Month: November 2011

Game Designer

I recently picked up Uncharted 3 and played the hell out of it. I mean, I was up all night for a video game. I haven’t done that since my first tour of college. While it feels less memorable than the second game in the series (in large part due to recycled design angles), it’s still a great game. I’ll be replaying it sometime soon for the same reason I choose to reexperience select books and films.

This brought my thinking around to the ultimate goal of working as a narrative designer—a goal which has been on the shelf since I moved here for a more lucrative opportunity. Part of this goal involves critical analyses of video game experiences in order to understand why some games have great narratives, some are middling, and some are just terrible, all of which may be affected by elements such as gameplay (which I still believe to be the foundation upon which a good story can be told), the visual and audio design, and of course general stability and performance of the software. It’s a complicated web that the team at Naughty Dog have demonstrated they can weave well.

I’m so impressed with the product of their efforts—in particular by Amy Hennig, the creative director and person responsible for the narrative design—that I’ve decided to begin reinvesting my personal time to game design study and execution. I’d done some technical design work, mainly in Flash (RIP), before I switched to strictly writing, and now I’m thinking that it can’t hurt to have a technical foundation to support creative endeavors. This probably means getting reacquainted with programming, which I fucking loathe as a liberal arts man and general hater of mathematics. But them’s the breaks.

Anyway, Naughty Dog is here in Oregon, and they have a spot for a game designer. Let’s see how I measure up.

Responsibilities

  • Responsible for the planning, level layout, setup and tuning of mulit-player and single player levels, from high concept to object placement and scripting

I’ve run through this process from the marketing and QA angles, but not design. Easy to understand and perform after time spent as an entry-level designer.

  • Responsible for designing and producing engaging and fun third-person action gameplay and levels

Nope. No professional design experience whatsoever.

  • Act as producer for levels you design, as well as other parts of the game, collaborating across disciplines to get work done and clear dependencies, ensuring deadlines are met, and championing aspects of the gameplay

I do this already. Collaboration is at the core of video game development. The more ownership I’m given, the more involved I become.

  • Work directly with artists, programmers, animators and other game designers to contribute to the vision of the game

Again, collaboration. It requires organization and focus of mind, as well as enough flexibility to take suggestions from others. A basic principle of human society, really.

  • Responsible for level layout by creating simplified level geometry and performing extensive play-testing and iteration

I’ve done some work with modeling, but it was years ago and not very extensive. I’ll have to include visual design basics along with programming.

  • Work with programmers to develop tools on an ongoing basis

I do this now. It’s simple identification of present and future needs and ways in which tools can help manage those needs. It also takes a bit of work to communicate needs in a way that a programmer can understand and translate into the tool.

Requirements & Skills

  • Experience designing single-player levels for console games

Nope.

  • Minimum 3 to 5 years of games industry experience

And how.

  • Strong methodology and problem solving ability and with a focus on creative, fun and innovative solutions

I solve problems and put out fires. I have to be creative to get ensure a game is properly tested. Easy shit. The fun and innovative part might throw me since the work I do is all fairly formulaic.

  • Strong and effective communication skills

I communicate what needs to be said. Tact is easy.

  • Exceptional team player with the ability to collaborate without losing sight of the gameplay vision

Yep.

  • Willingness to take design direction when offered

I’m flexible enough.

  • Experience playing 3rd person action games

I’d say most of what I play is 3rd person action games.

  • Very good working knowledge of Maya, 3DS Max or similar 3D package

Does it count if it’s working knowledge from six years ago?

  • Experience of developing third-person action games a bonus

Nope.

  • Experience of scripting set-up for action games a bonus

Nope.

  • Desire to be a part of the Naughty Dog team

Naturally.

Nothing comes easy I suppose. I’m looking at my options now, the best of which is to shut the fuck up and put out some actual work. There are enough game editors in the world to accomplish this. And writing is an ongoing endeavor.

It may be trite, but the T.E. Lawrence quote from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was included at the start of Uncharted 3, sums up the notion of making things happen:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

El Hombre Murciélago

We used to have an old hi-fi stereo in the living room. My pop made a big deal about the receiver, which hummed when it was powered up. He also owned an old record player and a box full of old 12-inch LPs. They smelled like dust and mold. I found a strange Iron Butterfly record in the box and listened to the B-side a few times before I cared about any music that wasn’t a theme song for a television show. I might have been lying on that old shag carpet that came with the house before they replaced it with wood flooring. The song was like a long road. I once fell asleep listening to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

My ma used to vacuum and clean the kitchen with the radio tuned to one of the Spanish stations that played los exitos. The announcers had deep, excitable voices. I’ve learned to imitate them for comedic effect.

That receiver and record player sat on top of two tall wood grain speakers, all of which was hidden from view when the living room door was opened so that the breeze could come in past the shiny black grate of the steel security door. We sometimes opened the windows and rolled open the glass window slats to allow the sunlight to flood in past the security bars on the windows.

These details are all incidental. The only real reason to be in the living room was to watch the CRT TV that sat on the shag and rotated slightly on its axis. When my pop found that television is was infested with cockroaches, which he managed to clear out after several hours with it in the garage. It was new enough to be digital and displayed the channels in big green numbers on the front, just above the number pad. There was a remote control with tape around the battery cover but it didn’t work too well. As the oldest, I never had to get up to change the channel.

We used to watch a lot of Ninja Turtles on that television. We collected the cards and watched it like it was the preacher.

If I wanted to chase after Shredder in that house, I ran in a circle. I probably began in the living room and stomped into the central hallway, alongside all the big drawers and closets on the left and my small (tiny) bedroom on the right. I was always Donatello because I was intelligent, even before I was really intelligent. I chased after Shredder wielding a long broom handle and we turned at the bathroom door to enter the kitchen, where I sometimes managed to hit Shredder on the shoulder, lightly enough to be safe but hard enough to get a squeaked child reaction. We continued through the breakfast nook and back into the living room where the chase might end on the old twill couch.

Once, I sat on the couch and wrote “YA NO TE AMO” on the inside of a snapple bottle cap, then sent Abe or Chris to deliver it to my ma, who was sitting on the side stoop with a cigarette and the mangy yard dogs who used to be fancy poodles. She never told me what she thought about it. You must understand that I really wanted to go to the pool with my best friend Ivan and his family. It was cruelty to not allow me to go.

Satisfied with my rejoinder, I sat on the couch and turned on the television to Saturday afternoon shows. The old Adam West Batman show was on, and although I wasn’t really a fan of something as old as Batman, it was enough to pass the time lying on the carpet, listening to commercials and traffic in between the fighting of crime.

Game Designer

I recently picked up Uncharted 3 and played the hell out of it. I mean, I was up all night for a video game. I haven’t done that since my first tour of college. While it feels less memorable than the second game in the series (in large part due to recycled design angles), it’s still a great game. I’ll be replaying it sometime soon for the same reason I choose to reexperience select books and films.

This brought my thinking around to the ultimate goal of working as a narrative designer—a goal which has been on the shelf since I moved here for a more lucrative opportunity. Part of this goal involves critical analyses of video game experiences in order to understand why some games have great narratives, some are middling, and some are just terrible, all of which may be affected by elements such as gameplay (which I still believe to be the foundation upon which a good story can be told), the visual and audio design, and of course general stability and performance of the software. It’s a complicated web that the team at Naughty Dog have demonstrated they can weave well.

I’m so impressed with the product of their efforts—in particular by Amy Hennig, the creative director and person responsible for the narrative design—that I’ve decided to begin reinvesting my personal time to game design study and execution. I’d done some technical design work, mainly in Flash (RIP), before I switched to strictly writing, and now I’m thinking that it can’t hurt to have a technical foundation to support creative endeavors. This probably means getting reacquainted with programming, which I fucking loathe as a liberal arts man and general hater of mathematics. But them’s the breaks.

Anyway, Naughty Dog is here in Oregon, and they have a spot for a game designer. Let’s see how I measure up.

Responsibilities

  • Responsible for the planning, level layout, setup and tuning of mulit-player and single player levels, from high concept to object placement and scripting

I’ve run through this process from the marketing and QA angles, but not design. Easy to understand and perform after time spent as an entry-level designer.

  • Responsible for designing and producing engaging and fun third-person action gameplay and levels

Nope. No professional design experience whatsoever.

  • Act as producer for levels you design, as well as other parts of the game, collaborating across disciplines to get work done and clear dependencies, ensuring deadlines are met, and championing aspects of the gameplay

I do this already. Collaboration is at the core of video game development. The more ownership I’m given, the more involved I become.

  • Work directly with artists, programmers, animators and other game designers to contribute to the vision of the game

Again, collaboration. It requires organization and focus of mind, as well as enough flexibility to take suggestions from others. A basic principle of human society, really.

  • Responsible for level layout by creating simplified level geometry and performing extensive play-testing and iteration

I’ve done some work with modeling, but it was years ago and not very extensive. I’ll have to include visual design basics along with programming.

  • Work with programmers to develop tools on an ongoing basis

I do this now. It’s simple identification of present and future needs and ways in which tools can help manage those needs. It also takes a bit of work to communicate needs in a way that a programmer can understand and translate into the tool.

Requirements & Skills

  • Experience designing single-player levels for console games

Nope.

  • Minimum 3 to 5 years of games industry experience

And how.

  • Strong methodology and problem solving ability and with a focus on creative, fun and innovative solutions

I solve problems and put out fires. I have to be creative to get ensure a game is properly tested. Easy shit. The fun and innovative part might throw me since the work I do is all fairly formulaic.

  • Strong and effective communication skills

I communicate what needs to be said. Tact is easy.

  • Exceptional team player with the ability to collaborate without losing sight of the gameplay vision

Yep.

  • Willingness to take design direction when offered

I’m flexible enough.

  • Experience playing 3rd person action games

I’d say most of what I play is 3rd person action games.

  • Very good working knowledge of Maya, 3DS Max or similar 3D package

Does it count if it’s working knowledge from six years ago?

  • Experience of developing third-person action games a bonus

Nope.

  • Experience of scripting set-up for action games a bonus

Nope.

  • Desire to be a part of the Naughty Dog team

Naturally.

Nothing comes easy I suppose. I’m looking at my options now, the best of which is to shut the fuck up and put out some actual work. There are enough game editors in the world to accomplish this. And writing is an ongoing endeavor.

It may be trite, but the T.E. Lawrence quote from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was included at the start of Uncharted 3, sums up the notion of making things happen:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

The coworker’s become enamored with the adoption of a pure-bred Husky or Malamute, and just invested an hour into researching available puppies in this area. They range in price from $500 to $1000.

But I also spent that hour trying to convince him that a $500 pure-bred puppy is likely to be adopted, whereas the many animals at the human society and shelters, not to mention the hordes of them posted on Craigslist and elsewhere as “FREE TO GOOD HOME,” are probably on more shaky ground, and that a mixed breed dog is no less capable of providing whatever it is he’s looking for in a pet.

He says, “But you can’t show them,” because the aesthetics of a creature and its marketability are most important.

I also chimed in with anecdotes about my own experience with a large breed of dog in a small apartment, and the pitfalls of working for much of the day while a large and energetic dog becomes bored at home. He remained obstinate about his desire for a high-cost, very large dog, just as I would remain obstinate about how bad an idea it is.

Different minds, differing opinions.

I’m over my own concerns about providing enough behavioral discipline to raise healthy, well-adjusted pets. Instead, I find myself researching immunotherapy and the cost of that versus being forced to give up all physical activity due to severely constrained breathing passages and remaining as distant as possible. Or, the cost of providing for their first year of life and giving them up to a different home versus my own needs. Cost is an easy problem.

It begins to feel like I’m the father who buys possessions for his children and ships them off to boarding school instead of providing them with simple affection.

The coworker’s become enamored with the adoption of a pure-bred Husky or Malamute, and just invested an hour into researching available puppies in this area. They range in price from $500 to $1000.

But I also spent that hour trying to convince him that a $500 pure-bred puppy is likely to be adopted, whereas the many animals at the human society and shelters, not to mention the hordes of them posted on Craigslist and elsewhere as “FREE TO GOOD HOME,” are probably on more shaky ground, and that a mixed breed dog is no less capable of providing whatever it is he’s looking for in a pet.

He says, “But you can’t show them,” because the aesthetics of a creature and its marketability are most important.

I also chimed in with anecdotes about my own experience with a large breed of dog in a small apartment, and the pitfalls of working for much of the day while a large and energetic dog becomes bored at home. He remained obstinate about his desire for a high-cost, very large dog, just as I would remain obstinate about how bad an idea it is.

Different minds, differing opinions.

I’m over my own concerns about providing enough behavioral discipline to raise healthy, well-adjusted pets. Instead, I find myself researching immunotherapy and the cost of that versus being forced to give up all physical activity due to severely constrained breathing passages and remaining as distant as possible. Or, the cost of providing for their first year of life and giving them up to a different home versus my own needs. Cost is an easy problem.

It begins to feel like I’m the father who buys possessions for his children and ships them off to boarding school instead of providing them with simple affection.

There was the one time, recently, where someone was talking to me about dreams and wonderful pies and things, and she kept on and on when we could have been eating or hiking or fucking or something, so I punched her square in her arm, right at the termination of the bicep valley, although not hard enough to be anything more than playful.

Instead of bitching about being punched she turned and smiled and kicked me in the shin, again in the context of play, and it was understood that although I am a man with dreams and hopes and fears and great potential and imperfections, I am a man of reality and the tangible, so instead of talking about wonderfully florid dreams I need to do things or be silent or go off and write about all the beautiful stuff that I can never speak of but consider and ponder to their everlasting death.

There was the one time, recently, where someone was talking to me about dreams and wonderful pies and things, and she kept on and on when we could have been eating or hiking or fucking or something, so I punched her square in her arm, right at the termination of the bicep valley, although not hard enough to be anything more than playful.

Instead of bitching about being punched she turned and smiled and kicked me in the shin, again in the context of play, and it was understood that although I am a man with dreams and hopes and fears and great potential and imperfections, I am a man of reality and the tangible, so instead of talking about wonderfully florid dreams I need to do things or be silent or go off and write about all the beautiful stuff that I can never speak of but consider and ponder to their everlasting death.