The Evolution of Concept Art at Gas Powered Games

Having started as an artist in the early 90’s, Pun has seen firsthand how concept art has changed dramatically. In the days of Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege, the technology for polygon-based games was still in its early stages. “A typical unit in Total Annihilation might have 60 polygons, so designing units like that didn’t require much fidelity,” he recalls. “In fact, when I first started, all my initial designs had to be tossed because they were too detailed.”

The demand for concept art started to pick up a few years later when Pun started working on Dungeon Siege, where the polygon and texture budget was dramatically higher. The Action RPG genre was becoming increasingly popular and Pun saw the competition heating up.

“By the time Supreme Commander started, the need for quality concept art really hit home,” he says. “Not only were there 2D concepts created, but to properly visualize the concepts in all orthographic views, the team had to model out high-quality concepts for evaluation.” This also caused the the art team at Gas Powered Games to be inventive and resourceful in delivering high-quality concepts while meeting tight schedule demands for subsequent titles.

Lessons Learned from Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege and Age of Empires Online

Kevin Pun

While the concept process has evolved, Pun still believes there are still a lot of lessons that he and his team could’ve applied to Wildman. In his time at Gas Powered Games, Pun points out the key aspect of all the Chris Taylor titles he has worked on in the past. “There is one common theme and that is epic-ness,” he says. “Chris loves to design big worlds, big battles, and tackle big themes,” Pun says. “Accordingly with our visuals, we strive to match his grand visions. For good or bad, our projects tended to jump wildly from fantasy in one title to sci-fi in the next and on to a stylized historic RTS. Artistically, the periodic change-ups were great for exploring new styles, but on the other hand, we don’t have a style to build upon.”

Pun proudly sees that as one of the main strengths of his team.”We are extremely flexible, and we are insanely passionate about making the best art possible without compromising design functionality,” he says.

Pun mentions the strategic zoom feature of Supreme Commander as one example of that; “The camera could zoom seamlessly from the ground to a wide satellite view showing the whole map while the player could still see all of their units. It was a major artistic and technical challenge that got even tougher by the camera’s ability to freely rotate on the horizontal axis on demand. In contrast to most of the RTS games of that time that did not have such a feature, all of the units, props and terrain features in Supreme Commander had to look good in all angles and all in zoom levels.” He says, “In Dungeon Siege, the most noted feature was the seamlessly streaming world. The player could walk from one end of the world to the other with underground explorations sprinkled throughout all without a single load screen. Creating this feature was a major undertaking that took years of long hours and sweat to pull through. To wrap up the examples, in Age of Empires Online, we tackled a completely new style for the studio by adopting a highly stylized cartoon look.”

Pun looks back at both Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege to have good game cameras that sat above the action and were pulled back to see as much of the battlefield as possible.

“In a production design standpoint, the most important lessons are to make sure that we design each character or unit with a strong silhouette, good contrast, and a unique color scheme,” he says. “This goal is to help the player see his avatar easily against the background, and to understand what combatants are on the battlefield in a glance. This is extremely crucial for gameplay, especially with epic real-time combat seen in games like Supreme Commander. Since the camera in Wildman is similar to that of Dungeon Siege’s and the battles share much of that of RTS games, much of what we learned from those projects will directly apply.”

The Experience of Working on Wildman and the Kickstarter Campaign

Starting the Kickstarter campaign was a mysterious journey for the studio and for Pun. The first step was to develop an attractive style that would work well with the budget that we were shooting for. “We made educated guesses on what would have impact and what could convey the spirit of the game without words,” he recalls. “Visually, we all want to produce eye catching art that captures potential backers’ imagination.”

Working on Age of Empires Online had given the team a lot of experience in creating highly expressive worlds populated with quirky, but memorable characters. Pun reflects that when they approached Wildman, they quickly gravitated towards a grittier, modified version of that look because the knowledge could be leveraged to speed up the development process in Wildman.

“Adopting that style also made sense in multiple levels, production wise,” Pun says, “Foremost, it addressed a big concern of how to deal with the violent conflicts in the game. With the highly stylized look, the battles would remain energetic, but slightly comical so that they would be more acceptable and responsible in the public eye. Asset production would also be easier without compromising quality, and we could avoid the intense scrutiny accompanied by photo-realistic styles.”

Once the team agreed on the look, the flood gate for creating assets for the campaign busted wide open. “Our criteria for creating art and posting were to keep communicating with Chris on what he wanted and to keep checking the pulse of the online feedback.”

Ideally, the team wanted to show as many facets of the game as possible to immerse the player into this unique and unforgiving world. Explaining this intention, Pun tells us, “The core experience of the game is adventure and combat, so that was our highest priority. For the launch of the Kickstarter campaign, we created pieces that could convey the power of the Wildman, and the relentless battles that would be fought. After that was done, we focused on introducing Wildman‘s adversaries and their environments. As the campaign continued, we set out to further flesh out the vision of the game. In a nutshell, the jest of our strategy was to post updates regularly, but remain fluid enough so that we could dynamically react to deficiencies in our campaign.”

While promoting the game at Kickstarter was top priority, the studio was also working on the game itself. The art team was a skeleton crew at that moment, causing everyone to be laser-focused on their tasks. His main responsibility made him primarily in charge of the concept art effort while the team was cranking on prototype levels. Aside from cool paintings, creating art for a game of this scope is much more difficult than most people realize. There are a lot of technical hurdles such as pipelines and tools that the art team has to face before the game comes to life. “The reality of the situation was that we were playing a catch up game and needed to pull out all the stops. The Wildman Kickstarter was a huge learning experience for us, and I am sure that it will be an interesting case study for other developers who are thinking about a campaign of their own.”

Art Transforms While You’re Drawing It

In the last 15 years, Pun has seen the role, scope and expectations from art transform completely. The industry has seen a significant shift in how games are produced and distributed; big budgets are harder to secure, and the demand for quick turnaround is higher than ever. He marks that recognizing and adapting to change is really crucial for succeeding in the industry. “To cope as an artist, I had to constantly reinvent the way I work, learn new tools or techniques, and upgrade my style to keep up with changing tastes,” Pun says. “A big part of doing that is to keep a constant eye on the evolution of the industry, soak in as much as you can, and push yourself harder through what you’ve learned.” Pun also wants to mention that one aspect of the Wildman campaign that surprised him was the importance of social media. Reaching the fans through forums, Facebook, YouTube and live-video chats were immensely powerful, and it made a significant impact to the campaign’s pledges. Now that he and the team have some experience, he wishes they had jumped on these earlier.

When asked about any advice that he would like to pass on to other developers who want to pitch their ideas and works, Pun considers quality, not quantity is of the utmost importance. Of course, in general, this is true for not only pitching games, but other marketing as well. For example, Pun sees a parallel in the countless portfolios of artists getting into the industry that he’s had to look through. “A lot of portfolios that crossed my desk were bloated with everything, including the kitchen sink,” he says. “For a modeling job, artists felt compelled to add not only modeling samples, but rough animations from school or sub par character concept designs that ultimately undermined the overall effectiveness of their interview.” Pun reflects and advises, “The most successful portfolios were carefully edited to bring maximum impact. There was a young artist who came through with six pieces on his thumb drive. Normally, that would be crazy to bring into an interview, but by the time I saw the second piece, I wanted to hire him at the spot. The art was that good.”

”That might be an extreme case but the point is to be focused and put your best foot forward,” he adds.

For the Love of Games

Growing up playing Pong and Atari games on the old family TV, Sean learned to love games early in life. When Atari released a Basic Programming cartridge, he immediately began learning the language and realized that programming consisted of a series of logical instructions. He discovered that building games could be an actual job.

Still, he did not plan for a career in the games industry. He graduated from Sonoma State University with a degree in Computer Science knowing he liked building things in software, especially games. LucasFilm Games (later LucasArts) happened to be hiring junior level programmers at that time. Up to this point, Sean had only created games as a hobby, but this sounded like the perfect opportunity for him. He was right: it turned out to be a great time to join the company.

Sean Clark at LucasArts

All of a sudden, he was working with a group of people just as passionate about games as he was; real artists, musicians, programmers– talented professionals who could bring unique creative elements to the product. “It was a blast!” Sean says. “It was also an experience that has helped me through my whole career, right up to today as 3^rd-party Director at Big Fish, working to bring fun game content to the company.” In all the roles he’s done, he’s always shown his love of games. He looks for the same passion and excitement for a game from developers, both internally and externally.

Point and Click Adventure Games Anyone?

Having been involved in multiple projects in a variety of roles, Sean has a soft spot for point-and-click adventure games. While at LucasArts, Sean helped develop The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990, a popular point-and-click adventure. It was a great experience, but problems always arise, and the solutions were often unique. Sean learned a lot about problem solving and creatively mitigating issues during this project.

However, point-and click adventure games started to slip into the background. In an interview with adventuregamers.com, Sean stated that the popularity of point-and-click adventure games would return. When we asked why he thought they had fallen to the background in the first place, his answer was emphatic. “I blame it on 3D. At the time, real-time 3D was such an amazing new capability that the faster computers and video cards enabled, it became the sexy new thing.” While 3D opened new areas of design, it also started a graphics arms race. Everyone focused on 3D graphics, with a game like The Dig being compared to Dark Force or TIE Fighter. But eventually, people realized that adventure games were a different genre to other games, like first person shooters.

He points out that in 2002, Big Fish took advantage of the 3D distraction and built a successful business recognizing and catering to the adventure gamer audience. Even Escape from Monkey Island still managed to do well in the “Adventure Games are Dead” era. Although there are not many classic 3^rd person point-and-click adventure games coming to market, there is the very successful line of Hidden Puzzle Adventure Games that Big Fish is so well known for. These, Sean asserts, are a modern version of adventure game storytelling, similar to those he started his career with.

Another reason adventure games seemed to go dormant was the fact that retail space is both limited and competitive. Because attention was so focused on 3D games, it was challenging to interest retail chain buyers in adventure games. The big factor in changing the situation was the internet. Brick and mortar stores were no longer the only way to purchase games. Sean attributes Big Fish’s success largely to its creation of an online place to find and purchase great casual content, including adventure games.

Adventure Game Evolution

This new cycle of adventure games has evolved, bringing lower-priced games, which are also shorter in length, and tend to tell stories in chapters or episodes. According to Sean, these new games are still high-quality, well-polished games with great artwork, and compelling stories, although the format is different.

Big Fish created a new format for adventure games, brought them to new audiences, and gave consumers a way to try the game before committing to a purchase.

Sean believes Big Fish has been instrumental in bringing more attention to adventure games in a number of ways. They created a new format for adventure games, brought them to new audiences, and gave consumers a way to try the game before committing to a purchase. They figured out how to make adventure games easier to find and consume, at a time when retailers had all but abandoned support for the genre.

Sean is just as excited about the future as he is about the present. “We expect 2013 to be a year of innovation in game, content, and delivery, with games on almost every device and in nearly all casual genres,” Sean says. “In March alone, Big Fish launched 2 highly acclaimed mobile games: Fetch for the iPad, an adventure about a boy on the search for his dog; and Match Up! By Big Fish, the first iOS game to have real-time, 16-bracketed tournament play. Add to that the world’s largest interactive streaming casual game service and continuing franchises like Mystery Case Files, which has been downloaded more than 100 million times, and you can see how there is something to excite all types of gamers.”

Sean reminds us that Big Fish is an incredibly talented and creative company, with exclusive partnerships with more than 140 developers all over the world. He expects Big Fish to continue bringing fun and innovation to the games industry.

A Passion for Storytelling

Kindregan’s journey begins with his admission to the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts. “I started out with a passion for storytelling,” he recalls.”I had known for years that I wanted to create stories, worlds, and characters. Since I’ve always enjoyed drawing as well, I thought it would be great to combine the two by becoming a storyboard artist in the animation industry. I’ve always heard that the Character Animation program at Cal Arts was the premier school for animation and I was lucky enough to be accepted there.” One of the requirements is that every student creates a short film every year, which narrowed down his aspired fields of expertise. “I found I enjoyed the story creation and storyboarding process much more than other aspects of creating a film,” he adds.

Once he had graduated, getting a job proved to be anything but smooth sailing. Kindregan ended up being one of a group of the lucky students that were hired out of school as an intern for Turner Feature animation. “They were wrapping up on Pagemaster and starting Cats Don’t Dance, but after three months, our internship ended and they announced that production had been delayed, and they wouldn’t need any of us for a year or more.” So he set out looking for work as a storyboard artist, only to be told that it was a prestige position and one would have to work as a clean-up artist, then “an inbetweener” and then an animator before he could even hope to get a job as a board artist. “It should only take a decade or so,” he was told.

But Kindregan had no interest in committing to that career and didn’t really see the point of being so far removed from storytelling. Instead, he kept looking for work as a storyboard artist, eventually getting short-term work storyboarding “fairy tale knockoffs that would be sold in supermarkets and such”. He also made some money reading and commenting on Hollywood scripts, but didn’t make enough to make ends meet. Taking up a job as a window blinds salesman was the only way to pay rent, but then his luck turned. Warner Brothers was starting a new animation division and Kindregan decided to drop off a portfolio. “A few days later, they called me at my window blind sales job to offer me a three year contract as a storyboard artist,” he says. “It was absolutely one of the best phone calls of my life!”

Constant change

After showing what he was made of at Warner Brothers, Kindregan went on to create storyboards for an impressive number of companies, including Disney, Universal, and Sony Imageworks. Although happy with the many different projects he’s worked on, it’s clear that working on big franchises demanded some attitude changes. “It was a case of going from project to project. The film industry is very mobile and many professionals are hired on a per-project basis. I initially found the constant change a little unsettling, but eventually realized that it kept me sharp and focused,” he says. “I worked with a wide range of people at many studios, on different films in different genres. I got to work in live action and animation, in features and television. Overall, creative people are empowered by dynamic, changing challenges.” He eventually settled into animation quite well and started teaching on the side, next to his increasingly successful work as a storyboard artist.

Brian Kindregan

A few years later, however, Brian decided it was time to make some changes in his professional life. “I was working as a board artist and teaching at the same time. I enjoyed teaching very much, but I needed to be involved in creating content.” He became increasingly less engaged with storyboard work in the film industry, due to changes in the nature of his job. “The role of storyboard artist changed, and storytelling gradually became the purview of writers only. ‘Just board the script’, was a phrase I was hearing a lot. I’m not that great of an artist, and the main contribution I made to a film was as a storyteller. So even though my reputation was good enough that I kept finding work, I wasn’t as motivated about it since I wanted to do more than ‘just board the script’.” So he took his storytelling skills to the games industry and applied for a writing position with Bioware, admiring the company out of personal interest: “I was playing a lot of Baldur’s Gate II and really enjoying it,” he remarks. The jump from visual artist to writer did not seem at all odd to Kindregan, both being a means of expressing story through characters.

Bioware

Bioware had clear, simple criteria for Kindregan when he applied as a writer: “They wanted you to create a game mod using their Neverwinter Nights toolset,” he recalls .”So I sat down and did just that. The process of creating that mod was an education in itself: being able to play a quest I’d written taught me a great deal about how writing and story integrate into gameplay.” Bioware liked Brian’s mod and decided to hire him, where he started out working on titles like Jade Empire. Though making the switch from film to games wasn’t that hard for him due to his adaptability, he certainly saw some differences. “On the surface, a game studio looks very much like an animation studio: T-shirts and sneakers, toys on the desk, ping pong tables. But just under the surface, it’s still software development and so it moves in a different way than film. Games are a young art form and they change by leaps and bounds each year, whereas film is a fairly well established form.”

Funnily enough, after working on Jade Empire, he went back to work in film to direct the first two seasons of a CG animated show for public television. It didn’t take long for him to realize directing wasn’t all he’d hoped for. “I was too focused on the managerial aspects, which removed me from the actual content creation that I loved so much.” Luckily, after a few years back in film, his good friend Drew Karpyshyn, a game scenario writer himself, asked Kindregan to come back Bioware to write for Mass Effect 2 and he “jumped at the chance”.

Having finished his work on Mass Effect 2, Kindregan once again decided to leave the company, though this time for as much of a personal reason as it was a professional one. “One of the reasons I’d gone back there was to work with Drew Karpyshyn,” he explains. “When he announced during development of ME2 that he would be leaving Edmonton to go work on the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO in Austin, I found myself open to the idea of a move. At the same time, my wife and I realized that we are both coastal people at heart.” Since Bioware’s headquarters are in Edmonton, Alberta, they felt themselves too far removed from the ocean. It wasn’t an easy decision, however, and knew that he would only leave the company if he got to go to “another developer with the same commitment to high quality games”. This narrowed the list down “considerably”.

Understanding Quality

Having made up his mind, he decided he wanted to join Blizzard’s Starcraft team. “It seemed perfect, I had always loved their games and they most certainly understood quality and . . . StarCraft,” he says. Kindregan emphasizes that it was only his enthusiasm for the IP that determined his decision and not the prospect of better pay or a better position. “I didn’t go to Blizzard as a lead writer. I was hired as a senior, but quickly found myself doing lead work there. They promoted me shortly after that. In general, I would not recommend taking a creative job solely for a higher title. I’d look for a company, team, IP, and project that all get you excited. If those elements are good, the job will be worth it regardless of your title. If they aren’t, then a title won’t help you.”

Even with his love for Bioware and the work he’s done there, “they have amazing, dynamic IPs, some of the characters I wrote on Mass Effect 2 feel like old friends”, he’s always fully immersed in the universes he’s working on at the time. “I am lucky enough to live in the fictional lands of StarCraft and Diablo. They are so fun, dynamic, and rich that they occupy my mind and creative interests. I love every game universe I’ve had the privilege to work on, but I’m always most excited to be working on the universe I’m in at the moment. If I am not excited to be there, that’s a sign that I should change!”

Empowered to Keep Growing

Not a man for sitting still for too long, Brian explored his opportunities with Blizzard itself after finishing Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. “At that time, the Diablo team had been looking for a lead writer for quite some time. All told, I felt like we’d gotten the StarCraft story on to a good track with Heart of the Swarm, and that I could do the most good by moving over to Diablo. I am very excited to be playing around in the Diablo universe and helping this talented team shape the future of the story.” Thankfully, Blizzard empowers their employees in this regard and encourages development where they can. “There are many discussions about career paths and growth, and they encourage continued education. They bring in guest speakers and allow employees to share their knowledge via a series of internal talks called ‘/learn.’ I’ve presented two of these in my time at Blizzard, and hosted one as an interviewer.” With Blizzard expecting nothing but the best from those who work there, Brian feels “very empowered to keep growing!”

Surely, specific choices and precise planning determine such a successful career? Nope, but here’s what Brian has to say on the matter: “Every person I know whose career has taken them to a fun and creative place got there in a different way. So the bad news is that there’s no set path. The good news is that there’s no set path! I always tell people that the key ingredient is: you should be too stupid to give up. You’ll meet many people who will tell you that you’re not good enough, that it’s not a ‘real job,’ that they don’t want people like you, that you can’t make a living at it and the list goes on. But if you’re too stupid to give up, it will bounce right off you. You’ll meet people who you will think are more talented than you, smarter, faster, better, and more creative. But those people will often give up, and you can always be better than they are at being too stupid to give up. That’s what worked for me!”

How Hard Could It Be? The Story of a Cinematic

At this year’s GDC, Brain talked about the role cinematics play in the storytelling of videogames and it’s pros and cons, speaking from his experience with Starcraft, which is notoriously reliant upon this tool. The mentoring role Brian takes on shows the teacher in him hasn’t gone for good. “I’d love to teach again, but it would definitely have to fit in with my schedule at Blizzard. I realized long ago that I always need to be on a job where I am creating content. If my schedule ever stabilizes enough to allow me to teach and still write for Blizzard, I would jump at it. Meanwhile, I very much enjoy speaking and lecturing on the things I’ve learned over my career!”

Dan Vargas is the current Art Director for Ubisoft’s Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth. In addition to his work on Battle for Earth, he has also designed some of the worlds in Assassin’s Creed III as a Senior Artist. In addition to Marvel’s Avengers, Vargas has years of experience working with other Marvel characters. Prior to working for Ubisoft, he was a Technical Artist at Next Level Games where he worked on games such as Captain America: Super Soldier (which was loosely based on the film, Captain America: The First Avenger) and Spider-Man: Friend or Foe (which was inspired by the first Spider-Man film trilogy). Vargas was also an Artist for Electronic Arts’ Black Box and a Motion Capture Operator for Electronic Arts Canada. And for close to two years, he brought his years of experience to the classroom for the Vancouver Film as the Instructor of Visual Design Principles for the Game Design Program.

Gamesauce: Growing up, were there any videogames, movies, or comic books that inspired you to pursue art for a career?

Dan Vargas: In school, I had always been a doodler; whether it was textbooks, notebooks or napkins – in high school, a friend of mine showed me his newly-minted Uncanny X-Men #213. I was blown away. Shortly after that, I started collecting for myself and was really inspired by [Marc] Silvestri’s run on the X-Men. I then started to copy pages from comics. So while I still draw inspiration from movies and games, it was comics that led me to draw.

You’ve worked on multiple comic-book-based videogames. Are there any superhero characters that you’d like to center a game around?

If I had to make it around 1 hero… I would choose Daredevil, for a gritty mature, story-based adventure/action game, maybe around Gang Wars or a lead up to Shadowlands. Otherwise, I would love to do the New Mutants in some kind of co-op action or RPG. There are just a lot of cool things you could do with that combo of characters and they all have interesting stories with interesting themes.

We took a moment to look at your artwork on your blog. Given your experience working with superhero games, have you ever considered creating your own comic book?

I have seriously considered this, but I don’t feel I have all the skill needed to pull it off.  I must say, having the opportunity to meet and talk with some of the artists from ‘Artist Alley’ at both SDCC and NYCC has been extremely humbling. There are some seriously skilled artists out there constantly working their craft! I do have a couple ideas percolating but for the amount of hours needed to pull off a book. I just wouldn’t be able to balance all the other things on my plate, but it could make for a nice sabbatical.

You’ve been working in the gaming industry for over a decade.  What are some of the ways you feel it’s changed over this time?

On the whole, our industry and our products have gained a lot more visibility and respect, both commercially and culturally. While the industry has matured, it has also become a lot broader and complex. Education options are much greater, offering higher quality instruction. The products are reaching new levels of awesomeness. The tools are becoming a lot more user friendly and accessible. However, because technology is at the heart of our business, we are inherently subject to constant change; some of the development processes are and will always be evolving, seeking to be more efficient and produce higher fidelity.

At the same time, the business itself seems in flux, especially the last few years. Genres blending into ‘biz’ models cropping up to corner people’s preferences. Accessibility to ‘games’ as a whole seems to have dramatically increased with smart phones and tablets. The good side being that independents have a much greater chance of producing and selling something…even sustaining themselves over a period of several projects! And we seem to be getting more of a global exposure to games, bringing some interesting and new perspectives and designs. Just look at some of the more ‘bleeding edge’ games – many, if not most, are coming from indies!

Gaming media has grown as well. There are a lot more sites offering broader and more objective coverage to general media, game developer interests and specific game community sites. It does mean that consumers are more savvy but this, too, serves us towards making better games, in the end.

You taught for almost two years at the Vancouver Film School, the same institution you learned animation from. Based on your experience, what are some of the skills and professional behaviors you feel schools should teach those who want to go into the videogame industry?

Apart from the skills needed for specific positions (Artists, Programmers, Audio, Designers, Production), I think it is good to have exposure to other specialties, in the very least teaching the dependencies between each. I think game design is especially important because different game ‘genres’ greatly change the dynamics of all the different specialties.

Another important aspect that I think would be useful is communication skill, not only developing individually, but especially in a larger group context. For this, I feel, an understanding of organizational culture could be greatly beneficial.

Specific to Artists, I believe it is still very important to have a good base in of the traditional arts. I feel it is essential to sustain hobbies that either tap-in to art culture or employ a specific skill; sculpting, needlepoint, film…anything really.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is based on the Secret Invasion storyline. What were some elements of the story that you wanted to keep in the videogame? Were there any aspects of the game that you just knew wouldn’t work in a videogame?

We stuck to the SI story line as much as possible; even taking directly from the comic for our campaign mode cut scenes! I think the most important premise was that 2 versions of every character could exist; of course some being Skrulls and others being the ‘real deal’. As for challenging elements to incorporate, well, we could potentially do anything in game to a certain fidelity as long as we stay within budget …but we had to focus on the elements that made the game fun and compromise appropriately to ensure we delivered on time. That being said, highly reactive environments and large scale destruction of Manhattan, Baxter Building, the Peak, Hellicarrier or the Avengers old base in the Savage land would have been COOL.

A big part of any videogame is the game play itself. How did the different game modes (Co-op, Versus, Arcade, etc.) influence how you designed characters and levels?

For this particular game, the various modes are played in the same context, so we didn’t need to alter the levels or characters to a work for a specific mode – keeping a consistency across the assets.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is going to be available on Xbox 360 and Wii U. Given that these are such distinct platforms, how do you keep the different versions of this game consistent while taking advantage of each system’s unique attributes?

Fortunately, we have a team of dedicated and talented graphics programmers. They did a great job of helping us achieve parity in the overall look and feel. The biggest challenge was on the design side; re-mapping actions to two sets of controls while keeping the gameplay balanced was tricky and required a lot of play-testing to get it right.

The majority of the characters that are in Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth have had dozens of different stylized outfits. How was each character’s look decided? On this note, were there any comic book artists that you wanted to pay tribute to in the game?

Almost too many; by focusing on the Secret Invasion series we did ourselves a favor, narrowing down the possibilities. Francis Leinil Yu penciled the whole series so it was quite natural to look at his art as a guide. As for me, I personally like Ramos, Madureira, Skottie Young, and Bachalo. Also the Udon Crew concept work for Street Fighter was inspirational. Of course, we had a fairly clear approval process with Marvel Games HQ and we were in constant communication with them which helped us ‘stay on target’.

How has your experience of working on Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth differed from working on previous games? How has becoming an Art Director changed your understanding of how games are made?

B4E is a lot of ‘firsts for me’: the first Kinect game I have worked on, it’s also the first fighting game that I have done, also the first exposure to Gamebryo. There is always something to figure out with new process or a different game genre; from tech restrictions to design parameters and asset creation. Also, since this was my first kick at the ‘art director can’, I was exposed to a lot more aspects of production that I would previously not concern myself with, let alone, be responsible for.

Stepping into the AD role was an eye opener. When you’ve been in development long enough, you inherently gain an understanding of the process. I have also had the good fortune to work with many talented artists, leads and ADs on previous projects, and I have been able to tap into their collective knowledge, so, I don’t know that I have changed my understanding, but I am certainly more keenly aware of the dependencies within the asset creation process, more mindful of game design implications and more conscious of overall player/user experience. Perhaps the only thing that has or will change will be my understanding of my role.

Without violating any confidentiality agreements, what are some projects you are working on that fans can look out forward?

Vargas: Hmm, well, er… the answer, sadly, will have to wait till we can roll out more info.

Gamesauce: You have probably met hundreds, if not thousands of people who wanted to get into the videogame industry. How did you first begin your career in this field?

Alex Hutchinson: I began as a writer in Australia, contributing articles to websites, magazines, whoever would run them, trying to focus on games and game issues. I figured if I couldn’t make them, I could at least write about them and learn something in the process. Then I was lucky enough that ‘designer’ became a more common job, and I started applying anywhere and everywhere, and was lucky enough to be given a shot at a small company in Australia.

You earned two degrees from the University of Melbourne. Neither your BA nor MA are in subjects specifically associated with videogame development, such as computer programming or graphic design. How do you feel your education has helped you in your career? Would you recommend a college education for anyone who wants to get into the videogame industry?

Remember there was no such thing as a degree in videogame development when I went to university! That said, I think that traditional courses that focus on art theory and production are perfect for aspiring artists, and general computer science degrees are perfect for aspiring game programmers; you can learn the specific tools and skills later. Start with a strong, practical base in the discipline you want. Writing was a huge help for me, in terms of learning structure, format, and having to produce and finish work.  And bizarrely the degree in classical studies finally became useful on Assassin’s Creed!

Assassin’s Creed 3‘s protagonist, the half-English and half-Native American, Connor Kenway, birth name Ratonhnhaké:ton, running through tree tops.

Before discussing Assassin’s Creed III, I want to ask you about some of your previous games. You were a Level Designer on The Invincible Iron Man. What are some comic book superheroes that you would love to design a game around?

I think the trick would be to find a character whose core fantasy and abilities mapped to game mechanics cleanly: there are so many good ones, but I’d like to get out of the more popular guys. Maybe a Lobo game. Or DC’s the Demon. Or Jonah Hex [in] a weird Western game.

It has been over four years since Spore was released. What are some of things you learned about both creating videogames and the business of videogames while working on Spore?

It was a huge project, and very ambitious, and I learned nobody will attempt something like it again. We set out to make this huge toy that played with creation and creativity, and I think in terms of the creation tools and the sharing, we made an amazing game. We didn’t get to where we wanted on the game part, but I’m immensely proud of the game. I learned that if there’s a gameplay clarity problem in an early concept, then this will translate most probably to a gameplay mechanics problem you can’t iterate your way out of, so fix it on paper first. And I learned that trying to be truly original is incredibly difficult!

Conner Kenway in pursuit and picking up a gun while running.

Army of Two: The 40th Day was the first game you were the Creative Director on. Did that position change the way you approached game development or selecting who you worked with?

Yeah, that was my first shot at the job. It was a new challenge because you move from designing mechanics and working almost solely with mission designers, or story and systems designers, to working with whole other departments that aren’t necessarily your strong suit. So there were departments, like animation or engineering, where I felt comfortable talking to the leads and directors, as I’d been more closely associated with them before on gameplay teams or wherever, and then there were departments, like sound, where it really wasn’t my strong suit. I had to learn a lot more about how they worked and what was important to them, and how I could talk to them in a way that would help them improve the overall game experience.

In terms of approach, it also meant I had to give more room to leads even in areas where I’d been doing that job before. So the lead design position, which was my old job, I had to learn to leave it in their capable hands and not interfere!

You are now the Creative Director for Assassin’s Creed 3. What were some of the aspects of the previous installments that drew you to this franchise?

It’s an amazing franchise. I love the focus on history, I love the desire to create a consistent and cohesive universe, and I love the talented people who work on it. It was a joy to come onto the franchise, followed by several years of incredibly hard work, but I’m very satisfied with the game we made. But in a nutshell: people and the opportunity to try and make something amazing are the only things that attract me to projects these days!

Assassin’s Creed 3 is set in North America between 1753 and 1783. What were some of the archives, materials, and people consulted to bring such a high level of historical accuracy to this game? Was there one historical figure or moment from this time period you really wanted to include in the game?

As with the other Assassin’s Creed installments, AC3 strives to immerse the player into the narrative’s period. This image highlights a character called The Carpenter.

We have historical advisors on call with different specialties, from revolutionary historians to cultural advisors. We gather huge amounts of references from paintings and drawings and maps from the period; we read all kinds of books and websites to gather facts; we watch movies and read historical novels to find exciting fantasies. All that takes about six months [and] while we’re simultaneously trying to draw the big picture of the game we’re trying to make, we essentially force the core team through a crash course in whatever historical setting we chose. And we included as much historical detail as possible, from Ben Franklin and George Washington to Valley Forge and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Is anyone at Ubisoft hoping for a History professor or teacher to use Assassin’s Creed III in an American History course?

It would be very rewarding if a course used it as an example of the look and feel and everyday life of the period (minus the assassin, of course). We spent so much time and money trying to get it right, that I think it’s the closest interactive recreation of this period yet made.

GS:  One aspect of the game that I am looking forward to is the naval portion of it. What were some of the challenges you encountered when creating a system to replicate 18th century naval combat?

The biggest one was just how slow it is in real life versus how slow we could make the ships turn before it stopped being fun in a game context. I think we nailed the overall feeling though, giving you the emotion of these epic vessels, without compromising on the reality too much. The water the guys created is also a technical marvel; we can literally scale up or down the Beaufort levels to simulate everything from calm seas to raging storms. It’s incredible.

The naval combat aspect of AC3, new to the franchise, is possibly the most ambitious maritime combat to date in gaming.

 There were some recent articles reporting that you were concerned about the future of AAA games. How would you like to see the gaming industry develop? Do you feel there is something missing that game developers should try to better include in their games?

No, I just think the industry is evolving, the same way it has for decades: popularity for certain experiences rise and fall, tastes change, the business model changes, the platforms change. I’ve been doing this long enough now to have seen several console transitions pass by, several predictions of the end of the industry fail to materialize, and several versions of ‘the future of the industry’ crash and burn. Quality is the only reliable indicator of the chance to succeed, and content is king as it always has been. AAA quality will be around forever, but the platforms will continue to change.

The ability to fail without fear of consequence is a skill earned through loss; it’s the sound of pages ripped from design documents, the shadow of deadlines long past due, the smoldering smell of money burned. But it’s a skill we should all acquire, as it builds character and prepares us for even more difficult roads ahead. We recently sat down with Mike Gale of Disaster Cake for a sobering discussion of what happens when things don’t go as originally planned.

Gamesauce: So tell us a bit about what you’ve been working on.

Mike: Soul Saga? It’s basically inspired by the “Tales of” series, a long running series of role-playing games published by Namco. I grew up with the “Tales of” series, so I really wanted to capture its essence. It’s a very immersive experience powered by a procedurally built storyline.

GS: Something built from the ground up to feel organic?

Mike: Yeah, that’s kind of what I had in mind. And as I was developing this story, I fell in love with what I would call “easternized western” games. Games like Oblivion and Skyrim. Specifically the way you could choose how you interacted with the individual characters and how the storyline evolved based on the players choices. I love what Bethesda is doing in that space.

I realized that it would be too difficult to pull off a game where the storyline evolves based on the players choices. So the concept evolved. If I’m going to put my name on a game, I want it to be complete.

GS: Yeah, they are doing great things.

Mike: They are, but over time I realized that it would be too difficult to pull off. Those games require teams of hundreds of writers. That’s a lot of pages to test. Too many for a team of my size.

GS: I can definitely see where it would be overwhelming.

Mike: It was. And if I’m going to put my name on a game, I want it to be complete. I want it to work. I don’t want my storyline broken because I didn’t have the manpower to test all of those variables.

GS: So your concept evolved?

Mike: Well, I started to play a game called Catherine, a puzzle-platformer psychological horror adventure game published by Atlus, and while it wasn’t necessarily too much about a branching storyline, being mostly visual, it was still a procedural story.

GS: It had an interesting approach, yeah.

Mike: I liked that the character used his cellphone to communicate with his girlfriend. He’s doing it while all of these supernatural things are going on. He was a social creature. We all are. Look around right now and you’ll see people texting more than anything. I wanted elements of that – a storyline where fantasy meets reality – and in the middle of it all, you’re building friendships and inviting people to join your party.

Soul Saga is perfecting the perfect blend of sweet Eastern art styles with awesome Westernized gameplay.

GS: Your project was initially a 2-D game, right?

Mike: That’s right. Unfortunately, when I first started, I was just learning about game design in general. I mean, I had developed some apps while I was at Microsoft, but it wasn’t anything quite on the level of game design. I knew I wanted there to be an element of character customization, but when I ordered the art assets – and I was doing all of this on a paycheck to paycheck basis mind you – I realized that changing the sprite’s appearances was going to be very problematic.

GS: In what way?

Mike: Let’s say, I wanted my character to equip a new sword, and I wanted this change to show up visually. Well, with the 2-D artwork, I couldn’t do this without a redraw. The shadows and lighting were all baked in.

GS: Sounds like an expensive lesson to learn.

Mike: It was an expensive one but I wasn’t about to cut that customization feature from my design document. If I cared about money I might have said “Screw it. I’m just going to finish this.” but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because when I’m on my deathbed, I don’t want to regret that I didn’t follow my passion to the fullest extent that I could.

Kevin Richardson accepting the award he recently received after winning the Volkswagen Fun Theory contest with his Speed Camera Lottery idea.

“When I was a kid, my dad used to drop me off at the cinema,” Kevin Richardson, Senior Producer at Nickelodoen Kids and Family Games Group recalls. “The first movie I remember was Santa Clause conquers the Martians. Even as a kid I knew it was bad!” We sat down with Richardson to talk about his early passion and career in animation, his entry into games after seeing CD-ROMs in action, trying to combine work with his love for the outdoors and how producers can make sure they’re a valuable asset to their teams.

Slo-mo Pinnochio

Richardson worked an entire year in Taipei with artists at Wang Films in 1986 for Hanna Barbera's The Pound Puppies and Flintstone Kids productions.

At a younger age Richardson received a Super 8 video camera from his dad, which he used to make his first animated cartoons and special effects. At that time, there was no Photoshop or video editing software to help him, making it a tedious endeavor. The film layers were literally stuck to each other in layers, prone to break at any time when run through the projector.

Young Richardson watched Disney’s Pinocchio 3 times in a row. “The animation and techniques are amazing.” With that passion for cinema and animation, Richardson would go on to study character animation and later computer video imaging at the California Institute of Arts in their motion picture school.  Ironically, Pinocchio was the same movie he would later have to watch in slow motion at film school. “It took at least six or seven hours to watch Pinocchio at four or five frames a second,” Richardson says. “But when you love animation and special effects, each frame is amazing.” One of his early heroes was legendary special effects creator Ray Harryhausen whom he met at a San Francisco Bay area premiere of one of the Sinbad movies.

After attending CalArts for two years, Richardson left to work on special effects in the animated movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Willow at Industrial Light and Magic. Richardson was responsible for removing the wires and garbage from several blue screen shots with actor Bob Hoskins in them.  “Which was one of the last non-digital optically combined movies,” he adds.

In his animation career Richardson would also end up working on various TV series, commercials and animated motion pictures until 1994. At that time, software companies were transitioning from floppy disks to CD-ROM, allowing for much higher speeds and storage. “The big title driving what you could do with content was The 7th Guest from Trilobyte studios,” Richardson recalls. Richardson had gone to the first conference on Digital Media, the MILIA, in Cannes. “This kind of just blew my mind,” he says.  “Everything from the interactive version of The Hard Days Night to Playboy’s Strip Poker was there. It was really a digital content renaissance.”

CD-ROM Careershift

Visiting multiple ghosttowns for his game was the perfect excuse for Richardson to head to the outdoors.

The added benefit of interactivity and the potential of the CD-ROM was something Richardson would later discover when he joined The Learning Company which produced educational entertainment software. “They were looking for an executive producer to head up their next-generation titles as they moved from floppy disks to CD-ROMs.” Richardson was responsible for creating the right pipelines to achieve the company’s goal to make the animation as close to TV quality as possible. Richardson oversaw most of the titles and brands of the classic Reader Rabbit and Clue Finders edutainment titles.

Richardson had just become a father of two daughters before his move to The Learning Company. He found himself at the brink of a major technological change and took the leap to get involved. “The situation I stepped into was that software PC games were still a very small cottage industry,” Richardson says. “I knew the shift to CD-ROM was a big opportunity to shift careers because I knew no one who knew how to do this.”

The production know-how Richardson had accumulated on how to prepare hours of animation came in handy. He would later leave The Learning Company to finish his degree in computer video imaging and earn professional certificates in software engineering and project management, taking the lower position of associate producer at EA Pogo at that time. “I went from being an executive producer with a team of 75 people to associate producer, having a team of nobody,” he chuckles.

Publishing Your Own Game

One of Richardson’s many storyboards (there are tons) from an upcoming Ghost Town Mysteries game coming out at the end of 2011 with him as one of the artists on the project.

In 2006, Richardson became a consultant and took the step to make his own game. “I’d been talking and thinking about this for years but never had the guts to do it,” he recalls. “So I went ahead and did it.”

Richardson then met his soon to be business partners from Hungama, an Indian media company that also runs a game portal, at the Casual Connect conference in Amsterdam. “They also wanted to break into the casual game space, but nobody was ready to enter into business with them just yet for the western market,” he says. A couple of days later, Richardson sat down and came up with the idea of the Ghost Town Mysteries franchise. His dad took him to the Bodie ghost town in the Sierra Nevada area as a kid.  ”I never forgot it, and thought thirteen haunted houses in a game is better than one!”  which led to the first title in the Ghost Town Mysteries franchise.

Richardson’s choice of those kinds of cities did have another motive. “I’m an outdoors guy, and that’s really hard,” he says. “I know a lot of people who make games that would rather be outside the office than staring at a computer monitor all day. So I thought, ‘What would get me out of the office traveling while still making games?’” Richardson would then travel to Bodie California and Bannack Montana with a photographer and ask the local folk and park rangers about ghost sightings. “We tried to base the game around an actual murder mystery from these ghost towns.”

Together with Hungama, also the largest online destination for Bollywood Music, Richardson produced and published the first Ghost Town Mysteries Bodie game. “Hungama has the equivalent of the iTunes store for Bollywood music,” Richardson adds. “They have a couple of game sites, are big on mobile gaming and wanted to make a step in the downloadable game area.” Richardson had timed his collaboration with Hungama well with having limited or no resources to start up the project. “A lot of entrepreneurs I know say it’s better to have no cash nor investors at all,” he says. “It forces you to think very smartly and precisely. I’ve invested pretty much all my time and money into making games and entertainment. I feel like I’m always in school because I’m always learning, and making mistakes, too.”

Passionate Production

The end result of Richardson's visit to Bodie.

During his year of working on Ghost Town Mysteries, Richardson also started doing contract work for Nickelodeon to insure a stable income for his family. In the Kids and Family Games department, Richardson focuses specifically on browser-based flash games.

“I’m mostly in my element when I’m working with creatives and technicians,” he admits. “So I’m not embedded in the actual day-to-day team who’s creating a project.” However, Richardson’s involvement goes beyond the creation of a design document. He always makes sure to include storyboards, character and concept sketches. “Not to the point that I’ve taken anything away from the development team, but to the point that I’ve felt I made my creative mark on the project,” he explains. “The team also has more respect for what I’m doing because they know that I have a clear sense of direction for their project. Or maybe they just find it annoying!”

The real challenge Richardson constantly faces as a producer at Nickelodeon is to make the game design document extensively fleshed out so each project gets greenlighted internally. “But not so fleshed out that we take away the imaginations from the developers so they can improve it and add their own,” he adds.

For Richardson, every game has been a new challenge since he joined his team of producers in 2008. He is very much enjoying his work at Nickelodeon, his colleagues at Nick and the engagement he has with developers from all around the world.

The second part of Richardson’s interview will be published next week, including tales about his most valuable lessons from being a producer, winning Volkswagen’s Fun Theory contest, the difference between personal and professional passions and how to make sure you enjoy your industry job without being disappointed by it.

From Gamer to Developer

Dunin studied Astronomy at UCLA and then joined the US Air Force. There she worked on different tankers and spy planes.

Elonka Dunin has been playing games since a time before PCs. Dunin’s father was involved with IBM computers in the 1960s and programmed mainframes to play games with her. As computers started moving into people’s households, Dunin was one of the early explorers of online fantasy worlds. She played every MUD she could get her hands on. When the game industry moved in the direction of Bulletin Board Systems, she played those too, until the industry and her along with it transitioned to online services such as GEnie and CompuServe in the 1980s.

In the 1990’s, Dunin went to GemCon in St. Louis, Missouri, where she got to meet some of the people involved in writing one of the games she played—GemStone ][ on GEnie. They hit it off, and a few months later she quit her non-game job in Los Angeles, California to make the leap to Simutronics in St. Louis. She has been there ever since.

Since taking a position at Simutronics, Dunin has been in the game industry for twenty years. Some of her most-loved games she worked on include popular MUDs such as one of the longest-running online games GemStone, Orb Wars, DragonRealms, and Modus Operandi. In 1993, CyberStrike won the first award for “Online Game of the Year.” It's hard for Dunin to pick a favorite: “I have a special fondness for each game in their own way."

Social Games Development

Fantasy University intends to combine snarky humor, endless pop culture references, and the Fubar (the game’s form of virtual currency) with solid RPG gameplay Simutronics has been known for.

Dunin is currently most excited about Fantasy University for Facebook, which is Simutronics’ first game for the social networking market. The Open Beta launched in mid-October 2010. So far, thousands of players have poured in from all over the world. “It’s got such a great energy about it, with wonderful humor and writing, and I am very proud to be part of a team that is bringing such a high-quality game to the space,” says Dunin.

For Simutronics, the biggest challenge has been the way the industry keeps changing so rapidly. However, Dunin is equipped to tackle the shifts, because of her love for and growth alongside the game industry since its beginnings.

Dunin elaborates: “We couldn’t look to how other companies were doing things, because we were often the first! And the business model kept changing out from under us, so we had to be nimble. When we started, games were provided on major online services that charged an hourly rate, of which we got a percentage. Then the online services started changing their business models to go flatrate, so suddenly our number of users skyrocketed, but we could no longer rely on hourly fees. Then we moved our business to the web and had to come up with an entire billing system from scratch, as we re-worked everything to go with monthly subscriptions.” Now, the industry is changing again, so Fantasy University employs a microtransaction business model.

“It’s like we have to re-invent ourselves over and over again, which is fun at times, but definitely challenging!” exclaims Dunin.

Elonka Dunin also happens to be an internationally recognized expert on the ciphers of the CIA’s Kryptos sculpture and authored The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms. Dan Brown named a character after her in his latest book, ‘The Lost Symbol’ called  ’Nola Kaye’, an anagrammed form of ‘Elonka’.

The Trials HD team near launch with Ilvessuo standing second from the right

Having just finished the Big Thrills downloadable content pack for Trials HD, RedLynx’s Creative Director, Antti Ilvessuo (2nd from the right), takes some time to talk with us about the multi-platform background of the company, keeping their financial and creative independence, managing growth and what lies after digital.

Multi-platform mania

Ilvessuo: "We recently released some of these old Web and Java-based Trials games as a free PC game called Trials Legends. It's available on our Facebook page. You just need to friend us in order to get it."

Before RedLynx became known as the ‘guys behind Trials HD’, the company had already built quite an admirable rep sheet. Since it was founded in 2000, the studio has quite the history of being accustomed to developing multi-platform titles, with over a hundred different games on either Xbox LIVE Arcade, DS, PSP, iPhone, Macintosh, PC, web, and mobile phones. “Part of the fun of making a game for a new platform is discovering those strengths and finding out how to use them in new, surprising ways,” Ilvessuo argues. “But to me, just making the game is the best part of the process, and I really enjoy that.”

Their history of different platforms would resound in their most popular franchise to date, Trials. Starting as a Java-based browser game in 2000, the earliest incarnations of Trials became a huge success and grew a large following.

“In fact, it was so popular that at one point our Finnish ISP at the time was having all of their bandwidth consumed by people from around the world, who just came to play Trials,” Ilvessuo recalls. “We called it a ‘DeTRIAL of Service Attack’, ha ha.”

Followed by the development of a 3D engine for the PC, Trials was once again considered for another iteration. “Out of all our dozens of previous, smaller games, Trials seemed like a good, proven game mechanic to try with this new engine,” Ilvessuo recalls. “And that is how Trials 2 SE was born, which has millions of games recorded to our server and still has a very active, involved user base today.”

Trials 2 SE would give Ilvessuo and his team the solid foundation they needed to approach Microsoft for Xbox LIVE Arcade, which led to the development of Trials HD. A million sales and two DLCs later, their once little Java game has become a gaming franchise.

Tune to perfection

Cleaning up around the RedLynx office

RedLynx’s devotion to the Trials franchise eventually paid off, but it wasn’t all just luck and timing. Through countless improvements and iterations, the team turned a handful of game mechanics into an addictive experience. For ambitious game developers working away on their own dream project, Ilvessuo always has a bit of advice ready. “I would say don’t forget about that core game,” he suggests. “Tune it to perfection, preferably with a team which has been working together for a long time. When you and your team know your game intimately, inside and out, then it is much more natural to create the next game in the series, what to improve and what to work on. From there, your series can naturally evolve into that coveted ‘franchise’ category. It’s probably not something you can force.”

RedLynx’s philosophy with game development is also fueled by a very open design process that allows the entire team to offer suggestions and have insight into the project’s development. “This makes the process a lot more fun for everyone,” Ilvessuo explains. “Plus, we always start with a working prototype so everybody on the team is playing the game right from the start and can see it come together.”

Ilvessuo has not saved any expense to keep the RedLynx crew entertained and happy to go to work. Their developers are blessed with a full music game setup, a slot car racing track, a shelf of board games, a poker table, a set of Sumo suits and wrestling mat, and also access to an extensive game library. “Games are just fun, so that kind of lends itself to making a fun work environment,” Ilvessuo adds.

Staying Indie

The famed wrestling mat

Not many small studios are fortunate to leave aside all the tiring side-jobs to keep the company going. The regular outsource jobs, porting and repetitive gigs wears on everyone, so diving head first into your own franchise and actually making a living (or more) from it was a dream come true for Ilvessuo.

“It’s a brave choice to make, that’s for sure, to be an independent studio, and try to balance the financial and creative choices,” Ilvessuo acknowledges. One thing I would recommend is don’t try and make too big of a game right away. If you are a small team, go for a smaller game. I don’t mean limit your ideas! But don’t try to build something too large. Instead, focus on polishing what you have created to perfection.”

Looking back at the past ten years at RedLynx, he wouldn’t have done anything differently. “Every game, every platform and every technology we’ve explored or worked with or developed for has been a learning point for us,” he explains. “You can learn as much, if not more, from your failures, as you can from your successes.”

With an internal staff of 35 and an extra 15 as development partners on stand-by, RedLynx is one of the bigger studios in Finland. A rather large number for an independent studio focused on downloadable titles. But Ilvessuo’s team hasn’t run out of game ideas yet. “ With good and experienced people, and our desire to be in a solid, sustainable position also in the future – meaning a need to grow – there are more games on our road map every year,” he says. “We’re not believers in hiring packs of lemmings and throwing them at a project. We prefer to hire what we call ‘octopus dudes’, who have eight arms and many talents each, and can put their tentacles into many different areas.”

Ilvessuo does admit that the growth has added more managerial activities to the company’s agenda. “A systematic approach to company-wide project management methods, people management, finding new partners that are needed and ways of working with them, financial management, PR and marketing, to name just a few,” he says. “All that has to be managed, as we want to constantly look at current and future opportunities. And we are likely to go for those opportunities that seem like exceptionally interesting ones and that best match with our internal strengths and our culture.”

Digital Livelihood

Ilvessuo as Santa Claus

Being one of the top sellers on XBLA, Ilvessuo confirms that RedLynx will remain on the the path of downloadable titles. RedLynx is currently hard at work on their MotoHeroz game planned for the WiiWare platform.

But for Ilvessuo, there’s also a desire to avoiding limiting themselves to a specific platform or game distribution type. “Especially seeing how fast the world changes,” he explains. “That applies also to distribution. Digital distribution, of course, is a key area for us, but who knows, there might well be new opportunities on the retail side, and there can even be a third way. Let’s wait and see.”

For Ilvessuo and his team, the relationship with their own audience of gamers is almost a sacred thing in their daily development. “We try and learn something from everything we make,” Ilvessuo says. “One of the key things we’ve learned from Trials HD is to listen to people and value their opinions. As long as you keep in mind the gamer, you can ask yourself, ‘Is this fun? If I was a gamer, would I like this? Would I want this?’ That will keep you on target.” That even includes their own team members, RedLynx’s external partners and testers.”

RedLynx is currently working on their Wiiware title MotoHeroz, which is scheduled to be released late 2010 or early 2011.

Writer and designer Sande Chen reflects on her journey as a freelancer, breaks down the budding field of social game design, and recalls memories of working on her favorite role-playing games.

From Serious Games to Social Games

With a background as a games writer and serious games designer, Sande Chen is currently navigating the fairly new space of social game design. She continues to consult on other titles but is content with a steady design position.

Although Chen went to film school at the University of Southern California, she aspired to work in the games industry from the moment she graduated. Her first contract position as a game writer was for Terminus, which won two awards at the 1999 Independent Games Festival.

“As a freelance writer and game designer, I have worked on pretty much every platform, games big and small, from serious games to MMORPGs,” says Chen. She relies on a wide range of ongoing and overlapping work, which is the lifestyle of freelancers.

Transitional work is key to a stable career as a freelancer. “Since some of my freelance work had been in social games, I had a pretty smooth transition into working full-time as a social game designer,” says Chen.

Aspects of Social Game Design

“Social Game Designer” is a title for designers who primarily design games to be played on social networks like Facebook. Social games require a unique approach to users. Chen explains, “One particular facet of working in social games is dealing with metrics and the immediate feedback from users. Of course, other types of games deal with such issues, but I find in social games, user impact on design is faster.”

Social games especially appeal to Chen because she can have a more direct relationship with players. To Chen, social networking trumps AAA titles, particularly when you take into account that Facebook social games can reach more than 500 million active users.

Chen deals with more than writing and design. She also has to consider the economical and marketing aspects of games as a consultant. Recently, she has been familiarizing herself with free-to-play mechanics paired with microtransactional elements in social games. “It’s very important to understand your monetization scheme or to build in ways to monetize when designing a social game,” Chen advises.

Before Social Games

Chen: “I really loved the dark atmosphere and the richness of the world.”

Although Chen enjoys social game design, she does miss the richness of writing for role-playing games. By far, her best experience was writing for CD Projekt RED’s first large-scale game, The Witcher, which won Best RPG 2007. She had the opportunity to work with a unique story created by leading Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowsk.

One of her most interesting experiences was working on a Serious Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (or SMMORPG, now that’s a mouthful). Like pushing the boundaries of social games, “the most exciting and challenging projects are outside the norm,” says Chen.

Chen explains what brought about the game: “My friend is a physics professor and an avid fan of fantasy MMORPGs. He wanted a fantasy MMORPG to teach university level physics. It also needed to be non-violent.” For this project, Chen had to figure out what the basic gameplay mechanic had to be, what the quests would be like, and how a physics curriculum could be integrated into a MMORPG.

It also had to feature magic and elves.

Sande Chen also coordinates the International Game Developer Association’s Game Design Aspect of the Month.