Blogging during college? So much for that!

When this blog was first created, it was to chronicle my experiences and development during my time in Vancouver Film School's Game Design program as a young, aspiring game designer and student. Well, let's just say that regular blogging wasn't exactly a part of the strict, regimented curriculum. I happened to choose the path that directed my time into efforts which got my projects done and game docs written. Unfortunately there was only one of me at the time (and at this time too), and the difference between blogging about my experiences during college and actually "experiencing college" (i.e.assignments and homework galore) meant the difference between sleeping and dying.

So. Much. Fun

Now, a year out of college and halfway across the world, I've discovered a brutally honest life lesson that hasn't reared its head until now:

Learning doesn't truly begin until after class has ended.

While this isn't as much as an epiphany as it is a simple coming to terms, it has always come across as an accepted notion that once you finish any academic degree, diploma, course, etc that you'll simply retain and permeate all the wondrous skills, abilities and/or knowledge you've learned over that time. And I think it's a very difficult for a fresh graduate to admit a lack of understanding, inabilities or plain ignorance when it comes to anything in regards to their chosen career field. After all, spending X amount of years to study, practice and learn your craft should amount for a very solid base understanding of what you've chosen to dedicate your life to, right?

And with this paper I now know possess the infinite knowledge of the universe! (and game mechanics)

So of course, it's incredibly frightening for someone like me to admit that after my time spent in college, I know a fraction of what I truly need to know to be considered a well-versed and adept game designer. When it's commonly accepted to push all flaws under the rug and step with the best foot forward, I've decided to display my short-comings as a game designer with this blog in an effort to showcase my own personal progress, successes and failures as I dive in head first.

You know nothing of game design, Jon Snuh

My goals are fairly short and simple:
1. Know something more today than I did the yesterday, and find out how this will benefit me and others.
2. Follow what's interesting and engaging, and don't get bogged down by lack of focus.
3. Don't get discouraged.

To jump-start this journey I've been completing a series of Unity 3D tutorials which was something I didn't have time to fully sit down and commit to during my year of study at VFS. While we were very exposed to Unity 4 and a majority of us used it for our final projects, it became difficult to find out what was going on under the hood in such a short timespan. Currently it's been a lot of note taking, passive listening and playing sections 2 or 10 times over, but as a non-programmer it's really starting to have a positive effect. I can't wait to see what I can do in a few weeks time, and I'll be keeping updates as I move forward with my progress.

Until then, have fun!

Look Ma! I made me a boardy game!

One of the class-sets that we take in term one brings us way back to the very beginning of games: the analog game. In a two-part class, we learn the fundamentals with playing board games as discussed in an earlier post. But in its counter-part, we get very analytical and discuss the theory behind all the games we grew up with and loved, why they continue to stand the tests of time and why we love them so much.

Don't get me wrong, Game Theory (Analog) is no walk in the park. It is very much a uniquely heavy class if board games aren't your regular gig. Admittedly, I don't do board games all that often. In fact most board games I've ever played have simply been at home with family or friends, and they have usually been the fan favourites: chess, checkers, backgammon, monopoly, life, risk, etc. Of course you can only play your Mom and Brother so long before getting screwed over in Monopoly by a younger sibling gets old (I'll get him...one day).

However, this class is a crash course in analog game theory, and if you didn't think critically about analog games before, you'll definitely be analyzing the hell out of them after this course. It's very similar to studying how movies are made, and then when you watch them you deconstruct the thing piece by piece to see how it all fits together. We learned the difference between purely competitive games (Agon) and chance-based games (Alea) and all the game types within those two main categories, such as ludus, paidia, mimicry, etc. If you don't know what those terms mean now, you'll definitely learn them!

But what's the end game you might ask? Well, you get to make your own damn board game, man! Right from scratch, you build the foundation of a game from a mere concept. It's a very open ended assignment that lead to a variety of games from all my fellow classmates. My game started off with an incredibly simple notion: a six sided die can be compared to an old west six-shooter. I wanted to build a game on the whole wild west duel concept, but have players use dice for their weapons. Of course it was a very loose and fragile idea that had absolutely no direction or concept basis, so I had a lot of work ahead of me.

I built up a quick prototype that actually took me far longer to put together than what it was worth. If there's one thing when it comes to early development and prototyping, definitely aim for quick and efficient even if it means it isn't pretty. You can deal with beautifying it later when everything works, and in my case, it was much, much later. It ended up looking like this (there were printed out player pieces too, but those aren't shown):

The premise was simple enough, player's each had three playing pieces that moved around the "town" and it became a tug-of-war to gain control of the town. After a few play tests, I found a lot of flaws in how the game was actually being played and then opted to try to refine the map and rules a little further which resulted in this:

After I built up this prototype, I scrapped trying to go for the artsy look with the buildings and just get the raw build on paper. A lot of changes took place between the first game prototype and the second, mainly the winning mechanic and how player's interacted with each other. I dropped the tug-of-war win strategy and decided to make it a little more linear because I hit a saddle point early on in development (another thing you'll learn in this nifty course!). I felt I was getting somewhere with this idea, and after a few more playtests I ironed out more kinks and ended up with what was essentially my final working prototype, this guy here:

This became my last real prototype that I play-tested. It's funny when you get to this point, you really get a sense of what you want to keep, and you tend to throw away a lot that doesn't work. I took a lot of feedback from my playtesters in what they enjoyed about my idea, and what things just weren't working. Every time I drew up a new game board, it felt like I was almost making a brand new game rather than refining my own with the changes I was implementing. But in the end it all becomes so worth it, because if you do your due diligence you'll end up with your final game! And from start to finish I have to say I'm pretty proud of the final product I put together.

In the end, it took a multitude of hours (don't even know the end tally), a multitude of dollars (roughly $100 or so) and a whole lot of patience but I ended up with a really nifty board game that I can say I made myself from scratch. I'm certain there are many people before me, and after me, who probably didn't or won't enjoy the process of making an analog game for this class. It's certainly not for everyone. I can say I didn't anticipate coming into Game Design, during the pinnacle of high-end graphic gaming, and designing a board game. However, I find the application of what I did an extremely invaluable tool not only for learning how to build a final product from a simple idea, but also how important the process of iteration is. If I didn't playtest my ideas and prototypes, I probably would've built an entire game off the first prototype I showed at the top, and frankly, it would've been a complete pile of crap. 

And ultimately, I created something I can take home and hopefully kick my little brother's ass at. 

Storytelling 101

During term 1 we had a Storytelling class with the very fantastic Mr. John Meadows. He delved into the tried and true structures of storytelling during our first few classes, more of a recapping of high school literature theory. We got a good refresher of the three act structure (you know, how 99% of stories are written?) and had our first assignment based on such.

I choose a game I quite enjoyed when it first came out: Star Wars the Force Unleashed. While it may not be the best game in the Star Wars Universe, I did thoroughly enjoy the use of its story to bridge the gap between the prequel and original trilogies. Since a majority of video games focus so heavily on gameplay, and often very little on story, I choose this as my example since it uses the three act structure so well.

Our next big assignment was a doozy, one that took nearly three weeks to complete. Well, for me it did, but of course that was both the benefit and curse of being a part of the last presentation group. For this project we learned about another very concrete storytelling device used in a lot of literature, the Hero's Journey. Our assignment had us take a movie, particularly one that we enjoy (unless you wanted to have a terrible time), and turn it into a video game using the Hero's Journey paradigm.

For this assignment I decided to go with a movie choice that, if you know me, was painfully obvious. As a big Miyazaki fan, it's tough to choose your favourite film from his library, but for this it was pretty easy. I picked Princess Mononoke since it is a prime example of the Hero's Journey. 

My presentation had it's hiccups for sure. I spent a good portion of time making a snazzy looking Keynote presentation for my final Storytelling class (where unfortunately Powerpoint is the more accepted format). I thought I would look pretty cool using my phone to control my presentation, but of course, doing things that aren't the norm usually blows up in your face. Note to self, try to test out connecting your equipment to a projector and running a slideshow BEFORE you're late to class after a break and spend the next 5 minutes getting it to work. However, I kicked technology in the face with a flying dragon kick and got it to work and belted out a stunning performance, or so I would like to think.

The Storytelling class is a fantastic way to break into the world of video game narrative and something I've been very interested in delving into myself. We'll see where I head when we have to stream in term 3!

KC

Freakishly cute!

When I last left off, I had been working on my Vinyl Toy assignment for Visual Design Principles. I showed off my mood board to give a sense of what I was going to do to the Munny doll we had to edit.   I tried to combine the grossness of disgusting naked animals (i.e. mole rats and hairless dogs) with the cute and cuddliness of fluffy animals like bunnies and kittens. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, but it was also very challenging, especially trying to make the creature look look convincing and not like a mish-mash of different parts.

We were able to see everyone's creations during the last class of the term. We have a lot of photoshop gurus in our class! Some of the Munny dolls looked absolutely disgusting, and I don't even want to know what their mood boards looked like. Overall, I'm very pleased with how my Munny turned out, being incredibly creepy but at the same time...kind of cute in a grotesque way.

As always, more to come!

KC

Let's name him....Albert.

Life imitates art?

Visual Art Principles has to be another one of my favourite classes in the first term. While we do get a lot of powerpoint presentations, it's a lot more open to discussion and class participation. Consider it a intro to Photoshop, but you'd like it a lot better if you have been using photoshop before.

Pixel Art: Myself as a cocky Jedi

We started out with pixel avatars. It was a simple project where we had to create an isometric pixel character of our choosing, using a weapon of any kind. Our class is definitely full of some creative souls because I've never seen a dolphin with arms and legs vomiting a rainbow beam, or an alien tribesman with a pitchfork. They were all insanely brilliant and well done. I decided to be narsacisstic and create myself in pixel form, similar to Habbo Hotel.


I think it turned out pretty well, and the likeness is uncanny! (Or at least my class thought so...) My personal favourite was being able to animate the tracers with the lightsaber swing, and it happened to impress my Visual Design teacher as well.

Currently, I'm working on an assignment where you take one of those Munny figurines and use it as a base template to create a creature that is both unsettlingly horrifying but oddly cute. Here's the moodboard to give a sense of where I'm going with this and we'll see if my final product suits it. Stay tuned!

Munny Moodboard: Where cute meets grotesque.

We're learning....no, seriously!

Carolina, Byron, Pavel and Kristina gearing up for Cyclades

One of the first classes to introduce us to the intense and unrelenting school year ahead was Game Analog Practical. What ensues in this strict and rigorous class, you ask? PLAYING BOARD GAMES! The first game we got to play among the ones that were offered was Cyclades, a conquest game of Greek gods and vicious armies. 

Imagine Settler's of Catan meets Greek Mythology. It took us a while to understand the rules, but we pushed on and played out hearts out. Near the end of the class, we weren't ready to leave. We had fallen so in love with the game and sought to stay after class to finish it. 

Game theory practical is an integral class to understanding the most simplistic concepts and mechanics of games, and why we enjoy playing them so much. We started out by playing tried and true classics, such as Backgammon, Chess, and Checkers, and moving onto much more complex games such as Settler's of Catan, Cyclades and Ticket to Ride. 

In one of our Game Theory Practical classes, we had about 2 and a half hours to come up with a completely new game based on the movie Lord of War, and using the existing board game of Allies and Axis. It was mind-bogglingly difficult, as we had to make it reflect the movie as much as possible, while still creating a functional game. It taught us how to work in groups, and why project management was so integral to constructing games within a large number of people. 

Dice: Important for Alea gaming

Game Theory Practical, one of the best classes of our first term in my opinion. Why? You get to rest your brain from all the other mind-melting information of all the other classes! Plus, who doesn't like to play board games?!