Game Design

It’s All in the Game as Students Pitch to Their Industry Peers

A year of Game Design distilled into one presentation – while that’s not an entirely accurate description of Game Design’s industry presentation night, you could tell the students felt the weight of expectations in the room. Here they were, with the games they’d worked on for almost four months, presenting to a standing-room only crowd of industry professionals – potentially their future employers.

Over the course of the evening, hosted by Senior Instructor Andrew Laing, students fielded hard, on-the-spot questions about their design choices, the inspiration for the games, and their future plans, including monetization. Leading off was the team behind Daru, a side-scrolling platformer that gives special attention to both combat mechanics and movement. Andrew Denault, Damien Le Lievre, Pedro Portasio, and Andrea Del Bello adjusted its design mid-development when testing demonstrated that the highlight for players was using Daru’s chain to glide about the levels.

Blending retro adventure gaming with modern design techniques such as mo-cap using Kinect, In Plain Sight, by Brooke Fargo, Hami Arabestani, Melissa Schnarr, and William Shyu, is the atmospheric tale of a father looking for his kidnapped son. Set inside a militarized hospital, the game relies on voice work and visual cues to guide the player down a stealth-based path.

The first Facebook game created by VFS students, and the first student game from North America to appear on Facebook, Zombie-Kiri puts you in the role of a zombie-fighting, hoverblade-riding ninja, who can choose to protect, abandon, or “kiri” your actual Facebook friends who populate the game. Students Stuart Saunders, Stanislav Costiuc, Nathan Nasseri, and Clarence Chan designed the game to address a hole they saw in the Facebook market – games for hardcore gamers.

If horror puzzlers set in Victorian hospitals are more your cup of tea, Anthony Butler, Brandon Dolinski, George H Charles, and Vlad Volynine have the game for you. Forget Me Not Annie sees you play as the titular Annie who, with the help of her location-swapping, talking teddy bear, tries to navigate her way out of the depths of her nightmares.

You also have to escape certain doom in Falling to Pieces, but that’s where the similarities end. Here you are an outdated robot, sent to the recycling pile, desperately trying to save both yourself and the other relegated souls from the pit of fire. To do so you’ll be relying on the three forms your robot can take, solving the puzzles and situations Bashar Al Halees, Brian Canart, and Trevor Da Silva have placed in your way to freedom.

The final game of the night, Remnant, took us to the farthest reaches of space, as the captain of a transforming spaceship aided by drones. Elliot Hudson, Waylon Snedker, Luke Takeuchi, Lance Mueller, and Ryan Jones have created an open space world that is constantly trying to kill you; in your favour are the ability to slow down time, and the aforementioned drones which allow you to change your ship into three, increasingly powerful weapons.

Afterward, the assembled guests were taken upstairs to the Game Design campus, for a chance to play the games they just saw, and ask further questions.

Congratulations on an engaging evening of presentations!

Guest Post: Extra Credits’ James Portnow Visits VFS

Some may know of James Portnow as the CEO of Rainmaker Games, but he’s also one of the minds behind Extra Credits – a web series focused on discussing important issues facing the video game industry.

VFS was pleased to host James for an inspiring visit with Game Design students yesterday, which left many in the room considering how to shape their own upcoming contributions to games. We’re lucky to have current student Isaac Calon give us a full rundown of the event.

Guest Post by Isaac Calon

The old bait and switch? Yes, please.

On Thursday evening the Game Design campus was treated to a talk by James Portnow about the aesthetics of our craft. As a game designer, journalist, speaker, the CEO of Rainmaker Games, and as the writer for the online game design series, Extra Credits, James has made an enormous impression on the industry that he so obviously loves.

His original plan called for a talk on the shape of narrative in the massively multiplayer space, but instead Portnow asked and answered questions for a solid hour, leading a standing-room-only audience to pithy conclusions not only about what he believes are our shared responsibilities as the future backbone of the industry, but also (especially) about the very core of the game-playing experience.

The theme of the event was that understanding what is happening on the player side of the screen, rather than what’s on the screen itself, is the key to understanding why Call of Duty, FarmVille, and Minecraft are such compelling and lucrative experiences in not-so-different ways. Lacking any visuals besides a PDF of MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, Portnow called on the audience to explain why we play the games we do and broke down several of our favourites based on the core aesthetics for each.

To sum up, we professionals aren’t only in the business of making fun. We are in the enviable position of making interactive experiences that tap into the many shared desires and needs of a vast audience – an audience far greater than the prepubescent teens of which it may have once been comprised. In James’ eyes, the opportunities presented by our field are basically limitless, and he sounded almost envious as he told us that the games industry’s Citizen Kane will “come from you guys.”

Portnow, via Extra Credits, has been accused of “white-knighting” the industry, or making it seem like it should only be focused on building games that send strong social messages or act as art installations. Rather, his message has almost always seemed to be that the relatively young but oh-so relevant and now widespread videogame medium has staggering potential beyond just “fun.” Of course there’s still room for that, but the potential for videogames to educate, for example, must be explored.

The 2010s are an exciting time for our industry, and frankly, I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do with it.

Thanks, Isaac. And many thanks to James Portnow for his inspiring visit!

Game Design Grads Student Project Hits Facebook

Ninjas and zombies. They’re a more natural fit than apple pie and ice cream, and for Game Design alumni Stuart Saunders, Clarence Chan, Stanislav Costiuc, and Nathan Nasseri, that fit lead them to explore the possibility of hardcore gaming on Facebook with Zombie-Kiri. As the team says on its website: “When we began thinking of Zombie-Kiri we wanted to create something that breaks the typical Facebook social gaming mold.” It’s both the first Facebook game to come out of Game Design, and the first student-made Facebook game in North America.

In a recent interview with The Vancouver Courier, Nathan says the team spent a combined 5,000 hours making the game over a period of three months. A key feature is integratation with your friends list on Facebook, giving you the option of either saving them…or letting them succumb to zombies.

Congratulations, team!

Game Design Expo 2012 Hits the High Score

All good things must come to an end, and so it is that Game Design Expo 2012, our sixth annual celebration of games and the people who make them, has come to a close. What an amazing weekend!

Saturday’s sold-out Industry Speaker Day featured some of the biggest names in gaming. Bruce Nesmith of Bethesda, the Director of Design on the runaway choice for 2011′s Game of the Year, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, delivered the keynote presentation. To date Skyrim has sold 10 million copies, an amazing feat for a game released in November, and part of its success is the Radiant Story system Bruce and his team used to create dynamic quests. But, Bruce warned, “Radiant Story is a tool. You can use a tool poorly. It will not make content. Storytelling is a uniquely human endeavour; people make good stories.”

Associate Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi, who helped start BioWare’s Austin studio to create the most-anticipated MMO in years, Star Wars: The Old Republic, walked the captivated audience through the lessons his team had learned, lessons that he admitted were freely given by the developers of another, high-profile MMO. “They told us we could know their secrets, because no one ever followed them.” He said that a lot of what they learned about player interaction came from their own experiences, such as in high school where you learn that talking to strangers can lead to ridicule. “But,” he added, “maybe you had a different childhood.”

Other presentations featured Dan Taylor exploring the fallacies behind entrenched views on level design, VFS grad Bruce Kelly‘s journey from family games to the gritty near-future of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Mark Acero of Radical Entertainment on how you can create more organic, fluid combat systems. The day’s talks ended with a fairly raucous panel discussion with local indie developers, moderated by Victor Lucas of Electric Playground, which discussed whether multi-millionaire developers could still be considered “indie”, why some of the most innovative game design is coming out of Scandinavia, and how to stay true to your ideas while still paying the mortgage.

On Sunday, people came out in the hundreds to Vancouver Film School for a free Game Design Open House, the first in the new Game Design campus, for a day of learning, meeting the people who make the acclaimed program tick, and giveaways, games, and standing-room-only sample classes.

The Open House also marked the official launch of the 2012 Women in Games Scholarship, a wonderful opportunity for an aspiring female game designer to receive a full scholarship to the program. In addition, there are scholarships from G4TechTV, Radical Entertainment, Slant Six Games, Annex Pro, and Microsoft/BigPark totaling $15,000. You can read more about them – and apply – right here.

Thank you to all our speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, volunteers, and everyone who came out to share this weekend with us. We’ll have more highlights coming soon from Game Design Expo 2012, including videos of all the presentations. For now, check out photos from both days below, and keep in touch through Twitter: @gamedesignexpo and @vfs.

All Work is Play: VFS Grads on the State of Gaming

Vancouver Film School In Focus Magazine – Issue 17 Cover Story

Check out the January/February issue, and many more!

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when a video game could only be played on a purpose-built cabinet at an arcade. Suffice it to say the times have changed, and your average mobile phone now has more computing power than the original NASA command station. With gaming theory influencing almost everything we do, from interacting with friends to buying groceries to getting healthy, games are set to take centre stage in the popular consciousness in a big way. How big? Well consider that in 2011:

  • Approximately 16,000 people were directly employed in the Canadian video game industry
  • The industry had an estimated $1.7 billion of direct economic impact on the Canadian economy
  • In the U.S., 72% of households played some form of video games, and 29% of gamers were over the age of 50
  • 59% of Canadians are gamers (have played a video game within the last month)
  • 45% of Canadians played a game at least a few times a week

In the following article, VFS grads – nine Game Design alumni, a Classical Animation grad, and a Sound Design for Visual Media grad – present their thoughts on games and the industry’s future.

A NON-EXISTENT GAME THEY’D LIKE TO PLAY

Annie Dickerson (Game Design, 2011 | Digido Interactive): I want a game that tracks every activity I do throughout the day. Brush my teeth – 2pts. Walk the dog – 5pts. My real world efforts then feed into a virtual world that rewards me for my deeds, challenges me to try new things, and helps me visualize patterns in my daily life.

Bruce Kelly (Game Design, 2006 | Eidos Montreal): Because they’re the only games I can think about right now: I want a game that looks like Skyrim, plays like Dark Souls, feels and sounds like Battlefield 3, and theoretically never ends like Diablo. I’m pretty sure that game would be considered a crime against humanity, though, so it’s probably for the best that it never sees the light of day.

McElroy Flavelle (Game Design, 2008 | Vancouver Social Games): Though I spend a lot of time talking about how the console era is coming to a close, I’d love to play a Red Dead Redemption-like game set in the Pacific Northwest. I imagine this is interesting to very few other people and there’s a good reason nobody will ever build it.

Grayson Scantlebury (Game Design, 2008 | Radical Entertainment): Still waiting for a “holodeck” to be a real thing.

Jake Kazdal (Classical Animation, 1996 | Haunted Temple Studios): I want the 16-bit adventure game genre to be revived. That may or not be a hint about what I want to do next!

Brennan Massicotte (Game Design, 2007 | Independent): I’d like to see games that have compelling personal journeys that exist in a social space with your friends. There’s so much potential for experiences where the players generate the content and the meaning of the world that hasn’t yet been explored.

Lawrence Metten (Game Design, 2009 | BigPark): I want to play a fighter where you face off against your pet-peeves. I’d love to kick the stuffing out of slow walkers, bad drivers, and nail biters. Virtually, of course.

Bruce Kelly was a Level Designer on Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Melanie Genereux (Game Design, 2007 | Longtail Studios): I want to play some funky-but-realistic-and-mature RPG where the protagonist is long-boarding and hitchhiking across the Americas. The player would build relationships and acquire various skills as they travel and meet new characters.

Jordan Fehr (Sound Design for Visual Media, 2008 | Independent): Some great ideas have been floating around about trying to make a game about photojournalism, especially as it pertains to war. I also would love to see something new created about maps and map-making. I have no idea how a game like that would even work, but since maps are such a central thing in video games, but only used as a tool, I would love to see where someone could go with trying to make the game actually about maps.

CASUAL GAMING VS AAA TITLES

Annie: Casual games have created experiences that a broader audience can enjoy, but there will always be gamers who demand AAA titles.

Bruce: I don’t see why their respective existences need to remain mutually exclusive, because if anything the gap between “casual” and AAA is shrinking. As far as winners and losers go, I can’t imagine the success of one being bad for the other. Casual gaming will arguably become the dominant form, but that kind of success will mean exposing more and more people to our culture, inevitably bringing new gamers into the fold; today’s casual gamer could be tomorrow’s hardcore gamer. It’s win/win as far as I’m concerned.

McElroy: I don’t think casual or AAA will die. I think we`ll see the line blur, and it’s already started. I think tablets will be the most common tool for delivering hardcore games and at that point there will have been a lot of lessons learned in the casual space to bridge the gap between core and casual.

Grayson: The key is finding innovation. I think casual games have the edge there, as they typically have more freedom and smaller production cycles. The next step is to take that innovation, create a title around it, and give it the polish it deserves to become a AAA title. Neither side will win or lose – the industry needs both.

Continue reading →

Bruce Nesmith of Bethesda Discusses Skyrim, Radiant Story

Skyrim's Radiant Story allows you to send thousands of cheese wheels down a mountain

Local coverage of video games is ramping up, now that Game Design Expo and the Game Design Open House are just around the corner. The Georgia Straight’s Blaine Kyllo spoke to keynote speaker Bruce Nesmith, Director of Design on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, about the game’s dynamic world system, Radiant Story:

Radiant Story’s more extraordinary feature is it allows characters in the world to react dynamically to what players do. “In a big, open-world game like this, to have the world react at this level is pretty new and fresh,” Nesmith said. If a player drops a sword on the ground, for example, a computer-controlled character might approach them with the blade, saying “Hey, you dropped this.”

You can read the rest of this story on the Georgia Straight blog. Bruce will deliver the keynote presentation at the sixth annual Game Design Expo, this Saturday, January 21.

If you didn’t manage to get a ticket, follow VFS on Twitter for live updates from the event.

Sound Design and Game Design Students Team Up at DigiBC Challenge

One of the benefits students often mention about VFS is being in close proximity to potential collaborators in other disciplines. Depending on the program, there are often opportunities to forge those connections through interdepartmental student projects — such as those that exist between Sound Design for Visual Media and Game Design.

Recently, a number of VFS students from those two programs entered into DigiBC’s competition to see who could create the “Best Student Interactive Property”. Five teams were accepted as finalists, including two from VFS, and all had to present their project in five minutes to a panel of judges coinciding with DigiBC’s holiday party held at EA.

Check out what the 2011 Women in Games Scholarship winner, Larissa Baptista, had to say about the experience on her blog. She was part of the team that presented Fang Shui, which you can play on Kongregate.

We reached out to Sound Design student Aaron Tchir, who was part of one of the teams that created and presented a game called Remnant. This features the work of Game Design students Elliot Hudson, Ryan Jones, Lance Mueller, Waylon Snedker, and Luke Takeuchi, along with Sound Design students Sasha Larco, Paola Velasquez, Dan Ayers, Wil Claeys, and Andy Smith.

“The game itself is a top-down space shooter developed for the web browser/XBLA market,” says Aaron. “Players pilot a ship called the Ambassador in arcade-like dogfights.”

With “over 400 lines of dialogue and 6 voice talents recorded over 3 different recording sessions,” the sound team definitely had their hands full. “I broke the raw tracks into parts and let my audio team at it. This project wouldn’t have met its milestones without them. I got to work closely with Ryan [Jones] and got face time with everyone working on Remnant. It’s a lot of fun being in Sound Design and getting to work with the other programs.”

The Remnant team is currently working on completing the game within the next few months — so stay tuned to the their blog for more details.

Congrats to all the VFSers who took part in the competition!

2011 Retrospective: Looking Back on an Amazing Year

2011 has been a year of incredible accomplishments by VFS students and alumni.

For the first time, we saw a Writing for Film & Television student screenplay produced on a global stage with grad Seth Lochhead’s Hanna. A team of Entertainment Business Management students took their Compendium short down to Screamfest LA and beat out seasoned pros for the Best Short Film award. And Digital Character Animation grad Rafael Cardenas took home his first Ariel Award – Mexico’s answer to the Oscars.

As any regular reader of this blog knows, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for VFS alumni achievements this year. Students and grads from all programs raised the bar even higher for the next wave of artists to come out of VFS, and we’ve pulled all of their stories together at vfs.com/2011.

Browse through the milestones of 2011, month by month. You’ll see a special video feature, VFS Blog and In Focus magazine stories, YouTube highlights, and what the wider VFS community had to say about it all.

Congratulations to everyone on an amazing year – and thanks for letting us tell your inspiring stories!

Star Wars: The Old Republic Hits Stores Today!

After six years of hard work, Star Wars: The Old Republic has cunningly made it into stores and online markets just before Christmas.

A MMORPG steeped in Star Wars lore, it’s BioWare’s biggest release to date and naturally features the amazing talents of VFS alumni — including Game Design grad Tyler Hitchings (Associate Writer), and 3D Animation & Visual Effects grads Justin Walters (Environment Artist) and Jason Shum (Cinematic Animator).

If the game sounds familiar, it might be because we’ve mentioned it before: Game Design Expo 2012 speaker Emmanuel Lusinchi of BioWare Austin served as Associate Lead Designer and will be presenting a talk on Industry Speaker Day titled “It Seems Pretty Obvious When You Put It Like That – Lessons Learned While Designing a AAA MMO”.

We can’t wait to hear more about all the work that went into what could be the highest-budgeted game ever (over $150 million!).

Congratulations to Emmanuel and all the VFS grads who are celebrating today!

The Full-Tuition Women in Games Scholarship is Back!

Game Design Expo 2012 is rapidly approaching — January 21-22 is just a month away!

As this year’s speakers prepare their presentations on everything from “Dynamically Created Content in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” to “Creating Cohesive Combat Systems” to “Competitive Multiplayer Design for iOS”, we’re getting excited for a weekend of game design fun and insight.

After three years of offering talented women a great opportunity to bring their game design skills to the next level, the full-tuition Women in Games scholarship to the Game Design program at VFS is back. Application details will be announced at the Sunday, January 22 Open House inside VFS’s new Game Design campus.

PLUS: There will also be a host of industry-sponsored scholarships (for women and men) from G4TechTV, Radical Entertainment, Slant Six Games, Annex Pro, and BigPark.

Register to attend, if you haven’t already!

There will be more Game Design Expo news as we get closer to the sixth annual event. To stay in the loop, follow @GameDesignExpo on Twitter and “like” the Facebook page!