Tag Archives: Game Design

Train2Game Interview: Gearbox Software co-founder Brian Martel on starting in the industry and learning from failure

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Gearbox Software co-founder and Executive Vice President Brian Martel has worked in the games industry for over twenty years, making him the most experienced member of the Texas studio. The Train2Game Blog recently start down with Martel at a Borderlands 2 preview event where he discussed how he got started in the industry, the importance of learning from mistakes and advice on getting into game development.

How did you get started in the games industry?

I’ve been in the industry now for about twenty years. I got my first start at Microprose, the first game that I worked on was Civilization and I’m the last name that appears in the credits, so I’m extremely proud of my time at Microprose and I learned a lot of valuable lessons from Sid Meier, how he starts and his approach to gaming and that’s really awesome.

I then went to 3D Realms, leaving to be a texture artist. There I met Randy Pitchford; we were paired up, he was a level designer and I was an artist and we really just hit it off. That’s kind of how it worked back in those days; you would just keep pushing each other. Then after that we decided to start Rebel Boat Rocker, which was one of the best miserable failures of our career, we learned a lot about what not to do in making games.

Then we started Gearbox Software and I think we’re going on thirteen years now and that’s been a fabulous experience. We’ve been working on things that we really love like the Half-Life series, working on some Halo, Tony Hawk, even the James Bond franchise; all of these things have been interesting and now we’ve got Aliens: Colonial Marines which is fantastic, a dream come true. And then owning our own intellectual properties, like working on the Brothers In Arms series and Borderlands.

So, it’s been a pretty cool ride, really love making games, we’re entertainers at heart and this is what we do.

You mentioned learning from mistakes there, how important is it then for young game designers to actually make mistakes and learn from them?

Yeah, you have to fail, you have to learn what works and what doesn’t work, and the only way to really do that is to not be afraid of those failures and kind of push forward and try and do and make new things and do stuff, that’s really what you need to do. I mean everything doesn’t have to be perfect.

Probably the best lesson in all of this, and it’ll sound kind of silly and base if you will, is you have to learn when things are good enough, and that’s sort of the trick. The customer doesn’t know the difference between you’re vision – which is far exceeding your capabilities – and what they get in the box, or on an app, or whatever. So just do it, make it, make something, make something they can feel and experience.

It’s like writers, right? You should just have to write, and that’s the same kind of thing, just make games. If you like programming, do what you love; if you like programming, you like art, just do what you love, do it. Just do it over and over and over again, find people you can work well with – they’re going to feed your passion and drive, that kind of thing.

So, would that be your advice to anymore aspiring to break into the games industry? Do programming, produce art, mod for example.

Yeah, exactly. Mods are a great way to start; because that way you can build a community, figure out what it’s like to work with other people. Its one thing when you’re on your own in your bedroom, garage, whatever, and you’re doing your own thing. But once you start working with people, collaborating and understanding how to make those compromises you have to make, sometimes some of the best things come out of those compromises, they come out of the discussion, because two different people have disparate ideas and you can’t get that on your own.

I think that’s where small teams are really great to do that, and even in large teams, having really great experienced leaders can help that, and the only way to get there is by doing it and getting through it and learning what to do.

Thanks for your time.

There’s more from Gearbox Software here on The Train2Game Blog, while there’s also plenty more advice from industry experts.

As usual, leave your comments on The Train2Game Blog, or here on The Train2Game forum.  

Train2Game News: “Playing board games is fantastic training for game designers” – Creative Assembly lead designer

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Shogun 2 Total War

Game designers should play board games in to help improve their skills. That’s the view of The Creative Assembly lead designer James Russell, who was speaking about making the mechanics of Total War and game design at Develop Conference 2012.

“Playing board games is fantastic training for game designers,” he said. “Everything a player does is raw gameplay.”

It formed part of a wide ranging session in which the Total War lead designer discussed subjects ranging from the key game design pillars of Shogun 2: Total War, to how, ultimately every single video game is based around player choices.

“Gameplay is all about choices and trade-offs. Games present players with interesting decisions with pros and cons.” said Russell, adding that weak gameplay is generally down to weak design choices.

The session concluded with The Creative Assembly man showing off pre-Alpha footage of Rome 2: Total War for only the second time. The game is scheduled for release towards the end of 2013.

Keep reading The Train2Game Blog for the latest news from Develop Conference, while there’s more from The Creative Assembly here. That includes information about their recently released Shogun 2 map editor.

How important do you feel board games are for game designers? Are you a board game player?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: “If you want to be successful, do something different” – Ian Livingstone

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To thrive in the games industry, you need to be a little different and preferably own your own IP. That’s according to Eidos Life President Ian Livingstone who was delivering his keynote at Develop Conference 2012.

“If you want to be successful, do something different, follow your heart” he said during his visionary session ‘From Dungeons to Downing Street – A Life in Games.’

The industry veteran discussed everything from founding Games Workshop, to Fighting Fantasy, to Tomb Raider. He also emphasised the importance for developers to control their own intellectual property.

“If you want real value, you need to create and own your own IP.” said Livingstone, later adding “If you can create your own IP, then do so.”

The games industry legend also told the audience how the three most important things in a game for him are gameplay, gameplay and gameplay. And as previously reported by The Train2Game Blog, Ian Livingstone believes “There’s never been a better time to run your own gig.”

Ian Livingstone was one of a number of industry figures who aided in mentoring Train2Game students taking part in Make Something Unreal Live earlier this year. The Games Workshop co-founder said he was “delighted” to be part of the initiative.

The Train2Game Blog will publish an interview with Ian Livingstone in the near future, but in the meantime, there’s more from the Eidos Life President here.

What are your thoughts on Livingstone’s comments? Do you agree that doing something different and owning your own IP are key to success?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum

Train2Game student Diaries James Bouckley week 15 and 16

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Week 15

This week we discussed targets for the game.  When should it be finished by and when would we have a demo ready.  We tried to have a demo ready by Friday but unfortunately we failed.  Despite the game being interesting and very fun to develop, the support cases have to come first and a surprising abundance of them this week and Rob still being on holiday meant we just didn’t have enough time to work on it.  It came as a bit of surprise to me this week when I discovered we needed desktop controls because the game was going to be multi-platform and the dual-joystick imitation controls for keyboard I had made (purely for testing purposes), weren’t going to cut it.  After a bit of stressful week, I have to admit that being told this didn’t find me well.  Ben spent some time going around the office with the iOS version of the game, which was finished, getting as many opinions as possible so we could polish the demo.  Meanwhile I struggled to finish the PC controls and failed.  Not a great week in all, but still a fair margin better than any week I’ve ever had in any other job… ever.

Week 16

Unity 4.0 has been announced!  It was announced this Monday and boy does that make for a lot of support cases!  Rob is now back with us and good job too because I think without him Ben and I would have struggled.  This again meant another week with not as much work done on the game as I would have liked.  The desktop controls are finished now, but buggy and I’m not happy with them.  Also, one of the major things that people noted about the game when Ben showed them last Friday was that they didn’t like the linear mapping between finger-joystick position and player speed.  What that means is that there is linear dependence between the distance of your finger and the centre of the joystick and the speed the player moves at.  People would have preferred a relationship that meant when you’re near the centre you move slower but then you accelerate faster as you move further away.  When I heard this my reaction was “Okay, that’s doable but it’s going to be expensive.  We’ll have to do a square-root operation every frame.”  God bless Unity though because they have already thought about it.  Mark showed me how to sample a curve and apply it to a script and the iOS controls are now far more user-friendly.  Another thing that came up is what happens when the player moves behind something.  Currently we have a shader that highlights the player so you can still see him.  This however sometimes makes it look like the player is on top of the object instead of behind it.  So instead I have started to implement a script that will make the objects see-through instead of the player being highlighted.  I was having some difficulty with this and with some help from Cat, we nearly got their.  I’m confident I can finish this myself early next week.

www.train2game.com

Train2Game Student Diary Ezekiel Morris Weeks 6 and 7

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Week 6

Well this week has been awesome so far facial expression are working in unity now so I’m glad about that , three weeks  struggling to get this face expression working but as a student I haven’t had experience on flat facial animation before so  it was Difficult  to solve this  issue.  I needed some guidance so Ben, a student at train2game took a look at this flat facial animation problem and got it working in unity 3d.

Next stage working on another character, creating textures but keeping the same model but still I’m not satisfied how my first character textures are looking, when I’m doing concept art I make sure you have a good understanding of the concept, for example how big it is, what is it wearing a reference image of my character once I’m clear on the design of the character I can prepare texturing the character.

I feel that this is just a work in progress on development but still we got a working function game it just needs some cleaning up so things are pitting up and also  I like the workflow I’m doing now,  you just feel that you know what you doing without thinking about it.

Oh yes we have a new environment artist joining the DR studios.

Ezekiel Morris week 7

This week DR studios had a launch party to celebrate their new release – my sea park, I’m happy to say my sea park is doing well  and  I’m happy to say I did collaborate on the project as well .

On my sea park I did the penguin and the seal sketch and then Matty helped clean up  the sketches. When I started at DR Studios I was working on another project and I was told  to help on my sea park  for  bit. After finishing  the sketches for my sea park  I when back to my original project .It was a nice day and a nice lunch out with my associates, the place we went was called red hot world buffet the food was excellent but I couldn’t eat anymore I was full.

We all went back to DR studios, I was food drunk, now I’m on another project and my task  is to model this character in three days but it’s going to be a  video render with a pink or white  background, then I’m gonna put a camera in the scene so that it  goes around the character when it’s  being rendered.

So I started off doing a model sheet of the character head but I wasn’t sure if I should sculpt the character or model it in 3d max but gonna model it straight in 3d max.

 www.train2game.com

Train2game Student Diary Craig Moore – What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

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Craig Moore – What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

Student Diary , Week 30

Unleashed on to the world like a penguin in a paddling pool! My Sea Park hit the unsuspecting world head on yesterday and it’s been an incredible experience, and this was only day one!

We had already seen the beginnings of the social media pushes, by our publishers, earlier in the day but it wasn’t until we got word of My Sea Park creeping in to the charts that things really got exciting. There was the hope it was doing well but the visibility wasn’t really available.

That was until around 5pm, while we were in the meeting with the publisher we heard word it had crept in to the top 50! Of course everyone became very excited, but by the end of the meeting it had already, again, crept in to around 37!

Of course this continued throughout the day, admittedly it wasn’t the most productive of days but it was a really lovely reward for all the hard work.  Of course, being a free title, there is now the hope it will actually monetise well.

That was pretty much the key moment of the week, the rest of my week has been spent illustrating and working on the concept document for the next title, which is going incredibly well. I am waiting on feedback from a few of the other guys here, but fingers crossed it will get some approval; It’s a really exciting project!

-Craig

www.train2game.com

Craig Moore

Student Diary – Week 31

What an incredibly exciting week it has been!

Suffice to say, with My Sea Park being released, the entire office were glued to iTunes watching our brand new game slowly work its way around the charts.

It was great watching it go up and down, and really muscling with the big boys, I got in to the habit of checking it with a stupid regularity, but seeing it in the same space as games like Angry Birds, Infinity Blade and Temple Run was such an amazing feat I can’t help but feel proud.

I think everyone in the office is pleased with how it has done, but the fun isn’t even over yet! With version 1.2 of My Sea Park put into submission last week we are hoping for the first update to drop either today or Monday. With that we should hopefully see a load more faces in the door, as well as hopefully some of the older ones who perhaps didn’t get chance to play as much as they would like or simply didn’t give it a good enough try.

I think it does highlight how competitive the market is at the moment, particularly for My Sea Park’s genre. We have to simply keep working on it, while also working on the next project, to ensure it stays fresh for customers both new and old.

This week I have been getting deep with Unity, finding my way around it and putting time into learning the way the UI systems work, it’s been a great learning experience and so far and I’m finding Unity incredibly pleasing to work with.

-Craig

www.train2game.com

Train2Game Student Diary Matty Wyett Simmonds Very exciting news for us all

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Matty Wyett Simmonds Very exciting news for us all

My Sea Park has come out this week! Very exciting news for us all, we’ve all been glued to the ratings and comments on the App store. So far the feedback we’ve had is great with mostly 5 stars!

Currently as I type this Diary My Sea Park is #19 in the Top Free Games in the App store! This is the kind of good news people need to hear, without Train2game Craig and myself wouldn’t have been in the situation that we are now.

We were given such control and flexibility over the games development and thankfully it’s doing well so far beating apps like Facebook and Twitter! Everyone has been working hard up to the release of the game and I am still working on it at the moment for updates and more downloadable content so it’s far from over just yet.

I’m glad everyone thus far likes the game and we’ve had a lot of comments on the art work, which for me is great to see (seeing as I lead the art for My Sea Park), and everyone is finding the Game fun and intuitive which is good for Craig too! Great week and more to come!

Matty Wyett Simmonds

OK so My Sea Park has been out for a week or so now and it’s doing extremely well! It managed to get to number 16 in the Top Free Apps chart on iOS which is amazing for the first day of release too! It got to number 1 in role playing games somehow and managed to get into the 70’s for top grossing apps which means people are enjoying the game enough to invest time and money into it. We’ve had some great reviews from all over the internet and on iOS devices and it’s just generally managing to get a name for itself. I’m very pleased with the outcome of my first published game; it’s amazing for my CV right now.

Thank you to everyone who actually downloaded played and sometimes bought in app items in the game! It has made a massive difference to the success and every download counts, even if it is free. We are working now on updates and more to come for the future!

 www.train2game.com

Train2Game News: Diablo III doesn’t have enough end-game content say developers Blizzard

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Diablo III developer Blizzard admits there isn’t enough end-game content to keep players continuously coming back for more.

The surprise announcement comes from community manager Bashiok on the Diablo III official forum, and represents a rare case of a developer admitting something can be improved a short time after the release of a game.

“We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they’re going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven’t already).” read the Blizzard forum post, which adds there needs to be more than looting to keep Diablo III players returning, but can’t be compared to World of Warcraft when it comes to end-game.

“Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft”

“We aren’t going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it’s not there right now.” said Bashiok.

“Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, but we believed pre-release that the item hunt would be far more sustainable, and would work to be a proper end-game for quite a while. That didn’t turn out to be true, and we recognize that.” he added in a later post.

There’s more Diablo III news here on The Train2Game Blog, while be sure to keep reading for the latest from Blizzard.

What are your thoughts on Diablo III’s end-game content? How do you feel about Blizzard admitting it could be improved so soon after release?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Guild Wars 2 designer on the importance of taking risks in development

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ArenaNet have posted a huge blog exploring the game design of their upcoming MMO, which they call the golden rules of Guild Wars 2. The game is set for release on Tuesday 28th August.

Among the six golden rules, is an interesting piece about taking risks in game design which Train2Game students may find particularly fascinating.

“Let’s try it.” You hope to hear that phrase at the end of a meeting, especially if that meeting was contentious, or if the idea discussed is new and radical.” writes Guild Wars 2 game designer Ben Miller.

“Imagine a playground full of kids playing. At its best, playing is making mistakes in a safe environment and learning from those mistakes in a way that encourages growth. Trying out new ideas or making drastic changes is the way we as designers get to play with the game.”

Miller says it’s a collective experience that tells them which risks work and which don’t

“It’s where we slip and fall, scrape our knees, and otherwise monkey around on the jungle gym. While we don’t try out every idea, we use our collective experience to get a sense for what has promise—what we should follow down the rabbit hole.” he continues, adding that Guild Wars 2 changed through development as a result.

“We look at where our ideas break, how they break, and why they break. You can see this in how we redesigned the sylvari, or in how we have developed the professions. They’ve all undergone quite a bit of transformation over the last few years as we have tried out different approaches and learned from those very playful experiences.” said the Guild Wars 2 designer.

The full post is available to see over on the ArenaNet blog, and is great reading for Train2Game game designers. They recently posted a similar blog on the importance of making Guild Wars 2 fun.

There’s more on Guild Wars 2 here on The Train2Game Blog.

What are your thoughts on the golden rules set out by ArenaNet?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game News: Good game design focuses on the player, not the designer’s mind says Warren Spector

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Good game design focuses on the player, rather than the ideas of the game designer. That’s according to Deus Ex creator and Epic Mickey 2 creative lead Warren Spector.

“A lot of games are all about trying to read the designer’s mind. A designer creates an incredible puzzle and you have to try and solve that puzzle in the one way that the designer lets you,” he told OPM UK.

“I don’t make games like that. The games that I make are about offering problems to players. In Epic Mickey you’re constantly making choices. It’s all about you deciding what’s important.

“It’s not about how clever and creative I am – it’s about how clever and creative you are.” Spector added.

There’s more from Epic Mickey 2 and Warren Spector here on The Train2Game Blog. Meanwhile, keep reading for more behind-the-scenes news on game design.

Do you agree with Spector’s views on game design? Is choice essential for good game design?

Leave your comments on The Train2Game Blog, or here on The Train2Game forum.