So recently we have returned to working in Unity in game design and I realized how much I've really missed coding. Once we started it was hard for me to stop, and this is during a point where I have had little motivation to do other things I really like, such as art. Coding though has just been really fun. And yes, it has been easy tutorial projects so far, but I've really enjoyed them and I love it when I figure out a solution to a problem.
I've also been thinking about college a lot lately, and for the past year I was absolutely focused on finding programs that would eventually get me to a career in animation. I would get frustrated when people even suggested maybe going to a normal college first and doing art school later if that was still what I wanted to do (granted, I had a lot of misconceptions about how college and degrees work at this point, but I also felt like they were just trying to discourage me). However, now I'm thinking that I really do want to do some more experimenting with possible careers. Of course game design seems obvious as it combines art and coding, but there is also web design and building apps and such as well, and I could always do art or coding on the side if I do decide to commit to a career that only focuses on one of those areas. Basically, all this means is I'm going to try to dedicate more time to improving my programming skills while still trying to learn more about animation too. Keeping my options open at this point is a smart move for me to make, and we'll see what opportunities it brings. Also, since it seems like next year I'll be working on a VR project rather than the 2D game that I had planned to work on, I think I am going to try to create the 2D game at home. This probably will take me a while (into summer or the next school year), but I think it will really help me improve my coding abilities and let me make some fun art and practice keeping a consistent art style.
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Since we are working with film, something that in the game design world is mostly used for in game cutscenes and game trailers, I wanted to make a blog post about marketing.
Obviously, marketing is incredibly necessary for any game, because you have to get an audience. However, with the rise of social media as a platform for marketing, it seems like a lot of times people get bogged down in how many people like their media. Of course it's nice to get a lot of attention, and important to know which marketing techniques are most effective for you, but feeling down about an ad or other piece of media not being so well recieved is not going to fix the problem. As much as people are passionate about their own work, in marketing you need to take a step back and remember you are just trying to sell something. You can use your passion to help do this, but you also have to have thick enough skin to accept the failures, get back up, and try another tactic. That being said, some social medias, like Instagram have some very cool features to help people market whatever is on their page. It has a "business insights" tool, which allows you to pay for promotions, but also just get data on your audience's ages and genders, as well as which posts reached more people. You can't get that kind of data from putting up a flyer, so I think it's very cool. I don't think using social media as a way to advertise will go away, nor do I think it needs to. I think professionalism and persistence need to be employed though, but I think it would be awesome to see more Instagram accounts for indie game developers who show progress as they develop their game and advertise. Working with audio and video - while it does share many similarities in principles - may seem a step away from game design, until you consider game trailers. Advertizing games, especially in today's world, is incredibly important, and a fairly effective way to do so is by creating a trailer. The Mario Odyssey trailer released by Nintendo at E3 has over 22 million views, with the "music video" they made as promotional material coming in at 14 million. Of course, Nintendo isn't a gauge of how effective this form of marketing is for the average game maker, but anyone can post on Youtube for free, and even if only 20 people see it, that's 20 more people who know about your game, which could be 20 more conversations about it or 20 more copies sold.
Obviously demos are probably the most effective way to show off a game since it allows the player to experience a taste of the game, but that means that you want a completed, bug free section that they can play that out of context will represent and hype up the rest of the game. Thus, video trailers can be more effective for displaying games that take place in multiple environments that greatly vary, or for aspects of the game that are still a little buggy some of the time but will be fixed before release. Of course, this isn't to say edit the video to make it look like you have a non buggy game and then release something that won't even run, but it is saying it gives you control over what you get to show and lets you give the player a taste of the whole game's atmosphere rather than an in depth look at one specific moment of game play. Again, as stated earlier, distribution is also easier. People are more likely to view a quick online video than download a shady link in order to demo a game that they've never heard of. Of course using both methods in tandem is also possible, and probably the most effective route, although it may be a bit more time consuming seeing as you have to edit a whole video and create a demo, which most of the time won't end up in the final game in the form it was in for the demo. Whatever way you choose, advertizing is so important because game making is becoming extremely popular, and ads are the best way to prove to people your game isn't just another weird app store game that doesn't function. So talking about A/V, what makes a good game trailer? This article from Games Radar talks about some professional game trailers and the things that they do well. First, the author emphasizes that a good trailer sells the idea of the game, and doesn't waste time on anything that isn't going to grab your attention. In all of the examples that he uses, he focuses on how the trailer appeals to the target audience, again, only pointing out main features that are going to get that audience interested and not wasting time on smaller aspects that are still in the game, but just not the focus. I like his statement of selling the idea of the game, because that's what really makes people want to experience it. It values both the concept and the execution, which is really cool. I kind of hope that we get to create game trailers because I think it will only continue to be important in the game industry, even just as an exercise for solidifying a game concept. So we've just completed a four-week game, and I'll talk about it later, because it was literally finished this class period, but I do want to talk about time management. This isn't completely specific to Game Design, it's very important for every part of life really, especially school (as seen by the fact that I had to wake up at 4 to finish homework last night because I left it until the last minute), but I'm going to talk about it for both games and just in general here. This is just going to kind of be a reflection on my own time management skills (or current lack there of) and sort of set some goals to reach in the future.
It probably seems very obvious to everyone, but calendars are really helpful for me. Despite this, I don't actually use one, and I think that's what I want to change. Trello was a really nice program for being able to check things off as we did them during this project, but I don't like how you can only have one deadline per checklist. I think a calendar combined with Trello would be effective because then you can still set strict deadlines and a good schedule while still being able to write checklists that you can easily check off from anywhere. Since it's digital, I wouldn't forget it at home or anything. Setting up this system or a similar system both for game design projects, and possibly just school work is a big goal for me. However, another problem I face is forgetting that the deadline for a big project - like 40 chemistry problems - is coming up. Even when given calendars, once they're completed, I usually fail to look ahead, so I don't see these things until it's too late. With checklists this can be avoided, but usually these things are prioritized lower on those lists than upcoming events, and sometimes I wouldn't ever get to them anyway. I think that to solve this, I want to dedicate a part of the wall in my room to be just for post-it-notes with the names of big projects and their deadlines. That way, I can look at the wall every day, and as long as I keep it updated, big projects won't be able to sneak up on me. Lastly, I also have trouble with motivation to use my time wisely. Many times I know I should be working, but I just don't want to. I think that if I think more about why doing the work is important or meaningful to me - grades are important for the future, parents would be disappointed, this is going to be an awesome game but only if you get it done, etc. - then I would have less trouble with this. Also realizing the things I'm doing to "relax," like watching TV, doesn't actually make me feel any better, and it would be better to get the work done early and have time later when it would make me feel better because I wouldn't feel guilty since I had already accomplished something. Overall, my time management isn't as bad as I probably just made it sound, it just could improve, because I feel like I could accomplish a lot more than I currently am. I hope that I can stick to these goals and that the improvement will be apparent. So we have just one week left to finish our 2D games based on the Durham Community. To say it's going to be stressful is an understatement, and this is not because of my group members or anything (they're amazing), it just takes a lot of work to make games. So, in this post, I want to reflect on how we've done so far in production, as well as see if there are things people in the industry do during crunch time that could help us, or if it's too late for us now and this will just have to be a learning experience.
First, the timeline provided by our teacher was simply this: have a playable prototype by the end of 4 weeks. Of course we have many other goals he set for us to reach, but he did not make them time specific; they just need to get done to create the game. He also suggested that we leave the final Friday for testing for bugs (meaning we have the prototype mostly up and ready to go by Thursday). The rest was up to us. So far, it's just been a frenzy of completing different assets, meaning that this week we have to finish all of those as well as put them all together in a cohesive game. I think this was definitely my first mistake. I left our schedule sort of fluid rather than setting strict deadlines. Even if we hadn't completely met the deadlines, having them would have kept us more on track I think, and would have helped to make this week easier. Now for the week ahead, because I can't go back and change my mistakes from the past. Obviously, being high school student, our crunch time won't be nearly as extreme as that for industry professionals, but I wanted to see how they handle the stress. According to the start of this article the answer seems to be, not well. However, it also explains that even with good scheduling, crunch time can still be a problem if any issues come up towards the end of development. This is bad news for us since we will likely have some problems as we put stuff together this week. It also says that you should know by the time you have 2 weeks left whether or not you'll be able to finish your game. But then, the article even says, "it’s very difficult to figure out how long it might take to finish a given task." Since this is our first time really producing a game on a team like this, our judgement may not be good enough to do this accurately, but it is a good idea to make this sort of check on whether or not you think you can make it every week at team meetings, so I think I will begin doing that if I am ever production manager again. The article towards the end says that crunching for more than 2 weeks is ineffective and you won't make it, instead you have to cut things. I think for our game it may be beneficial to cut a few things (for instance, the enemies, which we knew we were probably going to have to cut). We will only be crunching for 1 week though, so maybe our work will pay off a little, but at the same time there's only so much work we can do in a week. The whole purpose of this article was to sway you from supporting crunch time, and it was pretty successful, I am worried about this week. However another article strives to give tips on surviving this stressful work time (though it does reiterate that crunch time is bad). Many of the tips are things like "take breaks" which are less applicable to us since we have the rest of the school day to be working on other things, but some of the tips are helpful. It suggests heavy scheduling, communication of expectations, and being okay with failure in some aspects. I think at Monday's team meeting I definitely need to discuss all of these things with my group, especially working hard to set up a firm schedule so that we can get as much quality work done as possible.
In class, we are currently creating games based on Durham, and current local issues. We aren't very far in production yet, so I'm going to save talking more in depth about it for another post, but so far it is going well. Our game does not yet have a title, but it focuses on the issue of the Orange - Durham Light Rail, a proposed train system basically connected areas from Chapel Hill to Durham. Our game is going to be a rogue-like game where you have to build the track from one stop to another before running out of money, featuring Herman, a possessed ice cream cone, and Carl, a strange walnut character. I am the Production Manager and also work on narrative products as well as some of the 2D art.
However, what I want to talk about in this game is other Durham games, or even Durham content and Durham creators. This can be game companies of Durham or games that are set in Durham. I also want to look into games that are about current events. Both of these things are important as an aspiring game designer in Durham because it will let me learn more about the local game making community, which could be good for opportunities, as well as see what effect games can have on important issues. With just a quick google search for games set in Durham NC, very little relevant information comes up. Instead, gaming stores like Atomic Empire pop up, a list of books set in Durham (mostly history and basketball books), and even a kickstarter for a webseries set in Durham. It seems that there aren't any (easy to find) games set in Durham right now, which makes sense since we are just a random town. However, I still thought I would find something since the people of Durham seem pretty proud of "Bull City". Heck, I even have a Durham-themed comic book. The good news is, despite not making many games about Durham, there are many gaming companies with offices in Durham, many of which I got to see representatives from at ECGC last year. Insomniac Games is a pretty well known company around here, and they do a lot of work in VR games. Epic Games, who famously made Unreal Engine 4 also has an office here, and at ECGC I talked to many people who work there. They're also working towards more VR work and have made so many technological advances in the past few years to make VR better. And as I mentioned earlier, with places like Atomic Empire, it's obvious that there is a decent sized gaming culture here. More interesting to me are games that focus on current events or issues. I really am passionate about art as a form of activism, and such an immersive form of art and entertainment as a game seems like a great vessel for change. This article from NPR discusses the effectiveness of games in teaching messages. While the data is still coming in, I believe media of all forms does affect people greatly and I hope that I can create games that do affect people. I ended up playing one of the games mentioned in the article: The Cat in the Hijab. It lines up with my political views, so it didn't change my opinion or anything, but I appreciate the game. The message it tries to convey is about hate speech. I played through the game twice, trying to make the opposite choices each time, and I was a little dismayed to find that the choices made only really changed a few lines, so I felt as though it didn't teach anything about what outcomes different choices have. However, the best results did come from ignoring hate speech and sticking together with supportive people, so I do like the overall message it tried to get across. However, I think the people who need this message the most might not have played the game, possibly even just from looking at the title. So I think it's also important to remember that games don't have to be incredibly political to still make comments on important issues. As the NPR article above said, people like subtle messages better, and they're less likely to shut down moderate arguments than extreme ones. Games are a good starting point to get people thinking about issues, to make people more open minded and get the conversation going. Games like Skyrim have beggars and orphans, making players think about how to treat the poor, as well as big, open worlds with complex political climates, giving players a look into how different aspects of the world affect each other. Plague Inc. and Pandemic both teach valuable lessons about disease, the value of the CDC, and how the choices we make about travel and trade can affect health. These are examples of serious games that are still fun and subtle in their messages. Overall, I think games have a great potential for change, and I'm excited to be creating a game set in my hometown that could actually teach people about the light rail.
Before anyone says anything - or takes points off for spelling - it is "theatre." "Theater" refers to the actual building while "theatre" refers to the art. At DSA, we have to choose two art pathways. When I was making the choice, my dad said something along the lines of "well, do you think you'll be doing it for the rest of your life?" With that logic, I probably would have tried to opt out of history class, but he did have a point. As you can guess based on this website and the title of this post, I chose game design and theatre. Game design is pertinent to one of the paths I could possibly take in the future, but theatre isn't quite as much, at least at surface value; I'm not planning on being an actor. Yet, I think that my experience with theatre is helpful with other arts, including many aspects of game design.
The first three weeks of this game design class has been creating infographics, and at the end of the week, presenting them. Well, I'm a pretty socially anxious person, which does not bode well for me doing things in the game industry since pitching games and presenting ideas is a key part of the work. This is one of the main places theatre has helped me. Aside from the obvious things it has helped me with - giving me practice speaking in front of an audience, practice projecting my voice - it also taught me to take risks and be more comfortable in myself. While my presentation skills still aren't great, I think they are getting better, and theatre is a big part of that. In my last post, I also mentioned that animation is a career I am looking into. If this is character animation, then it's clear that studying how people express emotions would be very helpful. However, I've also helped out with many different tech crews before, which also holds many valuable lessons. Set crew can teach a lot about staging objects in your scene, as well as "camera angles" because of how much you have to consider where the audience is. Most recently I've been working on the marketing crew which has helped give me practice in graphic design and advertising. Since animations are basically drawn films, it makes sense that acting and tech that goes into creating theatrical shows would help with animation. In another small way, theatre helps because of the memorization skills it teaches. Learning lines quickly for a show can teach you to memorize other things quickly as well. This is helpful for photoshop shortcuts, or common commands in coding. Even if your memory isn't very fast, you do learn how to memorize better for yourself. Likewise, this, along with doing any piece of a show on a tight schedule, can help improve time management skills. Also, when working with so many people on a show, your communication skills are going to improve. Basically, for me, theatre is helpful to game design because:
Having to single in on just one career is difficult, and this was the first year when discussing careers we had to pick just one. Choosing a career is something most high school kids are expected to do now as they look for colleges, but most of the time it's just in terms of choosing a major or general field. We had to find a game design career that we were interested in, that we thought we would be good at, and that we would like to take on the roles of in an upcoming group project. I chose animator, but it took me some time to get there. We had a series of jobs to pick from, and a series of quizzes to tell us if we would be a good fit for each other them. However, the quizzes were missing animator and game developer, but there were quizzes for sound designer, game writer, producer, and programmer. All of my quizzes came back with the underwhelming result, "You might be good at this, but it's not a perfect fit." Because of this, I was planning to go with producer since I was getting sort of Jack-of-All-Trades results. However, in the end I decided to go with animator, not because I'm great at art, but rather because if I'm honest with myself, it's what I want to do as a job, even if I don't yet believe I'm talented enough to. Here's the infographic I made to represent animation and why I would be a good fit for it. The first box has some basic facts, I used two things that animators need to understand to incorporate graphics, and the last box for qualities that are nice to have as an animator. As I said earlier, I'm not a perfect fit for this career: I'm not great at 3D animation by any means, and my communication and time management skills could probably use some work still. However, I feel like if I do put in the work, my skills can get there, and I already have enough passion for it to make it work. I got information about animation from www.thebalance.com/animator-career-information-525982 .
So Make School - a programming school based in California - is running a contest of sorts for people to create apps. I learned about it pretty late in the process and I'm still a beginner in all coding, I really doubt I will win anything, especially when there's people in their 20s submitting, but I still wanted to submit. After all, it's good experience, perhaps a few people will see my game after all, and there is a raffle prize so who knows? You're allowed to submit projects that you had started before the competition actually did, making me wish I had looked into app design earlier. The game I'm making is a simple app called Color Car. It's a simple scrolling avoid-the-objects game. "It's the future and self driving cars are about, but due to people being sucked into their virtual worlds, the roads are a mess! Lucky for you, the world is also digitized, and by changing the frequency of light (color) that your car is on, you can go straight through the obstacles!" I originally intended for it to be a simple web game due to the need to be able to press many different buttons, but as of now I've modified the controls to make it work on mobile by making the car self-driving, and you just change the colors to go through obstacles. I'm doing what I can from memory and referencing the tutorials I have already completed for the rest. The touchscreen controls are really throwing me off right now though, so I need to work on that. Otherwise it is coming along pretty smoothly so far, though I'd like to add much more than I'll probably have time for to fit in the deadline. There's not much else to say about it as of now, so here's some of the artwork so far. I've had some perspective issues with it so far, but since it's not a very realistic game, I think it's better in this case to have icons that are easy to understand instead of super realistic ones. However, I will keep it in mind as something I need to improve on: I'll make another post later once I've made some more progress and hopefully I'll have the link to where you can upvote it and play it!
Although we were going to work in Game Maker, technical difficulties have forced us to jump straight into Unity. This is kind of a good thing because Unity is what we would have used next year anyway. We haven't really started using Unity much yet (due to more technical difficulties that make it hard to access the tutorials right now) but we have watched a lot of tutorials for navigating the interface, and we started working on coding in c#.
So far, the game interface seems a little confusing. The tutorials that we watched just went over the basics, and I think to really learn it I will have to learn by doing. I think that I will be able to figure it out, I just also think that it will take some time. I'm really excited to do some more advanced coding, even though I'm sure it will be very difficult for me. I only really know some basic coding things right now, so I'm excited to get into more complex stuff. However, since c# is, "not a beginner friendly type of code," I am a little worried about it since I often make mistakes and can get frustrated when coding. Overall though, I'm pretty excited just to get started making 2D games, and even though I know my first game isn't going to look as nice as the example games, it looks like the program is capable of doing some pretty awesome things, so I'm excited to learn how to use it. |
AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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