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Content with content.

Recently I was having a discussion with a couple of game developer friends about the perfect industry role. Inevitably the conversation progressed on to the challenges of staying content and motivated over the course of a project.

Both friends are currently in the industry and have positions of responsibility in their respective organisations, so their outlook is that much different to mine. Unlike them, I no longer belong to a 100+ strong team of experienced developers. Instead I work with one other at the same level as me and a few above, one of which is an academic and the other a surgeon. Unconventional I'll admit.

They work on big-budget titles, and I think generally enjoy doing so. The argument for being part of a large organisation is reasonably clear; you get to be part of something much larger than yourself, and I have to concede having worked on The Division I do get a kick out of seeing people playing and enjoying it, reading the reviews, and watching the surrounding buzz it's generated with videos, commercials, etc. But that feeling is muted because of the way these kind of games are produced.

Impressive fan art from RobinTran A team of many hundreds of people is needed to bring something like The Division over the line, so an individual developer's role in that team is specialised to the point that you can't possibly feel like you have any ownership over anything beyond your immediate realm of influence. And that plays into one of the biggest barriers to contentment for developers in the industry which is the current state of the project being worked on. It could be so many things beyond what it is, but it never quite meets that vision - and that’s difficult to contend with.

Even the hardiest dev can't resist finding flaws; it's human nature to do so. It's some kind of in-built survival strategy that mentally detaches from - and protects against - the game's failings. It's an unconscious way of absolving responsibility for things you aren't proud of.

In truth everyone working in 'triple-A' games has to employ this way of thinking at some level because given the scale of such a game there's no way to hold on to every last thing and have the unswerving conviction that it will eventually fulfil it’s potential by all falling in to place, gracefully combining to make something greater than the sum of its parts. For many it's enough to motivate and drive forwards to address lingering issues, for others it inhibits, narrowing commitment to just the things they're safely able to hold on to, in turn exhibiting overly defensive behaviour when those things are questioned by anyone else. When you see these wheels within wheels you start to understand how bad games see the light of day.

Contributing to big-budget games is a real slog. The work is physically and emotionally draining, so when it finally comes out the couple of weeks of fanfare is such a wonderful release that you almost forget the turmoil you've gone through to get to that point. For me this is both the positive and negative side of making games. The feedback is great, but the energy that's been put into the project in no way directly correlates with what comes out.

The Division will have a long life because of how Ubisoft are backing it and the type of game it is, but so many others don't have that luxury. I would wager that hundreds of thousands of man hours went into developing it – if not more, and I suppose in this instance there will be cumulatively more than that spent playing it after it's release, but for the individual developer all you see is the fleeting buzz I mentioned earlier. Is it enough? For me the balance is skewed, others might disagree.

So what is the ideal industry role?

The ability to continually challenge yourself by working on different aspects of a project is fundamental to deriving satisfaction from development. Being too specialised denies the ability to grow and improve. If all you do is make really nice looking bricks eventually you'll get bored, dissatisfied, and jaded. Ultimately it has to be a role that allows a developer to enjoy the work. There's an inherent satisfaction to making games, and that can help make up for the effort required to do so.

This may sound obvious, but working on a project that is fun and interesting is important too. I would bet that most developers at the big studios wouldn't be making the game they're working on if they had the choice. This is why you see so many weird and wonderful projects being created by indies free of market-led direction. Though being on any project for long enough becomes wearing, so working in short development cycles is ideal. I think anywhere between three and 18 months is probably about right. Combine that with strong community engagement throughout development and a long tail post release and you're on to a winner. For a developer to see the reaction to their work is what it's all about. I remember working with a junior level designer at Ubisoft who was overjoyed when the focus testers were in and he was able to see someone first hand interacting with his ideas. It was like he'd just realised that was his reason for being.

Finally; the studio's working culture is key. Being small enough for it to be possible to know everyone else on the team encourages a sense of belonging and enables the management to respect staff individually rather than just as a name and a discipline and understand that nine-to-five isn't and shouldn't be a privilege. This works both ways too; if the developer knows the management on a personal level, there's more chance that they will trust their vision, leadership, and ability to elegantly slot all of the game's elements together as required. Of course this all implies that cohorts are competent at their job and show openness and willing when challenged, if they aren't it falls down somewhat. You can't beat a good attitude.

I'm sure there are places out there that satisfy all of these points. And I'm sure that the developers in those studios are contented, and I'm sure they do great work on great games because of it.

#editorial

soundSelection #003

Carefully curated sounds for your listening pleasure.

Torchlight Vol.2 by Om Unit

Traps EP by Escapism Refuge

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inVision #003

A visual digest from this week's internet exploration.

#inVision

Back of Beyond. A look behind the Infinite.

A few weeks back I wrote about the challenging development of Beyond the Infinite (BtI) and how it nearly broke me. This week I want to talk more about what the project actually is and how it's shaping up.

At its core BtI is an anti-gravity racing game in the style of Playstation 1 classics Wipeout or Rollcage (which incidentally is getting a reboot).

It's inspired by many many hours of playing Zone Mode in Wipeout HD as well as fewer hours playing less clearly relatable games like Super Hexagon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Rayman Legends. In addition to games, music videos, art installations, gifs, DJ sets, and sacred geometry have all had their influence.

Given the project is named after 2001:A Space Odyssey's fourth act, the film is clearly significant too. Not just for the incredible visual impact of those concluding moments, but also for the subtlety of craft and patience to deliver it's story throughout. It's never overly explicit in it's intentions, which creates space for the audience to fill with their own imagination. I don't really get why games don't take this approach more often. Ambiguity can disguise many flaws, yet games are so eager to force heaps of exposition on the player.

While BtI doesn't really have a traditional narrative the aim is to provide a framework in which a story could be derived if the audience should want it. To achieve this I plan to use theming and visual presentation, or ‘environmental storytelling’ to give context without being specific. As an extension of this I'm keen to avoid adding any kind of dialogue spoken or written, and that includes the user interface. Whether this is practically possible or not is still up in the air..!

The central racing mechanic is supported by a host of other designs that reflect the previously mentioned varied influences on the project. Music features heavily and this is represented by three fundamental aspects of the game:

Firstly, a boost mechanic where each boost pad represents a musical element or sample that is played when hit. By design the player is encouraged to activate boost pads else they'll fall behind, in doing this they're creating the game's music as a by-product of competition.

Secondly, the speed at which the player travels is the tempo of the soundtrack. Hitting multiple boost pads in quick succession results in the player speed and soundtrack tempo permanently rising and the challenge increasing. Admittedly this is a mutated version of the Wipeout Zone Mode mechanic in which the player is forced to go faster and faster over time until they reach their limits and eventually explode, but it works great for pacing and ratchets up the tension over the course of a race – even if you're way out in front.

Thirdly, aspects of the soundtrack are represented as obstacles in the environment. This might be a gate that toggles between open and closed on each beat, or using the bassline to time the movement of an object that when touched will destroy the player. I always thought the idea of 'playing’ a music visualiser would be pretty cool and aesthetically stunning – a bit like Thumper.

To facilitate these audio-focused mechanics the environment is generated at runtime making the gameplay experience differ slightly each time it's played. Technically it's somewhere between pre-made and procedural. This means the stages are all designed algorithmically using modular building blocks that can be deployed in thousands of different combinations resulting in every play-session having a seemingly unique soundtrack and visualisation. In practice this is tricky to pull off, but one of the few successes of the previous iteration of BtI was it's procedural audio composer. Think of it like a robot DJ that curates the gameplay the same way a DJ might adjust their set based on the crowd's feedback. Sorry, it doesn't take requests.

Having obstacles means there are navigational puzzles too. Given the speed the player is travelling at they're not overly complex, but they do open up further opportunities for interesting gameplay. Players have the ability to leap and spin around the environment, making jumps and dodging obstructions. In BtI's previous incarnation I thought that the player’s movement was the ideal host for audio based mechanics, but after trying out various different approaches based on this idea I’ve come to the conclusion it’s very difficult to move the player in time with the music without taking away agency, so this is my compromise.

I'm now in the process of throwing all these elements together. So far the environment dynamically generates from a toy-box of modular pieces and the player can navigate around these pieces by jumping and rotating. Hitting boost pads in sequence increases the player speed and tempo of the soundtrack, and the basic race format is in. My current task is building bots to race against. I've never designed or created complex ai like this before, but I'm up for the challenge and I already have semi-successful pathfinding in place. Once I have the bot finished up I'm shifting focus to bring everything together so I can release regular playable builds.

There is so much still to do, for now though take a look at the work in progress..!

#recordingProcess #beyond the infinite

soundSelection #002

Here's what's been filling our ears over the last week. Follow the SoundCloud for more.

#soundSelection

inVision #002

Some highlights from our Pinterest page this week.

#inVision

Trying and failing. From Industry to Indie and out the other side.

Beyond the Infinite is a non-competitive co-operative music platformer or maybe, Beyond the Infinite is a fast-paced puzzle racer with musical elements, no wait, Beyond the Infinite is a competitive infinite runner where the player influences and creates the audio through their movements and actions... Actually Beyond the Infinite is not quite any of these things, yet. Beyond the Infinite is a half finished independent game that features bits and pieces of the above. I've been intermittently working on it now since late 2013. Development has been tumultuous and difficult even with some professional game development experience behind me.

After nearly three years as a designer at Crytek UK working on the Crysis series and six challenging months on the soon to be released Homefront: The Revolution I figured I knew enough to give up gainful employment in favour of a life of destitution starting my own independent game development studio, setting out to run it in a model similar to a record label with short games consistently released every few months. I wrote a (naïve) business plan, got some funding and started developing.

I don't remember exactly where the idea came from, but I do remember the moment that inspired it. I was sat on the balcony of the Crytek company apartment with my laptop, headphones on, doobie in hand, watching Milkdrop while listening to 'The Tide' by Noisa and 'Black and Red' by Jon Hopkins. What really inspired me was the idea of music as a narrative. While I wasn't listening to them at the time both 'Insides' by Jon Hopkins, and the brilliantly executed 'War of the Worlds in Dubstep' by ertwenpeller gave the concept some additional weight. To me it appeared to be unexplored in games bar the odd exception such as Rez or Zone Mode in Wipeout HD.

The seed was sown and I spent the next couple of years mulling over how to marry satisfying game-like interaction, music, and visuals. I figured to get that sense of synaesthesia the gameplay and audio had to be fundamentally linked, every action in the game would create or influence some aspect of the audio.

But when I sat down in front of Unity on my first official day of self-employment I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was trying to stick to my plan of releasing every three or four months so that meant keeping it simple. I didn't know how to code and didn't know how to use Unity beyond a few tutorials so my scope was limited. After about three weeks I'd come up with this:

It's super simple and pretty fun, but basic and I was ambitious. I could have - and probably should have - spent the next couple of months shining it up into something presentable and released it. I didn't though, and instead the simple easy to complete project morphed into something much more challenging. I figured I could take the prototype and improve it by making it the vehicle for my synaesthesia concept.

In my mind it seemed to fit. The player would be flying through these tubes having to perform platforming actions as in the prototype, but the actions would be musical samples. When you needed to jump a kick drum sample would be at exactly the right place, if you needed to duck here comes a snare sample, etc. The samples would be positioned so a pre-defined loop would be completed as you jumped, ducked and dodged around the tunnel. The problem was it just didn't work. It wasn't fun and it didn't invoke any sense of synaesthesia. I don't know how many iterations I did to try and 'find the fun', but none of them really ticked the right boxes.

Having spent six fruitless months with the game my confidence was shot and I remember having a meeting with Iain Simons and Jonathan Smith of Gamecity about the project. This is a video of the build I showed them:

They were far from blown away, but I think they could see some potential. They particularly liked the idea that it could be transformed into some kind of event or installation piece. However, the conclusion of the meeting was that I'd need to spend another six months on it at least to deliver.

There were two problems stopping that from happening. Firstly my funding was running dry; I'd need to invest more money in the project if I wanted to take it further. Secondly, and more importantly, I'd stopped believing in the game. I wasn't convinced it could be made into the thing I wanted to make it into, or that I had the ability to do it. Admitting this at the time was one of the most difficult things I've had to do. The game represented something much larger. It was my dream of being independent, it was my freedom.

Around this time I got a full-time contract at Ubisoft. I worked there for nine months on The Division and during that time I didn't once look at Beyond the Infinite.

It was a change in personal circumstances that brought me back to Nottingham. I had an offer to go back to what I knew at Crytek (now Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) or be part of a research project at the University of Nottingham developing games as medical treatments. I went for the research project and have been there now since April 2015. Not working in the games industry gave me the time, space and energy to start thinking about Beyond the Infinite again.

I started toying around with audio/visual stuff in Unity to get reacquainted with the tools and before I knew it I was enjoying developing again.

I had unfinished business with Beyond the Infinite. It was August when I decided I was going to restart the project from scratch. I figured out my mistakes and this time it was getting done right. One of the main reasons I couldn't make it work before was because the audio was leading the gameplay. The audio determined the pacing and how the levels were constructed. This time I was going to build a fun game first, and not let the sound take precedence. It's still an important aspect of the project, but it's not the main one.

I'll show more of the project and the process of making it in the coming weeks and months. For now though I'll leave you with my final description: Beyond the Infinite is a frenetic gravity-bending aural journey, and I'm going to finish it.

#recordingProcess #beyond the infinite

soundSelection #001

A selection of what we're listening to right now. For more check out our SoundCloud.

Mellow Thrills by The NorthaZe

#soundSelection

inVision #001

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