Furthermore, if you’re playing a game and you come across some kind of bug in it, chances are the developers know.  Many, if not most games will ship with some kind of bug.  It might be a simple art bug where a door is slightly offset from the wall.  It might be a collision issue where you get blocked from walking for no actual reason, or, alternately, where you can walk straight through a wall that shouldn’t allow passage.  It might be possible to get permanently stuck in the scenery, or have the audio skip disjointedly, or have the player just straight-up fall out of the world.  The thing is, the developers probably know damn well the game is shipping with bugs.  You really don’t need to tell them that.

Why do games ship with bugs, then?  Well, sometimes schedules get drastically cut, and there just isn’t time.  Sometimes schedules were poorly planned to begin with, and there just isn’t time.  Sometimes the very nature of the game you’re working on gets dramatically changed, requiring a lot of re-working, and there just isn’t time.  Sometimes half the people at a studio get laid off, and there just aren’t enough people to complete the game in time.  (Have you noticed a pattern yet?)  Sometimes a minor bug is known about and it just doesn’t get fixed because it’s not important enough to risk breaking the level for.  Toward the end of development, a game is like a house of cards.  If you have framerate, memory, gameplay and story all working together reasonably well, you do not risk breaking that balance for something as small as a trash plane sticking through a wall or a chair floating slightly above the floor.

My boss often says there are two kinds of games:  Game that are perfect, and games that ship.  It’s much better to work on games that ship.

Games start with a GDD, or Game Design Document.  Games that do not start with a GDD are pretty much doomed to fail, because they will have no concrete guidance on what game they are making.  The GDD contains story and character information, but it also contains much more than that.  A GDD will describe what genre the game falls into.  It will describe gameplay decisions and the consequences of those decisions.  It will describe character movement, enemy types, weapons, and puzzles.  It will contain descriptions of the levels, and the actions the player will need to perform in order to progress through said levels.  A GDD is the game, albeit in a 2-d, non-interactive form.

GDDs are important for both the developer and the publisher.  They’re used to pitch games to publishers, so both parties understand exactly what kind of game is being discussed.  The GDD will of course be amended and altered over the course of the project, but it’s still a very vital starting point.

The GDD for Grim Fandango can actually be downloaded in PDF form from here.  It’s worth a read for aspiring designers.

Now that that is out of the way…

On a previous post, Robert asked:

So, I have a question pertaining to 3-D modeling.  For the purposes of my portfolio, I’m wondering how high-res my pieces should be?  I frequently find myself creating models that are shaped very well, but they have a rather large poly count. So, I guess the underlying question here is whether it is more impressive in a portfolio to see very high poly count models with good texture or to see lower poly count models with textures that just give the appearance of higher resolution?  (Keeping in mind that my painting/drawing skills are rather poor at present so the textures are a definite weakness for me right now)

This is a good question, and the answer is almost always, “It depends.”  As a general guideline, you should never put more geometry into a model than is absolutely necessary to create the shape you want.  If you’re making a cube, that cube only needs to be 6 polygons.  A cube that is 600 polygons is ridiculous, because you really only need 6 in order to make the cube look like a cube.  The more complex the object you’re creating, the more polygons you’ll probably need to make it look right.  If you have a set budget for polygons, use them where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.  People won’t care if a door is made up of six polygons, but they’ll notice if the doorknob is blocky and unrealistic.  Have a look at the wireframe on one of my meshes:

This is a fairly high-poly mesh, but I spent those polys where it would show.  If those curves were choppy and blocky, the mesh would just look bad.  Since I spent the polygons on those important parts, the blocky headboard and footboard can be very simple.

Generally, it’s more impressive to see a lower-poly model that looks good than a ridiculously high-poly model.  Anyone can throw extra polygons at a mesh to make it look smoother, but it’s much harder to serve modeling steak on a hamburger budget and it shows more skill.  Texturing is also really important–if you model really well but you can’t texture for poo, you’ll probably have a very hard time getting hired.  There really aren’t separate modeling and texturing positions in most companies–3-D artists do both, so good skills in both areas are pretty necessary for the job.

Thanks for the question!  I hope this was helpful.

But mostly I’m excited about the new fridge.

Anyway, a few days ago commenter Chandler asked a couple of questions:

how much time would you say is spent testing the games you’re working on compared to actually working on modeling and stuff for them? What kinds of things do you look for specifically as a graphic designer when testing?

I’d also maybe like to hear more about the outsourcing of modeling you mentioned… how severe is it, and how do you feel about it?

How much time I end up testing really depends on how far along in the project we are.  If we’re still in full production, I don’t test really at all because I’m busy creating assets.  In the early stages, there’s not much point in playtesting because there are no completed levels.  The later it gets into production, the more levels there are to test and the more we’ll end up playtesting them.  Since the art tasks tend to be finished before the design tasks, it naturally falls to the art team to pick up more playtesting as the project progresses.

When I playtest, I’m actually not looking for things from an artist’s perspective!  I’m checking to make sure the game works.  We playtest to ensure the levels can be completed and that there are no major bugs that are either reeeaaally noticeable or stop the player from proceeding.  I’ll see a lot of art issues, of course, but that’s not the point of the playtest.  The point of playtesting is to make sure there are no places where the player gets stuck on collision, trapped in a wall or falls out of the world.

Outsourcing can be an issue, but not always.  The thing about outsourcing is that it can be really helpful in dynamically scaling your art team size.  You don’t usually save money on a per-asset basis, but you can essentially hire 30 extra artists for a month to crank out a bunch of stuff for your project, and then not have to find the money to keep those 30 extra artists around for several years.  Outsourcing is really only useful for characters and non-essential props for the most part.  If you try and outsource things like a wall system or a catwalk system you’ll end up wasting loads and loads of time getting the outsourcing team to tweak those assets to your specifications.  It’s much more efficient to keep important assets like that inside the company, where the turnaround time is 15 minutes.  The further outside the company you go, the longer the turnaround time is.  A 12-hour turnaround time for revisions really adds up if an asset needs more than one tweak!

The other thing about outsourcing is it needn’t be outside the country.  There are outsourcing firms in the US.  We sometimes work with a Seattle outsourcing company.  Outsourcing companies can be a great way for artists to get experience, too!  You might not get a job with a game studio, but working as a 3-d artist at an outsourcing company will get you into the industry.  I personally don’t feel threatened by outsourcing, because a studio is always going to need some in-house artists to ensure quality and quick turn-around.

Thanks for the questions, Chandler!

I’ve been playing Brutal Legend lately, and it’s been a blast.  I’m only maybe four hours into it, but it’s been really fun so far.  (Except for the driving.  I have never been good at driving games, so whenever I’m driving with a deadline I hand the controller over to Chris.)  I love the writing and the characters and the amount of ass-kicking I’ve been getting to do.  It’s very enjoyable, and it’s been making me think about a particular debate that recurs amongst developers.  Do you want the player to empathize with your character, or do you want the player to become your character?

It’s the latter idea that creates most of the Silent Protagonists in video games.  A lot of people think that if the main character never speaks, the player will project him or herself into the character’s world, and become the character.  Frankly?  I think this is kinda bullshit.  I never see myself as Link, I never see myself as Chell, and I don’t feel like I’m my Fable II character.  I don’t even see them as extensions of myself.  (Maybe if I got to choose some dialogue for my Fable character I’d feel differently.  Seriously, everyone wants to marry her and I can’t explain to them that she’s not ready to settle down right now, damnit!  Leave her alone!  She has a world to save!)  Link, for one thing, is depicted as having an actual personality, even if he doesn’t speak.  I like Link because he’s Link, not because he’s an extension of me.  Chell probably comes the closest to making me feel like I am the character, but that’s a factor of the game design.  Since there are no other humans in the game, and she never speaks, and the only things that speak to her are AI that don’t use her name, it’s pretty easy to start thinking, “Shit, they’re shooting at me!” rather than “Shit, they’re shooting at her!”  In Fable II, I actually feel way more connection to the NPCs in the story, because at least they have personalities!  The only thing that makes me feel connected to my character is her dog.

I tend to prefer games that feature an interesting character that I can empathize with.  Eddie Riggs is funny, badass, and kinda sweet.  I want to play the game just to see what happens to him.  Same with Beyond Good and Evil (if I can ever get past this stealth part).  I like to play as a character who interests me, who seems like a real person in some way.  I want to have a connection with the character, and I usually don’t get that with Silent Protagonists.  That doesn’t mean they can’t be part of a good game, of course, it just means I’m going to be playing the game for the game, and end up having less invested in it.  When I care about a character, I want to get them through the game unscathed because I don’t want to see them hurt.  When I don’t care about a character, I just want to get them through the game unscathed so I don’t have to repeat sections.

Silent Protagonists aren’t bad, per se, but I don’t think they do what some developers think they do.

Re: Minigames.

Minigames can be great.  They can break up a lot of the same gameplay and add interest and re-playability to a title.  However, when you want to add a minigame, consider whether the minigame you are adding uses any of the skills that your player will have built up over the course of the game, or whether it uses the skills that would be built up in a completely different title.  Maybe don’t add minigames with gameplay elements completely alien to the title you’re working on.

An example:  My boyfriend is currently playing Blue Dragon, a JRPG of the old guard.  Turn-based, with fighters, healers, black mages, and monks.  Occasionally, though, the designers decided to break up the gameplay with minigames.  Some of these build off skills you already have (like the escort mission–probably the least annoying escort mission ever).  Others require something that is pretty much never required in a JRPG–reflexes.  I don’t know about other people, but I play JRPGs partially because they don’t require me to aim at anything or have hairtrigger reflexes.  At one point in Blue Dragon, you are required to pass a punishingly hard shooting gallery minigame in order to progress through the game.  My boyfriend has much better reflexes than I do, but it still took him three tries and a whole lot of swearing.  It was very nearly a ragequit moment.  I was just sitting there going, “Who thought this was a good idea?  People who play JRPGs don’t expect this kind of shit!  What the hell is this shooting game doing in my JRPG?”

So, to sum up:  Consider the kind of people who will be playing your game, and ask yourself, “Will these people like this minigame?  Or will they wish death upon my family when they encounter it?”  Please, don’t make me wish death upon your family.  It takes so much energy.

“I really enjoyed BlahdeBlah, but it was kinda short so I wish there was a multiplayer component so I could keep playing it.”

vs

“BlahdeBlah should have multiplayer!  It’s stupid that it doesn’t have it!”

When someone says something like the first statement, I can see where they’re coming from.  I don’t necessarily agree with them, but the fact that they enjoyed the game and want to continue enjoying it is something I understand.  The second statement rankles me as an artist and as a gamer.  Saying what a developer, artist, or author should or shouldn’t have done is a sure-fire way to get yourself ignored.  Maybe they just didn’t want to put multiplayer in their game.  Maybe they actively considered multiplayer and decided it wouldn’t work with the rest of the overall game experience.  Maybe they just goddamn hate multiplayer, for that matter.  Telling a developer that the decision they made is stupid is just going to make the developer annoyed.  (And often, when it is a genuinely stupid decision, pretty much everyone on the development team is going to agree with you but would have changed it if they were able to.  If a dumb design decision makes it into the finished game, you can bet that many of the people on that team disagreed with it but were helpless to change anything.)

There are people who want multiplayer because they feel it adds a continued play value to a game they have spent their money on.  This is certainly a good point–Halo has a single-player campaign but is mainly a multiplayer title, and people are still playing it years later.  (Heck, people are still playing CounterStrike!  They certainly got their value when they bought that one!)  But I, personally, don’t feel that a game needs multiplayer to justify the purchase price if the single-player experience is interesting and varied enough.  Let’s take Portal, for example.  I paid $20 for Portal on Steam, and it took me about four hours to get through the first time.  That’s around $5/hour for entertainment, which is on the pricey side when it comes to video games, but I enjoyed the experience so much I would have gladly paid more.  I also replayed the game with the developer commentary on, so let’s say I got 7 hours of entertainment for my $20.  I find that pretty fair.

On the other hand, I have Twilight Princess on the Wii.  I paid $50 for this game, but I have logged probably over 25 hours on it so far and I find it immensely fun and engaging.  (I only need to fight Ganondorf and I’m done, but I want to save that for a special occasion and like, bake a cake to celebrate.  Yes, I know I am weird.)  That comes out to about $2/hour of entertainment, and I can certainly see myself replaying it at some point, bringing the total cost per entertainment hour even lower.

My boyfriend has one of the most extreme examples, though.  He bought Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in around 2001 for somewhere around $35.  He has played that game almost once a year since he first got it.  Conservatively, he has logged around 100 hours playing Castlevania, bringing his cost to around $.35/hour of entertainment.  Why has he played it so many times?  Because it’s a good game with good gamplay and an engaging (if not well voice-acted) story.

I have no problem with people preferring games with multiplayer because they like the multiplayer experience, but it’s certainly not the only thing that makes a game enjoyable or valuable, and it’s not always necessary to make a game worth the purchase price.

I could not disagree more.

Multiplayer is a great thing, first of all.  It allows a constantly changing game experience for the players.  It can allow teamwork, backstabbing, strategy and raw power.  It lets gamers play with their best friends or with people from halfway around the world.  It can be a very, very fun thing.  But not every game needs it. I don’t think people know what they’re asking for when they demand that every game have multiplayer.

They’re asking for fewer games. Multiplayer takes time and it takes money and it takes a good chunk of each.  Multiplayer titles need map support, code support, matchmaking support, online capabilities (that actually work), art support because people want more than one character to choose from, and lots and lots of playtesting.  This is all assuming you have a game that lends itself well to multiplayer, like an FPS.  What if you’re working on an RPG?  Do you want to have a separate multiplayer campaign?  Split-screen co-op?  Should Player A’s character be able to travel to and join Player B’s game?  These are all questions that need to be answered, and then after they’re answered they still need to be implemented.  Adding multiplayer to a game can seriously increase development costs and time.  One of the easiest ways a developer can avoid going over time or over budget on a project is to avoid multiplayer.  For a small start-up or indie developer, than can make or break a studio.  If gamers seriously want every game to have multiplayer, fewer games will be released because it will simply be too expensive for developers and publishers to keep with the current release standards.

Also, some games simply don’t need a multiplayer component.  Would Final Fantasy be improved with multiplayer?  Would Zelda?  What about Planescape: Torment?  Monkey Island?  Okami?  Portal?  (Okay, maaaaybe Portal.)  As gamers demand more and more multiplayer, these excellent single-narrative games will be less and less common.  As a fan of immersive games with developed storylines, this idea makes me very sad.  I want well-written narratives and long stories in my games, and I am perfectly willing to sacrifice multiplayer to get that.  I don’t care what you do with your first-person shooters as long as I still have my adventure games!

Besides, who wants to have an important story point interrupted by some 12-year-old boy calling you a gay noob lagger?

Don’t mind if I do!

There was no blog on Monday because my internet was down.  At home, anyway, and I make it a point not to blog from work because, well, they’re not paying me to blog.  They’re paying me to move a heck of a lot of old assets from old packages into new packages, renaming said assets as I go.  That’s what I’m getting paid to do at the moment, anyway.  I did get to do some 3-d modeling and texturing earlier this week, so that was a nice break.

The thing about the internet is that you don’t realize how much you use it until it’s gone.  I’m not an internet addict by any means, and I can function perfectly well without it when I’m camping, or at a beach house, or doing things that take me away from the computer and out into the world with the Daystar.  But when I’m at home, and the internet goes out, it throws everything out of whack.

“Well, I kinda wanted to go out to dinner, anyway.  I wonder if that cafe is open tonight.  I’ll check–dammit, no I won’t.  Maybe I’ll start on that new knitting project.  I just need to print out the pattern–shit.  I didn’t save that one.  Okay, I’ll do some yoga.  Pandora has a good yoga music channel–crapdamnfart!”  Everything that I would normally do, or look up, or check on without thinking about it becomes nigh impossible.

It’s like this at work, too.  Technically speaking, a 3-d artist doesn’t always need the internet, but when it goes down a great cry rings out around the office.  With no internet, we can’t find reference for meshes we need to model.  We can’t download texture references.  We can’t authoritatively win the argument over whether the 360 is better or the PS3 is better.  (Okay, we can’t do that even when we HAVE the internet.  But without the internet we can’t link to memes and pictures of LOLcats to support our point of view.)  We geeky types love us some internet, and it’s become such a ubiquitous part of our lives that when it’s suddenly gone, we feel the absence keenly.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to SexyManButts.com.  I haven’t been able to access it for DAYS.

When this happens, hobbies are what will save your sanity.  I really recommend having a couple of hobbies outside of work that are as far removed from video games as possible.  If you make video games all day, and then come home and play video games all night, that’s a lot of time with a console or computer.  There’s nothing wrong with that if you enjoy it, but for me personally, sometimes the last thing I want to do after a day of playtesting is play another game, even one that isn’t broken.  There are also some serious health problems that can result from a sedentary lifestyle, as well as the repetitive stress injuries that come hand-in-hand with a lot of computer use.  (Ask me how I know.  Tennis elbow.  FROM MOUSING.)

Personally, the two hobbies outside of work that keep me sane are knitting and yoga.  Knitting because it’s a creative endeavor that at the same time requires none of the tools I use at work, and yoga because it is about as far from sitting in front of a screen as it is possible to be.

The things that I like about knitting are somewhat telling.  It’s creative and lets me use my art skills when it comes to designing a garment or settling on a color scheme.  It’s also something that I can control completely from start to finish.  Nothing randomly glitches and crashes when you’re knitting.  It’s impossible to have a corrupted save file with knitting.  It’s portable, so I can do it on the bus, at home, or at a tea shop.  I don’t have to play super-close attention to it, so I can do it while I’m watching TV or holding a conversation.  I don’t have to make a special time for knitting the way I have to for drawing.  I can pick up knitting and start right where I left off without wandering all over the map trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.  (Final Fantasy III on the DS, I’m looking at you.)  And when I’m done knitting something, I have a finished product that doesn’t need to be submitted to any companies or be approved by any publishers.  It’s mine, and I made it the way I wanted.

Yoga, on the other hand, requires me to actually pay attention to my body and nothing else for an hour.  It makes me move in hundreds of ways that I don’t at work.  There are poses and exercises that stretch the Perpetual Mouse Muscle Knot that lives in my right shoulder blade.  I do yoga because I know that what I do for a living can be extremely damaging to my body in a lot of ways, and yoga is a way to counteract that.  Also, it has brought me a lot closer to being able to touch my toes when I bend over, and that’s a serious accomplishment for someone with hamstrings like mine!

Whatever you do in the industry, remember to have a life outside of it.  It’s much healthier for everyone.