Degrees in Game Design

Kotaku has reported NYU's plans to offer a degree program for game development in Fall 2009.

A commentator has reigned in as follows:

I hope [...] lessons in typography [carry] over to your games. So many games use such horrendous custom-made typefaces. The counters are too small, the kerning sucks, tails are added or omitted that obscure the glyph and make it look too much like others... I usually find myself going, "just use Univers and get it over with." Unless you want serifs, then just stick with Garamond. Though I personally prefer Cheltenham.

I couldn't agree more with the root of that commentator's highly-specialized sentiments.

Maybe I'm a pessimist but I think one end result of game design programs will be game designers who know even *less* about the world, but who know more technical things about making games. I didn't think of typography, but I did think of everything else. It seems to me that when games try to "deal" with drama, or with science, or with political intrigue, or with history, or with tragedy, or with philosophy-- I could go on and on-- a very half-ass and high-schoolish understanding of these domains comes across. Yet the graphics are pretty good. (You could say that these factors are direct results of the market. But I would argue that low production values limits the size and diversity of the market.)

The Benefits of Non-game-specific Disiciplines

When we see printed typgraphy out there in the real world, in books or in magazines or ads on television, it's delicately crafted by experts. But in games, it's usually made by programmers or whoever. Years ago, the result was password systems that used highly ambiguous fonts. Password systems have since been abolished, but we still have inefficient and poorly presented graphical interfaces, menu systems, and sometimes hard-to-read text.

Considering the amount of game developers that very obviously want to achieve "cinematic" things in their games, but end up doing it (editing, camerawork, voicing/direction, writing) like inept amateurs without even realizing it, a good education in filmmaking could be pretty useful.

Speaking generally, better education in design could lead to better games too. A good designer strives for simplicity. The good designer tears down inefficient functionality and puts some magically seamless blend of form and function in its place. More talented designers would give us better interfaces, better stage design, better control schemes, and smoother game mechanics.

The over-arching problem is that game developers and publishers don't have a budget to make great cinema or typography or anything. They don't have staff who are gifted in those specialties. They get paid to make a passably-programmed game with good graphics. Film-making is one of the most hugely collaborative arts to ever emerge-- simply watch the credits rolling to see how many very different skills it took to make the movie. The diversity of talent required to make a good modern game is somewhat similar to that, but the division of labor and expertise does not appear to be similar at all. (Example: Grand Theft Auto IV was an enjoyable game, and had a gigantic production staff. But the onscreen text was too small, the controls were syrupy and sloppy, the map/radar systems did not use enough color contrast, the menu system was terrible, the checkpoint system was punishing, the plot had no development, the story was preachy, the multiplayer interface was frustrating and cumbersome. To complement my criticism with some praise: Call of Duty 4 had superb design in almost every facet of the game, and had fewer obnoxious flaws than almost any recent game I can think of.)

Here's the optimistic angle: digital games are a young industry, compared to the highly evolved cultures of advertising or film-making. Maybe one day game developers will be able to live up to the responsibility of using typgraphy, of using 3D cinematic camera-work, of using live voice actors, and of using careful plotting and pacing. I just don't happen to know how degree programs in game development will affect that.

Unskippable Cut-scenes

Again on the topic of cut-scenes. As Joystiq has reported, Steven Spielberg doesn't like cut-scenes. Especially when there's no option to skip past them.

Since I feel a lot less mean beating up on unskippable cut-scenes, let's start with that.

Unskippable cut-scenes are bad (because they're unskippable)

Other commentators on Joystiq have defended the wide-spread use of (unskippable?) cut-scenes on the basis of "good story." However, buying and playing a game does not signify an agreement to sit through unskippable cut-scenes. When we buy a DVD we expect to be able to easily navigate the content. Not necessarily for the sake of skipping content that we don't like, but for convenience.

Skipping cut-scenes is an obvious matter of convenience. Maybe you're at an extremely difficult section that you have to repeatedly attempt a dozen times in a row, and you don't want to also repeatedly watch the 2 minutes of cinematics that precede it. Maybe you got interrupted the last time you played, and you want to quickly resume at where you left off without wading through cut scenes. Maybe you restarted your game progress, because you wanted to fix your initial character or something, and you've already seen the intro cut scenes 20 times before. Maybe you have to stop playing, but the next save/checkpoint only comes after the end of the cinematic that you're in the middle of.

Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.

The "but it's artistic vision! next thing you know, gamers are going to demand that there's a menu option to instantly max out their level, start anywhere, and do anything!" argument is a lousy straw-man.

Those of us who appreciate the ability to freely turn the pages of our books, and to move between scenes on our DVD's, have never demanded that authors or producers also give us the ability to strengthen the protagonists or change the content of the story. That would be a matter of whimsy, not convenience, which some gamers apparently cannot distinguish.

The notion that cut-scenes should be mandatory because "the story is so good!" is self-absorbed. It's akin to a book author who releases some kind of digital book that is a forced scroll from beginning to end because he doesn't want the reader to accidentally or deliberately mess up or ruin the brilliant pacing of the plot by freely turning the pages.

Even during the specially-implemented SPEED RUN mode of Mirror's Edge, you are forced to watch the ending cinematics every time you finish your run of the last level. That's ridiculous. (The ending cinematic itself is nonsensically rushed and poorly conceived-- but my point is that even if it was the greatest piece of cinema ever devised, I might have an ever-so-slight desire to skip it after my fifteenth attempt at a record-setting run.)

Unskippable cut-scenes are indulgent at worst, and lazy programming at best. I don't see how any gamer could disagree with that, since the frustrating consequences of unskippable cut-scenes are so obvious and I would assume universally understood.

The only time we as consumers can't skip things is when we go to the theatre or a concert, or arguably on television. WHEN WE OWN A PRODUCT, we expect some minimum of convenience.


...But skippable cut-scenes are pretty bad too

Ouch. Sad but true. They're bad because they're poorly made, way more often than not. And they're poorly made because the people making them do not have cinematic talent or skill.

A commentator on Joystiq has pointed out to those who emphatically agree with Spielberg has said something along the lines of this: modern videogames have the capability for marvelous cinematic sequences--deal with it!.

But on the contrary, it's the game industry itself that has refused to deal with the consequences, and refused to take up the responsibility for actually crafting quality cinema--which would require actual dedicated staff for things like "writing" and "acting" and "direction", not stand-ins from the sound, design, and programming teams.)

I don't personally like Spielberg's style, but he certainly knows something about direction and production. I'm not necessarily embarrassed to watch his work when there's somebody intelligent in the room with me. I don't think he should find a new job, or sub-contract out his work. But let's face it: most video-game cut-scenes are poorly written, poorly acted, and the camera-work is amateurish. And the fact that gamers don't even seem to notice might even mean that sloppy cinematics aren't worth criticizing. But allow me. (And before you think "Ha! But Spielberg's movies ARE embarrassing, you fool!" let me say this: what commonly distinguishes movie campiness from videogame campiness is that the game developers do not realize how campy and corny their masterpiece scene is.)

Good cinematographers, editors, camera-operators, and dialog writers do what they do because they are good at it. They better be, if the studio is risking a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Game developers, on the other hand, go to work and toss on their filmmaker wannabe shoes not because they are good at it but simply because they can, and because they think it's cool. The industry should not have 3D animators acting as the de facto directors and cinematographers and camera operators, or have designers functioning as dialog/text writers. Designers should not be the directors of voicing. It's not their job, and way more often than not, they do it poorly.

An analogous example would be if the author of a best-selling book was also the book binder, the covert-art designer, the marketing copywriter, and directed the production of the audio book. No book publisher would ever, ever allow that, unless the author was obviously an untiring and multi-talented genius, yet video game publishers allow it all the time. In fact they possibly even generally enforce it, through managerial decisions that don't bring cinematically-talented people onto the staff, for budgetary or other reasons.

At best, unskippable cut-scenes are a sloppy programming oversight. Maybe the programmers didn't have the time, will, knowledge, or direct orders to implement "skipping" functionality. Who knows. But at worst, unskippable cut-scenes are the work of over-zealous cinema posers who want to force and preach their half-baked "art" directly down our threats.

The industry should grow up. It's a sobering fact that terrible cinematics (acting, direction, writing) do not affect, or are not perceived to affect, game sales. Gamers like games, and will forgive them for their disgraces or maybe not even notice them. But there are a few other apparent facts to consider:

1) There are more consumers who "routinely/occasionally watch movies" than there are people who play games.

2) The cinematic standard, even for crappy movies, is much higher than the cinematic standard for games.

3) If a game comes along that ever rivals the cultural or popular sensation of a blockbuster movie (like The Dark Knight, or something), it will probably have similar formal quality. And all of us-- gamers, non-gamers, and the game industry-- will be better off.


Anyway, I was glad to point out a few outstanding game productions in my last post about cut-scenes.

Who Forgot The Funk?

Rock Band is OK. Rock Band 2 is better, but only if you pay to import the Rock Band 1 songlist and DLC. Not a huge fan of Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. It has "legends" right there in the title, yet Jimi Hendrix isn't REALLY anywhere to be found. I've never played Guitar Hero: World Tour. Also never played Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Definitely won't buy the Rock Band Country Pack.

Personally, I'm waiting for Funk Band: Who Got The SOUL?: Classics of Funk, Soul, and R&B, Comin at You Straight from the Snake Pits of Motown and Stax, And There Won't Be No Scarcity Of That Philly Soul.

A man can dream.

Cut-Scenes, Then and Now

Too Many Game Developers are Filmmaker Wannabes. There you have it.

Even old antique games had cinematic cut-scenes. Maybe a sprite of a UFO would fly across the screen and capture a Princess by beaming her up against her will. Then the UFO flies away. The purpose of the cut-scene is to show the player what to do and what's at stake: That's the bad guy! Get that S.O.B!

Modern technology has permitted game cut-scenes to be so overblown that they no longer have any useful connection to the game as a game. They're only used as stuffing-holes where the heavy-handed developer can do all their indulgent wannabe filmmaking. The cinematics are intended to spray the screen with drama, with "fleshed out" the characters, and inept amateur camera-work, and to dazzle the gamer with new and spectacularly failed attempts at photorealism. In other words, movie-like sequences serve to make games more movie-like, rather than to enhance the game as a game. Meanwhile, important features suffer from the developer's priorities: lack of controller configuration options, sloppy design mechanics, lack of support for things like co-op, permanent score-keeping and leaderboards, efficient user interfaces, native speed-run support, and all that.)

"Movies are exciting. So why not incorporate some movie-like things into our games?", you say?

OK, sure. Why not. A lot of movies are pretty exciting, aren't they, and all we do is sit back and watch. The problem is that even a crappy box-office bomb is held to a standard of dialog/acting/script/plot/character that is leagues beyond the pathetic internal artistic standard of video games. And even as the dialog, plotting, and editing of game cinematics reeks all over the place and embarrasses you in front of your grandparents and girlfriend, you can still tell how much time and resources they put into the inept cinematic visuals. It's sad.

I'm not going to mention any names.

How about I name some games that did it RIGHT. Call of Duty 4, Thief, and No One Lives Forever had great production values for their cinematics-- possibly the best ever in gaming, or certainly in first-person action. The voice-acting/direction and scripting was superb. System Shock 2 was excellent, and did a good job with writing and voicing. Half-Life used no cut-scenes whatsoever, and was an outstandingly immersive and fun game.

NOW GO AND DO LIKEWISE, GENTS.

Mirror's Edge Problems

First off I want to say Mirror's Edge is a brilliant game. I've played it for hours, and will play it for many more hours. It's the first game since Thief: The Dark Project to take first-person action in a bold new direction. That's phenomenal. I'm a happy camper.

But let's talk missed opportunities. Let's talk about THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM. I'll only cover a few parts of the game that were so IMperfectly included that I'm stupefied. The developers very obviously wanted to, and loved to, include this or that feature but accidentally completely botched it instead.

Really the only rational explanation for these problems is that the publisher rushed the release of the game, or that the entire development staff was suddenly stricken with blindness and deafness about 3/4 of the way through development, or that the game staff was literally a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters who got mostly lucky.

Sliding Speed

What could, would, and should be the funnest maneuvre in the game-- the slide-- makes you feel like a tortoise. At one point in the game you get the chance to dive down a nice smooth escalator median, and slide down it like a kid on a playground. At another point (SPOILER) you get to slide down the slightly curved facade of a huge modern skyscraper. But you barely move when you're sliding! And the slide emits a ridiculous squeaking noise like you're sliding down a leather couch without any pants on! SPEED UP THE SLIDING! SPEED UP THE GODDAM SLIDING PLEASE! When I'm sliding down a steep beautiful shiny surface, I should be ZOOMING.

Have you ever slid on a dud slide in real life? You know, a metal slide at a playground that somehow isn't smooth enough, and your butt hardly goes anywhere when you get on it? So you just stand up and get off it, or you use the bottoms of your feet to pull yourself forward? That's how fun sliding is in Mirror's Edge.

It baffles me that a developer could make a parkour game where the world is a playground and the whole premise of the game is to jump/run/slide/bound off everything you come across, but you can't go zooming down a polished metal surface at more than a snail's pace.

False Sense of Urgency

Who needs urgency? Not me, personally. One of the most brilliant sections of Mirror's Edge has no urgency at all about it. You must physically navigate, by any means possible, all the way to the tip top of a frighteningly tall atrium using scaffolding, concrete, banners, construction equipment, and whatever else you can get your feet or hands on. Musical cues complement the "revelations" you experience as you figure out the next sequence of dazzling parkour moves that brings you substantially closer to your goal. It's fantastic. I've never seen anything like it in a game. Just fantastic.

But at many other times the game forces you to run urgently away from the police through bland linear corridors and tunnels. In these sections, which happen way too frequently, the parkour stops dead because there's no obstacles or structures to jump on. The walls are colorful, but the hallways are just flat and rectangular. The game does everything it can to create a sense of URGENCY at these points. Your partner tells you through your earpiece radio: "Keep going! You don't want to know what's behind you!" The game would have you belief that's the case, and does what it can to give you the definite feeling that there's a gang of angry cops behind you, plus you have your friend's word to go on. But if you ignore your friend's warning and all the fast-paced music, and stop in your tracks, maybe check on your watch or tie your shoes, or try to remember what you have in the fridge, you'll see that no cops or anybody else ever catches up to you. Nobody converges on you. Nobody shows up. The posse of bogeymen you were desperately running from doesn't even exist. Everything-- visually and musically-- suggests that if you let up your mad sprint for one second, a pig-pile of cops will be on your ass and your goose'll be cooked. But they never come. The hallways stay empty.

The developer's reasoning seems to be: "Well the player *knows* they're supposed to keep running. It's pointless to bother putting in any pursuers, because the player is running so fast they'll never see them anyway!"

It was the single-most illusion-breaking experience I have ever had in any media ever. It played out like a heavy-handed avant garde / fourth-wall experiment. It almost made me sit back and say: "This is all fake. Video games are hollow illusions. They are pathetic constructs. What a profound lesson about the meaninglessness of mass entertainment I have been taught today."

The lack of anybody actually pursuing you was offensive. It was despicable. It was lazy. It was utterly ill-conceived.

How difficult is it to have the gang of cops ACTUALLY on your tail? It's inexcusable. It's like playing Space Invaders on a blank screen and having to pretend that there's aliens there to blast.

Zero Human Habitation?

Everybody knows, in real-life, that if you're going to recklessly sprint through an office building and dive and stomp all over everybody's cubicles, half the fun is zooming past all the stunned desk-workers and bystanders and knocking all the bumbling secretaries out of your way.

But Mirror's Edge has no bystanders. You run through huge residential complexes, office buildings, shopping malls, train stations, and metropolitan streets, but you never find a single living soul except for a few patrolmen who you knock unconscious.

In Grand Theft Auto IV, you could very satisfyingly rush past pedestrians while you evaded a police helicopter. In GTAIV if the nearby pedestrians were carrying coffee, or papers, or groceries, they'd sometimes drop them in shock. They even spit out their coffee when you jam on the breaks just before backing over them as you pull your car out of a parking space. You could even be a complete jerk and press a button to SHOVE people out of your way as you dash madly down the sidewalk. GTAIV was a severely flawed game but it certainly got that part of things right.

Mirror's Edge, despite intending to be the most kinetic first-person adventure ever developed, never reinforces the thrill with deft touches like that.

Not only are there no people to zoom past, there are no props within the game world that react to you brushing past or zooming around. you can sprint across a desk and jump around an office, but the desk phones, files, chairs, and potted plants will never move an inch out of place. That's a colossal missed opportunity.

(A good use of sound-mapping does contribute to the game world, though. Your footsteps make prominently different sounds depending on whether you're walking on concrete or walking on a thin metallic ventilation shaft, and so on. When you leap over a wide ledge and cling to a pipe like a scared monkey, the gutteral thwappy THPHWUNK of flesh-hands-on-metal is magnificent.)

Underused Moves

Mirror's Edge has a "Press yourself up against a wall", which you can use to slowly cross a narrow ledge with your back to the wall. You also use it to slip yourself through extremely tight cracks in boiler rooms and maintenance tunnels, at a few points during the game. However, at no point can you get into an elevator and press up against the wall to avoid gunfire before the doors close, even though you run into an elevator while people are trying to gun you down on more than one occasion.

It also has a "Run up behind an enemy, then snatch his gun and knock him out in a wild burst of kung fu" move that I never get sick of. But since the game has no real AI/detection engine, there's only about three times in the entire game when you can actually get behind an enemy's back to execute the move. Enemies always know exactly where you are, even if you secretly run behind a parked truck in a remote corner of gigantic pitch-black parking garage. Enemies are always facing you, even when you try to rope-a-dope/loop-de-loop them in a darkened labyrinth. It doesn't matter how slowly, carefully, or quietly you move. The cops all have limitless x-ray vision, or some magical compass oriented toward your body instead of toward magnetic north, or an extraordinarily keen sense of smell.

Getting Personal

I have to get personal now.

At one point in the game, you happen to take a bit of a bad fall through a plate-glass ceiling. You end up about 30 feet down, on your rear and in a daze. Luckily one of your friends was waiting for you to show up, so he comes over to you while you're down on the ground to see if you're OK. The plan is to flee together.

Now a normal person would ask if you're OK, then grab your hand to help you up. Watch a basketball game. It's an unspoken and unwritten rule that NO PLAYER SHOULD RISE FROM A FALL without the direct physical assistance of a teammate. This is LIFE. We help each other. We especially help our friends. First, it's helpful. Great. Secondly, it probably reinforces and nurtures our relationships and our team spirit. So not only is it normal good behavior but it's all-around good practice.

Yet the friend in Mirror's Edge doesn't even touch you while you stand up. He doesn't help you up. He waves his hand in your face, as if to magically revive you, then turns away and motions for you to get up and follow him.

Mirror's Edge already contains TWO first-person hugs, ONE first-person HAND-SHAKE, one case of BEING BEAT UP by a large man in first-person. All those were fun to watch and reflect on, and they're all somewhat unprecedented for a first-person action game. Yet there is no first-person GETTING HELPED UP BY A FRIEND, even though the potential for it is right there slapping us in the face. Weird.

I'm sorry to to have to suggest that the reason for that oversight is that the developers don't have a full enough vision of the world or of human life to know or realize how natural or significant the social act of physical assistance is. I think developers and gamers, on the whole, are insular. I'll continue my sweeping generalization in another post, and just say for the time being that I can't think of any other reason why such an awkward faux-pas between "friends" could get it's way into a finished product.

TO SUM UP

Great game. How could so many-- obvious?-- things go wrong? I've even skipped over most of the Big Problems that reviewer's have already criticized the game for (shortness, poor writing, absurdly weak and sudden conclusion, etc).