New Beginnings Pt Deux, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Conceptual Stage

Cripes, here we are.

So Call Connect has been chugging along at less than incredible speed (although we did get featured on the front page of Eurogamer as App of The Day, yowza!) and for the moment, creatively if not sales-wise, lies dormant, like a sort of handheld Marie Celeste.  Adrift, at least until we decide to update it again with, um, something.  Level pack?  If you'd played it, you'd understand what a silly thing that is to say.  New weapon upgrades maybe...

Regardless of Call Connect's failings or great successes, the time has come to move on to pastures new and make a second game.

We're not concerned about suffering a cliché sophomore slump as for that to happen we'd need a stellar opening effort.  While we're very proud of Call Connect and what we achieved over the course of producing and refining it, it hasn't set the world alight, or even a part of it (maybe Uzbekistan).  What it did do was allow us, to prove to ourselves, that we could provide ourselves with the proof that we, ourselves, proved, eventually.  Ahem.  Point is, we realized that we could churn a decent game that was polished, a bit charming and worthy of some small critical acclaim. We also proved that were just as adept at failing to market this charming, polished critical success adequately.

We're reasonably assured of our ability to replicate the latter, and though the former is elusive we feel as though (this Royal We business is starting to wear thin.  I'm going to revert to me, Greg, now) I've learned enough to stack the odds in our favour this time.  Part of that process is what you are reading now; get out there, say something, apologize for apparently being deliberately offensive despite the quote being decontextualized, retreat from the tabloid glare, regather your strength and build a following.

Some aimless and not so aimless rambling there.  That's me all over; verbose, prone to wandering and terribly unfocused unless Stewart Lee or vanilla soy milk is involved.  I'm the artist though, I can do that.  Shaun is the voice of common sense, reason, logic and programming.  I'll be posting pretty pictures of things and occasionally being serious.

Like now.

The conceptual stage of any artistic endeavour is personally painful for several reasons; one, endless rejections and revisions of your various concepts is going to be the norm for the foreseeable future and two, at least in my case, I'm very rusty and apt to be frustrated.  So ensues a few weeks of finding the time over nights and weekends to sharpen my skills, just to get them to that stage where I can reliably produce acceptable designs.  Lots of self chastizing during this bit.  Technical difficulties abound.  Not being a full time artist I can go weeks or months without putting pencil to paper or pen to touch screen, so regaining one's touch is a frustrating experience.  That came across as a bit whingey, yes.  Still, beyond this stage I'm in THE ZONE (meaning my bedroom).

Once this figurative hurdle is cleared (and I'm not sure I've cleared it just yet), I can set about creating themes, mockups, designs and a general aesthetic 'feel' for our next title.  This is the Good Stuff.  At this point I'm thinking cute (but not too cute) mecha, as the chunky, colourful yet tactile feel of deformed mecha would serve me well on multiple fronts.  As ever my tendency toward dark and grungy barges its way to the front of the queue, stepping on toes and elbowing heads, so I'll let that out of my system gradually until clean, clear designs are the norm.  Dark and grungy is a wonderful means of loosening the art muscle though.  Just the tonic for writing a thesis.

So, there I am, is.  Here is the very first half-reasonable snippet of concept art that may or may not give an indication as to what we intend to produce.  Dark and grungy, yes.  Greg of WTTC: out.

The first of many.  It's like a mecha-avocado, bent on vengeance.

Note: listening to Nahvalr and going to see Richard D. James in person in a few weeks.  Bazinga!

Mein Craft

Few people on the gaming globe (it's like the regular globe, just a tad smaller) have yet to hear about Minecraft.  Speaking of globes, the potential maximum size of a Minecraft map would allegedly take around 6 years to traverse on foot.  I am willing to take on this Craft Walk challenge and am currently taking donations on behalf of ClockFund, a non-profit organization dedicated to... well, obviously that is a lie.

Lying aside, Minecraft is fast becoming the definitive PC game of this year and possibly the decade to follow.  While much is made of the adventuring aspects, the griefing, the ingenuity and dedication of certain players (see the functioning 16bit ALU for a frightening example), the vast, complex projects constructed using the myriad tools and editors that have sprung up since MC first appeared, my time with MC has revealed perhaps it's most appealing aspect; teamwork.

I dabbled briefly with the singleplayer to become acquainted with the rules and control scheme, but multiplayer was clearly the budding minecrafter's natural habitat.  Having joined a server of like-minded types, we set about creating an environment that lacked any kind of architectural consistency.  Castles here, sunspheres there, an impossibly high diving board and a tree that touched the world's invisible ceiling.  None of it really fit; these would not be 'council approved' constructions.  I had built my own little castle and continue to work on it but the most interesting and discussion-worthy experience I have so far is interaction with fellow crafters.  Myself and one other local decided to collaborate on a rail line, one that would run a complete circuit of the inconsistent township, sort of a sightseeing venture.

He began to dig a trench on an island beach, close to where his own personal project was located, then began excavating in earnest.  In the meantime I set up a smelter and workbench to facilitate the construction process.  We communicated via the in-game chat function and pretty soon had created a length of track that, encased in glass, dipped below the water line and continued on under water until it reached the land mass opposite.  Visible from the surface, it was quite pretty.  The sense of achievement derived from completing that particular project easily equaled and probably surpassed that which I'd felt when creating my own personal project.  My interest in collaboration and the nature of collaborative spaces probably was cause for deeper analysis than "well, that was fun", but collaborating on and completing a project in this kind of space was not something I had experienced before, at least not virtually.

This, to me, is Minecraft's real hook.  Investment of time and effort to create something impressive in single player mode is doubtless satisfying, but that shared experience ensures a more emotionally resonant experience for the players that contributed.  Minecraft's gameplay can quite rightly be labeled as emergent, but this emergence is creative and collaborative, surely worth far more to the player.

Few games (if any) are like Minecraft and many games are not designed to be used in such a way, but give players a tool-set, a space in which to use those tools and the capacity to collaborate with other players and voila, remarkable things happen.  A quick glance at youtube shows any number of Minecraft videos, many of them concerning group projects (notably this one).  People, generally, enjoy working with other people and further to that, people enjoy creating with other people.  This is not exactly a new concept for game developers, but never has it been so starkly highlighted as it is in Minecraft.

The creative act is highly addictive.  Minecraft gives you a relatively simple building system (one consistent unit of measurement) and the capacity to do virtually anything with with it.  Throw in other people who can build with you in real time and hours, days, weeks are lost creating something that has little relevance (beyond youtube) outside of the space in which it was created, yet is maddeningly addictive and very rewarding.

Whether Markus Persson thought so deeply about the multiplayer experience or not, his game allows free expression of creativity through a shared experience and the importance of that to those that play Minecraft is utterly evident.

- Greg

GCAP '10

Fascinating trip to GCAP this year (that is to say GCAP itself was fascinating, not the trip there.  That was mundane and, dare I say it, rather painful).

If I could sum up this year's conference in one word it would be this one: marketing.

This word and subsequently theme was common to 80% of presentations, particularly the plenaries.  David Edery's take on the lifecycle of a console is a useful guide for those wishing to maximize their chances of success when launching a new title on a particular platform.

The chaps at Endgame offered one of the few solely gameplay focused presentations as they outlined the difficulties they encountered when balancing, er, difficulty.  Fractured Soul for the DS is a gamers game, if there is such a thing any more; if there is, this it is one, or something.  A significant portion of their presentation was centred around the user testing process and the feedback generated by it.  Heartbreaking might be one way to describe it.  However, for the sake of a little pain, a well balanced gameplay experience is its own reward.

The Doublefine keynote was entertaining though not particularly relevant to those not running a large studio.  Despite that, it did offer one particular lesson applicable to any developer; take risks. 

Between sessions we were treated to a middling selection of pastries, none of which tempted me (though they were quickly snapped up by other more ravenous developers.  Devs are a fine judges of pastryflesh).  Lunch was distinctly DIY which seemed in keeping with the rise of local indie developers and the room in which we were provisioned could have housed a giraffe.

The EEDAR keynote illustrated the value of statistical data to developers as stat after stat was hurled at us from the podium by Greg Short.  I was left in no doubt of the comparative scale of the industry and it's continuing growth through a particularly rough economic period.  This previously 'recession proof' industry had been downgraded to defcon 2 or 'recession resistant', though this is still a pearly state of being.

Halfbrick's session had arguably the heaviest marketing focus and highlighted the need for a dedicated marketing person or unit depending on the scale of the assault.  Of note were the fact that reviews were synchronised to launch alongside the game itself, thus creating a sort of tidal wave of attention.  Of further note was the focus on maximizing marketing opportunities for each update, effectively relaunching the game in the process.

Special mention must go to Jupiter's Casino for having the gaudiest neon lighting system imaginable, the most appalling taste in music and the snottiest waiter this side of Noosa.  "Got the money mate?  Can't pay with hopes and dreams!"  No, no you can't, though when you've already set up a bar tab it's not really relevant is it?

Afternoon all,

Greg