I’m playing with the spore creature generator! Here’s one of my doo-dads.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rACOf3D-KQE

Game design is a nebulous job. People have asked me how they can become a game designer. They have some great ideas. Maybe they’ll take some classes.
So I’ve created a syllabus for my upcoming free class called “So You Wanna Be a Game Designer”:

The purpose of this is as follows:

Think of this as night school. Before you spend your hard earned money and time learning C++, Maya, and Java… This course will help you to get the experience of design, without all of the overhead.

I need a good response when people ask me how they can be a game designer. Part of me wants to tell them to take out a huge loan, pack up and go to Full Sail for a couple of years.

It seems like there should be a quicker method for finding out if the discipline is attractive.

If this thing is works it can be a do-it yourselfer, with a final project you can share with your friends.

So I want to create a 2 month crash course to find out if you’ve got the chops. Luckily, I already have a test subject.

So anyways. Here’s my current syllabus for weeks 1 - 3.

1) Design a new “real materials” game. Examples include charades, boccie ball, and tag. The deliverable is a 1 or 2 page document that explains the game’s rules and play structure. If people can read it and easily understand what they need, and how to play the game, then your first homework is a sucess.

2) Focus test your game. Iterate upon your game. Clarify any rules questions that have been found. Game design is very much about iteration and creation. Finally type up the notes you’ve gotten from your focus testers. What worked? What failed?
The first two weeks deal with design in a way that someone with any skill set can attempt. As my friend Justin pointed out to me: “It’s worthless to spend years learning how to program, and then discover you actually don’t like designing games.”

By this point I estimate a good percentage of budding game designers have moved to greener pastures and have dropped out. Actual design and iteration is not as fun for some as they would like to believe. The remaining students are energized by focusing their creative energies.

3) This is tricky.

I feel that a game designer should know something about scripting. This may merit some harsh criticism from some who would say “no designer scripting“. As someone who primarily is payed to script my butt off, I can’t help but to say that, in my experience, it’s a darn fine skill to have as a designer. In “Rusty’s School of Game Design” we’re going to dive in despite all of the controversy and get started on scripting instead of tackling level design or something similar.
There is also a lot of debate here as to the best engine to get our budding designers started.

Neverwinter Nights has a particularly good engine for building missions and dialog. I’m throwing this one out for the simple reason that it’s a bit too focused of an engine for my program.

Flash is a bit sexier for me right now because of the flexibility and sharability of the game. This is still in the running but it gets minus points for the higher pricepoint pushing $700 for CS3 Professional. Also it is restrictive in regard to 3-D graphics.

Game Maker is a gem at $20 and that’s for the professional version. The good news is it has a lot of tutorials, is cheap, and is specifically set up for making games. It even makes .exe’s! The bad news is that its 3D capabilities are limited.

Shoot’em Ups like Team Fortress 2 have good SDKs and tools for creating custom levels. This is appealing, but once again I am determined to focus more on scripting than level design at first, as this course is designed primarily to help people understand whether they they like the day-to-day activities of a designer and I feel that people may enjoy modding and level design more than scripting.
So, the current top-dog for getting everyone’s feet wet in scripting is Yoyo Games’ Game Maker.

I’d like to hear from potential “students” as well as experienced industry people before we nail down week 3 and move on to making weeks 3 - 6.

Secondhand Lands Beta is underway. We’re amassed some avid players!

It’s night 2 and I believe 3 people have passed the “Level 50″ landmark. We even have a “overt” player. I’m wondering when the PvP will start at this rate.

FOURTwenty, Aeros, Enwis Haphio, and BaaaaB are all fairly experienced players at this point.

Overall more people are playing as sheep than as wolves.

A few players have sworn us as their “new home”. I think they enjoy the developer attention of 3 GMs being logged on around the clock.

Last night, as you can see, players were new and had their fairy helpers still with them.

Tonight Peepers and I are celebrating people reaching level 50!

More as the beta continues!

Secondhand Lands is now officially beta!

I encourage all of you to go to www.secondhandlands.com and download the launcher!

I’ll see you all on server Duncan!

Secondhand Lands – Gear

This post is a collaborative post between myself, Patrick Rogers, and Bobby Thurman which is an open discussion about Secondhand Land’s item system.

Secondhand Lands is not WoW. Orcs do not battle against manly looking elves while wearing huge shoulder pads that make them look like clowns. Players will not adhere to a nightly guild-enforced raid calender.

Specifically, gear will not be “greater than all”. A skilled player with with well-chosen, synergistic skills will beat a worse player with “strictly better gear” 9 times out of 10.

The Rundown:

There are 5 gear slots: Eyes, Head, Neck, Back, and Feet.

The largest contributions to your character will be from your Back, Head and Feet armor.

These pieces will all add to your physical resistance score in varying degrees. Three sample Back pieces are as follows:

Red Magic Cape: Sheep favored item that gives 10 physical resistance and lets you jump 5% higher.

Really Heavy Plate: Gives a whopping 20 physical resistance. Sheep with less than 50 strength and constitution will move a reduced movement speed (it’s really heavy).

Sheepskin pelt: PvP piece favored by wolves and “black sheep”, 5 physical resistance that grants a bonus 2% damage versus sheep.

Feet and Head slots work similarly, trading off more or less physical resistance for more or less bonus to their skills and special abilities. Expect head pieces that increase head butt and bite damage. Expect boots that make your sprint and hoof slam attacks better.

Neck and Eye pieces are more rare, and give stranger, more esoteric effects.

Examples of eye pieces include a monocle that increases stealth detection and purely ornamental masks and sunshades.

Neck pieces could work as follows:

Spiked Collar gives wolves a bonus to their growl spellpower.

Blingin’ Gold Necklace: Gives a 2% bonus to all healing done. Wearer occasionally says “My mama didn’t raise fool.”

Each piece of gear, in short, should feel ‘different’ from another piece.

Read the rest of this entry »

Have a seat boys and girls, and get ready for the play-by-play. The unlikely final showdown between Optimus and Prime and Albus Dumbledore here on Yaxamie.com!

Let’s take a closer look at each of our contestants:

Optimus Prime is the heroic robot commander of the autobots, who have sworn to protect human life. At one moment he’s a semi truck that pulls an entire trailer full of explosive goodies. The next moment he’s a giant robot with laser rifle and an access to more weaponry than you’re typical military submarine. Within his chest he carries a talisman of leadership, the Creation Matrix.

Albus Dumbledore is a old-ass wizard who ranks a grumpy prostate an equal annoyance to dragons, ogres, and incorporeal nasties alike. Dumbledoor has his choice of the most powerful wands and spells of any of the Order of Merlin could possess. He has exceptional control of fire and can summon his deadly phoenix Fawkes to his aid.

Following is an interview with fan-boy Otto and fan-girl Helga.

Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be a growing trend in gaming. New genres come out and capture the interest of the “hardcore” gaming community only to succumb to more profitable dumbed-down versions of the originals which have the opportunity to overcome a larger market share.
Specifically I think about the early MMORPGs Meridian59 and UO which were based around a hardcore PvP-centric model. A few later MMOs maintained a hardcore PvP model, but even so, they padded the number of safe areas and made a better bed for the casual gamers.

Now, I see that EA is teaming up with Hasbro to build casual video game titles. Talk about two giants! If there’s money to be made, EA and Hasbro have highly trained bloodhounds to sniff it out. With EA putting more and more energy in partnering with Hasbro and their POGO games, you can bet the casual games market is where the smart money lies.

The good news is that video games have become progressively more assessable, and therefore a more profitable industry.

The question is this:

Does the shift to the casual game market spell the slow death of hardcore games?

What do people expect from a game design blog?

There are a lot of ancient game designers with 10 times my experience as a game designer.  People visit their blogs for sagely advise (as they should).

So what do I have to offer?  This is a sort of a mission statement on my part.

I will not pretend to be an old designer with tons of experience.  I’ve got 2 years of experience in the industry, split between QA and design.  This blog will become (I hope) a great resource for those who wonder what being an entry level player in the game development circuit.

Also, since I am a philosophy nerd, there will be the occasional philosophical or literary posting.

Hopefully, I will find an audience who needs this type of information.  Maybe the contents of this site will be more useful to the people looking to “break in” and see what to expect in the early years as they progress as a junior level designer.

Thanks guys!

Before my “meager” 2 years of experience in the gaming industry, I would read people like Brian Green’s advice on “breaking into games“. A lot of his advice, I have to admit, I am only now beginning to understand and appreciate.

Some of Brian’s highlightable bits of bite-sized truth include:

“you should realize that there isn’t really an ‘idea person’ job description. Most game ideas will come from senior people with years of experience under their belt.”

and

“Network, network, network, network. I can’t emphasize this enough.”

These two I feel obliged to comment on, since they have been very much a reality in my life.

Everyone new to a QA position will find that they have ton and tons of suggestions that weigh heavily on their minds. Most of these will be shared by the whole of the design staff and are too complex or too far beyond the scope of the project to implement.

If you want to have your ideas taken seriously, by all means, obtain some coding and scripting skills and put together a demo in Unreal, Flash, or Game Maker. Seriously. Most games are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration anyways, so learn to script or code.

As to the second point. If you want to break into the industry, find some game people and offer to buy them beer or food. Be cool. Have intelligent things to say. Maybe they are looking for one of the plethora of enthusiastic script kitties who are willing to work for less than their business software counterparts.

Chances are, if you actually manage to get a career in the industry you’ll work with just about everyone in your city at some point. So a few beers bought here and there will go a long way for you in the long run.

I’ve heard more than one director say “never hire anyone you wouldn’t drink with after hours.” And they mean it.

People who have been in the industry much longer than I have have said essentially the same thing. If for some reason you’re reading about this for the first time here, the gods help you, don’t take this as wistful advice.

Good news everyone. I made up a new word. Esrbish. (Pronounced Ee-suhr-bish)

Why it’s a good word. ESRB rules are so weird and arbitrary, sometimes just asking a fellow designer or producer if something is a potential ESRB issue or snafu can take a lot of wasted verbiage.

Here is a sample conversation using the new word.

Producer: “Wow, when those zombies explode, copious amounts of blood fly everywhere. Can we tone that down.”

You: “Do you think that it’s ‘gross’ or just ‘esrbish’?”

Producer: “We’re already ‘M’, so mostly just gross.”

You: “Let’s poll QA.”