Current Issues in Digital Media and Game Design

In this week’s elective class, Bryan Neider, the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Electronic Art’s Games Label, gave us a talk on the current issues in game industry. Prior to talking, he showed us the video of EA Games – Battlefield Bad Company, Spore, Spore Creature Creator, Warhammer Online, and Dead space. EA released many cool games this year.

The summary of current issues is as follows.

1. Current economic conditions
• o Today’s economy is in a highly unusual state of uncertainty and it has created heightened anxiety for consumers
• In past downturns, interactive has been less impacted by market slumps compared with other entertainment


2. Consumer buying habit patterns
• The number of casual consumer and online multiplayer, the demand for social experience is increasing
• Marketing is still gravitating to quality
• As the international demand for video games rises, it is important to localize games to meet consumer preferences and tastes
• The increasing demand for second hand games has risen significantly


3. Connected consumers
• Games are becoming a "service" – transition from only packaged goods, to a hybrid model, where the game is “always on
• Consumers expect online features and social interaction
  


4. Ongoing relationship with customers
• Customer service takes on new meaning - moving up the value chain from fixing "bugs" and providing "patches," to managing and refining the customers' entertainment experience
  
• Customers are starting to expect the interactive experience to evolve to meet their preferences and gaming "style"
  
• The interactive experience will begin to be tailored to the consumer
  


5. Impact to game design & team structure
• Teams are required to expand their design “horizons” and they are well underway in changing their designs
• Multiplayer, online, episodic, downloadable content are the core deliverables to tomorrow's games
  
• Data mining is becoming a core competency - understanding how people interact with games - this will allow improving play-balance and tailor the interactive experience to each consumer's style and skill
  
• The "user interface" is very important and now requires consumer feedback early in the design process
  
• More focus on high quality art/audio

Thanks to his talk, we were able to gain a more broadened perspective into the interactive game industry. He also presented us with Spore creature creator. We really appreciated his talks and the presents.

Animation Show of Shows

Ron Diamond of Acme FilmWorks brought his Animation Show of Shows to Electronic Arts today. The 85 minute show included 11 different shorts, plus a Q&A session with two of the directors afterward. Koji Yamamura (left) directed "Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor", and Alexi Alexeev (center) directed the (very) short "KJFG #5." Ron Diamond is on the right.

My personal favorite was "Keith Reynolds Can't Make It Tonight," which was director Felix Massie's graduation film for his animation degree. (You can see an excerpt here.) He uses simple stick figure animation in a Sim Tower type environment with a wonderful narration voiceover.

Half Presentations

Last Wednesday were Half Presentations - so named because they're halfway through the term. We invited ETC alums, a number of our EA friends, and a few other guests to be in the audience for the two presentations and Q&A's afterward. A free lunch, of course, was used as bait.

The presentations were in a 'double-wide' theater at Electronic Arts, so the audience is twice as wide as it is deep. This can be an extra challenge for a presenter, but both teams did a great job of adapting.

Top image: The Tea & Sugar Team during their introductions.
Middle image: Linhan presenting with Shih-Han looking on.
Bottom image: Team Hatch, with the Global Imagination globe in demo mode.

Alyson from Pixar

Alyson started working at Pixar right after she graduated ETC in 2005. She has presented about 3 topics which are "How to make animations", "Tools Development" and "Tips for getting a job".

1. How to make animations.
In Pixar, the most important rule is "Story is King". They usually spend years developing a really good story. After they have it, they research "Art" and "Characters". They are using many references and trying to use real sculptures and lighting models to find proper art style and characters. The next step is making a layout and sets for environment. Creating animation and effects for whole scenes is followed. Lighting is the last work to finalize the film.

2. Tools Development.
Alyson emphasized that they are developing tools like they are making animations. This means they also make a story board for new tools by interviewing animators. Also, like film department, there is a director driven system in the Tools development team. The director has a right to make a final decision for tools and this is working very well since he has a lot of experiences about it. This director driven system is the key system for both department which enables the directors to maximize their creativity and ability.

3. Tips for getting a job.
Alyson explained that students should know themselves before they apply to companies. Also, being aggressive is another key point to find a job. She introduced her episode that she went to San Francisco from Ohio just for having lunch with a person working at Pixar. This brought her another interview chance and she got the job from Pixar at the end. In addition, communication and public speaking skills are always important. She said ETC is really good place to improve those skills.

Historical "Fiction" means you don't have to do research, right?

We've been doing a lot of playtesting on our spherical shooter, and it's safe to say that we've "found the fun." People enjoy playing, even though the game's currently flailing away without any sort of scoring or win condition. We're in a good place; all we have to worry about is not losing the fun while we fill in the little details like "goals" and "story" and "intuitive controls" and "more than one type of enemy."

Speaking of story, we've got one of thems now! The game's all about defending a Renaissance-era human settlement (the only one in the world) at the North Pole from giant monsters that rise from the South Pole. Now, that's already historically and geographically inaccurate on too many levels to really think about. So we went whole hog on the made-uppedness and came up with this story:

1000 years ago, in 1459, The King of Europe decreed that all the citizens of the world must relocate to the green and fertile plains of the North Pole, to escape the fearsome creatures that rose from the south. Since then, the pact he forged with Queen Margaret of the mermaids has kept the human stronghold safe from all seafaring invaders.

But now, in 1654, the tides are turning. The currents are granting passage to the underdwelling beasts of the South Pole, and a new King rallies the naval forces of his kingdom to drive back the approaching monstrosities.

It doesn't quite have the velvet perfection of John Hodgman's richly textured historical dishonesty, but it's a spirited mendacity nonetheless. I'm particularly proud of its assertion that one thousand years passed in between 1459 and 1654.

Hoyt Ng on Presentation Skills

Today, Hoyt Ng a senior trainer at DreamWorks PDI and a veteran presenter visited us at ETC-Silicon Valley. He brought with him many gifts and tidbits on presentation skills. Throughout his two and a half hour talk, he emphasized that everyone has the natural skills to present well. He joked about how some of his students when seated could answer questions like a perfect presenter, but would shed all their presentation skills the moment they leave their seat. It is important to note that Hoyt did not attempt to change our presentation style. He believed that everyone must find a style that is comfortable to them. Instead he provided us with various exercises. These exercises aimed to bring the natural skills that we apply on person to person communication into our presentations.

Hoyt explained that there are nine common presentation flaws:

1. Pausing
2. Breathing
3. Non-Words
4. Posture
5. Eye Contact
6. Movement
7. Intonation
8. Facial Expression
9. Emotion Honesty

In the spirit of good presentations, instead of a boring talk about presentation skills, Hoyt gave us many exaggerated hands-on exercises. Each exercise aimed to make us comfortable with applying a natural communication skill, in order to overcome some of the common presentation problems. For example, in one exercise the participant had to present by pausing for five seconds after every sentence. Similarly, in another exercise, the presenter was required to remain in eye contact with each audience for a continuous five seconds. In yet another exercise, the participant must perform extremely exaggerated gestures. He believed that once we are familiar with these exaggerated exercises, skills such as pausing, having eye contact and using gestures will become a habit during actual presentations.

Hoyt’s presentation skills class felt like an improvisational acting class every ETC-er takes in his or her first semester. Between engaging discussions about flawed presentations and numerous hands-on exercises, Hoyt’s class taught ETC-SV students many life-long skills on public speaking and presentations.

Our First Shooter Prototype

The Magic Planet team is building a shooter! It's set on the ocean, which seemed like a logical choice for a shooter's setting since outer space isn't spherical.

It's toroidal. Everybody knows that, right? We'll let the Magic Donut team take care of that one.

Anyway, our game is based on real nautical battles that have occurred in the Earth's history. Take a look:

Here, the player's ship follows a giant enemy prawn, about to shoot its collision sphere for normal damage.

Here, another giant enemy prawn prepares to strike the North Pole. You may remember this from your history classes, assuming your teachers got all the way through the real history and had time to teach you the imaginary stuff.

We're hard at work on this one, so expect to see more soon. We're also getting a 3-foot Magic Planet soon, to replace our 2-foot one, so expect it to get bigger, too.

Carl Rosendahl - The Next Digital Entertainment Wave

Carl Rosendahl, was noted as being the founder of Pacific Data Images (PDI) producing the hit animated film Antz and Shrek. Carl is currently a faculty member in the ETC-SV working with the next generation of entertainment creators. The topic of today’s talk was “The Next Digital Entertainment Wave.” It was also the same speech that he gave in South Korea last month, only more dynamic and more personal stories shared.

The talk was started with the evolution of new media. Carl considered the primary thing of filmmaking was *editing* as we learned in our visual story class. He also thought the computer graphic technology was meant to make the filmmaking better not make it different. Carl then talked about the technology evolution of how CG was developed, and gave details of creative evolution, which again, was all about story telling. He also drew of chart showing the trend of technology and creative and illustrated the relationship between these two media elements. Subsequently, business model evolution was included in this session regarding the film production. A variety of filming examples were listed to support his point of view. After that, he continued with the future vision of media. How the trend towards quality? When entertainment was developed from a single location such as stages to many locations like films, then to home, to be on demand, and to be portable, how did we take the balance between quality and convenience? Furthermore, linear versus interactive was another task for media creators. Lastly, how did we see the possibilities in the social world, such as Facebook and Second life? There’re always big chances but it’s about how you seize them.

It was a very inspiring talk that Carl gave us. We valued this opportunity to have the world’s digital media pioneer, Carl Rosendahl, as our faculty and friend at the ETC-SV. Thank you, Carl, and we love you!

Quarter Presentations

October 2nd was 1/4 way though the semester, so it was time for formal quarter presentations. This is a shot of team Hatch and their Global Imagination globe with their first app on it. They are navigating around the world using a Wii remote looking at geotagged pictures from Flickr. Their interface allows you to input a string of tags and how far back in time you want to look, it then populates the planet with images. Think tags like "baby" or "sunset" or "toys" - the results are fascinating.