inevitable for Marston. He guns down his former allies like the bitter enemies they have become. A man unfamiliar with mercy, John receives no mercy in the end. He

John is an outlaw, a husband and father

Year 1911, New Austin, West Elizabeth, and Nuevo Paraiso

By Jerry Kline

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concept story

Dan HouserMichael Unsworth

Christian Cantamessa

storms Dutch’s hideout with the U.S. Army, and confronts Dutch one-on-one. Dutch is a man who is unable to confront change. He longs for the lawlessness of the Old West. Before his death he tells John “We can’t always fight nature, John. We can’t fight change,” and “When I’m gone, they’ll just find another monster. They have to, because they have to justify their wages.”

John survives his final encounter with Dutch, and returns home. There he reunites with his wife Abigail, his boy Jack, and even his lazy Uncle. He takes care of his family, grows close to his boy, herds his family’s cattle, and chats with Uncle. For once John has the normalcy of life that he has always wanted since his story began. It’s a poignant moment in the story as our hero finally gets what he wants.

Inevitably, John’s past catches up to him. Much like Dutch had warned him, the U.S. Army is looking out for them only. John will once again have to pick up his gun-but this time to save his family from the encroaching government.

The story picks up again in 1914. Jack Marston has seen both of his parents pass away. He’s a grown man now, not the scrawny kid we saw before. From the way he is dressed Jack looks like he has followed in his father’s footsteps. He is more of a gunslinger than a scholar.

John wanted his son to lead a life different from his. Like every good parent, he wanted his child to have a better life than he did. Yet here Jack is, the spitting image of his father-a gunslinger, and soon to be murderer, all in the name of vengeance. Again, the circle of violence and revenge will continue. Jack Marston is going to track down the man who killed his father and take revenge.

Jack pays a visit to Edgar Ross, the man responsible for John’s predicament in the beginning, and ultimately his betrayer. When Jack confronts Ross, vengeance consumes him. They square off, and Jack guns him down. Ross is left alone and lifeless, a victim of the same vigilante violence that he encouraged John to enforce. Jack rides off alone, his future uncertain.

Dutch lets himself fall from a cliff, giving John not the opportunity to shoot him

Writers on Red Dead Redemption

Ending with Jack

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concept story

In May 2011, three friends decided to follow their passion and began an independent developer in Missoula, MT. Varied perspectives and ideals create the goals and passion behind ‘Open Mind Gaming’. To get a better view about this developer, EFG asked the founder some questions.

FoundersJackson: “Open Mind Gaming was founded May 2011 by myself, Jackson Smith, with the help of Duncan Cox - our musician. Duncan and I have always batted ideas off each other and discussed elaborate concepts, games and plans. We have varied perspectives, stances and ideals, yet we are often able to communicate our opinions to each other in a constructive manner. He has been the ideal partner to venture into this endeavor with.”

Developer“Our goal is to reinvigorate the industry with adventurous and creative games. We want to go against the grain of first-person shooters; develop games that are both unique and entertaining. Open Mind Gaming will deliver games that have been personally crafted by three highly passionate individuals. When we finish our games we don’t release them unless we’re impressed by the results. The capabilities of our team also have tremendous potential for growth over the next several years. Each of us thrives by constantly learning and adapting. We challenge ourselves in creativity and strive to do better. There is a push inside of me that makes me want to start my own company. I love programming but I can’t keep myself out of the business side of things. The challenge that being an entrepreneur entails

is alluring; the prospects for success and the risks of failure rest on your shoulders. I founded a game development company because I like to program and I like to make games. I want to be able to create wonderful experiences for people and play a larger role in connecting them to it. I felt like I had something to bring to the industry and knew it was my passion.”

Future“In ten years a lot will have probably changed. Surviving the changes in our life over the next couple of years may become strenuous as we prepare and graduate from high school and college. On the flip-side - the room for growth and potential for us to become significantly more skilled and successful is high. We don’t see any immediate reasoning to expand to an office or hire new employees - our company is founded on the ideals of a small business. For our earlier games we plan on releasing them through Steam and Indie City on PC. In the future, we aim to achieve contracts with Microsoft to develop for XBLA - assuming their cooperation. Moving away from digital-distribution markets is not currently an interest. The important part is that there is a mutually beneficial relationship for everyone in the process - both employees and customers.”

www.openmindgaming.com

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company profile

INTERVIEWPATRICK LIU

Can you describe yourself in a few words?Patrick: “I would say that I’m very open minded, I have a lot of respect for people in general. I try to see the best in everyone. I’m very determined, I know what I want. I’m a nice guy.”

What does an average day look like for you?Patrick: “There isn’t any average day, but I spend a lot of time in meetings, I spend a lot of time writing emails, or reading emails, but really my job is to communicate. To talk with people, to make them perform their best, to make them work together. To solve a lot of tricky problems, to make a lot of tricky decisions.

Everytime we make games there are complications and I make sure that problems are solved. Presentations I do a lot of, that as well.”

What is your biggest passion?Patrick: “Except for games, I would say food. I like food, both my parents work with food. I grew up with food. I like to find new food, like going to a nice restaurant with nice food. I like baking a lot, so I have my own sourdough culture. I bake regularly, so I would say, making and eating food.”

Do you also have other hobbies?Patrick: “Obviously I’m a geek, like everyone else. I love comics. I love reading and I have a big collection of comic books. Sci-fi, fantasy, whatever. I have a large collection of comic books. I also like music, I play music myself. Movies, tv-series, so I really love everything.”

Back in April 2011, EFG got the chance to sit down and talk with Patrick Liu, producer at Digital Illusions CE, at the Festival of Games expo in Utrecht. Like many other people in the industry, he too started out somewhere completely different than games. In the meantime, he’s worked on titles such as The Darkness and the Battlefield: Bad Company games. Battlefield 3 was still in its full development cycle and his answers reflect this.

So, from 2001 till November 2005, you’ve been working as, and on, many different things. For example; you’ve been a biology teacher, but also a project leader for the Swedish Military Defense. How come you’ve been working on several totally different functions?Patrick: “I think I’m probably that kind of person. Either I’ve found something else that I want to do, or I’ve actually been headhunted a lot. I don’t know how, but people ask me. So yeah, I’ve been in a couple of businesses and I think that’s a strength. There are a lot of people in the industry that are either very young and they haven’t had another job before, or they’re very old and they actually founded the company and haven’t done anything else either.

From my point of view it’s nice to have a perspective on the rest of the world, how it works, with companies and organizations and stuff like that. I love games, this is the best job I’ve had so far. I won’t say I would stay in the business forever, but right now I’m not seeing any ending anytime soon.”

What was going on or what happened when you finally thought, this is what I really want to do?Patrick: “I’ve always loved games, obviously, but it didn’t really strike as working with games, earlier. I’ve been a freelance artist for a long time and I’ve been teaching programming as well, on a university. I was active in the demo-scene for a while, so I’ve done a lot of stuff related to games. It still didn’t strike me as something I could do, was qualified to do. But when I worked as a project manager, a consultant, I just send an application to Starbreeze Studios. There wasn’t a specific post, I just said; “I’m a project manager, maybe you have use of my skills,” basically that. They were probably impressed, because soon they hired me.”

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interview

Let’s talk a bit about Starbreeze Studios. How did you experience your journey at the studio?Patrick: “It was very chaotic, I learned a lot. I’m still in touch with those guys, we’re good friends and I’m still seeing my old boss, who I still see as my mentor. He taught me a lot about the industry, producing the Darkness and all that. I also started pre-production on the new Riddick game before I went over to DICE. It was a very meaningful experience.”

Did you encounter many challenges while working at Starbreeze?Patrick: “Oh yes! I don’t know if I had more challenges than I have now at DICE, but every project has it’s own challenges, new things to learn. I don’t think that’s going to stop ever, I think I’m going to keep learning stuff. The day I stop learning new stuff, I quit the business.”

What has been the biggest challenge until now within the game industry?Patrick: “I don’t know, it’s hard. I’ve been more involved with the business side, obviously. So I have to keep in check how the business works, how the stockmarket works, how consumers behave. There are a lot of factors we don’t have control over, but we need to handle somehow. Those are the kind of challenges I come across and probably the biggest ones.”

At this moment you’re the producer at DICE. How is this working out for you?Patrick: “Very nicely, I like it there a lot. It’s a very well organised studio. Comparing it to any other

workplace I’ve been in, in any other industry, the working environment is great. It’s the best place I’ve been so far.”

How did the process for working on Battlefield: Bad Company go?Patrick: “It was also very chaotic. Back then, I think it was the biggest production for DICE. Obviously it’s Battlefield 3 now, but back then it was a lot bigger than their previous titles. Taking into account that we also developed the Frostbite engine in parallel, the story, the destruction features, going on complex next-gen consoles for the first time, those were a lot of challenges at the same time. I think we had some growing pains back then, but we learned a lot from it. The process is more smoother now, of course.”

What does DICE mean to you at this moment?Patrick: “DICE is in a very good place right now, I feel we are very competitive, with the games we have in the pipeline. We feel very safe in what we do, we have a strong leadership in the studio, but we’re still not at the top yet. I’d argue that we were at the top adhering Battlefield 2, but since then have lost it, obviously. I like to be the underdog, I like to be in a fighting position, so we’re at a very good position I think.”

Do you have any goals which you still try to achieve? Or perhaps already achieved?Patrick: “I don’t know.. I guess I want to create something new, maybe start a new franchise. Just do something fresh.”

On your journey towards DICE and eventually at DICE, what has been the major new thing you’ve learned? Patrick: “I’ve grown a lot as a person during the last six years and I think the one most important thing is to trust my gut feeling. There are a lot of decisions being made everytime,

“The day I stop learning new stuff, I quit the business”

37EFG

interview

we have a lot of data that helps us in the decision making, but in the end it will always be your gut. By experience I now know that my gut is right, often. So that’s something I’ve learned, to trust your gut feeling.”

Do you have an idol or a source you get inspiration from? You mentioned your mentor at Starbreeze, or are there other people?Patrick: “There are a lot of inspirational people for me. What’s funny is that I work with people at DICE that have been there since the beginning. A few of the founders are still there and working with them is very humbling, because they’ve been in the industry for so long. I have a lot of respect for them and luckily they have a lot of respect for me, as basically their manager, as well. Just seeing them work is amazing.”

Do you play any video games? Which one is your favourite?Patrick: “Ever? Oh, that’s hard. I need to bring up two. One of them is Monkey Island and the other is The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past.”

Alright, we’re at our ‘mystery’ question now: if you could choose, which video game character would you like to be? Why?Patrick: “The first thing that comes to mind is probably Gordon Freeman, because I’m usually a quiet guy that likes to observe. He’s kind of anonymous, in the design of the character, but he still has a lot of personality in his actions. I like that a lot.”

Do you maybe have any advice or tips for our future readers? Patrick: “It’s extremely cliché, but I would say: Follow your heart, do what feels right. Combine that with self-awareness, be aware of who you are and what you can do, and then follow your heart.”

“That’s something I’ve learned,to trust your gut feeling”

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interview

“Fighting a rogue Spectre with countless lives at stake and no regulations to get in the way? I'd say that beats C-Sec.”

Being a Turian brings characterized features of its own to Garrus Vakarian. He cares about the crew and never puts his own needs ahead of the group. Turians are taught to have a strong sense of personal accountability, as they need to own every decision they make, good or ill.

Turians are dedicated to their mission and are willing to do what needs to be done. They will not easily surrender to a mission that shows failure.

Garrus VakarianPalavenMale

TurianBlueSandstone grey/sandAlias name 'Archangel'Turian Agent/RebelEngineering

FirearmsSniper – Assault riflesGarrus is an NPC, who is recruited in Mass Effect by Commander Shepard.

Name: Homeworld:

Gender:

Race: Eyecolor:

Skin color:Special:

Occupation: Specialities:

Combat style:Primary weapon(s):

Additional info:

who is?

Garrus Vakarian

Do you have a great character you’d like to share? Submit your character to EFG and maybe your character will be featured next time! contact@efgmagazine.com

Garrus is a loyal, dedicated humanoid who would rather choose to be in action every day than sit around, reading books. Everything and all is being seen as either good or bad, innocent or guilty, black or white.

When Garrus is called to be in action he is ready for it with his sniper rifle next to him. He isn’t ashamed for his badass attitude, while performing headshot after headshot. Some cockiness goes along with his trigger-happy persona, but you will never lose his respect and trust.

Garrus sees the galaxy as ‘black and white’, there is no grey.

39EFG

who is?

Eye For GamesABOUT GAME DESIGN &

DEVELOPMENT

Eye For Games

A place to learn, to get inspired and keep motivated, but

above all it is a place where people can share their passion

with each other. We look through your ‘rank’, student

or professional - triple A-company or indie-developer.

Without the amazing individuals there would not have

been a game industry at all...

- Rai, Lead Director at Eye For Games

contact@efgmagazine.com - Let’s connect!