Origin of the Game Designer

In this interview of renowned game designer Richard Garriott, Garriott made a curious statement that caught my attention:

As we've grown, we constantly try to find people to promote into leadership positions and form new teams - however, it rarely works. Much more commonly someone arrives on the scene or emerges as a super-talented individual. To make a top movie, you have to be super talented, to make a top game you have to be super talented, to write the best book ever written you have to be super talented. You can pick up skills on the job and you can refine your skills, clearly, but the very special talent that is required to truly be a top developer of any creative property type is not something that you can start life as B talent and a few years later emerge as an A talent. At least not commonly, it's sort of a lifestyle attitude that begins with people at a very young age. You can see they've got a top talent even before they have all the skills all they need. Those are very rare. For example, in the history of Origin, we really had 2, in 20 years, Richard Garriott, myself, who could develop Ultimas, we had Chris Roberts who could develop Wing Commanders, and those were the two triple-A hitmakers in our company. We had a couple of B+ guys, Warren Spector and Tony Zurovec [designer of Crusader: No Remorse] were sort of our B+ guys, and Warren went on to become an A player, but I don't even know what Tony's doing any more. But the same thing is true for almost any company, you go back over time with, people who are triple A talent, who have pretty good odds of making a hit, and then there's everybody else.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, as I consider game design to be a skill like any other. It can be learned, practiced, honed, but more importantly it can be critiqued and judged against a set of standards and practices.I will admit however, game designers are subjected to much gray area as the success of game design is measured by an elusive, intangible, immeasurable, subjective statistic: fun. How fun a game is determines how well it was designed, which is then reflected on the ability of the designer. But it brings up the question:

Are Game Designers Only Born, Not Made?

I will not argue that some just simply "have" that passion. I can speak for myself in the matter of those types of people referred to as "AAA types" by Garriott: making video games is close behind falling in love and raising children for giving life relevance. That sounds dramatic, but it's true. I referred to it in a previous post as the onus of the artist. I believe all creative people, regardless of their medium, can only be 100% fulfilled when they are creating. The act of creation can be expressed solely through a healthy marriage or raising kiddoes, it is not limited to an "artistic medium", but these people need to express it. They need to create.

But they are only a handful of individuals, and they are scattered throughout all sorts of walks of life. I doubt every well-respected game designer is one of these "AAA types". Many game designers simply "ended up" in that position, even if it wasn't their career goal. Especially on small indie teams, the "game designers" are not some tribunal of wisemen who convene at a round table to discuss mechanics, elements, story, etc. The hat of the "Game Designer" is one worn underneath other larger, more impressive hats like "AI Programmer", "3D Artist", "Level Designer", "CEO", "Producer", etc.If the team is small enough, the design of the game is really determined by the team as a whole. Each person has a skill set, but chose to work in the games industry because they have a passion for games, they like to work on and create them at some level. Everyone in the games industry is a "Game Designer" on some level, with a few exceptions.

But the ironic part is the design of the game is the MOST important part of the game. Good design(ers) lead to innovative new mechanics that spawn countless knock-offs and reproductions (cover mechanic from Killswitch is what pretty much made Gears of War famous). Good design leads to fun, and fun is the reason any of us (developers, publishers, consumers) are here; fun should always be the main goal, you really cannot have too much fun.

I came across this post from Peter Bottomley while looking for UDK tutorials (couple weeks into the massive UDK tutorial library which dwarfs Unity's support library by a mile). Peter's post mentions the aforementioned issue that "everyone" on a team is a Game Designer, but details the double standards game designers face to show how, really, not "everyone" on a team is a Game Designer. Peter mentioned he was inspired by an article by Mikael Säker,which is also a fantastic read. Mikael details the real duties of a Game Designer versus a Programmer/Artist/Producer who has a nice fitting game designer hat:

Designers are good at creating work (problems) for others. Designers are bad at providing the tools necessary for solving these problems.

In other words, the role of the game designer is not to create “ideas” for the team. It is to provide design. Those are two very different things. Design is not about dumping problems (the “ideas”) on other people and force them to do the actual design work.

I have heard designers say things like “this move doesn’t feel good, it has to be animated better so it feels right” – heck, I’ve said stuff like that myself! And you know what? That is a piece of utterly worthless feedback! If I work on a mechanic, I should know the purpose of it. If I can’t answer why it is in the design, what its function is, how could I ever know what to look for during implementation? It is lack of understanding that leads me to blurt out vague statements like “this has to feel cooler”.

It is my duty to properly drill into the designs. It is our job to sort out unknowns, find answer to questions and make sure that all those uncomfortable issues that appear during the drilling process are called out and dealt with. When our co-workers start to implement the design that we have created, we should give them the answers and tools they need.

When a programmer needs diagrams describing the flows of moves and metrics for speeds, distances and timings, I should be the one to turn to.

If a level designer needs pacing plans and a library of blueprints for combat encounter set pieces – I should create those tools because it is my job to understand the game and answer questions.

And if that is not inspiration to keep working on game ideas, keep learning C++ and C#, keep teaching myself UDK, Unity, and other kits, then I don't know what is.

But where do quality Game Designers come from? Game design, once defined, IS a skill you can learn. You can be good at, you can be bad at, and while "everyone" on a development team can do it, only a few can do it well. Game Designers, above all else, are problem solvers. We look at the current state of an idea and provide solutions that meet the necessary criteria of that project; eg. will it appeal to a certain demographic? Does it utilize our quirky programming lead who has an affinity for AI? Does it require our team to do things nobody knows how to do? Is it marketable? Is it within our budget/timeline? These are the questions Game Designers ask when "everyone" else simply goes, "Wouldn't it be cool if the game had ...?"

I think, then, that all a Game Designer is is a creative person with a knack for solving problems, and able to work extremely well with other people. These types of people are found in all fields, being separated only by their respective medium. My father, for example, is a union pipefitter. He is now rather high up in the company, but retains a position that requires, above all else, creative problem solving and being able to work with his team. He knows the strengths, weaknesses, schedules, lives of each of the men on his crew. He knows his field better than anyone else.

Maybe my father is responsible for why I became a Game Designer: growing up watching him solve all these complicated math problems I didn't understand, looking over his shoulder at the giant blueprints of pipe architecture that enveloped the entire dinner table, listening to his crew members talk about him like he was their best friend, maybe I just wanted to be like him. Maybe that's my origin.

Industry vs. Inspiration

What's better: Money or Profound Cultural Impact? This is a debate found in every creative field, but only recently has it become an issue for video games. Sure, the core demographic has always been concerned, and so has every red-blooded game designer out there, about creating something brilliant versus something profitable. Everyone loves to hate Halo's story, anything with a movie license, and Dynasty Warriors 9. But with the rise of indie games, quality, innovation, and fun is what stands up above the crowd, and boast the most impressive margins.

Before I end my little intro., I wanted to paste the mission statement of a little developer called SRRN. It pretty much encapsulates the debate behind this article.

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether games are art. You can probably tell how we feel about that argument from our logo up there. To understand our position, it might help to know what we mean by art. For us, art is not about having the right answers. It’s about asking the right questions.

Video games allow us to look at some of our oldest questions in new ways. Bioshock used the conventions of a first-person shooter to ask questions about free will that simply couldn’t have been asked in prose or film. Shadow of the Colossus relied on third person perspective and the structure of action-adventure games to frame questions of moral consequence and introspection in ways that sculpture or photography cannot.

SRRN Games takes as axiomatic that games can be art. The question for us becomes: If games are art, then what? What does that mean for gameplay? What does it mean for narrative? Too often developers and publishers focus myopically on individual features – from frame-rates to play-time – and in doing so miss the forest for the trees. Artistic elements like narrative and character development aren’t things you can add onto a game like bolt-on upgrades.
Bricks are important for construction, but if architects never stepped back to see the bigger picture they couldn’t make art out of buildings. At SRRN, we step back from the individual components that go into game development to view the artistic whole.
It’s not just about the game. It’s about the conversations afterwards.

The Cost of Inspiration

Let's face it. Strapping a license on to the same old tired mechanics is cheap, easy, and makes lot's of money. It's sort of a no brainer for publishers. And, unfortunately, innovative games based on a new IP don't usually sell dick. I work with a man who was a sales rep / zen-master for Sony for a good while, and he told me that Shadow of the Colossus was one of the hardest games he had to sell.

So why are people like myself so obsessed with creating something that will truly impact a person's life? Video games exist solely to entertain, so if it accomplishes that then why go through all the extra effort? Does the guy who designs paper shredders want to create one that is way more expensive to manufacture, require the consumer to dick around with it for months before they can actually use it, or design it to maybe not even shred paper?

Picasso figured this debate out, eventually. He is arguably the most prolific artist of all time, having created over 147,800 pieces. Many critics say he "sold out", as we has simply able to sign his name on a sketch of cat poop and it would sell for a bazillion dollars. Do game designers work in the same way? Is there a point in time before they too sell out? I think it happens in reverse, opposite of all other creative fields. Most (all?) game designers do not start their career as a game designer. Many start in the wonderful land of tedium called Quality Assurance, others opt to see how games actually make money by traveling the Publishing road, some were already coding other types of software, and others were professional magicians. Then, when your title and salary changes to "game designer" you get to work on awesome stuff like, Barbie's Big Adventure in Hairspray Land, Horshoe Toss Mania, or World of Fight. You have to prove to the world that you can take a $40,000 budget with a 2 month dev. cycle and create something people will actually spend money on. You have to sell out first, then once you're famous like Itagaki you can afford the cost of inspiration.

But what is the cost of inspiration? To figure this out, we need definitions. Let's examine our two main variables.

Money

Money, in the context of a salary, is how a society deems an individual's worth that exist within. A society could be your company, or your country, every society is different. If you have a team of 3 game designers and you get paid more than the other two, the society of your company deems you more important than the other two. We all know it doesn't usually work out like this due to politics and general shenanigannery, but that's the idea anyway. By this definition, the money your employer gives you to do work directly translates into how much your work and you are valued.

Profound Cultural Impact

A PCI is a game changer. Usually found in academia, and usually only valued in highly magnified retrospect, PCIs completely change the way an individual, and as a result a society, thinks. It could be anything. Metal Gear Solid 1 made me want to become a game designer after I played the demo I got in my U.S. Playstation Magazine over and over and over for months until the game itself came out when I was in middle school. That video game changed the course of my life forever, hopefully for the better. It showed me a whole new world of expression of ideas. PCIs are responsible for the tingle you get in your lower spine when something awesome happens in a good book. PCIs are what leave you feeling invincible when you walk out of a great action movie. They change how you see the world, if only for a little while. PCIs can also be people like Martin Luther King Jr., inventions like the car, but in here we only speak in the context of video games.

In short the cost of inspiration is money, which by it's definition means it costs value to society. Inspiration is what breeds the creation of a PCI, which means the onus lies solely on the inspired. Sure, you can be like Notch and make something wonderful on the side, but that cost him time, and time = money. Time spent on Minecraft could have been spent on developing something else for someone else to make more money. So why did he do it? He was already creating games, but they were not fulfilling his need to create a PCI. It's almost as if, over time, a hole is created that slowly fills with inspiration. When it fills up it overflows and spills everywhere, leading not only to the creation of a PCI, but also to a life changing event for the creator. The act of creating a PCI is a PCI to the creator of it. It's inevitable, really. Creative people can't avoid it which might be the only reason we have inspired games that challenge convention.

If a designer is placed in an environment where they have total freedom all of the time, will they ever become inspired again? Or will they fall victim to the successes of their first titles, thus generating a creative "template" that their brain falls back on whenever a withdrawl is needed from their giant hole of inspiration. This can lead to designers pretty much making the same game every time, even though they have free reign.

Not all is lost, however. I recently represented Southpeak Interactive at the VPD Summit in Folsom, CA at the end of July. It was my first show, and I had a lot of fun meeting some real salt of the earth alcoholics sales reps. For real though, these people know how to drink. I didn't meet a single asshole, just a bunch of wonderful people. One man I met there was Joe Gonzales, and we had a hell of a conversation which is what actually motivated me to log in here and write up a rough draft of this post. His view is that game design should be about making games that change people's lives. The money will follow as long as you do all the marketing well, and don't have your head up your ass. It was very refreshing to meet someone who has been in every facet of this industry to have this point of view. I was under the impression that such dreams of creating art through games were crushed under the hammer of experience, under the layers of glaze that lead to jaded hopes. I was worried that one only has enough time in this industry to have big dreams before it becomes all about the benjamins. It's nice to see this isn't always true.

Games can truly be about the bigger picture in life, capable of delivering profound messages that change people's lives. We are getting closer to this as the creation of games becomes more accessible, distribution/marketing becomes easier, and games become services versus products. It will just get better.

Just don't give up like Japan.

One Big Step Out of the Treehouse

It's official: I still have a career in video games. The Supreme Court declared video games to be an equal to film, music, literature, etc. in terms of their ability to be a communicative medium. So if the Supreme Court takes video games as seriously as they take everything written by Mark Twain, everything filmed by Hitchcock, and every stroke laid down by Michelangelo, why don't video game developers and publishers? Why is the industry so afraid to embrace the artistic qualities of video games? Why settle for making toys for kids/grandparents? And don't say the money; not everything Nintendo makes does well.


I doubt Justice Ginsburg has a lvl 85 Warlock (Scalia might) or has ever been enraptured by the narrative beauty of Bioshock, but even she can see the artistic potential of video games. David Jaffe just bumped this really old debate in his interview with CVG.

David Jaffe versus Steven Spielburg

David Jaffe is actually one of my heroes partly because I am a little racist. I grew up idolizing Kojima (who didn't?) for creating Metal Gear Solid, but let's face it: I am not Japanese, the development climates for Japan and America are completely different. I basically idolized a man I have nothing in common with, besides a passion for game design. That's like Michael Jordan idolizing the Scottish guy who invented basketball. Yes, they both really, really, really love basketball, but that's all they have in common. David Jaffe is basically my Dr. J.


It's not just his games (although growing up Twisted Metal: Black rarely left my PS2) it's how he views games.

    "I over-eat when I'm stressed. I'm not present enough in my life to just be with the stress. When it comes to someone working out of a place of ego, it's the same thing. The creative talent and their vision should be enough. The end goal of someone patting you on your head and saying: 'You're an artist now. You mean something'... I'm not trying to be an asshole. We've all fantasized about those moments because we think it means more than it really does. But in reality, it doesn't mean shit."

 I do not want games to be art so I can dust off my beret, pack my vintage oak pipe with all natural tobacco created by a small tribe of native Americans, and sit around with hipsters smelling our own farts. I want games to be viewed as an art form because it will change why people make games. As long as games are being made to be sold to retailers, to appeal to demographics, to fatten pockets, they will never grow up and game designers will be forever stuck in their treehouse. Why is Steven Spielburg able to do anything he wants to? Because he has made amazing blockbuster movies that redefined film. Sure, a few games have made HUGE steps in the right direction. Once we make games on par with Speilburg's films, we can get out of our Treehouse and start making big boy games that make big boy money, all while being respected as a medium.


I do think we are getting much closer. L.A. Noire was the first video game to be featured at the Tribeca Film Festival. Colleges around the world are or have built video game design programs. It just seems like everyone really, really wants video games to advance, but they never do due to the current antiquated development process.


Hell, even game design itself is filled with relics of the past. Health bars are leftovers from when machines could not process a 3D model reflecting real damage like broken limbs, blood, etc. The little green HP bar was a mechanical representation of all of those things. "Health packs" don't make any sense at ALL (how do you package and ingest pure 'Health'?) yet they are found in pretty much every modern FPS. RPGs are even worse, suffering from a myriad of relics from Dungeons & Dragons. Str, Int, Agi, etc. are representations of things that can now be accurately reflected in games. The whole concept of gear in general as well: how does a belt make you stronger or more intelligent? It doesn't; via stat gains the belt is a just a catalyst for character growth, because either due to a lack of computing power or the game being pen and paper, showing that your character got stronger was impossible. But now it is. My character fought some baddies and is more experienced in fighting? Great...make him larger, change his muscle tone. All of this feedback to the player should not break the fourth wall, and that's what all these numbers are doing. But I digress.


Point is: yay for video games, now let's keep up the momentum! We will see our Hamlet one day. As I have stated in a previous post about Moore's Law, it will only happen when the technology reaches a climax and a kid in his basement can create something paramount to Bioshock, by himself, much like how a couple of kids with a video camera can create some spectacular amateur films.

Terminator v. EMA - My Thoughts

Posted in my other blog for my CMC class is a post about the the Supreme Court hearing on violent video games. I liked it so much I am shamelessly copy and pasting it here. Enjoy.

The New York Times published this wonderful write up on the Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association case back in November. The results will be published in June 2011.


The hearing is about restricting the sale of "violent video games" to minors. If passed, a law will be created that heavily fines any business selling newly illegal games to those under the age of 18, essentially treating games deemed "violent" the same as pornography. The representative for the EMA says this is a violation of free speech as detailed in the First Amendment, and the other side touts a 1968 precedent that states, "extremely violent material can be obscene as to minors even without a sexual element."


I find it highly ironic that Arnold "The Freaking TERMINATOR" Schwarzenegger is leading this charge against violence. And it's not just his movies that are violent, there are many licensed gamesstarring the Governator that depict gratuitous violence. That's like if Ron Jeremy, (in)famous porn star and third Mario brother, started an abstinence campaign.


Here's a description of the first Terminator game, stolen from Wikipedia:
You take on the role of Kyle Reese and protect Sarah Connor from the cyborg sent back in time to kill her, or become the Terminator and eliminate Kyle and Sarah. Either way, the player chases his opponent through Los Angeles buying or stealing weapons and equipment while attempting to eliminate his enemy and avoid the police.


"Or you become the Terminator to chase and slaughter innocent civilians". I wonder if the EMA representative brought this up in the hearing.


Anyway, if the law is passed it is bad news for the games industry, which means it is bad news for me since I am a part of the games industry. This is not to say I don't partially agree with the idea behind the law. I do not want young kids being exposed to the horrible scenes of violence and depravity that are found in some games. I just argue that video games be treated with the same respect that movies and music are. Does Cinemark get fined an arm and a leg for allowing a 13 year old to go see Saw IV? No. Should it? I don't think so. As is always the case, the parents are to blame for their screwed up children. Either through neglect or good ol' fashioned abuse, parents are fully capable of turning their children into serial killers without the help ofGrand Theft Auto.


The shining gem of the assault is a game called Postal and Postal 2, which is about a man who has free reign over the town of Paradise, AZ. There is never a goal in the game to kill anyone, the game just really really really wants you to do so. I would like to make this one glaring point about the Postal series:


The Postal series can only be played if you are 18 or own a credit card. It has an "AO" adult rating, and is NOT sold in ANY brick and mortar retail store...except maybe like a sex shop, which minors cannot enter anyway.


It can be purchased online, but that would require the use of plastic. I do not know many 13 year olds with their own credit cards. So basically if you cannot buy porn, you cannot buy Postal. GTA is pretty depraved if you want it to be, but it is not required nor encouraged. And yes, God of War has cartoony boobies in it, but most of them are attached to monstrosities like Medusa or harpies.


To summarize, treat games the same way as other media, parents be more proactive in what your kids have access to, and I have never met anyone who has played Postal.

The End of AAA Titles?

It seems the games industry community is up in a tizzy about the future of boxed retail products. I can understand, they have been doing it for FOREVER. These just seem so bleak, if not also a little pouty:

-Gamings-Future-Looks-Uncertain-Says-Epic-Boss (also here at gamesindustry)
-The Necessity Of Making Free-to-Play Moves 
-Industry Vet to Young Devs: You Might Never Be AAA
-Edery_Nintendo_Had_Better_Watch_Out_For_Apple_Google

Talk about depressing; this is just four of them. Why is everyone so afraid of change? This is not the apocalypse everyone is making it out to be, which brings me to this blogs focus point:

This Is Not the End of AAA Titles
I will never stop playing or consuming them. My friends will never stop playing or consuming them. I doubt we are the ONLY people that feel the same. Look at it the way many developers view their fan base: if you can create a product for a very specific group of people, it actually makes it easier to develop that product because you have precedential releases that define what to do.

KOEI's Dynasty Warriors (DW) series is (in)famous for this. Those games have to be pretty cheap to make by now. There are very few new assets per release, but people buy them up (myself included). Now if our little DW community is large enough to justify new DW releases every so often, how does this NOT apply to any other title? MMOs are pretty much the prime example of this idea. They establish a community after the rush dies out, then they build for that community only. People who do not play Age of Conan do not care nor consume patches made for it: it is content created without the intention of expanding the consumer base.

So what does this mean for AAA titles? Do people REALLY think the next Call of Duty is not going to sell? Those games were large multi-bajillion dollar titles, and they sold just fine because of the precedential consumer base. Now not every game is Call of Duty (although many try to be). I think DLC is a great route for developers to squeeze out extra profits from the assets used in big AAA titles. It worked for Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. What about treating a AAA title as a base for something that builds a ton of profit over time? It would allow them to stay competitive with F2P games.

F2P games generate very little revenue for each transaction, but they have multiple transactions over time. I have been playing League of Legends for about 7 months and have spent around 100 bucks on it. Thats a whole lot more than 60 (standard retail price), and will just grow over time. Now look at Fallout 3. It has five DLCs and one (amazing) sequel. Thats 6 new opportunities for revenue using old assets. When I say "old assets" it is not obviously true: there are many new assets in each game, but the MEANS by which those assets are created is already in place. It does not take a whole lot of people to utilize the same pipeline to create new stuff. A good modeler can poop out a mesh in a couple hours, it can be textured, rigged, animated, etc. by a small team in not that much time. The licenses are already owned, or better yet the in-house engines are already built.

So here's a list of what AAA titles of the future need to do to stay competitive. The strategy of a AAA title and developer is to spend a whole TON of money initially, but eventually reach a spot where future products that are of the same quality if not better than the old ones and can be created for the same consumer base for fractions of the cost.

• Establish a pipeline
• Build an in house engine like iD or Crytek did. Its expensive, but it cuts costs down the looooooong road. Plus you can sell the license to other devs. If not, buy an extended license. 
• Build an initial development team to build the pipeline; eventually lay off everyone for a tiny core team to produce future assets. Also, find everyone you laid off jobs because you are not a grinch.
• The goal of this part is to have something set up that will let you continue making future products on the same level as the initial release.
• Utilize intelligent game design to drive sales, not more money
• Ideas are cheap. Using various development methods to beta test ideas before financial commitment like iterative development, cheap ideas can be profitable ideas with low(er) risk.
• The industry is becoming less and less a gimmick or toy based industry. Longer console cycles, "fad-ness" of zany peripheral based games like Rock Band, and overall "meh-ness" of the Kinect means people want engaging experiences, not mere distractions. This applies to Facebook "games" as well: devs have to continually build new experiences to keep the core engaged.
• Use the establish pipeline to churn out great DLC. Its like writing a novel series: there is always the hardcore fan base that will buy everything you make. The goal is to get the fan base large enough to support every subsequent DLC release.
• Split studio into pieces.
• Schafer did this, sort of. The idea is to split your studio into separate teams that each work on different types of games. Apps are big right now, so have a steady revenue stream with your app side, while bigger more rewarding risks can be taken with a AAA side. I would argue that in the long run of a studio if you could flop 3 times on the AAA side for every Call of Duty-esque franchise to be established, thats a win.
• The goal (or point) to this is to keep able to afford the same team working together for more than one project. I have found through school that working with the same team over multiple projects leads to better results than having all new members every project.
• There is no game that can appeal to EVERYONE, but who says you cannot create a studio capable of appealing to everyone? 
• What we are seeing now in the games industry is what happened to every other media industry at some point. Specific types of games for specific types of people are emerging (not talking about Genres). There was a point when going to see a "movie" turned into going to see a "comedy" or "western" or whatever. People who play apps exclusively will generally shy away from picking up Dead Space 2, and vice versa. Most of my "hardcore" gamer friends shy away from Facebook games because they "are not games" and "are a waste of time." 
• Monetize multiplayer
• I do not mean charge for access; that will just turn away players. Monetize similarly to how Team Fortress 2 monetizes, micro-transactions. Imagine the multi-player side of a product being able to bring in more revenue than selling the box/download itself! Two streams is greater than one.
• The key is BALANCE. If any monetized aspect of the game will give one individual more power than another, it is imbalanced. World of Warcraft private servers are notorious for this. In fact, WoW private servers are great testing grounds for new monetization ideas (they're freeish).
• Great monetization balancing can be found in League of Legends, Vindictus, Team Fortress 2, and most korean F2P MMOGs.

These are just some ideas of mine, pure speculation from an observer. I do not want devs to give up hope for AAAs. There is still a large enough chunk of gamers who will pay to play them, and then some. The next billion dollar idea is to expand the consumer base for AAA titles. I have a couple that might work, but those aren't free!

Game Design: Using Rules to Build Experiences

When people ask, "What's your major/area of study?" and I reply, "Game design & Ludology", 99% of the time I get this response, "So you like...write code and stuff?" Well, yes...some (most) do, but I prefer not to (although I can). Then I launch into a dizzying array of real world comparisons and metaphors which usually leaves my glamored inquirer standing lost amidst an ever-growing storm cloud of crap pulled from my ass.

So I think it necessary to log an answer made of stone and mortar rather than smoke and paper:

What is Game Design?
In short, its just rules. That's about it. Game designers are people who make rules. Now, the games industry usually forces game designers to be masters of other fields too: art, programming, sales, management, etc. In fact it is pretty much required that as a game designer you also need a "back up" area of expertise (mine is writing and narrative construction; and maybe beatboxing).

Game designers are the ones who decide what, exactly, makes a game good v. what makes a game bad. I believe this is the most important part OF a game. Graphics, sounds, control methods (peripherals, motion sensors, etc.) are great, but the integral experience of the user is based around what they are DOING inside a game. Tetris is a great example (although timing and resulting innovation had a lot to do with its commercial success) of this.

Look at a game like....Poker. Poker is what I call a "pure mechanics" game (there is a ludological term for them somewhere). This means they are completely devoid of a narrative, and have no (intentional) higher meaning behind its construction. I would have used Chess, but I can argue that Chess has a narrative based on the names, traditional models, and mechanics of the pieces used. Poker does not intend to tell a story; however, because it is a game which is interactive, it acts a catalyst by which stories are created (everyone has a crazy poker night story). These games are arguably much more popular than most for the aforementioned reason. When a group of people gather for an impromptu game of soccer, a story is created about playing soccer.

Now the relationships between Ludology versus Narratology is to be saved for another post. However since it is in the context of this post, I will say this: rules can be used to tell stories. As seen in Conway's Game of Life (great video there) simple rules (Game of Life has four, although that video says two) can have a profound depth and meaning behind them.

I am currently reading Gonzalo Frasca's 2007 Ph. D. dissertation, Play the Message, and in the beginning he talks about a movie called Kamchatka which is about an Argentinian family holed up Anne Frank style. The father uses a Risk knock off called. T.E.G., to teach his son to never give up despite how the opponent is overwhelmingly powerful. The game itself is about warfare, strategy, etc., but the mechanics (rules in a context) can be used to drive home an idea. This is what I love about games. This is why I say there are very, very few "good" games out there, most simply do not take advantage of this. Most games use devices found in movies to further a narrative. Devices like dialogue and cinematics, both things that are hard-coded and can NOT be experienced in ANY other way because they are non-interactive (Resident Evil 4's "interactive cinematics" do not count either, although they are neat).

Game design is all about the rules. When the rules are placed in a context, they become mechanics. I am exploring this in my senior Capstone project Chains: An Exploration of Determinism and Free Will by creating systems of rules designed to dictate the actions of the universe, rather than create the universe by hand. Instead of saying, "the player goes here and does x using y", I say, "well there's gravity, the NPC's have "souls", and everyone is trying to achieve their goals in life". The game takes on a new meaning now in true non-linearity. The act of playing builds the story unique to the player.

Iterative Development

The whole concept of "Iterative Development" has been around for quite awhile. To summarize the process in step format:

1. Create initial prototype (alpha)
2. Let members of your demographic (or everyone) use it
3. Carefully record their feedback
4. Take feedback and put it into your product
5. Re-release product (beta)
6. Rinse and repeat until the money runs out

In the gaming industry, this process has become the standard since every game you ever play has internet functionality.

What I wanted to examine in this post was League of Legends by Riot Games. I am looking at LoL because it is an extremely weird adaptation of the Iterative process, despite how the game has "technically" been around for quite awhile. And by weird, I mean utterly brilliant and a herald to development processes of the FUTURE.

Defense of the Ancients: All Stars

**Disclaimer**
Now I know that DotA: All Stars did not "start it all". Aeon of Strife did. Or Tides of Blood (which I have actually played). Or...whatever did. But this is like Grand Theft Auto: every GTA before number 3 does not matter, despite how they were really good games. Moving on!

DotA created the "MOBA" genre, (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), which I think is a horrible moniker ("Multiplayer Online Battle Arena" describes everything from Quake to Facebook games, it needs to be more specific; maybe mention RTS in there?) way back in 2003. It was built using Warcraft 3's map editor, which came with a copy of the game. Like all good games, it was built for FUN, not for profit. It garnered a HUGE following, tournaments were held all over, everyone had a great time, except noobs playing for the first time.

So the creator of DotA started a new project with Riot games called League of Legends released late 2009, which for all intents and purposes is a slower-paced, more user-friendly DotA all in a clean, neat little free client that uses the standard free-to-play business model of micro-transactions (which I might add, is phenomenally balanced; the shop gives access to things non-payers have access to as well, and it also allows people to buy non-impact things like skins for characters).
It utilizes a leveling system so noobs play with noobs, pros with pros, and once attaining level 30 (the max), you can take your game further with ranked matches. Its all very nice, and even has a narrative that I don't pay any attention to. On the other hands, there is Heroes of Newerth (HoN), which is a subscription-based client that is much less forgiving than LoL. Most (all?) of the major DotA players migrated to HoN over LoL for this very reason; its faster, harder, higher bar of entry.

My point: 
League of legends beta tested it's game inside ANOTHER GAME made by ANOTHER DEVELOPER.

DoTA was essentially the beta test for LoL. Brilliant stuff. Games like this are a balancing NIGHTMARE, requiring little tweaks and months of game play to feedback. Having the beta version so publicly available and supported, they had so much data that it could be perfected. Hell, it would have been slick enough to beta test a game in a game you've already released, but in someone else's? Ballermuch? This is the pinnacle of iterative development.

Now, obviously it wasn't intentional. The lead developer (probably) didn't even dream of his little WC mod becoming so huge and profitable. But it did, and I think the rest of the industry could learn from this. Utilize mod-heavy games with pre-established communities for your concept beta testing. Games like LittleBigPlanet, Starcraft II, Fallout 3 (gotta visit its mod nexus), etc.

Although I think it's cheating, many games say they're in beta (I'm looking at you Dead Frontier and Minecraft) although you can still give them heaps of money. It's like, "Oh, I'm in beta because I'm missing parts, I'm buggy, and generally incomplete...but I have this shop over here where you can spend money, I will be complete someday! Purchase early, save now!" And while it is cheating, its also a great idea as long as it is FUN (which both of my examples are, check them out).