The closed loop

"Humanity, loss, race, friendship, acceptance - heavy topics for any medium, and especially difficult for videogames. After finishing Minerva's Den, these are the things I'm contemplating regardless."

-from Arthur Gies' review on IGN.com

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So, a couple of weeks ago, Minerva's Den, the story-based DLC for BioShock 2, was made available on Xbox Live and Playstation Network. This gives me some stuff to talk about.

Firstly, the response has been quite positive, for which I am very grateful. We're up there near the top of the highest rated add-ons on Xbox Live, and last I checked we had 200+ reviews on PSN with an average user rating of 4.96 stars out of 5. Can't really ask for more than that.

It's encouraging because, as DLC, we were a small team without a ton of resources. I'm insanely proud of what our team accomplished, and I think our success was based on having scoped the project appropriately for the amount of time and personnel we had. The story in particular was designed to be told as economically as possible from the ground up, and yet we seem to have connected with people despite a lack of flash.

The ending seems to garner the most attention on this front, even though the reveal is two stillframes on a monitor screen and a couple of voice clips, and the denouement which many people have called very emotional is nothing but some empty rooms and an audio diary, followed by a narrated 4-frame slideshow.

The key, I think, is in trying to tell a personal story-- something that followed the arc of an individual's life, and illustrated his getting through a particular trauma. The specifics are very sci-fi, but the core themes of loss and longing are intended to be universal. I think that on some basic human level it's very easy to put oneself in Porter's shoes, and so the impact of his plight comes across intuitively.

Race is one issue in the DLC that, while touched on very lightly in the actual content, has been brought up frequently in the reviews and other responses I've seen online as a central component of the experience. The guide character is a black man: Charles Milton Porter, a groundbreaking computer scientist. His race is only mentioned once, in the audio diary "How to Get Ahead," and otherwise goes unaddressed. I think it's the kind of thing where the issue of race hangs over the experience implicitly, and that one single point of acknowledgment carries with it much broader implications that were already in the player's mind. I found the response on this point interesting, anyway, largely because I never thought of that diary as being a big deal when I wrote it, so it made me take pause and try to analyze just why it's struck a chord.

As a side note, I've been monitoring responses to the DLC by searching for keywords on Twitter and Facebook, and it's been interesting for me to see the relatively high representation of female players posting their thoughts on Minerva's Den. Rachel suggests that this might be attributable in part to female users having a greater tendency to post on social networking sites in general. Nonetheless, it's nice to see a relatively high volume of responses from players who don't precisely fit the typical FPS-playing demographic. One likes to think that they've made something that can be relevant to people who aren't exactly like themselves.

In any case, I want to take this opportunity once again to thank the immensely talented team that poured so much hard work into making Minerva's Den a reality, and to thank everyone that's taken the time to play it. This is the first project that I've led, and as writer and lead designer, it's kind of my baby; it means so much to me to know that people are enjoying the experience of playing through the thing. I should also thank Zak McClendon, Jordan Thomas, and the rest of the management at 2K Marin for giving me and my team this great opportunity. Check out the Secrets of Minerva's Den on the Cult of Rapture to see who else worked full-time making great content for the DLC (as well as finding out about some obscure Easter eggs and in-jokes.)

Finally, you might have (though almost certainly haven't) noticed a slight change to the blog: the daruma in the header image, one-eyed for so many years, has finally earned his second pupil. Okay, so it's a crappy clonebrush job in the header image, but his real-life counterpart, which I've had since college, also has depth perception now.

In a lot of ways, this kind of closes the loop on this blog: Fullbright began in 2006 as a progress journal for the very first amateur FPS levels I made, right out of college; it was aspirational, meant to keep me honest and encourage me to keep working toward my dream. In the interim I banged the drum about games being smaller, shorter, more digestible experiences; telling more personal stories at an individual scale; of maintaining a focus on fidelity and immersion despite a more modest overall scope and team size. And now I've managed to lead Minerva's Den, a product which arguably upholds all of the above values.

DLC benefits from the stable base of a AAA game to build on top of, and the strong support framework of a full-size AAA studio to keep the production running smoothly, while allowing a small sub-team to follow its own creativity, making a new experience within the possibility space of the main game's premise. I feel highly privileged to have been involved in an enterprise like this in the capacity I was able, and I feel that by and large the results speak for themselves.

And that's just it. Maybe this entire blog has been one very long, indirect way of expressing a desire to make work that can speak for itself, finally rendering this little internet soapbox obsolete. Maybe that time has come.

Thank you all so much for reading this blog and contributing to my thinking on video games and game design. You've all made me more able to do the kind of work I've always wanted to do. For that I will be forever grateful.

Thanks for playing.


-steve

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Minerva's Den

It's officially announced! The upcoming story DLC for BioShock 2 is called Minerva's Den-- a new part of Rapture with its own story, featuring a cast of new characters plus a few familiar faces.

I was writer and Lead Designer on the project (as well as designing the first level myself...) and while I can't say much more about it yet, I can say that I'm extremely proud of what our team accomplished. Lots of new stuff is packed in there for one DLC! New levels, new story, new weapon, new Plasmid, new enemy and bot variants, even a new type of Big Daddy!

It's funny: I guess this makes me some sort of specialist on expansion content. My first design job was on an expansion pack for FEAR, then I worked on a direct sequel, and now an expansion for that direct sequel. I look at it as a blessing, really: never underestimate the value of working on top of a stable base.

Anyway, I'm really excited for people to start exploring Minerva's Den. It's a little project, but one with a lot of heart, I feel. Look for more info soon.

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Darks Days 2

Sorry the blog's been dark (again.) I'm consumed once more by getting something squared away at work. Hopefully sooner than later it'll be revealed publicly. Until then... maybe not a lot of blogging. Apologies, but with any luck, this will end up having been worth missing some blog posts for.

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Sorry the blog's been dark...

Attempting to ship game. Don't miss me too much.

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Cult of Rapture podcast

I appear along with Level Architect Alex Munn on BioShock 2's official podcast #2, available now from the Cult of Rapture, both in audio and text transcription form.

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Reorienteering: spatial organization in BioShock

Level design is communication. The constructed space itself needs to communicate the player's options-- where they can go, what they can do, how to progress. If the space doesn't adequately convey useful information, the player is lost.

Some games have less of this sort of information to convey than others. The player can assume that in a very linear, tunnel-like game, continuing to move forward is always the way to progress. As long as the designer communicates which way is forward (which door the player must exit through to continue) then the player will not be lost. On the other end of the scale are open-world games. The designer must clearly landmark destinations in the world, and the mini-map can be relied upon to lead the player there.

What about a game that lies more in the middle, like BioShock? Open-construction levels that the player can freely navigate, but that are made up of smaller, enclosed individual spaces result in a sort of ant farm arrangement. How does the designer keep the player oriented, and give them the information they need to easily navigate from one side of the level to the other?

These are my personal observations having spent a lot of time examining the levels from BioShock, and not any kind official process or information. These points mostly refer to the core systemic levels of BioShock: Medical Pavilion, Neptune's Bounty, Arcadia/Farmer's Market, Fort Frolic, Hephaestus, Olympus Heights/Apollo Square, and Point Prometheus.

Hubs & spokes

The most common high-level organizational strategy is the hub and spoke-- a large, central space from which smaller, self-contained spaces radiate. A straightforward example of this is the Medical Pavilion hub. You'll remember it as the place you first find the work of Dr. Steinman, and fight your first Big Daddy. The pavilion itself is large and open, with exits to the dental wing, surgery wing, funeral parlor, and so forth split off of it to all sides. However, the space is large enough to be partitioned throughout so that only a couple of possible exits can be seen by the player at any given time, as not to overwhelm them with too many simultaneous options.

As the player passes through the hub, they choose one possible exit and explore the space beyond it. Once this spoke has been explored, the pavilion acts as a reorienting space-- the player may think "alright, I'm done with this area. How do I get to the other parts of the level?" They backtrack through the spoke arriving back at the pavilion, which is easily identifiable. At this point the player only has to walk around the outer edge of the hub space to find exits to the rest of the possible spokes.

In this arrangement, minor spaces are always closer to major spaces than they are to other minor spaces-- the player always passes through the hub to get to another spoke. The player never proceeds directly from spoke to spoke, getting lost without an identifiable anchor space to reorient themselves by. The terminal point of any small explorable space is always just a short lifeline away from the major anchor space.

Consider this in contrast to an even distribution of small spaces that are all interconnected: if the player is on the far side of the level and wants to return to the place they started, they must pass through a succession of small, evenly-weighted spaces to return there. How does the player know whether they're making progress? How do they keep from getting turned around? The player must essentially memorize how each spoke is connected to every other. Even distribution of space results in a labrynthine construction that works against the player's sense of direction. Hub and spoke construction guarantees that even if the player is wandering blindly they will soon arrive at a large, recognizable space they've seen at least once before, and can reset their navigation from there.

Of course, this all goes back to principles of design for real-world public spaces. A shopping mall is laid out in this way-- short hallways branch off of a central concourse so that the visitor is never far from a large, central space that connects back to all the other minor spaces radiating from it. In BioShock, this is may be most recognizable in Fort Frolic, a large shopping mall in Rapture. Two main concourses are connected by a single passthrough, and all the shops, theatres and attractions branch off of these two major anchor spaces. When the player arrives at a dead end while exploring the tobacco shop for instance, they need only wander back the way they came until they reach the central atrium, from which they are reoriented and all their other options are open-- the Fleet Hall theatre, the casino, the strip club, etc. In Hephaestus it's the circular walkways ringing Hephaestus Core; in Apollo Square it's the large central courtyard containing the gallows, and so on.

The player's comprehension of an open-construction level is like a lifeline trailing behind them. If there's no central reorienting space, the player has nothing to anchor their line to; if the minor spaces radiating out from the anchor are too convoluted or arbitrarily interconnected, the player's lifeline gets tangled and they have no idea how to get back to their anchor point. A successful open-construction level is one where the player can be confident that their lifeline will always lead them back 'home,' from which they can cast out again, safe to explore new territory without being left adrift.

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Exclusive

The April 2009 issue of Game Informer magazine features the first big preview/reveal of BioShock 2. Check out the generous 10-page spread to find out how Rapture has changed since your last visit, who you play in the game, and just what this Big Sister thing might be. Available on newsstands now.

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GDC Guide 09

GDC shouldn't need much of an introduction: it's thousands of game developers from all around the world gathering in San Francisco to talk shop and gain contacts. It's catching up with friends you often haven't seen in a year; it's good vibes about creativity, passion, and the future of games.

For the last couple years I've put together a GDC guide for the design-minded and art-interested. 2009 is below; I've left off keynotes, tutorials and award ceremonies in favor of Wed-Fri sessions, but suffice it to say that the Game Design Workshop and Game Developer's Choice Awards are worth attending. Also be sure to spend as much time as you can in the Independent Games Festival pavilion! Play them all!

Practical

Helping Your Players Feel Smart: Puzzles as User Interface	Randy Smith	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This presentation examines the predictable series of steps players take when approaching a puzzle or challenge and describes a set of principles adapted from user-centered design that can be employed to keep players on the path to discovering the solution for themselves. Examples are drawn from the presenter’s experience on the THIEF series and DARK MESSIAH OF MIGHT AND MAGIC and from Valve’s Portal.

It goes without saying that Randy Smith is a smart dude with valuable experience in this area. A chance to glean the knowledge should not be passed up!

The Iterative Level Design Process of Bioware's MASS EFFECT 2	Corey Andruko Dusty Everman	TBD	Production/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This session examines the BioWare Mass Effect team’s new level-creation process, which is focused on maximizing iteration for quality while minimizing rework and cost. It shares some of the lessons learned from creating Mass Effect and evaluates how well this new process is working based on current experiences.

Iteration in level design is beyond essential. In the current age of high-fidelity visuals, agility can be hard to maintain. Always interesting to see how other studios tackle common problems.

Beyond Balancing: Using Five Elements of Failure Design to Enhance Player Experiences	Jesper Juul	TBD	Game Design/ 20-minute Lecture
Overview: This 20-minute lecture presents a toolbox for improving the design of failure in video games. Based on research on player reactions and attitudes towards failure across different audiences, the lecture identifies Five Elements of Failure Design for better failure design in single player games.

As someone who's following up that game that had Vita Chambers in it, this issue is well within relevancy for me. It's an interesting problem, and one that can easily be over- or undersolved.

Master Metrics: The Science Behind the Art of Game Design	E. Daniel Arey Chris Swain	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Seven cutting-edge metrics-based game design techniques have been gathered from some of the leading game designers in the world via personal interviews. All are presented visually and in a hands-on style. Each is intended to be practical for working game designers who seek to make better play experiences.

While designer instincts are important, cold, hard numbers cannot be denied. Gathering hard metrics along with soft playtest interview feedback is essential. Input on best practices in gathering and utilizing this data is always valuable.

Valve's Approach to Playtesting: the Application of Empiricism	Mike Ambinder	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This talk will focus on how Valve is broadening its playtest program to apply methodologies from behavioral research which should serve to both increase the stock of useful information and to decrease the collection of biased observations.

And speaking of which, you couldn't ask for better than insight from Valve, the masters of data-based design.

Player's Expression: The Level Design Structure Behind FAR CRY 2 and Beyond?	Jonathan Morin	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: While designers often want to support player’s expression, it rarely materializes in the end. This lecture describes how this particular problem was approached on FAR CRY 2. It explores its level design structure at every level and concludes with examples on how it could be applied to other projects.

Open-world level design is an interesting topic to me, mostly because I haven't really done any of it. A breakdown of how Far Cry 2's playable spaces were conceived and constructed is sure to be illuminating.

Lighting with Purpose	Jay Riddle Paul Ayliffe	TBD	Visual Arts/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This session offers attendees a guide to better understanding both the aesthetics of lighting and its practical application in game development. By sharing recent examples, the speakers will demystify the process and bring insight to the how and why of its use. Don't just throw lights in your worlds willy-nilly. Light with purpose!

I view lighting as just as much of a design element as an art element. My hope is that this session will present concepts like direction and readability to lighting artists-- and some pointers along these lines that could be applicable to designers as well.

Everything I Learned About Level Design I Learned from Disneyland	Scott Rogers	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Scott Rogers (GOD OF WAR, MAXIMO) reveals his secret weapon for designing levels: Disneyland. Learn how to inject the genius of the Magic Kingdom into your own game designs. Topics include player's thematic goals, pathing techniques, and illusional narrative. From skeletons to trash cans, there’s a lot to learn from Disneyland!

As commenters below have pointed out, there's more to 'learning from Disneyland' than a single ride. I've frequently heard the comparison between a game and a Pirates of the Carribean-style ride, which are worrisome: keep your hands inside the cart while you watch interesting things pass by. The description of this talk sounds like it analyzes the park as a whole-- from skeletons to trash cans-- which could touch on some interesting approaches to directed but open spaces.

Theory

Fault Tolerance: From Intentionality to Improvisation	Clint Hocking	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: As a follow-up to the second-highest rated talk of GDC 2006, this presentation looks at the specific challenges of designing game mechanics that both allow and encourage players to play expressively, while opening the door for them to accept small incremental failures and set-backs as an engaging element that adds depth and variety to dynamic play.

Clint Hocking's talks are routinely the most thought-provoking and engaging at GDC. A 'sequel' to the first talk I saw him give, from GDC 06, is hard to resist. He tends to talk about designing the kinds of game experiences that mean the most to me.

Read Me: Closing the Readability Gap in Immersive Games	Patrick Redding	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Visual fidelity and procedural complexity have grown independently of one another. This disconnect means that game information presented to players often provides little feedback about their actions. Patrick Redding (Ubisoft Montreal) discusses why the disparity must be addressed before games can tackle more complicated problems in narrative and AI.

Though this could theoretically (get it?) go into the Practical pile, Redding tends towards the higher-level. I suspect this will be less an in-depth examination of specific techniques as much as an overview of limiting factors to addressing more complex issues than shooting, jumping and driving through game mechanics.

Stop Wasting My Time and Your Money: Why Your Game Doesn't Need a Story to be a Hit	Margaret Robertson	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Stories help sell games, but they help break them, too - adding expense, frustration and inflexibility to the design process. Drawing on first-hand experience of troubleshooting a wide variety of story-based games, this session will demonstrate how you can deliver high levels of emotional engagement and strongly marketable themes without bogging your game down in cut-scene hell.

Margaret Robertson is awesome. I hadn't heard of her before going to see her talk at last year's GDC, and it blew me away. Her topic this year is right up my alley.

From First Date to a Committed Relationship: Designing for Engagement and Sustained Satisfaction	Scott Rigby	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Based upon multiple studies with over 10,000 gamers, this session presents the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction model (PENS) which focuses specifically on those experiences that lead to sustained engagement and player value. Each of three specific intrinsic needs will be reviewed (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), alongside specific game examples, recommendations, and strategies for implementation during design, development, and testing.

This one sounds like it may be some good-natured academic mumbo-jumbo, but useful approaches to thinking about a subject can often be distilled from what on the surface seems to be an over-systematized thesis paper.

The Human Play Machine	Chaim Gingold	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Every game we make or play engages a human faculty, whether it’s movement, make believe, or flirting. But are we, as game designers, using the full range of the human animal’s play capacity? What latent play faculties have the Nintendo Wii, casual games, and player authorship games (SPORE, LITTLEBIGPLANET) tapped into that makes them so novel, fun, and broadly appealing? What play faculties do we traditionally engage, and what play potentials are still out there?

Exploring fresh avenues of play and mediated creativity is incredibly important. Presumably one of the designers of Spore's creature creator knows a thing or two about the subject. Taking casual games and the success of the Wii as jumping-off points makes me somewhat dubious, but I trust some novel angles will be presented.

The Job

Creative Career or Grueling Job? Staying Passionate about Our Craft in the Games Business	Don Daglow	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: The games business keeps spawning more mega-corporations. It's tempting these days for individuals to start thinking of ourselves as depersonalized cogs in a big machine, or as boats torn from our moorings by distant storms and tossed around in the surf. Are we in creative careers or grueling jobs? Does the answer seem to change day by day and week by week?

I'd be interested to hear the perspective of such an industry veteran, and more pointedly the president of Stormfront until it closed, probably right around the time that Daglow was submitting this talk proposal. He's been in it for a long, long time; what's the secret, man?

Failure is NOT an Option - Basic Survival Techniques for any Producer/Designer	Rich Vogel	TBD	Production/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This session gives you important insight on why games fail and by providing these insights we learn how to survive. The speaker will provide examples and give his personal experiences fire fighting in the trenches. Expect to see lots of examples.

High theory is useless without the ability to get shit done right and out the door. This could easily go in the Practical pile, but it feels more like a "get the job done" thing. Ship it, ship it good!

10 Things Great Designers Exhibit	Gordon Walton	TBD	Production/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: The speaker shares his condensed, 10 step version of his 25+ years experience in hiring and working with game designers, focused towards emerging challenges in game development. Expect to learn what to look for in a successful designer, and be entertained and inspired simultaneously!

Though the speaker's experience is heavily online-focused, I'd be interested to hear a veteran's take on what's made a good designer through the years. Hopefully it could give me some tips on how to become a better one myself!

Just for Fun

Experimental Gameplay Sessions	Jonathan Blow	TBD	Game Design/ Two-hour Panel
Overview: A series of short presentations, where game developers demonstrate and talk about their new and experimental games. Independent games, academic projects, and AAA mainstream games are all represented.

Always interesting. Get exposed to small, new, weird, funny, innovative indie titles. Though for the most part you could get the benefit of this session by taking the list of games and downloading them yourself, the developers' takes on the pieces adds useful context, and usually some of the titles covered aren't available to the public at the time of the session. Expand your horizons!

Nuances of Design	Jonathan Blow	TBD	Game Design/ Two-hour Panel
Overview: Most modern games are conduits for a large amount of visceral communication: the colors and sounds that the player sees, along with the way his actions feel, convey most of the game's information and constitute most of the experience. By augmenting a classical presentation with play sessions, we hope to facilitate understanding that is instinctual rather than intellectual.

Similar to the above, but playable! An interesting 'tactile lecture' approach. A laptop is required-- talk about elitist!!! Just kidding, but I've never attended because for two years I didn't have a laptop, and for the third my battery died. Maybe this year I'll make it.

The Game Design Challenge: My First Time	Eric Zimmerman Steve Meretzky Kim Swift	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Panel
Overview: Welcome back for another year and another Game Design Challenge, where three amazing game design greats create original concepts around a very unusual game design problem. Join us as returning champ Steve Meretzky squares off against two new challengers.

The Game Design Challenge is often hilarious and entertaining, but it epitomizes the 'Just for Fun' heading-- completely frivolous. If you're paying your own money to be here, there are much more responsible ways to spend your time. But if you've got an hour to kill, you're pretty much guaranteed some laughs and a good anecdote coming away from the session. Did you know that Alexy Pajitnov once made pants for himself? This I learned at a prior Game Design Challenge.

GDC Microtalks - One Hour, Ten Speakers, Unlimited Ideas	Richard Lemarchand Robin Hunicke Eric Zimmerman N'Gai Croal Frank Lantz Jenova Chen Tracy Fullerton John Sharp Clint Hocking Jane McGonigal	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Imagine this: ten visually intense game design micro-presentations in a row, given by ten great speakers in the course of one fascinating hour! Come along to have fun, be challenged and get creatively inspired, or use the session to preview speakers who are talking elsewhere at the conference to see if you like their style!

When 20-minute sessions just can't satisfy your desire for compressed ideas and truncated trains of thought! Could be fun, could be pointless, could be thought-provoking... probably all of the above, cycling in 10-minute intervals. Some good speakers, to be sure.

Little Hands, Foul Moods, and Runny Noses 2.0: The Research You Should Know When Making Games for Kids	Carla Engelbrecht Fisher	TBD	Game Design/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: When developing games for children, especially preschool and elementary aged children, game designers often work in a vacuum. Far removed from the experiences of childhood, they might create games that they believe are interesting for children, but never have the opportunity to interview or watch children play the games.

Though I don't personally make children's games, the evolving design of games for kids has rankled me for a while. The current trend seems to be making kids' games the simplest, dullest, most child-proofed experiences possible. And I have to assume that children find this boring as hell! Remember playing the NES as a child? Remember Zelda's worldmap being a vast mystery? Contra kicking your butt even with the 30 lives code? Going back to Punch-Out!!, Metroid or Super Mario Bros. again and again until you finally beat them after months of trying? Children have a whole lot of time on their hands, enjoy being challenged and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with overcoming real obstacles, and can't be harmed by difficult or 'dangerous' situations in games. The overwhelming popularity of Pokemon for instance demonstrates that kids aren't looking for something simple and shallow. I hope the research here will bear out my feeling that children's video games don't need to treat their audience with kid gloves.

Cinematic Game Design III: Action!	Richard Rouse III Martin Stoltz	TBD	Visual Arts/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: This next installment in the popular Cinematic Game Design GDC lecture series focuses on action scenes. Many games deliver highly immersive conflict, but action films manipulate a wider range of emotions and make their conflict meaningful. A series of film clips that demonstrate different cinematic action techniques will be shown and deconstructed. Each technique will then be analyzed to see how it can be applied to gameplay to make a game more visceral and compelling.

It bothers me that "how to make your game more like a movie" is a "popular" series at GDC constituting three parts. Broad cultural influence is of course essential to good game design, but showing clips from big-budget action films as a guide to how you should design your video game is just a problem, plain and simple. I'd be interested to see the actual content of this presentation, as it sounds scary on the surface.


Art & Postmort

The Brutal Art of Brütal Legend	Lee Petty	TBD	Visual Arts/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: A behind-the-scenes look at creating the art for a highly ambitious, Heavy Metal inspired original game, this talk examines how the look of Brütal Legend was defined and realized. Details on how Double Fine met the challenge of creating a unique, stylized look while also delivering a “AAA looking” game on the current generation of consoles are revealed.

I am actually not super-psyched on Brutal Legend's visual style, but I do love any big-budget AAA game that shoots for a non-standard aesthetic. Maybe this presentation will help me warm up to Brutal Legend's particular take on dark 'n' quirky.

Creating First Person Movement for MIRROR'S EDGE	Tobias Dahl Jonas Aberg	TBD	Visual Arts/ 60-minute Lecture
Overview: Dice has taken the first person genre to new grounds with the free running first person adventure MIRROR'S EDGE. Learn what some of the challenges were and how we successfully overcame them when creating a believable first person full body experience

First-person body awareness is pretty excellent in my opinion. I can see my feet? Holy shit! Seeing DICE's processes for conceiving and implementing their first-person parkour sounds interesting.

The Unique Lighting in MIRROR'S EDGE: Experiences with Illuminate Labs Lighting Tools	David Larsson Henrik Halen	Wednesday, 10:30am — 11:30am	Visual Arts/ 60-minute Sponsored Session
Overview: We will present the technology and ideas behind the unique lighting in MIRROR'S EDGE from EA DICE. We will cover how DICE adopted Global illumination into their lighting process and Illuminate Labs current toolbox of state of the art lighting technology.

Sure it's a sponsored session, but the lighting in Mirror's Edge was really cool! The bounce lighting off bright orange paint onto a white concrete wall was just beautiful. I'd love to see how they did it.


There you have it, a full lineup! Sounds like a great selection of sessions this year-- it's all incredibly interesting, even the stuff that might rub me the wrong way :-) Safe travels and hope to see you there.

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Teaser

The first teaser for BioShock 2 has been cell phone cammed and youtubed.

Update: the real deal has been unveiled.

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Magazine

This month's issue of Official Xbox Magazine (with Fable 2 on the cover) contains a lovely little write-up of 2K Marin (including a team photo where you can see my smilin' mug.) Like the cover says, meet the minds behind BioShock 2! Nice being in print. On newsstands now.

Edit: I just noticed that every single game mentioned on that cover is a sequel.

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Shocking

It's a bit belated, but I can finally share the news: about a month ago I started as a designer at 2K Marin, working on BioShock 2.

Building a career in the games industry feels weirdly analogous to dating: a process of finding a studio that you're right for, and who's also right for you. My early flings as a tester were never meant to be long-term, and my first serious relationship with TimeGate was good while it lasted, but a long-distance arrangement just didn't turn out to be what I was looking for. Now it feels like I somehow stumbled into catching the prom queen's eye, and we're getting along great so far. Hopefully it'll be a while before she realizes she's totally out of my league.

As a studio, 2K Marin seems to be just what I was looking for: a group of super-talented people, working on a property I love, who are 100% invested in the design philosophy that drives me. I have conversations at the office daily about gaming and design that I'm only used to having with like-minded friends or on this blog, which is an amazing place to be at with your day job.

I have an enormous amount to learn from my new colleagues here, and I only hope I'll be able to absorb some of their knowledge and creativity, and feed that back into my work. As a gamer and designer, being involved with the next BioShock is thrilling. I'll try not to let anyone down.

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Work

A long time ago, I promised to share the specific elements of Perseus Mandate that I was responsible for.

I came into the project more than halfway through its life cycle. The entire single-player campaign was set in stone. My duties were primarily to A) bring various campaign levels from alpha or beta quality up to final state, and B) to create original maps for the Instant Action gametype.

First I'll share the original levels I built.

Instant Action

The Instant Action gametype made its first appearance in the 360 port of the original FEAR. These are standalone maps unrelated to the single-player campaign, which allow you to simply blast through a bunch of FEAR's combat without narrative elements to slow down the pacing. I was assigned to create three Instant Action maps (or "Bonus Maps" as they were called in the PC version.) One was based heavily off of an original design by Ian Shephard, so I don't consider it "my map" any more than the levels that I worked on from the single-player campaign.

But I created two other Instant Action maps from the ground up, handling all stages of development from original concept to final visuals and bugfixing. They were sort of "concept maps:" 'Sprint' and 'Arena.'

Sprint

This map eliminates all elements of exploration and equipment scavenging. Instead it focuses on an extremely focused linear path with checkpoints along the way at which the player can refill without slowing down. The challenge is to complete the "track" as quickly as possible, dropping each enemy as efficiently as possible so that you can cross the finish line without breaking stride.

Upon playing the demo of The Club, I felt that their game structure was a much more involved version of my concept for Sprint. Obviously the two productions were each developed completely independently of one another, but it felt validating to see another studio executing on the concept fully.

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Amanda Stewart performed an environment art pass on this map. The setting for Sprint is a bright, clean office complex, lit throughout by skylights. This environment was chosen to emphasize the focus on precise execution of your run, and to avoid enemies getting lost in the shadows. One battle does take place in the basement/generator room underneath the building.

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Arena

This map is the opposite of Sprint: it's a large, enclosed courtyard-- basically a single, open-plan room-- that gets invaded by wave after wave of enemies. The player must survive until the final enemy is killed. The checkpoint system reappears, by way of supply crates that are periodically dropped by planes flying overhead in a very arcadey fashion. The player kills waves of enemies, restocks at the supply drop points in the corners of the map, then continues the cycle.

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Again, the player's goal is to clear the map in the fastest possible time. My focus was to create exciting, open-ended combat in a dynamic space; challenge the player to maintain awareness of his surroundings at all times; and include some excellent destructible elements in the final battle, once the arena had served its purpose. So at the end of the level, the huge "Power Armor XP" mecha is dropped from a helicopter and crashes through the sculpture in the center of the map, then can smash through the surrounding concrete arches to chase the player.



Amanda Stewart provided the standing lamp and destroyed arch art assets.My favorite detail of the map is the large clock on the north wall, which runs in real time. I was actually surprised at how nicely the visuals turned out, since I was responsible for all the geometry and texture placement on the buildings surrounding the courtyard (I am a level designer, not a world artist.) The modernist sculpture in the center was also fun to build, and to blow up.

Single-player

I was responsible for adjusting gameplay elements, event scripting, tuning, performance, and visuals in a handful of the single-player campaign maps, but I don't feel like I "owned" any of that content. If my fellow LDs laid the foundation and built the frame, I just put up the drywall and gave it a couple coats of paint. These levels included the abandoned Underground, the sewers/subway following the Underground, and the mining facility, as well as a good deal of work on the final level of the game.

One area of the single-player campaign that I did feel some ownership over was the freight tunnel that preceded the mines. The player rides an elevator down into the large subterranean freight tunnel, and accompanies an NPC through it. I was handed the shell geometry, and built the visual look of the area:

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Tom Hanrahan (late of TimeGate, now of Monolith) provided the layout and shell geometry. Art assets come from the original FEAR, as well as the TimeGate art department. I placed the textures and art prefabs, provided final detail geometry, built the large pipes along the ceiling, and lit the space. The dusty fog of the volumetric lights really sells the scene, but unfortunately it only appears on the PC version; we cut volumetrics altogether from the 360 version for performance reasons.

Moments

Throughout the campaign, I was asked to go in and add some unique moments-- scares, scripted events or enemy encounters. While I only felt like a guest in the other guys' levels, the events that I added were themselves entirely of my own conception and execution. Spoilers ahead; here are some unique moments I snuck into the game proper:

Data Core Vision

During the first act, the player works his way through the ATC's Data Core facility. The main shaft runs many stories vertically through the center of the building; as the player criss-crosses through the level, he passes through the main shaft a number of times. The first couple times you pass through, it looks like this:



After becoming familiar with the environment, you pass through a final time, and are confronted with this scene:



The Data Core environment was built by Jim Kneuper, and the cloning pod assets were provided by TimeGate art department. The scene did what I wanted-- you feel frantic and distressed as you try to escape from the horrible machine, then disoriented as everything is suddenly back to normal. Jim said it's his favorite part of the level, which tends to make one feel good.

Foreshadowing of Chen's Fate

As the player presses through the sewers under the city, he suddenly finds himself in an unfamiliar place: a strange industrial facility. He's greeted by his squadmate, Chen... but the vision ends with an image that implies things might not end well for the good lieutenant.



Art assets provided by TimeGate art department. I built the industrial facility environment and scripted the sequence, as well as the transition out of and back into the sewers. The sewers were built by Jim Kneuper. The idea was for an attentive player to suddenly remember this scene far down the road when Chen finally meets his end, and to foster that spark of realization when the two scenes click.

The Abandoned Hobo Camp

Before exiting the sewers, the player encounters a makeshift barricade of sheetmetal and cast-off home furnishings. Enemies burst through with breaching charges, sending debris flying. Upon further inspection you find mattresses and a flaming barrel; apparently vagrants had set up a small shanty here.



I placed all the set dec and scripted the enemy encounter. This event was originally created for the Perseus Mandate demo, and was integrated into the campaign proper. The level was built built by Jim Kneuper.

Chen Disappears

After a large explosion rocks the city, the player takes refuge in the abandoned Underground. He and Chen are separated from the rest of the squad. They must hurry to get back topside. The player follows Chen, until the inexplicable happens.



Shane Paluski (late of TimeGate, now of Remedy) is responsible for the scripting in the initial monologue, as well as the overall visual look of the Underground. My role was to make the player follow Chen for a bit, as this segment has originally been solo. I wanted to show off as much of the partner AI's range of motion as possible, so I had Chen ducking under obstructions, tumbling through windows, and sliding over tables. I had the player's vision distort and Chen dissolve into ash, leaving the player to wonder if he'd even really been there in the first place.

Window Surprise

While working your way back up from the Underground, the player comes across a small ammo cache in a side room.



Bruce Locke built this level. This little event I stuck in is a cheap scare, but one that's apparently effective. It's especially satisfying putting these kinds of shocks into the game late in development. A tester in QA has become completely familiar with the map, having played through it dozens of times; then one day you hear him literally scream as a scare sequence suddenly pops up somewhere it hadn't been before. Priceless.

Interrupted Firing Squad

When Paxton Fettel is killed, his platoon of Replica soldiers goes dormant, instantly falling into hibernation where they stood. As evidenced by scenes throughout the FEAR games, Replica forces tend to purge their surroundings of any civilian life. This gave me an idea for a grimly humorous little tableau:



Bruce Locke built the level. At this spot, I placed a squad of Replicas that was in the midst of executing a group of civilians, firing squad-style, when Fettel's death pulled the plug on their consciousness. The guy on the far left was seconds from meeting his maker like his two unfortunate friends, when out of nowhere the Replicas just dropped what they were doing and went to sleep. As you can see, the mental stress left the survivor trembling in a quite a state.

Wicked Witch

Finally, a little flourish I added to a scene I'd become way too familiar with while working on the game. After the player goes through enormous amounts of trouble to apprehend one Gavin Morrison, the guy is up and crushed to death in one of Alma's psychic freak-outs. I wasn't responsible for this scene, except for one small bit at the end.



Shane Paluski scripted the scene. It's messed up, but also kind of funny: I mean it's only one step away from a piano falling on the dude. So I added the skid motion to the truck after it lands, and left poor Morrison's feet sticking out from underneath. More than a couple people suggested his toes should curl up when you look at them. I'm glad this little touch made it into the final product.

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So, those are my personal contributions to the game, along with the less tangible finishing work I did throughout. My time spent working on it was incredibly fun, rewarding, and challenging. Less than a year ago I was a tester; now I can point to stuff in a retail video game and say "I made that." Which is nice.

Anyway, enough about my day job! Thanks for bearing with me.

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day.

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Soldier

I read a quote last night in The Cage by Kenzo Kitakata:

"What good is a soldier who doesn't want a medal?"

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Retail

It's official: my first title as professional level designer has reached retail store shelves.

It was cool seeing the preorder signs and boxes in EB last week, and I'll pop in next time I'm near one to see the genuine article in person, shake the box around, hear the discs rattle. It's a modest accomplishment-- Perseus Mandate/F.E.A.R. Files isn't a release with anywhere near the profile of Call of Duty 4 or Gears of War-- but in the two years since I started this blog, I have gone from temp-hire game tester to full-time level designer with a shipped title under his belt. I'm proud to be able to say that. It's what I set out to do, and I hope that this will be the first of many titles with my name in the credits.

The low profile of the title means it hasn't received many reviews of yet; other factors have kept the reviewers from being too kind. Perseus Mandate is taking a bit of a beating, while F.E.A.R Files is doing a little better, no doubt bolstered by the added value of Extraction Point being included in the box. Innumerable factors result in the final state of a game at release, much less the review scores of that game, but I stand by my work on the title, and am proud to have been a part of something that I hope will bring some players a good deal of enjoyment during their time with it. As a fledgling designer, one who is only a single member of the design team and who was brought onboard less than 6 months before we went gold, I can only take some small amount of credit for our successes with the game, and a small amount of responsibility for our failings. I also hope that as more reviews trickle in, those Metacritic averages might creep upwards a bit.

We're digging in our heels and revving up pre-production for our next big, unannounced title. Here's hoping that with more resources of all kinds at our disposal, we'll be able to use the lessons learned from Perseus Mandate and deliver something truly outstanding!

In the meantime, if you do pick up Perseus Mandate or F.E.A.R. Files, pop open Instant Action: Sprint or Instant Action: Arena to play the two levels which are entirely my own, from concept to final polish. I am also largely responsible for Instant Action: Clinic, though I built it up from a base created by fellow level designer/former QA tester Ian Shepherd. My hand is visible throughout the campaign as well, though none of the level layouts or meta-elements are mine; only finishing and polishing. I'll have images and video of the material I'm directly responsible for sometime in the near future, for the curious.

Cheers!

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Demo

The playable demo for F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, a standalone expansion by TimeGate studios, has been released!

I was responsible for creating this demo, but most of the content isn't mine. I grabbed large sections from one level created by Shane Paluski and another by James Kneuper, a nightmare sequence from one of Sam Villareal's levels, stitched them all together, cleaned up some elements, added more of my own (including the final room,) did a bunch of bugfixing, and voila, there we have it: one playable demo that is truly a team effort.

I'm happy with all our work on the demo. It's a fun little playthrough, looks nice, and does a good job of illustrating what Perseus Mandate is all about. I hope that if you're a F.E.A.R. fan looking forward to the expansion, or just a gamer who happens to try it out on a whim, that you enjoy the experience we've put together.

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Home

Official update: I'm moving back to San Francisco, and I'm taking my job with me.

It's been almost six months now that I've lived in Sugar Land, 2000 miles away from Rachel. Work on Perseus Mandate is wrapping up, and I need to get back home. Rachel and I have both spent enough of our lives in a long-distance relationship.

I told TimeGate I had to get back to San Francisco by September, and they said, "Why don't you do that, and keep working for us from there?" So, I move back on the 16th and immediately start working remotely for TimeGate from my apartment. I'll maintain all my responsibilities but submit my work online, and be flown on-site every once in a while to collaborate directly in the office.

I have high hopes for the setup. I think I'll be very productive at home, and that my communication online and over the phone with my cohorts back in Texas will be effective. I'll look forward to my occasional visits to the office as well-- as I mentioned to the people here, it will be much more realistic for me to have a long-distance relationship with my office than my girlfriend. That much I'm sure of.

In any case, it's been a good but difficult six months. Here's hoping that the next six are even better, and much easier to live with. San Francisco, I'm coming home.

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Announced

The project I'm working on at TimeGate has been officially announced. It's F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, a new standalone expansion for F.E.A.R. Not much concrete info has been released yet, but I was responsible for the demo level that's going to be shown later this week during E3, so my work will be the first public face of Perseus Mandate. Like the earlier F.E.A.R. demos, this one is a compilation of bits and pieces from the single-player campaign, grafted together into one continuous level, with a little polish and additional content provided by yours truly. So, most of the core content was created by my fellow LD's here at TimeGate; I just chose, arranged, and finished parts of their work to act as a showcase for what's new in this expansion.

I haven't got a whole lot else to say about it at this point, beside that I'm proud to have been given the responsibility of debuting our product to the world, and that I hope its public reception is positive. Unfortunately I won't be able to show much of my own work on the project until the game ships, but I'll try to give some sort of behind-the-scenes look at the demo creation process once it's been shown to the press.

F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate-- my first title as a designer!

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Texas

Greetings from Sugar Land, Texas.

I've made the move and it's my first day at TimeGate. The project I'm working on seems to have a really solid groundwork laid for us level designers, and I'm looking forward to digging into the work.

Being in Texas is a sort of culture shock deja vu. I'm from Florida before I moved to the west coast 6 years ago, and this big, flat, hot, Republican suburban sprawl is a little uncomfortably familiar. On the way in from the airport, I saw a Support the Troops yellow ribbon bumper sticker, the loop of which was replaced with a cut-out of a Christian cross, on the back of an SUV. My first day included The Cheesecake Factory for lunch and Chili's for dinner. I'm just trying to keep my head low.

I'm planning to write up my impressions from GDC soon. There's a lot of ground to cover there, and hopefully I'll start on it when I get home. But for now, I'm off to complete my first day as a level designer.

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Pro

Official announcement:

I will begin work as a level designer at TimeGate Studios on March 12th!

TimeGate's most recent release was Extraction Point, the official expansion pack for F.E.A.R. Considering my work with WorldEdit and the F.E.A.R. maps I've released, I would say that TimeGate and I are a pretty good match :-)

TimeGate has been on the scene since the late 90's, gaining prominence with the Kohan series of RTS games before switching gears with the release of Extraction Point. I was very impressed with my playthrough of the expansion, which recently won PC Gamer Magazine's Expansion of the Year 2006 award. It's a great team of guys there and I'm excited about the project.

I'll be moving to Texas immediately after GDC. I'll miss being in the Bay Area with Rachel and everyone else I know here, but I feel like taking on this new role will be worth it.

I hope to find the time to release BENEATH pt. 2, which is not so far from completion at this point. I'd like to make it a priority, as I'd hate to see this go unfinished, since I'm excited about how I plan to finish up the story.

In any case, with this move I'll be a professional designer, which just makes me happy beyond words. I'll keep this blog up to date with how it all works out. Thanks to everyone who's provided me with the encouragement and support to do this thing. Lone star state, here I come :-)

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