Currently, I'm working on Trion's RTS MMO called "End of Nations." As of last milestone (just ending) I was assigned as Creative Content Lead on the game design team. A recent dev diary showed that I really need to keep my eyebrows down when talking and perhaps go for the more natural "pirate-barbarian" look than the clean cut corporate attire.
How I Got into Games:
Back in 1995, I had to two scholarships to grad school in New Genres of Art, but as artist Paul McCarthy at his opening at the Getty Center said to me after telling him what I've been up to for the last decade "you took a far departure" from Fine Art in to the world of Video Games.
Nearly 14 years later, I'm still in games, but always took my conceptual critical skills that I learned in Fine Arts school with me. So it wasn't that far of a departure, although I find that my critical techniques are very new to game production. As my wife who was in the movie and television industry says "you guys suck at making a product on time!"
Do I miss Art, just as much as I miss playing football. But my love for games keeps coming back, I recall stealing quarters and finding any way to get my hands on a quarter to play an arcade game at the local ice cream shop or 7 Eleven. This love of mine is a tri-part monster.
Many pinches did I recieve from my mother as she found me at 7/11 "Oh ma God here she comes man, run!"- 7/11 Clerk common exclamation, followed by a pinch to my side while trying to get the high score.
After graduating college (3.8), I took more computer courses, you see Photo Shop was not very available anywhere on most campuses during that time, that's when I met some fellas from Activision and started as a beta tester on MechWarrior Ps1. 2 1/2 years later out of Activision QA "the dungeon" I had a game portfolio which I shopped around.
However, the back story reads like destiny. My exposure to computers began with my mom bringing home Xerox "throw away" motherboards and a prototype laser mouse. She worked for Xerox' El Segundo prototype department, so we saw and heard about a lot of future products. Then in 6th grade Miss Swinger put me in charge of the classic Radio Shack computer. We had to lock bolt it to the floor and when we were finished had to carry it back into the closet, which also had a bolt lock.
That summer, I won my first game design contest at the local Boy's Club in Santa Monica (The same Boy's Club that was the center and storm of controversy when a clerk denied a girl a ball, it became the Girls Club soon after). I designed a pin ball game that had 2 holes and carved in gutters, in other words I designed it to take your money! I also heard the movie "Clash of Titans" told in oral/verbal narrative tradition twice, since we didn't have money for the movies this was the closest thing! What power story telling had on us all!
[I come from a strong story telling tradition incompassing hundreds of family stories, so any great story is worth the ear and the beer. Some where archived at U.C.L.A.]
At home, we were not allowed to ever play Dungeons and Dragon or similar games due to their "demonic and satanic worshipping nature" according to my parents, so we invented our own games. That's when I learned my first lesson, keep the player entertained, if anyone died the game died, so we always found a way to save! We took some graph paper, a pair of die and made a sidescroller based on Spelunking, lots of skeletons, spiders and treasure chests to be found.
When we were short of money (a quarter) we either took grey hairs for 1 penny a piece out of my grandfather's head (and he counted each one) or played in real time our favorite game at the time; An advanced version of "the floor is lava" with boss monsters, items, platforms and swinging ropes!
By middle school, I was up to Fortran, however my math suffered because of the "busing policies" of my school district (the different schools didn't have articulation agreements). In highschool, I took another BASIC course and made a "choose your own adventure" starring Wally George and a haunted house. My long life love of Art, Football and Games conflicted schedule wise, dam if I only had two more clones. In my freshman year I took a job cleaning a store front which I was never paid for, then took a job at a toy store to purchase Nintendo Games.
It's been a long journey, often bumpy, but my love of creating worlds and especially entertaining people has taken me this far.
Currently, I still maintain a love for making Fine Art and new found love for Intellectual Property development; its just a matter of time to get around to them all. With a son on the way, perhaps I can relive them all again.....
Game Philosphies Part 1
I always found game design to be a big mish mash of all disciplines and always more than just about the numbers. I guess I'm more of a holistic designer, concerned more with the overall entertainment experience than specific mechanics or systems.
Nowadays, several millions could be spent on designing just a couple maps or systems, so I take being a Game Designer as a serious equivalent to a Movie Director.
Does Story have anything to do with game design? 100% it does, stories are all around us, anything and everything with a beginning-middle-end has a story. We as human beings hold stories so sacred that we are willing to and have killed each other for them.
A story is not necessarily about "text," stories probably started with a visual, then audio and last re-enactment. Text only came after many centures of the latter. So when you are moving around in a map, guess what? The very objects, points of interest and landscape are telling you a story way before you get to a non player character with a mission to dish out. Have a monster encounter? That has a story as well!
Systems themselves have a story, if it is a mechanic as simple as jumping, the jumping over time in most games becomes more challenging and you always find yourself jumping over more and more dangerous contexts.
Systems like talent trees or avatar transformative as well have stories, who are you and who are you going to become are strong tools for a Game Designer to layout a plan. You can often if not always sense when a designer has not thought and designed this out, simply laying out meta-game transformative systems willy nilly just doesn't cut it (unless its DADAism all over again).
Games can be designed using a super structure like Compulsion Loops, defining Micro, Core and Meta compulsion loops in a game sets a president for the story transformative aspect of a game. While Level Designing, consider the player's movement in space and what they see telegraphs to them things to come and simply contextualizes their experience.
So next time you hear someone say stories have nothing to with games, ask them to recommend a great game and tell you about it, you'll see quickly that they will evolve into telling you a story. After all is Halo just about shooting or is it about a Space Marine shooting Aliens while saving Humanity? Which of the two would you buy as a piece of entertainment?
