Spy Party & Smooth Jazz

Videogames do a lot of leg work for the player in terms of sensory representation.

As a kind of composite uber-medium that encompasses audio, visual, textual, and systemic content; all in digital form, it leaves very little space for the player to fill. Role play is often a major part of the immersive quality of games, and while each medium has found its niche for the audience games often excel when they put players in the procedural space. What I mean by this is that the interactivity, the procedures the player enacts, is the missing part of the game that player fills. This means that role play is decision (or choice) based, rather than imagination based. The player does not need to imagine visual locations or characters, or gaps in time due to editing, only potential outcomes of decisions.

Being involved in the Spy Party beta has been interesting in that, as a game in the process of being built, there are atmospheric elements still missing, even though the systemic content is already quite advanced. Music, for example, is missing. Only background party chatter and the clinking of drinks is heard. It has made me realise just how much of a difference can be made to a player's experience of entirely the same systems when manipulated whilst listening to music. As a result, my Spy Party sessions have been accompanied by a soundtrack of my devising, namely Chris Potter’s live sessions on shuffle. This addition has done wonders to enhance my role playing as both the spy character and the sniper.

Many elements of Spy Party's gameplay are timing based, while the rest are behavioural based. All of them are skill based, as designer Chris Hecker has emphasised. This jazz accompaniment has altered my approach to this timing by tweaking the tempo at which I play the game, as the rhythm of the music evolves I found myself developing a narrative that matched. Sometimes the sniper's laser would hover over me during a particularly syncopated section causing added tension as I strove to remain undetected. Or I would smoothly take control of my character as the brush strikes on the snare laid out a sophisticated beat, creating that ultra-cool presence of the super spy.

You may have noticed all of this applies to the spy role. I have yet to find a genre of music that matches the equally engaging sniper gameplay in quite the same way, something classical perhaps? Or some tech metal to match his/her constant and ever roaming alertness? Suggestions welcome.

Dissertation

Cover

If anyone ever felt there was a 9,000 word gap in their knowledge of the videogame medium, then I have just the solution for them: in the form of my dissertation. Click the title below to begin reading it in all its multi-chaptered and fully illustrated glory.

Dissertation

If you don't feel there's any holes in your encyclopedic knowledge of game and media theory then perhaps my writing can offer new perspective and context on the role of meaning in a fundamentally systemic and procedural medium.

As a substantial body of writing I have made a tab dedicated to the dissertation at the top of the website, so you can revisit it multiple times as you work your way through it, easily locating the prose you are part way through reading.

Or, if you want to download the PDF, you can view and download that HERE.

Respite

Subtle, but the new shaders connote the metallic materials of the blimp and the bump mapping helps break up the specular highlights.

Its the holidays so stuff to do animation-wise has dried up a bit. Though I'm still doing a bit of 3rd year work to stave off the sunshine induced apathy. I've had to gut my laptop (which was dying anyway) and implement some pretty illogical work-arounds to get my laptop to function properly with the, now enormous scenes The Last Trophy is working with. I remember when I was proud of my laptop, and lived under the illusion that it could hold its own against most desktops of its age...

Note the faulty motion blur on the left propeller, something we'll have to live with without increasing rendertime in unhelpful ways.

I've also been dabbling in render passes in order to give the compositor more control over the different elements of the image. So far we have diffuse material colour, specular, reflection, shadows, zdepth, and ambient occlusion. Unless specifically requested I'm hoping that should cover everything.

There's even some Ambient Occlusion on this one, not that you can really tell, but now you know its there, doesn't it look nicer?

Even though we still have a term left of this academic year I feel very aware of the vast amount of summer holiday approaching, a length of time that I'd like to fill with something productive if possible. I've been sending emails to a small number of companies I'd like to do placements with over the summer and recieving not particularly encouraging automated replies generally saying: "we can't reply to every email, so don't expect a response". Even the hardly known Frictional Games in Sweden have a response warning that they aren't looking for interns. They're a 5 man team for gods sake, and I offered to work for free! Obviously the fact that there is only 5 of them means they can't babysit a useless student, still, slightly disheartening.


In the meantime I've been trying to push myself into making a start on pre-production for our own 3rd year major projects. While this feels stupidly early, I don't want to arrive at term one of next year and have to sketch and storyboard a load of stuff from scratch, if at all possible I'd want to be able to go straight into asset production to give me and whoever else I can convince to join me as much time as possible in the production stage, because the sooner that all wraps, the more we can up the shininess :D

Meet Noel Paisley, Professional Protagonist.

Since gutting my laptop I haven't been able to install adobe stuff because (not expecting it to die on me) I left all the installation discs in Falmouth. So this is just a pencil sketch until I can ink and colour it in Photoshop. Hopefully I can make a start on modelling a low poly version of the character and figure out how the scraps of cloth or his beard might work in terms of dynamics.

Pixel Propaganda

Chris Hecker, designer working on Spy Party recently did a lecture at a University that covers some pretty fundamental aspects of game design but in a way pacey way that infuses his own enthusiasm and opinion.

I've always felt a resistance to killing in videogames, after a while it feels normal (which is worrying in itself) but this article discusses some of the other options available to developers that are being neglected.

This is Jonathan Blow's most complete talk on Braid, specifically its gameplay, and shows footage of the games prototyping phase. Its a fascinating look at one of my favourite games ever and even in this talk, there are still elements Blow refuses to discuss as he believes so strongly in the importance of player discovery.