IGN: 2011 Video Game Release Time line

What is a game designer?

People almost always confuse game designers with game developers; they would point out a developer and say: yeah I know this guy, he works in game design; The process of explaining what is a game designer exactly has been a pain for such a long time; I'm pretty sure almost 70% of the people I know have no idea what I do and what I found shocking is that I had to explain the concept in interviews when I applied to local game development houses. 

The state of game development in the middle east and in Jordan especially is a subject of a different post beyond the scope of this one. 

To many of us, we love this man like a father; I had the honour of meeting him back in 2007; didn't wash my hands for weeks

For now, let us start with the definition of a game designer. 

Definition 

A game designer is a person who designs games. The term normally refers to a person who designs video or computer games, but it can also refer to one who designs traditional games, such as board games. 

Game design is the creation of the rules and content of a game. It does not involve programming, art or animation, or marketing, or any of the other myriad tasks required to make a game. All of these tasks collectively can be called “game development” and game design is one part of development.

A video or computer game designer develops the layout, concept and gameplay: the game design of a video or computer game. They work for a video game publisher or developer. This person usually has a lot of writing experience and may even have a degree in writing or a related field (such as English). This person's primary job function is writing, so the more experience they have with the activity, the better. Some art and programming skills are also helpful for this job, but are not strictly necessary.

History

Early in the history of video games, game designers were often the lead programmer or the only programmer for a game. This is the case of such noted designers as Sid Meier and Will Wright. This person also sometimes comprised the entire art team! As games became more complex and computers and consoles became more powerful (allowing more features), the job of game designer became a separate job function, with the lead programmer splitting his time between the two functions, moving from one role to the other.

 Sid now strictly designs; his focus shows in creating complex titles such as civilizations series 

Later, game complexity escalated to the point where it required someone who concentrated solely on game design. Many early veterans chose the game design path eschewing programming and relegating those tasks to others.

Today, it is rare to find a video or computer game where the principal programmer is also the principal designer, except in the case of relatively simple games, such as Tetris or Bejewelled. With very complex games, such as MMORPGs, designers may number in the dozens! In these cases, there are generally one or two principle designers and many junior designers who specify subsets or subsystems of the game.

What is a Game Designer?

As you may have noticed, game design is an incredibly broad field. Those of us who are professional designers sometimes have trouble explaining what we do to our families and friends. Part of the reason for this is that we do so many things. Here are some analogies I’ve seen when trying to explain what it is like to be a game designer:

• Game designers are artists. The term “art” is just as difficult to define as the word “game”… but if games can be a form of art then designers would be artists.
• Game designers are architects. Architects do not build physical structures; they create blueprints. Video game designers also create “blueprints” which are referred to as “design docs.” Board game designers create “blueprints” as well — in the form of prototypes — which are then mass-produced by publishers.
• Game designers are party hosts. As designers, we invite players into our space and try our best to show them a good time.
• Game designers are gods. We create worlds, and we create the physical rules that govern those worlds.
• Game designers are lawyers. We create a set of rules that others must follow.
• Game designers are educators. As I have discussed earlier, entertainment and education are strongly linked, and games are (at least sometimes) fun because they involve learning new skills.

Hanarubo Sakaguchi created worlds in the Final Fantasy series players still enjoy to this day 

Game design in the real world

In the video game industry, the job of game designer is one of the hardest to obtain. It is not easy, though many people think they "have what it takes" to perform this job. It is the biggest problem that faces designers is that people always have opinions about everything, and while it's part of the designers job to collect those pieces of information and take what suits the project the most; the constant nagging could get tiresome. 

Because everyone think that there's nothing to being a game designer and they can be it, it could lead to lots of clashes with the management; Game designers are creative people and hostile disrespectful environment in which the boss dictates what 'he' thinks best all though it's out the scope of his expertise could get the designer very very frustrated.  

Almost everyone in the game industry has what they believe is the ultimate game concept and is waiting for the opportunity to develop the game. As a game designer, they may get the opportunity to develop that game concept, so competition is usually very high.

Since a video game publisher may invest millions of dollars towards a game's development, it is easy to understand why they choose game designers carefully—one or two poor game concepts could end up costing them millions of dollars of revenue and could even risk bankrupting the company. For this reason, game publishers usually choose game designers who have a proven track record with several hit games under their belts. Less seasoned designers may be assigned to low profile games that have budgets in the low thousands.

Hideo Kojima works with huge teams to create cinematic gameplay experiences; I attended a lecture of his in TGS 2006 in which he described in full detail the creation of MGS4; he inspired me to become a better designer 

Being a successful game designer implies handling all these pressures and coming up with a title that will entertain the masses and bring back the company the most revenue possible. 

Thoughts on Dead Space 2

Introduction
So I just finished Dead Space 2 and wanted to discuss it a bit. Mainly because it is a perfect example of some trends in game design that I find are really harmful. I also find that it has some moments that could have been brilliant if just slightly changed, making it extra interesting to discuss.

Before going into the actual critique I want to say that the game did have some enjoyable parts, especially the at times absolutely amazing scenery. Dead Space 2 just radiates production value and it is a very well-put together game. I quite liked a lot of it and it is one of the few games in recent memory that I played until the end. The game has very nice atmosphere in places and even attempts at a sort of meaningful theme(more on that later).

At the same time, it is very clear that Dead Space does not aim for any real sophistication. For instance, you need to stomp on dead mutant children to get hold of goodies and gore is quite excessive. In many ways, the game is much closer to Dead Alive (Braindead) than to something like Alien, and should probably be judged that way. However, in the following discussion I will approach the game as if the goal was to create a tense sci-fi horror game.

With that out of the way, let's get down to business.


Cheap deaths
When I started the game, I was not in the best of moods (being a bit agitated), but I did what I could, darkened the room and so on. Everything to heighten immersion. As the game started out, it began with a non-playable sequence, something which made me relax and slowly immerse myself. Once the game actually began and I gained control, my mood had changed quite a bit and I felt I was ready to be immersed and role-play. Then after just playing for 30 seconds or so, I took a wrong turn and died.

This broke all the immersion I had built up over 10 minutes or so, and I had to start all over. The intent was probably to communicate the danger to the player, but this could have been made a lot better. Why not simply hurt the protagonist, or something similar, giving in-game feedback that the player should be very careful. After I had died and gotten a loading screen, I had to build up my mood again almost from scratch.

The same thing happened at the end of game, where you need complete a sort of chase-sequence before the final cinematic. I was unsure of the controls in this sequence and died just before it was over. Just like with the death at the start, this completely spoiled my mood and removed any emotional impact the ending might have had. Instead of becoming an exciting sequence, it became an obstacle and I concentrated on the pure mechanics instead of role-playing.

Having cheap deaths during immersive/emotional events like this is just lazy design. The sequences are meant to be completed in a specific fashion anyway, so I cannot understand what can be gained by having players restart over and over until they "get it". Sure it adds some kind of excitement, but this is greatly removed on subsequent attempts anyway, not speaking of how bad this is for immersion and role-playing. And considering there are other ways to add consequences to actions, I do not think it is a valid reason. It is just falling back to old and uninspired design.


Saving Progress
Scattered across the game are save stations, all using an interface similar to 20 year old games. I do not understand why these are in, as it is the most immersion-breaking device one can think of. Having to enter a menu, and choose a slot in which to save, has no connection to the game world at all. Consoles nowadays have large hard drives (and save games can be made very small) so it cannot be a technical limitation like in older games. I am guessing it is just another case of falling back to old design patterns, and again I think it is totally unnecessary.

The way I save games in systems like this is to loop through the visible slots (usually four), always picking the oldest save game to overwrite. That way I have three older save games to go back to in case something screws up. As this is basically the system we emulate in Penumbra and Amnesia, and nobody has raised any complaints on that, I guess I am not alone in saving like this. So, if one still wants to use the save stations, my first suggestion would be to simply skip the interface and just save upon interaction. If players want to go back to certain places have a "Save Game" option in the menu or simply a chapter selection.

But why stop at that? I would have liked the game to skip saving altogether and do it automatically for me. Dead Space 2 implements resource streaming extremely well and you never feel like you travel between different maps, but roam a continuous environment. Not having any kind of visible save system would fit this design perfectly and most likely increase atmosphere.


Repetition
It seems quite clear to me that Dead Space 2 tries very hard to provide a lengthy adventure (took me 10 hours or so go through) and to do so it repeats many elements over and over. This is something that exists in just about any game, where the goal of having filling a certain length quota trumps pacing, story development and the like.

For example, I really liked the first time the protagonist is forced to crawl through a ventilation shaft, but the tenth time this was repeated it just felt old and uninspired. Instead of trying to come up with new ways to create similar moments, the first one used is just recycled. Another example is the hacking mechanic that was served as an interesting diversion the first time, but ended up being an unwanted frustration.

You rarely see this sort behavior in other media (at least the good works). It is only in games where an, at first intriguing and noteworthy, event/idea is repeated until tedium. I would much rather have a shorter game that constantly bombards me with unique and inspiring sequences.

Dead Space 2 does do this right at a few times though. For instance, one section has the protagonist hanging upside while enemies swarm from all directions. This sequence is never repeated and not even dragged out. I would have liked to see that for all parts of the game.


Looting and Shooting
I might be that I am slightly disturbed, but I find shooting limbs of monsters a great pastime. Especially with the fun and greatly varied arsenal that Dead Space 2 provides. So much did I enjoy it in fact that it is hard to focus on much else. Sure, some of the fighting can be pretty intense with enemies swarming you, but not that much different from how a game like Tetris can be. Added to this is the focus on upgrading the weapons and finding ammo/money, which further brings your mindset toward the shooting part of the game.

I have talked about how focusing on fun can be bad before, and Dead Space 2 is such a perfect example. Your main motivation to explore the environment is not to get deeper into the story or to enjoy the art, instead it is to search for goodies. Because the game constantly bombards you with items popping up and force you to pay attention to them (you will run out of ammo otherwise), this becomes the main thing occupying your mind. Everything else is simply pushed into the background, which is really a shame consider the epic set pieces and sometimes interesting background facts. In their effort to comply with "fun" gaming standards, the creators have actually let much of their hard work go to waste.

I must add that the combat was not completely un-scary though. I started out playing on normal, and at one point, my resources had almost run out, which made me much more careful and tense when I thought monsters might be near. As I was put in this state, it completely transformed how I approached the game, and I started to pay more attention to background sounds and the like. Unfortunately, as I died the combat sequences stopped being scary and instead became tedious challenges in resource management. This together with the increased urge to find hidden items, killed most of the atmosphere to me. I then change to easy difficulty and could enjoy the game more as I did not have to worry about looting or combat strategies as much.


Story
Dead Space 2 does have a story, but you will have to make an effort to find and experience it. As if the focus on combat was not enough, the actual story seems to be consciously pushed into the background. I can actually only recall one time when you had to actively confront the story (reading a note gives a clue on solving a puzzle). The rest of the story just plays out in the background and as a player you are pushed on by the urge of upgrading weapons and dismember mutants.

The game does have some interesting aspects though, for example trying to tie the entire game up with the protagonist's grief, but since it is so drawn out and overwhelmed by other elements, it does not really work. Another intriguing part of the game are some earlier sequences where you encounter people fleeing from monsters and people locked up in cells. Hearing the hammering of somebody wanting your help was quite disturbing and had they just added some kind of interaction related to this (like try to open the door) it could have been extremely effective. Instead it was just pushed into the background.

One of the story things that I did really enjoy was how a recording spoke of the material of a ceiling in an upcoming room. When entering the room your attention is directly drawn up and you could relate the recording, graphics and background story to each other in a nice way. I really wished the game had a lot more of this.


Motivation
In the first Dead Space you played the part of a silent errand boy, something that the creators tried to change in the sequel. The way they try to do this is to make the protagonist an active character and make his own decisions. However, I think this sort of backfired and in Dead Space 2 I had even less of an idea on what is going on. Several times I had to check the "mission log" in order to find out what I was up to, and to find out the reasons for this. Since the protagonist was already talking, I wished he could have done this just a little more, explaining his action and reminding me, the player, of what I was supposed to do.

This also connects to the way the story is told, and further distances the player from the events in the game. Instead of deciding for yourself what the right course of action is, you just follow the game's instructions in hope that will allow you to progress. So while in the previous game you followed the commands of in-game characters you now follow the commands game's interface. This is of course much less immersive.


End notes
Playing Dead Space 2 made me both sad and hopeful.

Sad because I feel there is so much excellent work that has gone to waste and that I keep wondering if there will ever be any change to this. For every game i play I feel that there is so much potential lost due to following old and dull game conventions.

Hopeful because while there is much I do not like, it feels that there is not that much needed to totally transform the experience. Simply removing all combat focus and making the game half as long would probably have created a much more interesting experience. The question is if that will ever happen, but now I am at least confident that it is possible.

SONY PSP2 AKA NGP Announcement

At the PlayStation Meeting 2011 over in Tokyo, technology overlord Sony finally and officially unveiled the PSP2, currently codenamed the Next Generation Portable, or NGP. The PSP’s successor looks fairly impressive so far, sporting the long-desired dual analog sticks that the original PSP was missing, built-in 3G and a touch-sensitive OLED screen, among many other neat features.

Current Name


Though most people will most likely refer to the device as the PSP2 well after it receives an official name, the current codename of the device is the Next Generation Portable, or the NGP for short. Not exactly creative, though if you feel a currently unofficial, uncreative codename is a problem, I cordially invite you to whip out your Nintendo DS and remember what those two little letters stand for.


Hardware and Software


- High-resolution, touch-sensitive OLED screen
- Built-in WiFi
- Wireless 3G connectivity
- Tilt-sensitive SIXAXIS controls
- Three-axis electronic compass
- Built-in GPS
- Front and back facing cameras
- Buttons: D-Pad (up, down, left, right), dual analog sticks (finally), action buttons (triangle, circle, X, square), shoulder buttons (left, right), start, select, volume controls, PS button, - power button
- New LiveArea service and new application Near 
- Built-in mic
- Built-in stereo speakers
- Capacitative multi-touch pad on back of the device

an unusual location for an unusual touch surface 

Storage Media


As we all expected, no more UMD. 
NGP uses a small flash memory card, dedicated for NGP software
The new game cards will store add-on content (presumably downloadable content) directly on the card itself, as well as store save data directly on the card (like game cartridges have done in the past)


Battery Life


It is supposedly around the same as the original PSP, which means anywhere from a few hours to ten hours, depending on what features are being used. 
It would seem to average out at around four to five hours, which makes it on par with the battery life of the upcoming Nintendo 3DS


Specs


- CPU: ARM Cortex-A9 core (quad core)
- GPU: SGX543MP4+
- Dimensions: Approximately 182.0 width x 18.6 height x 85.3mm depth
- Wireless: 3G, IEEE 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- 5-inch OLED touchscreen, with a 960×544 resolution (by comparison, the current PSP has a 4.3-inch screen with a 480×272 resolution)


LiveArea and Near


- Near app can detect all other NGP owners in your area 
- Shows other NGP owners are playing
- Can chat with other NGP owners
- Display NGP owners’ rankings for games


Games Shown


- Based on existing franchises: Uncharted, Killzone, WipeOut, Resistance, LittleBigPlanet, Hustle Kings, Hot Shots Golf, Monster Hunter, Call of Duty
- New franchises: Little Deviants, Reality Fighters (supposedly an augmented reality game, Virtua Fighter pun?), Gravity Daze
Trophies
- NGP games will feature trophies
- Backwards Compatibility
- Can play any downloadable PSP game
- Can play any PSOne game supported by the PlayStation Suite


PS3 Exportability


Real life Big Boss Hideo Kojima showed off the PS3 Metal Gear Solid 4 running on the NGP, and it reportedly looked almost as good as the PS3 version
Kojima said the NGP demo of MGS4 took the model and data environments from the PS3 and exported them directly to the NGP
Though the NGP isn’t exactly as powerful as the PS3, this sort of portability suggests it’s fairly close, and could seemingly lead to playing proper PS3 games on the NGP
Example: If the PS3 and NGP can share save data, less powerful PS3 games (many of the PSN games) could surely be played with both devices, allowing a user to bring their PS3 game with them after they leave the house


Interesting Notes


- A price has not been announced
- The window for a Japan release is during the 2011 holiday season, no other details about release dates have been mentioned as of yet
- No word yet on internal memory, or what kind of memory card will be used for external memory (for videos, music, downloadable games, etc.)
- SONY apparently decided against integrating 3D technology into the device; gamers are debating on the matter, Nintendo's venture would probably unveil how this technology would serve gamers of the next generation. 
- The Uncharted game is supposedly a brand new one, not a port, with graphics so incredible that it apparently looks like regular PS3 graphics at a glance
- The back end touch pad doesn't make sense to me yet; but it would be interesting to see how designers are going to use the double sided touch features to create games; would be revolutionary or would be just another gimmick no one would care for in a while? supporting games would tell. 

SEGA TOYLET

the Sega Toylet! A new game system attached to urinals in Japan that you play by literally peeing into it and having the game measure your stream!It basically consists of a screen on a wall and a pressure sensor positioned inside a public urinal below it. If you haven’t guessed how it goes yet, the games are based on the strength of your stream.


The games are currently being tested in four locations in Tokyo, with each Toylet offering four games to choose from:

There’s the “Graffiti Eraser”: The stronger the stream, the more cyberwalls you can clean up.

Or try “Milk From Nose.” This is a multiplayer game. Your stream is measured against those of previous users and translated into milk blown from a character’s nose. The strongest nose-blowers pushes the opponent out of a ring, and we have a winner. Your opponent need not be present to play.

Another game equates stream strength with a gust of wind blowing the dress off a girl.


The concept might sound silly (not to mention sexist, since it’s obviously designed to go into a men’s room), but it sure beats staring at a blank wall at your local watering hole. The screens can also be used to display digital ads when no one’s, uh, playing. The platform is still in development, so there’s no word when we’ll start to see local pee tournaments in Japan yet. 


Once again, the Japanese have beat us in the war of toilet evolution. 

Thoughts on: Red Dead Redemption

Unlike the rest of the world, I hated red dead redemption; the game is basically GTA on a horse, only driving a horse is much more difficult than a car. 

Perhaps, i'm being a bit biased here, RDR no doubt is a polished work of a veteran team. The obvious repetitive use of their previous successes and trying to mask it in an unappealing - in my opinion - wild west theme is kind of insulting. They could've easily called this game GTA:Wild West and no one would've though twice about the name. 

I don't know if it's just me, but I think the wild west theme belongs to the 40's; we've grown tired of it, it's not cool to be a cowboy, it's not cool to roam between cacti and the accent is definitely not attractive. 

The game starts out by giving you no ties with the character whatsoever, they throw you off in the middle of no where and then start giving you pitty tasks to teach you the controls of the game. Some would argue that the reason the character doesn't have a back story at the beginning of the game is to give the player the impression that they control the outcome of the character, which is somewhat true, how the player rarely have control over scenarios that might get you shot like the first bit of the game. 

The game could've been much more enjoyable on a PC, this is clearly not a console game from the control scheme, moving the two analogue sticks while you're riding is pain as it is, then you have to aim with a trigger button, shoot with another and adjust aim with the right analogue stick. I believe these mechanics would've worked a lot better with a keyboard and a mouse. 

Not to mention the painful horse back riding experience; carefully tapping the x button on a high speed chase while desperately trying to control the crazed camera is one thing, but shooting while doing that is something else. 

 

The game would definitely have it's fans; Rockstar games fans probably get their socks off playing this; but this isn't my cup of tea ... definitely hoping that they would try a much more original effort with LA Noir; looking forward for that one. 

Physics and Heightmaps

When I thought that all problems with heightmaps was over, I stumbled upon something sort of tricky recently. The only thing I had left for heightmaps was to add physics to them. This seemed easy to do as it was basically just a matter of sending the raw heightmap data to the physics engine (newton game dynamics) However just as I had done this I realized that this was not enough: the terrain could have many different physical properties at different places (a spot with dirt, one with rock, etc).

The thing is that in physics simulations you give a material per shape, each material having certain properties (friction, etc) and special effects (sounds, etc). The heightmap is counted as a single shape, and thus it only has a single physics material. This was something I had totally forgotten. Luckily, the physics engine supports the assigning of special properties to each point in the heightmap. Once I found the proper info, it was pretty simple to add this (see here).

Now it was just a matter of adding extra material values to the heightmap (basically just an array of single integers, the id of the physics material at each point). My initial idea was that this could be "painted" on as an extra step, and to be sure I asked Jens what he thought about it. His reaction was that this would be way too much work and wondered if it could not be auto-generated instead. We already had a physics material assigned to each render material, so the basic info was easily accessible.

However, when I started to thinking about this, I found the actual auto-generation increasingly tricky. How should we determine which of the many blended materials to set the physics properties (blending was not possible)? Also, how do I get this information, considering that the blend textures can saved as compressed textures, into a CPU buffer?

The way we chose to solve the material picking was that the top visible (meaning over a certain limit opacity) blend material always sets the physics material. This allows map creators to set priority on materials in terms of physics, by simply placing them at different places among all blend materials. For example, if a material like gravel should also have its effects shown no matter what it is blended with, then it should be placed high up in the list. While currently untested this seem pretty nice and can also be tweaked a bit (like having something else determining priority).

The generation of this data was made by rendering the blend textures to an off-screen target and then grabbing the data into normal memory. What this meant is that the GPU would decompress any packed textures for us. This also solved some other problems, like the need to resize the texture according to heightmap resolution. Once the data is grabbed from the GPU it is just a matter to loop through it, check values and write to the final buffer.

Problem was finally solved and physics properties auto-generated!


With this little post I hope to show that there often is more to a problem than what is visible at first. Also, this shows another advantage of using normal texture splatting (more info here), instead of megatextures or similar. With the auto-generation of physics, it is much easier to create and update the terrain, something extremely important when you are a small team like us.

Would be very interesting what other techniques people use (or known of) for setting up physics properties on terrain!