1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,215 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,215 --> 00:00:17,840 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:26,380 --> 00:00:31,600 PROFESSOR: OK, so a couple really quick announcements-- 9 00:00:31,600 --> 00:00:34,682 on Monday, I mentioned a number of other classes 10 00:00:34,682 --> 00:00:37,140 that are offered in the spring if you're interested in game 11 00:00:37,140 --> 00:00:38,350 development here at MIT. 12 00:00:38,350 --> 00:00:39,930 But I forgot this one. 13 00:00:39,930 --> 00:00:42,340 This is 11.127. 14 00:00:42,340 --> 00:00:44,880 It's also cross-listed as CMS.590. 15 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:49,410 It's taught by Eric Klopfer and Scott Osterweil. 16 00:00:49,410 --> 00:00:52,730 Scott should be in our class next Monday, 17 00:00:52,730 --> 00:00:56,120 I believe, to talk to us about learning games. 18 00:00:56,120 --> 00:00:57,730 But if you end up being interested 19 00:00:57,730 --> 00:01:00,520 in games for learning, games for education, 20 00:01:00,520 --> 00:01:01,890 this is a great class to take. 21 00:01:01,890 --> 00:01:04,269 And it's offered in the spring. 22 00:01:04,269 --> 00:01:09,430 We also have a class, CMS.615, Games for Social Change, 23 00:01:09,430 --> 00:01:11,240 that's being taught this fall. 24 00:01:11,240 --> 00:01:14,140 So if the topics of the games that we're working on 25 00:01:14,140 --> 00:01:15,930 for Project 4 are something that you just 26 00:01:15,930 --> 00:01:18,429 find yourself really interested in in the next couple years, 27 00:01:18,429 --> 00:01:22,470 those are two classes you can take to explore that further. 28 00:01:22,470 --> 00:01:25,360 PHILIP TAN: All right, so I guess for me, it's 29 00:01:25,360 --> 00:01:28,584 talking for an hour, and then after that, teamwork, right? 30 00:01:28,584 --> 00:01:29,500 PROFESSOR: Absolutely. 31 00:01:29,500 --> 00:01:32,300 PHILIP TAN: OK, so today, what we're going to do 32 00:01:32,300 --> 00:01:36,860 is talk a little bit about aesthetics, about what we 33 00:01:36,860 --> 00:01:38,630 mean when we say we want your game 34 00:01:38,630 --> 00:01:40,450 to have a cohesive aesthetic. 35 00:01:40,450 --> 00:01:43,130 We do realize that the games that we're asking you to make 36 00:01:43,130 --> 00:01:45,340 are extremely time constrained. 37 00:01:45,340 --> 00:01:49,800 We've been asking you not to go terribly much beyond the scope 38 00:01:49,800 --> 00:01:51,270 of what you've done before. 39 00:01:51,270 --> 00:01:53,500 But what we want to see in your game 40 00:01:53,500 --> 00:01:57,400 is a really, really cohesive aesthetic. 41 00:01:57,400 --> 00:01:59,310 We used to tell students that we wanted 42 00:01:59,310 --> 00:02:01,640 them to put out polished games. 43 00:02:01,640 --> 00:02:05,080 But there was a really unclear definition 44 00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:08,350 when we used to do this about what a polished game would be. 45 00:02:08,350 --> 00:02:12,790 And we also realized that for some students, 46 00:02:12,790 --> 00:02:16,200 for a lot of you, you've seen games that are really, really, 47 00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:18,100 really polished. 48 00:02:18,100 --> 00:02:21,160 When I say a polished game, can you 49 00:02:21,160 --> 00:02:23,410 come up with some examples of things 50 00:02:23,410 --> 00:02:24,803 that immediately come to mind? 51 00:02:24,803 --> 00:02:25,670 STUDENT: Limbo. 52 00:02:25,670 --> 00:02:26,420 PHILIP TAN: Limbo? 53 00:02:26,420 --> 00:02:28,000 Yeah, that's the black and white side 54 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:32,600 scrolling platform, really, really spooky, gorgeous visuals 55 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:33,890 and sound design. 56 00:02:33,890 --> 00:02:34,520 What else? 57 00:02:37,884 --> 00:02:38,384 Yeah. 58 00:02:38,384 --> 00:02:40,249 STUDENT: All of the Final Fantasy games 59 00:02:40,249 --> 00:02:41,290 have really polished UIs. 60 00:02:41,290 --> 00:02:42,810 PHILIP TAN: Pretty much, yeah. 61 00:02:42,810 --> 00:02:45,250 Every single Final Fantasy game for its era 62 00:02:45,250 --> 00:02:47,890 is probably like the high watermark for production 63 00:02:47,890 --> 00:02:50,870 values-- not just the UI. 64 00:02:50,870 --> 00:02:53,820 But you're right in saying the UI is alive. 65 00:02:53,820 --> 00:02:56,390 Whenever you even switch to a different menu option, 66 00:02:56,390 --> 00:02:57,688 it does this little animation. 67 00:02:57,688 --> 00:02:59,604 STUDENT: It's one of the only [INAUDIBLE] that 68 00:02:59,604 --> 00:03:00,771 has a really good UI design. 69 00:03:00,771 --> 00:03:02,229 And I've looked at a bunch of them. 70 00:03:02,229 --> 00:03:04,452 And it's like, Final Fantasy is just way 71 00:03:04,452 --> 00:03:05,635 better than all that stuff. 72 00:03:05,635 --> 00:03:06,110 And of course, the graphics, too. 73 00:03:06,110 --> 00:03:08,276 PHILIP TAN: Which is amazing, because they change it 74 00:03:08,276 --> 00:03:09,526 so much every game. 75 00:03:09,526 --> 00:03:10,900 Unlike a lot of other franchises, 76 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:13,110 they change the formula a lot, but also of course 77 00:03:13,110 --> 00:03:15,120 other things, like the animation quality 78 00:03:15,120 --> 00:03:17,430 and the music and the voice act-- 79 00:03:17,430 --> 00:03:20,486 maybe not the voice acting. 80 00:03:20,486 --> 00:03:20,986 Yeah. 81 00:03:20,986 --> 00:03:22,410 STUDENT: Meat Boy. 82 00:03:22,410 --> 00:03:23,535 PHILIP TAN: Super Meat Boy? 83 00:03:23,535 --> 00:03:24,865 STUDENT: Yeah. 84 00:03:24,865 --> 00:03:26,780 [INAUDIBLE] physics. 85 00:03:26,780 --> 00:03:30,470 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, for folks who haven't played this game, 86 00:03:30,470 --> 00:03:32,050 it's a really punishing game. 87 00:03:32,050 --> 00:03:34,980 But it makes it super easy for you to try again. 88 00:03:34,980 --> 00:03:38,410 In fact, there's like a single frame between you dying 89 00:03:38,410 --> 00:03:41,430 and you starting the game again. 90 00:03:41,430 --> 00:03:43,440 And it goes right off. 91 00:03:43,440 --> 00:03:47,040 A game built by two people, by the way-- it's an indie game. 92 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:49,990 You can see it in documentaries like Indie Game-- The Movie. 93 00:03:49,990 --> 00:03:52,970 And you can see even though they're working on their own-- 94 00:03:52,970 --> 00:03:54,950 and they do spend a considerable amount of time 95 00:03:54,950 --> 00:03:58,670 on an extremely visually polished and musically amazing 96 00:03:58,670 --> 00:03:59,697 game as well. 97 00:03:59,697 --> 00:04:00,980 STUDENT: Monument Valley 98 00:04:00,980 --> 00:04:03,080 PHILIP TAN: Monument Valley for the iOS? 99 00:04:03,080 --> 00:04:05,460 Yeah, I can't remember, has it come out for Android yet? 100 00:04:05,460 --> 00:04:08,410 But it's definitely iOS right now. 101 00:04:08,410 --> 00:04:11,204 But what strikes you as polished? 102 00:04:11,204 --> 00:04:16,180 STUDENT: The graphics and the gameplay is just very smooth. 103 00:04:16,180 --> 00:04:17,680 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, and the game's kind 104 00:04:17,680 --> 00:04:21,664 of like a flat shaded isometric game, 105 00:04:21,664 --> 00:04:23,590 if you're familiar with that 3D concept. 106 00:04:23,590 --> 00:04:25,190 It means that things that are far away 107 00:04:25,190 --> 00:04:27,315 are the same size as things that are close to you-- 108 00:04:27,315 --> 00:04:31,140 isometric orthogonal projection. 109 00:04:31,140 --> 00:04:34,870 The camera is kind of looking at the world at a 45 degree angle 110 00:04:34,870 --> 00:04:37,999 up and sideways. 111 00:04:37,999 --> 00:04:40,540 Everything's flat shaded, but it's got incredible art design. 112 00:04:40,540 --> 00:04:45,000 It's got art direction, I would say, just 113 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:47,570 how all of the characters, even though they basically all 114 00:04:47,570 --> 00:04:51,150 have one color, maybe black and white, 115 00:04:51,150 --> 00:04:53,300 move with a lot of expressiveness. 116 00:04:53,300 --> 00:04:56,000 They have iconic characters, and you immediately 117 00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:58,400 sort of recognize what each character is supposed to be, 118 00:04:58,400 --> 00:05:00,233 even though the game is pretty much made out 119 00:05:00,233 --> 00:05:02,760 of geometric shapes. 120 00:05:02,760 --> 00:05:04,330 I call out Hearthstone. 121 00:05:04,330 --> 00:05:05,310 Anyone playing that? 122 00:05:05,310 --> 00:05:05,820 Anyone else? 123 00:05:05,820 --> 00:05:10,160 Yeah, it's like just every little bit of movement 124 00:05:10,160 --> 00:05:12,870 that the screen does as soon as your finger touches 125 00:05:12,870 --> 00:05:15,650 that screen is amazing. 126 00:05:15,650 --> 00:05:17,580 Even little silly things, like when 127 00:05:17,580 --> 00:05:19,400 you are looking for a match, and you 128 00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:21,540 see all the other people who you could 129 00:05:21,540 --> 00:05:23,000 have been matched against. 130 00:05:23,000 --> 00:05:25,830 And it of course always selects the perfect match for you. 131 00:05:25,830 --> 00:05:27,370 It's a ridiculous little UI thing. 132 00:05:27,370 --> 00:05:28,870 But it sort of gets you in the mood. 133 00:05:28,870 --> 00:05:30,620 And of course, that's like music and stuff 134 00:05:30,620 --> 00:05:34,670 for what's really a card game, a collectible card game, right? 135 00:05:34,670 --> 00:05:40,140 So what I'd like to do right now is play through a game 136 00:05:40,140 --> 00:05:42,910 that I feel has a coherent aesthetic. 137 00:05:42,910 --> 00:05:45,570 But maybe you wouldn't necessarily call it polished. 138 00:05:45,570 --> 00:05:47,310 But it gets you a little bit closer 139 00:05:47,310 --> 00:05:49,187 to what we're looking at. 140 00:05:49,187 --> 00:05:51,770 Because it might be a little bit more feasible for this class. 141 00:05:51,770 --> 00:05:57,440 So who hasn't played Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure yet? 142 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:00,460 Who would like to, actually? 143 00:06:00,460 --> 00:06:02,260 All the hands went up. 144 00:06:02,260 --> 00:06:06,610 Come on down, yeah, you, yeah. 145 00:06:06,610 --> 00:06:08,716 OK. 146 00:06:08,716 --> 00:06:12,160 SISSY: Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure. 147 00:06:14,888 --> 00:06:16,096 PHILIP TAN: Is that too loud? 148 00:06:16,096 --> 00:06:18,560 Is that OK? 149 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:20,026 SISSY: Hi, my name is Sissy. 150 00:06:20,026 --> 00:06:22,750 And I simply love ponycorns. 151 00:06:22,750 --> 00:06:24,746 It is the best thing in the world, 152 00:06:24,746 --> 00:06:26,742 because it's a pony and unicorn. 153 00:06:26,742 --> 00:06:29,237 It's a ponycorn. 154 00:06:29,237 --> 00:06:32,417 I don't have any ponycorns right now, 155 00:06:32,417 --> 00:06:34,413 so I'm going to go get some. 156 00:06:34,413 --> 00:06:38,405 Come with me on my magical ponycorn adventure. 157 00:06:38,405 --> 00:06:44,892 I can go through rainbows to visit new places. 158 00:06:44,892 --> 00:06:49,383 That's not a ponycorn. it's a goat on a pole. [INAUDIBLE]. 159 00:06:56,369 --> 00:06:59,363 Hi, Orange Boy, my name is Sissy. 160 00:06:59,363 --> 00:07:00,860 ORANGE BOY: [GIBBERISH] 161 00:07:00,860 --> 00:07:02,856 SISSY: Do you like ponycorns? 162 00:07:02,856 --> 00:07:03,854 ORANGE BOY: [GIBBERISH] 163 00:07:03,854 --> 00:07:04,852 SISSY: Me too. 164 00:07:04,852 --> 00:07:06,349 Got any jars? 165 00:07:06,349 --> 00:07:07,347 ORANGE BOY: [GIBBERISH] 166 00:07:07,347 --> 00:07:07,930 SISSY: Thanks. 167 00:07:07,930 --> 00:07:12,337 If I find any ponycorns, I'll put them in these jars. 168 00:07:12,337 --> 00:07:15,830 This is an empty jar for holding ponycorns. 169 00:07:19,822 --> 00:07:21,319 I see a new rainbow. 170 00:07:25,311 --> 00:07:30,301 EVIL LEMON: [CACKLING] I'm an evil lemon. 171 00:07:30,301 --> 00:07:31,798 SISSY: [INAUDIBLE] 172 00:07:31,798 --> 00:07:34,542 EVIL LEMON: I will squirt lemon juice in your eyes, 173 00:07:34,542 --> 00:07:36,289 and that stings. 174 00:07:36,289 --> 00:07:39,642 SISSY: Oh no, what will I do? 175 00:07:39,642 --> 00:07:41,450 EVIL LEMON: Stay away. 176 00:07:41,450 --> 00:07:46,390 SISSY: [SCREAMS] 177 00:07:46,390 --> 00:07:47,640 EVIL LEMON: Stay away. 178 00:07:47,640 --> 00:07:52,930 SISSY: [SCREAMS] I found a key. 179 00:07:52,930 --> 00:07:55,888 Hmm, this [INAUDIBLE]. 180 00:08:06,734 --> 00:08:10,678 TIGER: Hi, I am a tiger, and I'm going to eat you. 181 00:08:10,678 --> 00:08:11,664 SISSY: No you're not. 182 00:08:11,664 --> 00:08:12,650 TIGER: Yes I am. 183 00:08:12,650 --> 00:08:14,622 SISSY: No you're not. 184 00:08:14,622 --> 00:08:16,101 TIGER: Yes I am. 185 00:08:16,101 --> 00:08:19,580 SISSY: [SCREAMS] 186 00:08:19,580 --> 00:08:21,222 TIGER: I'm going to eat that ponycorn. 187 00:08:24,708 --> 00:08:26,100 SISSY: I got a coconut. 188 00:08:33,452 --> 00:08:36,404 It's a coconut. 189 00:08:36,404 --> 00:08:39,848 I'm going to throw this coconut at you, lemon. 190 00:08:39,848 --> 00:08:40,832 EVIL LEMON: Oh no. 191 00:08:40,832 --> 00:08:41,816 Ow, my face. 192 00:08:41,816 --> 00:08:46,244 SISSY: That's what you get for being evil and a lemon. 193 00:08:46,244 --> 00:08:48,704 EVIL LEMON: Stay away. 194 00:08:48,704 --> 00:08:49,710 SISSY: [SCREAMS] 195 00:08:49,710 --> 00:08:53,640 PHILIP TAN: Oh, I think you might have broken the game, 196 00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:54,667 but that's cool. 197 00:08:54,667 --> 00:08:55,750 STUDENT: What about a jar? 198 00:08:55,750 --> 00:08:57,350 PHILIP TAN: Oh, jar, yeah, try. 199 00:08:57,350 --> 00:08:59,302 SISSY: This is an empty jar. 200 00:08:59,302 --> 00:09:01,254 I got the green ponycorn. 201 00:09:01,254 --> 00:09:02,844 I put it in the jar. 202 00:09:02,844 --> 00:09:04,760 PHILIP TAN: OK, all right, so I think everyone 203 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:05,843 gets the idea of the game. 204 00:09:05,843 --> 00:09:07,270 Thank you so much. 205 00:09:07,270 --> 00:09:09,015 Yay, thank you. 206 00:09:09,015 --> 00:09:14,130 [APPLAUSE] 207 00:09:14,130 --> 00:09:17,025 So let me actually switch to my presentation. 208 00:09:20,540 --> 00:09:21,836 There we go. 209 00:09:21,836 --> 00:09:25,010 I'm going to talk a little bit about aesthetics. 210 00:09:25,010 --> 00:09:32,820 Now, what about that game seemed off? 211 00:09:32,820 --> 00:09:36,430 Let's start with, what in the game seems out of place? 212 00:09:42,456 --> 00:09:43,860 STUDENT: The artwork, I guess? 213 00:09:43,860 --> 00:09:45,651 PHILIP TAN: The artwork seems out of place? 214 00:09:47,780 --> 00:09:51,030 Out of place compared to the-- it 215 00:09:51,030 --> 00:09:54,590 is a bit of a trick question. 216 00:09:54,590 --> 00:09:57,250 I have trouble figuring out what's out of place. 217 00:09:57,250 --> 00:10:00,040 I think maybe the cursor hand actually 218 00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:03,580 looks like this default kind of browser cursor hand, 219 00:10:03,580 --> 00:10:07,740 is the one thing that I feel is not really 220 00:10:07,740 --> 00:10:09,590 cohesive of everything else. 221 00:10:09,590 --> 00:10:11,387 The artwork kind of sets the tone, 222 00:10:11,387 --> 00:10:13,220 is pretty much the first thing that you see. 223 00:10:13,220 --> 00:10:14,844 Even before you start playing the game, 224 00:10:14,844 --> 00:10:19,497 you see the artwork and the website. 225 00:10:19,497 --> 00:10:21,330 And then of course, when the music comes on, 226 00:10:21,330 --> 00:10:25,560 you actually hear pretty much the girl's voice 227 00:10:25,560 --> 00:10:27,520 for most of the game. 228 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:31,110 You get to about halfway through the game 229 00:10:31,110 --> 00:10:32,880 before you hear a dad's voice playing 230 00:10:32,880 --> 00:10:39,312 the lemon and Orange Boy, I guess-- wah, wah, wah, wah. 231 00:10:39,312 --> 00:10:41,110 Did anyone notice the user interface? 232 00:10:44,877 --> 00:10:48,083 STUDENT: It's not obvious at first what's clickable and what 233 00:10:48,083 --> 00:10:50,100 isn't. 234 00:10:50,100 --> 00:10:53,250 An outline could maybe help or something 235 00:10:53,250 --> 00:10:55,710 when you hover over something that you can actually click. 236 00:10:55,710 --> 00:10:58,680 PHILIP TAN: What are any visual cues that you were working off 237 00:10:58,680 --> 00:11:01,846 to figure out what to click on? 238 00:11:01,846 --> 00:11:05,758 STUDENT: Things would be drawn on different pieces of paper. 239 00:11:05,758 --> 00:11:08,203 That wasn't clear. 240 00:11:08,203 --> 00:11:11,137 But in general, clicking on everything 241 00:11:11,137 --> 00:11:14,550 is just what I do normally in point and click games. 242 00:11:14,550 --> 00:11:16,050 PHILIP TAN: It is a click everything 243 00:11:16,050 --> 00:11:18,040 in the game kind of game. 244 00:11:18,040 --> 00:11:19,450 So that makes sense. 245 00:11:19,450 --> 00:11:22,560 There is actually a slight little bit 246 00:11:22,560 --> 00:11:25,730 of drop shadow behind everything that you can click. 247 00:11:25,730 --> 00:11:27,770 And some things that you can click but 248 00:11:27,770 --> 00:11:32,180 don't do anything, like the goat on the stick, for instance. 249 00:11:32,180 --> 00:11:34,160 I thought I saw another hand over here 250 00:11:34,160 --> 00:11:36,007 about the user interface. 251 00:11:36,007 --> 00:11:36,875 Anyone? 252 00:11:36,875 --> 00:11:38,750 STUDENT: I was going to say the drop shadows. 253 00:11:38,750 --> 00:11:41,540 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, OK, the drop shadows, yeah. 254 00:11:41,540 --> 00:11:42,040 Yeah. 255 00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:43,477 STUDENT: I don't think there's always 256 00:11:43,477 --> 00:11:45,393 a drop shadow between everything you can click on. 257 00:11:45,393 --> 00:11:46,830 Because I'm pretty sure you can click on the cactus, 258 00:11:46,830 --> 00:11:48,539 and the cactus has no drop shadow. 259 00:11:48,539 --> 00:11:49,330 PHILIP TAN: Oh, OK. 260 00:11:49,330 --> 00:11:51,180 STUDENT: She's like, ow, cactus. 261 00:11:51,180 --> 00:11:52,620 And I was like, oh, that's weird. 262 00:11:52,620 --> 00:11:54,060 That didn't give me any indication 263 00:11:54,060 --> 00:11:56,460 that collecting it would give some sort of feedback. 264 00:11:56,460 --> 00:11:59,025 PHILIP TAN: I forget, does the cactus do anything? 265 00:11:59,025 --> 00:11:59,650 STUDENT: Uh-uh. 266 00:11:59,650 --> 00:12:01,873 PHILIP TAN: Ah, so I think there is a big difference, then. 267 00:12:01,873 --> 00:12:02,680 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] cactus. 268 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:04,138 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, everything that's 269 00:12:04,138 --> 00:12:07,410 like crucial to advance in the game I notice 270 00:12:07,410 --> 00:12:09,670 has a drop shadow. 271 00:12:09,670 --> 00:12:11,730 But yeah, if you click everywhere 272 00:12:11,730 --> 00:12:14,580 in the world-- if it looks like something that might stand out 273 00:12:14,580 --> 00:12:18,650 from the blank sheet of paper, it should respond, right? 274 00:12:18,650 --> 00:12:20,360 So even though the cactus is not sort 275 00:12:20,360 --> 00:12:26,385 of a crucial piece of the plot, such as it is, 276 00:12:26,385 --> 00:12:29,200 it is something that a player might reasonably 277 00:12:29,200 --> 00:12:31,460 expect to be able to click on and do something. 278 00:12:31,460 --> 00:12:33,105 And yeah, you get pricked by it. 279 00:12:33,105 --> 00:12:34,309 She says, ow. 280 00:12:34,309 --> 00:12:35,100 There's some voice. 281 00:12:35,100 --> 00:12:38,770 And there's a little bit of payoff on that. 282 00:12:38,770 --> 00:12:43,300 Every time he clicks, there's a little blue crayon circle 283 00:12:43,300 --> 00:12:46,770 that sort of emanates from where you're clicking. 284 00:12:46,770 --> 00:12:50,040 So there's another little typical UI feedback 285 00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:51,810 of, all right, you clicked on this thing, 286 00:12:51,810 --> 00:12:53,260 and we're acknowledging your mouse click, 287 00:12:53,260 --> 00:12:54,635 but we're going to do it in a way 288 00:12:54,635 --> 00:12:57,718 that sort of works with the rest of the art style. 289 00:12:57,718 --> 00:13:00,640 I think something else that also stands out a little bit 290 00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:01,940 is-- let me see. 291 00:13:01,940 --> 00:13:05,330 If I go back to the game-- oh, I closed it, didn't I? 292 00:13:05,330 --> 00:13:07,780 OK, all right, does anyone remember 293 00:13:07,780 --> 00:13:12,419 if the border between the game space and the inventory, 294 00:13:12,419 --> 00:13:13,960 was that like a straight line, or was 295 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,090 that kind of a raggedy thing? 296 00:13:17,090 --> 00:13:20,180 I thing it's pure straight line, right? 297 00:13:20,180 --> 00:13:22,330 Yeah, so that's another weird thing. 298 00:13:22,330 --> 00:13:24,280 It's like, this is a game that's made out 299 00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:25,630 of like ripped sheets of paper. 300 00:13:25,630 --> 00:13:27,760 Then all of a sudden, there's this hard white line 301 00:13:27,760 --> 00:13:29,680 right across. 302 00:13:29,680 --> 00:13:32,860 What works in this game? 303 00:13:32,860 --> 00:13:34,630 Why would someone want to play this 304 00:13:34,630 --> 00:13:36,671 to the end-- which just takes about five minutes. 305 00:13:36,671 --> 00:13:37,668 It's not terribly long. 306 00:13:41,652 --> 00:13:43,644 STUDENT: It's sort of all whimsical. 307 00:13:43,644 --> 00:13:47,130 And you kind of want to find out what this girl came up with, 308 00:13:47,130 --> 00:13:52,110 and what they worked together to create, basically. 309 00:13:52,110 --> 00:13:55,120 The story behind the creation of the game is also interesting. 310 00:13:55,120 --> 00:13:59,110 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, it's father/daughter, 311 00:13:59,110 --> 00:14:01,970 but the daughter led the project, basically determined 312 00:14:01,970 --> 00:14:03,730 how everything was going to work. 313 00:14:03,730 --> 00:14:06,210 The dad just did the coding and some voices, 314 00:14:06,210 --> 00:14:08,440 of course scanning, and things like that. 315 00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:12,280 But very quickly, you're introduced things 316 00:14:12,280 --> 00:14:13,890 like the goat on the stick. 317 00:14:13,890 --> 00:14:16,670 Very, very quickly, it just establishes that you're just 318 00:14:16,670 --> 00:14:19,800 playing in five-year-old logic right now, 319 00:14:19,800 --> 00:14:21,780 and this whole world is going to work that way. 320 00:14:24,630 --> 00:14:26,290 The fact that it's narrated largely 321 00:14:26,290 --> 00:14:30,140 by this character-- who has an opening cut scene, actually. 322 00:14:30,140 --> 00:14:34,290 It's just like, I'm Sissy, and I fricking love ponycorns, 323 00:14:34,290 --> 00:14:36,540 and then explains what a ponycorn is. 324 00:14:36,540 --> 00:14:41,040 And then you don't actually get to see one until pretty far 325 00:14:41,040 --> 00:14:42,420 into the game. 326 00:14:42,420 --> 00:14:46,410 But as soon as you're told, yes, that lump of green 327 00:14:46,410 --> 00:14:49,930 is a ponycorn, is a pony with a unicorn horn, 328 00:14:49,930 --> 00:14:52,150 you then say, OK, all right, that's a ponycorn. 329 00:14:52,150 --> 00:14:53,150 That's something I want. 330 00:14:53,150 --> 00:14:55,130 And at that point in time, you already 331 00:14:55,130 --> 00:14:58,800 know you're supposed to put them in jars. 332 00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:06,960 So that starts to talk about something 333 00:15:06,960 --> 00:15:09,940 that we've already been exploring a lot in this class. 334 00:15:09,940 --> 00:15:13,225 It's kind of like the systemic aesthetic, how 335 00:15:13,225 --> 00:15:17,020 a person feels when they're playing through a set of rules. 336 00:15:17,020 --> 00:15:19,380 And Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure, 337 00:15:19,380 --> 00:15:22,150 it's the set of rules as devised by a five-year-old. 338 00:15:22,150 --> 00:15:24,529 But they're actually all internally consistent. 339 00:15:24,529 --> 00:15:26,070 When you play through the whole game, 340 00:15:26,070 --> 00:15:27,939 you start to figure out, yeah, clicking 341 00:15:27,939 --> 00:15:30,230 everywhere is actually a perfectly reasonable strategy. 342 00:15:30,230 --> 00:15:32,784 Because nothing's really going to hurt you in this game. 343 00:15:32,784 --> 00:15:34,047 You may get scared. 344 00:15:34,047 --> 00:15:35,380 You may get pricked by a cactus. 345 00:15:35,380 --> 00:15:37,440 But nothing's really going to hurt you. 346 00:15:37,440 --> 00:15:39,790 So it's OK to click on everything. 347 00:15:39,790 --> 00:15:42,030 And the kinds of decisions that you get to make 348 00:15:42,030 --> 00:15:44,740 are more like, is now the right time 349 00:15:44,740 --> 00:15:46,167 to use to jar on a ponycorn? 350 00:15:46,167 --> 00:15:47,750 Do I need to do something first to get 351 00:15:47,750 --> 00:15:53,280 past the lemon or the other bad folks who get in your way? 352 00:15:53,280 --> 00:15:55,470 And the kinds of rules and strategies 353 00:15:55,470 --> 00:15:59,019 that you have to devise to be able to navigate 354 00:15:59,019 --> 00:16:00,810 through your space gives you a certain kind 355 00:16:00,810 --> 00:16:02,000 of systemic aesthetic. 356 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,570 And you've been working with that since the beginning 357 00:16:04,570 --> 00:16:05,570 of the semester. 358 00:16:05,570 --> 00:16:08,810 Prototyping-- some of you have made games 359 00:16:08,810 --> 00:16:10,450 that make you feel very tense. 360 00:16:10,450 --> 00:16:13,930 Some of the games are more zen-like. 361 00:16:13,930 --> 00:16:15,640 Some games are more strategic. 362 00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:17,400 And you have to really think carefully 363 00:16:17,400 --> 00:16:19,000 about your next decision. 364 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:21,800 And some of them are kind of frantic. 365 00:16:21,800 --> 00:16:23,550 And those have all come out from the rules 366 00:16:23,550 --> 00:16:25,360 that you devised first on your prototypes. 367 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,510 And then you moved them over to your digital versions. 368 00:16:28,510 --> 00:16:31,291 And that's one form of aesthetic. 369 00:16:31,291 --> 00:16:33,335 But then there's also the other kind of aesthetic 370 00:16:33,335 --> 00:16:35,710 that we've been talking a little bit when we talked about 371 00:16:35,710 --> 00:16:40,870 polish-- the art direction, the music, how 372 00:16:40,870 --> 00:16:43,510 a 3D object is rendered, or even how 373 00:16:43,510 --> 00:16:45,830 a 2D graphic is represented. 374 00:16:45,830 --> 00:16:50,040 Is it drawn in crayon, or is it high quality line art, 375 00:16:50,040 --> 00:16:54,190 or is it something running in the Crytek engine, 376 00:16:54,190 --> 00:16:58,320 and you've got mobile mapping and specular lighting 377 00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:02,354 and things look like fire and glass and concrete? 378 00:17:02,354 --> 00:17:04,270 Do the sound effects sound like they're coming 379 00:17:04,270 --> 00:17:05,490 from a place in the world? 380 00:17:05,490 --> 00:17:07,990 Do they sound like the thing they're supposed to sound like? 381 00:17:07,990 --> 00:17:11,950 Do they sound other worldly or little MIDI notes, 382 00:17:11,950 --> 00:17:15,995 the sort of thing that you would expect from a Nintendo game, 383 00:17:15,995 --> 00:17:17,369 from an old school Nintendo game? 384 00:17:20,349 --> 00:17:23,960 And then there's the things that we would normally 385 00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,800 refer to as sort of the story of the game. 386 00:17:27,800 --> 00:17:31,100 There's the plot of what happens to characters as they navigate 387 00:17:31,100 --> 00:17:33,890 through the world, and who are these characters, who are they 388 00:17:33,890 --> 00:17:37,510 really, and what sort of emotional development they're 389 00:17:37,510 --> 00:17:39,270 going to go through. 390 00:17:39,270 --> 00:17:41,560 What's the theme of the game? 391 00:17:41,560 --> 00:17:50,940 Is it a game about being isolated from everybody else? 392 00:17:50,940 --> 00:17:56,430 Is it a game about US military strength? 393 00:17:56,430 --> 00:17:58,780 I think the theme of Call of Duty is actually, 394 00:17:58,780 --> 00:18:02,070 America starts wars, England finishes them, 395 00:18:02,070 --> 00:18:05,540 which is kind of weird if you look at history. 396 00:18:05,540 --> 00:18:08,090 And where is this game set? 397 00:18:08,090 --> 00:18:09,230 When is this game set? 398 00:18:12,900 --> 00:18:14,700 Hopefully that's clear enough. 399 00:18:14,700 --> 00:18:19,194 And I think one of the things that can help 400 00:18:19,194 --> 00:18:20,610 is just a little bit of vocabulary 401 00:18:20,610 --> 00:18:25,190 so that when you're talking in your team about what's 402 00:18:25,190 --> 00:18:27,430 working in your aesthetic, it helps 403 00:18:27,430 --> 00:18:30,220 to be able to put words to it so that people can understand 404 00:18:30,220 --> 00:18:32,439 what part of the aesthetic that you're talking about. 405 00:18:32,439 --> 00:18:33,980 Are you talking about the things that 406 00:18:33,980 --> 00:18:36,530 have to do with a game system, your rules 407 00:18:36,530 --> 00:18:38,470 and the logic of your game? 408 00:18:38,470 --> 00:18:41,450 And how is that going to make someone feel while they're 409 00:18:41,450 --> 00:18:43,590 playing your game? 410 00:18:43,590 --> 00:18:45,560 Are you talking about the style, the musical 411 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:48,480 and the visual style of your game and how things move, 412 00:18:48,480 --> 00:18:54,210 how things animate, and how things [INAUDIBLE] 413 00:18:54,210 --> 00:18:55,690 the things you hear? 414 00:18:55,690 --> 00:18:58,060 Or are you talking more about the fictional elements-- 415 00:18:58,060 --> 00:19:01,820 what's going on in the sort of storyline? 416 00:19:01,820 --> 00:19:03,950 All these three things are going to work together 417 00:19:03,950 --> 00:19:06,010 to create the aesthetic of your game. 418 00:19:06,010 --> 00:19:08,590 And all these things need to work together 419 00:19:08,590 --> 00:19:10,010 for your final project. 420 00:19:10,010 --> 00:19:12,400 So I want you to be thinking very, very 421 00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:19,380 hard about what's the fiction of the games that you're creating. 422 00:19:19,380 --> 00:19:24,960 Is it being set in a real world actual city, an actual named 423 00:19:24,960 --> 00:19:25,460 city? 424 00:19:25,460 --> 00:19:28,750 Is it kind of like an abstraction of a city 425 00:19:28,750 --> 00:19:30,271 in a certain part of the world? 426 00:19:30,271 --> 00:19:31,270 Is it not a city at all? 427 00:19:31,270 --> 00:19:33,090 Maybe you're playing as the whole world? 428 00:19:33,090 --> 00:19:36,110 Maybe you're playing as a completely different planet, 429 00:19:36,110 --> 00:19:40,690 and you're trying to get through your learning that way. 430 00:19:40,690 --> 00:19:41,810 Is it about a family? 431 00:19:41,810 --> 00:19:43,350 Is it about an individual? 432 00:19:43,350 --> 00:19:47,630 Is it about an entire town council or something like that? 433 00:19:47,630 --> 00:19:52,800 Style is something that you have to leverage in order 434 00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:54,647 to take advantage of whatever strengths 435 00:19:54,647 --> 00:19:55,980 you happen to have in your team. 436 00:19:55,980 --> 00:19:59,400 If you have really good artists or a really good musician, 437 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:01,250 you're going to take advantage of that. 438 00:20:01,250 --> 00:20:03,010 But you don't want to do anything that's 439 00:20:03,010 --> 00:20:06,000 going to sort of show the assets that you 440 00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:10,040 don't have a lot of control over as being poor. 441 00:20:10,040 --> 00:20:16,600 You want everything to be kind of a matching even standard. 442 00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:24,880 So for instance, if you did a game that has mostly pixelated 443 00:20:24,880 --> 00:20:27,320 8-bit style graphics, and all of a sudden, 444 00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:31,390 this vector art shape comes in, you better 445 00:20:31,390 --> 00:20:33,866 have a really good reason for that thing to be there, 446 00:20:33,866 --> 00:20:36,620 or a photograph shows up in your game or something like that. 447 00:20:36,620 --> 00:20:38,660 You better have a really good reason 448 00:20:38,660 --> 00:20:43,920 why you're throwing in two very, very different visual styles 449 00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:44,480 in there. 450 00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:45,640 You can make it work. 451 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:48,991 But you need to be able to think very, very hard about how 452 00:20:48,991 --> 00:20:51,240 you're going to make that work-- even things like what 453 00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:52,912 your cursor is going to be. 454 00:20:52,912 --> 00:20:55,440 And of course, how's that going to work with your system, 455 00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:55,940 right? 456 00:20:55,940 --> 00:21:01,820 If your game is about a dire situation-- floods are coming 457 00:21:01,820 --> 00:21:04,460 in or something, there's an epidemic-- 458 00:21:04,460 --> 00:21:09,300 and you put everything in kind of nice, sunny, tropical, 459 00:21:09,300 --> 00:21:12,620 everyone's at a beach kind of a setting, 460 00:21:12,620 --> 00:21:15,950 well, you can sort of do this like weird subversive thing. 461 00:21:15,950 --> 00:21:18,136 But then you have to be very, very conscious. 462 00:21:18,136 --> 00:21:19,760 It might be a little bit easier for you 463 00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:22,010 to just use a visual that actually 464 00:21:22,010 --> 00:21:24,950 supports the kind of game play that your game actually has. 465 00:21:24,950 --> 00:21:27,550 If the game is about feeling tense, 466 00:21:27,550 --> 00:21:29,250 use visuals that also communicate 467 00:21:29,250 --> 00:21:32,500 this sense of feeling tense. 468 00:21:32,500 --> 00:21:36,400 There are games like-- how many of you have played Tropical? 469 00:21:36,400 --> 00:21:39,500 A couple of hands out there. 470 00:21:39,500 --> 00:21:40,770 How about SimCity? 471 00:21:40,770 --> 00:21:42,460 Who's played SimCity? 472 00:21:42,460 --> 00:21:43,372 OK, a few more hands. 473 00:21:43,372 --> 00:21:45,580 So what's the difference between Tropical and SimCity 474 00:21:45,580 --> 00:21:48,610 from someone who's played Tropical? 475 00:21:48,610 --> 00:21:49,127 Yeah. 476 00:21:49,127 --> 00:21:50,960 STUDENT: The flavor is completely different. 477 00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:52,322 PHILIP TAN: The what? 478 00:21:52,322 --> 00:21:55,195 STUDENT: The flavor. 479 00:21:55,195 --> 00:22:02,955 Tropical is overall kind of various Caribbean [INAUDIBLE]. 480 00:22:06,550 --> 00:22:12,150 PHILIP TAN: There's a tropical sort of equatorial setting, 481 00:22:12,150 --> 00:22:18,450 as opposed to SimCity, which is this very, very urban probably 482 00:22:18,450 --> 00:22:22,460 temperate climate. 483 00:22:22,460 --> 00:22:24,270 In one game, you're the mayor. 484 00:22:24,270 --> 00:22:26,620 In another game, you're set up as a dictator. 485 00:22:26,620 --> 00:22:29,790 And the kinds of things that you do in Tropical 486 00:22:29,790 --> 00:22:34,200 are supposedly things that are very similar to SimCity, 487 00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:37,460 like building and zoning and constructing up 488 00:22:37,460 --> 00:22:38,960 your little island. 489 00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:44,234 But at the same time, you also have to do sort of dictatorial 490 00:22:44,234 --> 00:22:46,900 quashing your resistance kind of things, which you don't usually 491 00:22:46,900 --> 00:22:48,560 do in SimCity. 492 00:22:48,560 --> 00:22:51,790 But it's set in this kind of very idyllic 493 00:22:51,790 --> 00:22:55,010 tropical sunny environment. 494 00:22:55,010 --> 00:22:58,800 And developers of that game are usually 495 00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:01,010 trying to play that for laughs. 496 00:23:01,010 --> 00:23:03,110 It's like, yeah, you're a dictator. 497 00:23:03,110 --> 00:23:05,911 But you're not really that evil compared 498 00:23:05,911 --> 00:23:07,660 to some of the real atrocities that you've 499 00:23:07,660 --> 00:23:13,330 seen in tropical dictatorships in the real world. 500 00:23:13,330 --> 00:23:16,540 And so they're trying to use the visuals to get across 501 00:23:16,540 --> 00:23:18,400 that you're kind of this comic dictator. 502 00:23:21,220 --> 00:23:22,930 I can certainly imagine a game that's 503 00:23:22,930 --> 00:23:30,690 a lot more about real dictators of small island nations. 504 00:23:30,690 --> 00:23:34,610 And that will probably be a lot more-- 505 00:23:34,610 --> 00:23:37,140 the visuals will probably not be quite so cheery. 506 00:23:37,140 --> 00:23:38,680 Even though it might be sunny, it 507 00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:41,880 will probably show a little bit more 508 00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:47,480 of the grit of what it's like to live in a very humid and very 509 00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:50,985 muggy and rainy place, and try to play that 510 00:23:50,985 --> 00:23:53,610 up so that that aesthetic works with how the game play actually 511 00:23:53,610 --> 00:23:56,230 is going to work. 512 00:23:56,230 --> 00:24:00,930 So I should expand on that. 513 00:24:00,930 --> 00:24:04,360 So we talked a little bit about how 514 00:24:04,360 --> 00:24:10,580 these things work on their own-- fiction, system, and style. 515 00:24:10,580 --> 00:24:14,540 But in between, there are sort of these domains 516 00:24:14,540 --> 00:24:16,730 of game development, which are going 517 00:24:16,730 --> 00:24:18,480 to draw from both of them. 518 00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,950 How a player interacts with the system and the visual feedback 519 00:24:22,950 --> 00:24:25,650 they're going to get from that in the user interface 520 00:24:25,650 --> 00:24:29,450 is going to also affect how they feel about your game. 521 00:24:29,450 --> 00:24:32,710 And it's going to affect that aesthetic. 522 00:24:32,710 --> 00:24:36,470 The way a certain character has a theme song, 523 00:24:36,470 --> 00:24:40,269 for instance-- this one character who's 524 00:24:40,269 --> 00:24:42,310 been lurking in the background, and you've always 525 00:24:42,310 --> 00:24:43,645 heard the theme kind of in the background. 526 00:24:43,645 --> 00:24:44,769 Then they show up in front. 527 00:24:44,769 --> 00:24:49,780 And then suddenly it has a full orchestration of their song. 528 00:24:49,780 --> 00:24:53,360 Things like that are how style and fiction work together, 529 00:24:53,360 --> 00:24:57,190 this particular character's theme, whether it's 530 00:24:57,190 --> 00:25:01,560 Gollum, or the theme of one of the big cities in Lord 531 00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:03,370 of the Rings, or something like that. 532 00:25:03,370 --> 00:25:09,370 And of course, the level design of your game itself 533 00:25:09,370 --> 00:25:15,750 both have gameplay implications and sort 534 00:25:15,750 --> 00:25:18,450 of fictional implications. 535 00:25:18,450 --> 00:25:21,700 A post-apocalyptic racing game looks very, very different 536 00:25:21,700 --> 00:25:24,890 from, say, a Formula One modern-day racing game, 537 00:25:24,890 --> 00:25:28,100 or a horse racing game. 538 00:25:28,100 --> 00:25:29,725 And that's going to not only change 539 00:25:29,725 --> 00:25:30,850 the way how the game looks. 540 00:25:30,850 --> 00:25:33,350 It's also going to change the way how the game plays. 541 00:25:33,350 --> 00:25:35,940 Is there debris on the track? 542 00:25:35,940 --> 00:25:38,050 Is everything very dusty? 543 00:25:38,050 --> 00:25:40,940 Is everything highly polished and very clinical, 544 00:25:40,940 --> 00:25:43,590 for instance? 545 00:25:43,590 --> 00:25:45,440 And of course what your characters can 546 00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:48,790 do in an environment-- if you say someone's a ninja, then 547 00:25:48,790 --> 00:25:51,720 I expect this character has ninja-like abilities. 548 00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:58,020 Is this, oh, you're a ninja, and you kind of punch people 549 00:25:58,020 --> 00:26:01,630 in the face in sort of one on one fisticuffs? 550 00:26:01,630 --> 00:26:03,374 And it's like, that's not a ninja. 551 00:26:03,374 --> 00:26:05,040 You're thinking of something else there. 552 00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,280 Maybe you shouldn't call that person a ninja. 553 00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:10,647 So we've looked a little bit at Sissy's. 554 00:26:10,647 --> 00:26:12,230 I want to show a couple of other games 555 00:26:12,230 --> 00:26:16,400 that I feel do really, really nail a cohesive aesthetic 556 00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,090 on a very low budget. 557 00:26:19,090 --> 00:26:21,142 And just for the sake of time, I think 558 00:26:21,142 --> 00:26:23,350 I'm just going to bring them up without asking people 559 00:26:23,350 --> 00:26:24,710 to come down and play. 560 00:26:24,710 --> 00:26:29,190 But how many people have played Thomas Was Alone? 561 00:26:29,190 --> 00:26:31,012 Just about five people, OK. 562 00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,500 Oh, there we go-- OK, it was just loading up, cool. 563 00:26:40,550 --> 00:26:42,685 So this is a game that's mostly about rectangles. 564 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:48,320 There we go. 565 00:26:54,781 --> 00:26:57,763 NARRATOR: [INAUDIBLE] 566 00:27:28,027 --> 00:27:29,610 I'm glad I'm not making you play this. 567 00:27:29,610 --> 00:27:33,180 Because this is really giving me a crick in my neck. 568 00:27:33,180 --> 00:27:36,168 NARRATOR: [INAUDIBLE] 569 00:27:39,769 --> 00:27:42,060 PHILIP TAN: OK, I'd like to show you a little bit more. 570 00:27:42,060 --> 00:27:44,286 But I find the contrast on that screen 571 00:27:44,286 --> 00:27:45,910 is a little bit too low to actually see 572 00:27:45,910 --> 00:27:47,530 what the level is like. 573 00:27:47,530 --> 00:27:49,330 But it's pretty much all geometric objects. 574 00:27:49,330 --> 00:27:50,663 They're not all at right angles. 575 00:27:50,663 --> 00:27:53,440 Not everything in the game is a rectangle. 576 00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:58,170 And you saw some of the water kind of had some texture to it. 577 00:27:58,170 --> 00:28:00,870 But it's pretty much all flat shaded polygons. 578 00:28:00,870 --> 00:28:05,750 The majority of the game is all flat shaded polygons. 579 00:28:05,750 --> 00:28:12,250 What in that very brief clip that you saw sort of 580 00:28:12,250 --> 00:28:15,650 gives you a sense of what the developer of the game 581 00:28:15,650 --> 00:28:18,619 wanted you to feel about the game? 582 00:28:18,619 --> 00:28:19,910 What were some of the elements? 583 00:28:19,910 --> 00:28:22,118 What were some things that were working in that game? 584 00:28:29,770 --> 00:28:31,750 STUDENT: There's a lot of empty space. 585 00:28:31,750 --> 00:28:36,152 And it sort of adds to the environment of being alone. 586 00:28:36,152 --> 00:28:37,860 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, you're very, very small 587 00:28:37,860 --> 00:28:41,498 in the screen compared to the rest of the screen. 588 00:28:41,498 --> 00:28:45,490 STUDENT: The music also gives that same impression. 589 00:28:45,490 --> 00:28:48,983 But it's not too depressing. 590 00:28:48,983 --> 00:28:51,977 Because you've got this sort of story quality, 591 00:28:51,977 --> 00:28:55,470 like [INAUDIBLE] 0.8. 592 00:28:55,470 --> 00:28:57,574 So presumably you're going to get to the part 593 00:28:57,574 --> 00:28:58,990 where he's not alone, or whatever. 594 00:28:58,990 --> 00:29:01,665 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, yeah, it's Thomas Was Alone, not 595 00:29:01,665 --> 00:29:02,550 Thomas Is Alone. 596 00:29:02,550 --> 00:29:04,270 STUDENT: Also, I haven't played it. 597 00:29:04,270 --> 00:29:07,572 PHILIP TAN: No, you are making some very logical assumptions 598 00:29:07,572 --> 00:29:09,030 about this game, which are actually 599 00:29:09,030 --> 00:29:10,440 entirely true about this game. 600 00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:15,500 Eventually, you find other cubes, rectangles actually. 601 00:29:15,500 --> 00:29:18,220 All right, and so that's the way how the music works 602 00:29:18,220 --> 00:29:20,670 to sort of set the tone of, yeah, 603 00:29:20,670 --> 00:29:25,220 it's kind of melancholy, but not completely depressing. 604 00:29:25,220 --> 00:29:28,196 You've got a bit of a beat. 605 00:29:28,196 --> 00:29:28,695 What else? 606 00:29:33,345 --> 00:29:35,470 I can't remember if you mentioned the voice acting. 607 00:29:35,470 --> 00:29:38,720 But what's that doing to the game? 608 00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:46,100 First of all, who's speaking? 609 00:29:49,250 --> 00:29:49,910 Is it the cube? 610 00:29:52,766 --> 00:29:54,200 STUDENT: Some external narrator. 611 00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:58,210 PHILIP TAN: Some external narrator, yeah. 612 00:29:58,210 --> 00:29:59,470 So that's this. 613 00:29:59,470 --> 00:30:00,830 And what does that imply? 614 00:30:00,830 --> 00:30:05,960 What does that tell you about what this game is 615 00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:07,220 trying to get you to feel? 616 00:30:11,700 --> 00:30:14,658 What comes to mind? 617 00:30:14,658 --> 00:30:15,632 Hmm? 618 00:30:15,632 --> 00:30:16,610 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 619 00:30:16,610 --> 00:30:17,183 PHILIP TAN: Say what? 620 00:30:17,183 --> 00:30:18,110 STUDENT: It's a story. 621 00:30:18,110 --> 00:30:19,401 PHILIP TAN: That it is a story. 622 00:30:19,401 --> 00:30:22,408 This is actually more of a narrative based game. 623 00:30:22,408 --> 00:30:24,798 STUDENT: It makes you fell sort of isolated, 624 00:30:24,798 --> 00:30:27,666 like you're being spoken to by something far away, 625 00:30:27,666 --> 00:30:30,534 almost nonexistent, and you're sort of by yourself. 626 00:30:30,534 --> 00:30:32,522 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, so I think there's 627 00:30:32,522 --> 00:30:34,980 a little bit of the game that you're kind of being observed 628 00:30:34,980 --> 00:30:38,230 by this third party that's not actually part of the story, 629 00:30:38,230 --> 00:30:42,100 but is narrating the story of this rectangle. 630 00:30:42,100 --> 00:30:46,640 So you're alone, but not exactly, right? 631 00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:48,860 There is this third party there, which 632 00:30:48,860 --> 00:30:50,990 is there to tell your story. 633 00:30:50,990 --> 00:30:54,260 And somehow, this story is going to go places, 634 00:30:54,260 --> 00:30:57,360 as suggested by the music, but also as suggested by some 635 00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:58,970 of the things that he says. 636 00:30:58,970 --> 00:31:02,750 He makes mental notes for the future, 637 00:31:02,750 --> 00:31:05,580 even though the mental notes are kind of a silly one. 638 00:31:05,580 --> 00:31:08,440 That implies there is a future, right? 639 00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:09,233 Yep? 640 00:31:09,233 --> 00:31:11,598 STUDENT: It makes you feel empathy for the character, 641 00:31:11,598 --> 00:31:13,490 even though he's just a rectangle. 642 00:31:13,490 --> 00:31:15,390 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, yeah. 643 00:31:15,390 --> 00:31:19,560 Actually, let's talk about that rectangle. 644 00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,578 What does the rectangle do when it jumps? 645 00:31:22,578 --> 00:31:24,570 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 646 00:31:24,570 --> 00:31:27,060 PHILIP TAN: Hm? 647 00:31:27,060 --> 00:31:29,852 STUDENT: It gets thinner. 648 00:31:29,852 --> 00:31:32,060 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, it gets a little squash and stretch 649 00:31:32,060 --> 00:31:33,620 animation there. 650 00:31:33,620 --> 00:31:37,110 For something that's really just four right angles, 651 00:31:37,110 --> 00:31:38,640 it's actually remarkably expressive 652 00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:40,740 when it actually does a single job. 653 00:31:40,740 --> 00:31:43,560 It gives you the sense that this thing is not 654 00:31:43,560 --> 00:31:45,470 an inanimate geometric object. 655 00:31:45,470 --> 00:31:48,040 This thing is alive. 656 00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:51,990 This is an organic square, or rectangle. 657 00:31:51,990 --> 00:31:54,880 OK, so we've gone through a couple of ways 658 00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:58,870 how this game achieves its sort of aesthetic quality. 659 00:31:58,870 --> 00:32:01,650 Let me see what my next slide was going to be. 660 00:32:08,906 --> 00:32:14,878 All right-- oops, darn it. 661 00:32:14,878 --> 00:32:16,360 There we go. 662 00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:37,470 I'm hitting the space bar. 663 00:32:37,470 --> 00:32:40,855 Whenever you see a big circle radiate, 664 00:32:40,855 --> 00:32:42,628 that's me hitting the space bar. 665 00:33:34,430 --> 00:33:35,430 What does that even say? 666 00:33:35,430 --> 00:33:38,350 Oh jeez, OK. 667 00:33:38,350 --> 00:33:38,850 OK. 668 00:34:38,910 --> 00:34:43,270 OK, so I'm going to quit that game. 669 00:34:43,270 --> 00:34:47,639 So let's talk a little bit about that. 670 00:34:47,639 --> 00:34:50,369 First impressions? 671 00:34:50,369 --> 00:34:53,309 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] panel. 672 00:34:53,309 --> 00:34:55,269 You have the whole fish-eye thing 673 00:34:55,269 --> 00:34:58,390 through the tube thing, kind of like weird pixels. 674 00:34:58,390 --> 00:35:01,035 And you also have this guy going down the screen. 675 00:35:01,035 --> 00:35:03,910 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, so there's sort of a vertical hold jittering 676 00:35:03,910 --> 00:35:04,680 going on. 677 00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,259 And actually, it kind of doesn't look 678 00:35:07,259 --> 00:35:08,550 like it's a flat screen, right? 679 00:35:08,550 --> 00:35:09,299 It looks kind of-- 680 00:35:09,299 --> 00:35:11,822 STUDENT: Yeah, I kind of said the old school kind of screen 681 00:35:11,822 --> 00:35:13,155 with the fish-eye kind of thing. 682 00:35:13,155 --> 00:35:15,465 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, a little tube shape to it. 683 00:35:15,465 --> 00:35:17,110 Yep, that's a good one. 684 00:35:17,110 --> 00:35:17,610 What else? 685 00:35:22,050 --> 00:35:26,204 That's developed by one guy, by the way. 686 00:35:26,204 --> 00:35:28,674 STUDENT: You hear him breathing the whole time. 687 00:35:28,674 --> 00:35:31,144 So it kind of makes you feel claustrophobic, 688 00:35:31,144 --> 00:35:36,084 like you're in a small space looking at this monitor. 689 00:35:36,084 --> 00:35:38,940 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, yep, so the fact 690 00:35:38,940 --> 00:35:40,980 that you can hear your own breath sort of 691 00:35:40,980 --> 00:35:43,229 gives you an impression of the space around you, which 692 00:35:43,229 --> 00:35:45,750 is simultaneously really, really small 693 00:35:45,750 --> 00:35:47,685 and really, really large at the same time. 694 00:35:47,685 --> 00:35:49,060 You're in this tiny little thing, 695 00:35:49,060 --> 00:35:52,965 but there's this huge world outside of there. 696 00:35:52,965 --> 00:35:53,465 What else? 697 00:35:58,219 --> 00:35:59,010 Is there any music? 698 00:36:04,926 --> 00:36:07,884 STUDENT: I didn't get what the objective was. 699 00:36:07,884 --> 00:36:11,335 But it kind of sounded [INAUDIBLE] 700 00:36:11,335 --> 00:36:13,642 kind of space ship or something. 701 00:36:13,642 --> 00:36:16,100 You're an astronaut in some kind of spaceship or something, 702 00:36:16,100 --> 00:36:19,223 and you're trying to search for air. 703 00:36:19,223 --> 00:36:20,220 PHILIP TAN: Yep. 704 00:36:20,220 --> 00:36:24,200 So let's say, OK, air is important. 705 00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,860 And there's a lot of things that remind you of that, right? 706 00:36:26,860 --> 00:36:29,660 You have the breathing sounds. 707 00:36:29,660 --> 00:36:31,320 You have the things in the world that 708 00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:35,100 are sort of [INAUDIBLE] that you can pick up. 709 00:36:35,100 --> 00:36:36,440 There's a little oxygen meter. 710 00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,599 I'm not so sure if all of you saw that. 711 00:36:38,599 --> 00:36:41,140 There's a little oxygen meter that's constantly running down. 712 00:36:41,140 --> 00:36:45,304 And the sound of your breathing changes 713 00:36:45,304 --> 00:36:46,970 depending on how much oxygen you've got, 714 00:36:46,970 --> 00:36:48,303 or if you pick up an air pocket. 715 00:36:48,303 --> 00:36:50,620 Then you can breathe. 716 00:36:50,620 --> 00:36:51,440 What else? 717 00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:53,200 OK, so you said space ship. 718 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,010 And a few people said space ship. 719 00:36:55,010 --> 00:36:57,430 What else gives you the impression 720 00:36:57,430 --> 00:37:00,740 this might be a space ship? 721 00:37:00,740 --> 00:37:03,780 Because the game never tells you that you're in a space ship. 722 00:37:03,780 --> 00:37:05,205 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 723 00:37:05,205 --> 00:37:06,020 PHILIP TAN: Hm? 724 00:37:06,020 --> 00:37:07,990 STUDENT: I actually thought it was underwater 725 00:37:07,990 --> 00:37:08,990 instead of a space ship. 726 00:37:08,990 --> 00:37:10,448 PHILIP TAN: It could be underwater. 727 00:37:10,448 --> 00:37:13,440 So what's the evidence for each? 728 00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:13,940 Yeah? 729 00:37:13,940 --> 00:37:17,860 STUDENT: So for underwater, whenever you press space bar, 730 00:37:17,860 --> 00:37:21,290 it kind of looked like a radar sort of pulse. 731 00:37:21,290 --> 00:37:25,450 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, It's kind of like a sonar ping, 732 00:37:25,450 --> 00:37:28,860 which is something you'd expect to do underwater. 733 00:37:28,860 --> 00:37:32,300 What are things that remind you of space in this game? 734 00:37:37,490 --> 00:37:39,172 I would argue that-- oh, yeah. 735 00:37:39,172 --> 00:37:40,976 STUDENT: Some of the objects on the screen 736 00:37:40,976 --> 00:37:44,100 look like they could be stars [INAUDIBLE]. 737 00:37:44,100 --> 00:37:46,560 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, they look like constellations, right? 738 00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:49,925 STUDENT: There's that issue when you're trying to turn around 739 00:37:49,925 --> 00:37:50,925 you had to kind of stop. 740 00:37:50,925 --> 00:37:54,320 And it almost seemed like [INAUDIBLE] thruster 741 00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:56,260 or some kind of [INAUDIBLE]. 742 00:37:56,260 --> 00:38:00,640 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, yeah, there's a lot of inertia in changing 743 00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,295 your direction, yeah. 744 00:38:03,295 --> 00:38:05,170 Apparently there is an answer on whether it's 745 00:38:05,170 --> 00:38:06,540 space or underwater. 746 00:38:06,540 --> 00:38:09,040 I don't actually know the answer to that one. 747 00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:13,770 But they're both plausible conclusions 748 00:38:13,770 --> 00:38:18,020 from actually nothing that the game explicitly tells you. 749 00:38:18,020 --> 00:38:21,680 All of that you derive from hints, from the aesthetic. 750 00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,545 But because the game kind of works together really, 751 00:38:24,545 --> 00:38:27,060 really well on the game mechanics of running out 752 00:38:27,060 --> 00:38:30,590 of air and the visual representation of having 753 00:38:30,590 --> 00:38:35,870 this old school monitor, as well as the sound of you breathing 754 00:38:35,870 --> 00:38:42,970 and everything that you kind of know about what it's like to be 755 00:38:42,970 --> 00:38:46,730 in a situation where air is important, which implies 756 00:38:46,730 --> 00:38:49,480 certainly not walking around on the ground somewhere. 757 00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:54,250 Or if you are, you might be on a different planet, or something. 758 00:38:54,250 --> 00:38:58,220 And what you know about inertia gives you 759 00:38:58,220 --> 00:39:01,430 this impression, this very, very deep kind of world 760 00:39:01,430 --> 00:39:03,917 that you can sort of make theories about and imagine 761 00:39:03,917 --> 00:39:05,750 where you might be without the game actually 762 00:39:05,750 --> 00:39:07,890 having to tell you any of that. 763 00:39:07,890 --> 00:39:11,970 So that's a game where I feel it's really, really successful 764 00:39:11,970 --> 00:39:14,670 in getting that across. 765 00:39:14,670 --> 00:39:17,670 This next one I'm just going to play a demo. 766 00:39:17,670 --> 00:39:19,770 This is Defcon. 767 00:39:19,770 --> 00:39:23,760 It's kind of like a real-time strategy game, 768 00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,820 only on a sort of global thermonuclear war 769 00:39:26,820 --> 00:39:28,250 kind of scale. 770 00:39:28,250 --> 00:39:28,750 Oops. 771 00:39:36,530 --> 00:39:38,030 Screen-- here we go. 772 00:39:45,010 --> 00:39:49,270 Is this 1,280 by 800? 773 00:39:49,270 --> 00:39:51,295 I think my screen resolution changed on me. 774 00:39:54,690 --> 00:39:58,960 Yeah, when I tried to fix that problem earlier, 775 00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:01,980 the screen resolution changed on me. 776 00:40:01,980 --> 00:40:03,420 That doesn't matter. 777 00:40:03,420 --> 00:40:08,520 I'll switch it to something else. 778 00:40:13,060 --> 00:40:15,780 Mostly, this is fine. 779 00:40:15,780 --> 00:40:18,610 So I'm just going to play a demo. 780 00:40:18,610 --> 00:40:21,500 This is just a game that you see. 781 00:40:21,500 --> 00:40:24,140 This is as if the game is just playing 782 00:40:24,140 --> 00:40:25,740 against itself-- AI versus AI. 783 00:40:25,740 --> 00:40:29,210 If anyone has seen-- how many of you have seen War Games? 784 00:40:29,210 --> 00:40:31,380 OK, wow, OK. 785 00:40:31,380 --> 00:40:34,430 It's Matthew Broderick, is that right? 786 00:40:34,430 --> 00:40:37,370 And this is very much inspired by that. 787 00:40:37,370 --> 00:40:40,890 And the idea, of course-- actually, I'm 788 00:40:40,890 --> 00:40:46,830 not going to tell you beyond what I just said. 789 00:40:46,830 --> 00:40:48,620 I want you to start calling out things 790 00:40:48,620 --> 00:40:52,700 that you sort of think work aesthetically about this game. 791 00:40:52,700 --> 00:40:54,302 [CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING] 792 00:40:54,302 --> 00:40:56,010 I'm going to move the camera around, too. 793 00:41:06,420 --> 00:41:08,120 This is an actual game that you're 794 00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:10,870 watching right now being played with the AI playing 795 00:41:10,870 --> 00:41:11,515 against itself. 796 00:41:18,510 --> 00:41:24,202 Just call out stuff that strikes you about this game. 797 00:41:24,202 --> 00:41:30,611 STUDENT: The type face is very nicely apocalyptic, 798 00:41:30,611 --> 00:41:36,821 like all angles and-- I don't really know how to explain it, 799 00:41:36,821 --> 00:41:38,010 but it feels good. 800 00:41:38,010 --> 00:41:41,430 PHILIP TAN: It's stark, if nothing else. 801 00:41:41,430 --> 00:41:46,620 There's a certain amount of brutishness about it, 802 00:41:46,620 --> 00:41:48,790 but also very technological. 803 00:41:48,790 --> 00:41:53,610 It's not just like hewn out of rock. 804 00:41:53,610 --> 00:41:57,025 It's not that kind of brutishness. 805 00:41:57,025 --> 00:41:59,441 STUDENT: It's technological, but it looks very old school. 806 00:41:59,441 --> 00:42:01,790 It's very much like a radar screen. 807 00:42:01,790 --> 00:42:06,620 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, not necessarily even 808 00:42:06,620 --> 00:42:08,620 year 2000, right? 809 00:42:08,620 --> 00:42:14,550 This seems like a much older aesthetic, something 810 00:42:14,550 --> 00:42:16,340 from the '80s maybe, Cold War. 811 00:42:22,660 --> 00:42:26,160 Scroll over to something a little bit closer. 812 00:42:26,160 --> 00:42:27,210 No one's in America. 813 00:42:30,423 --> 00:42:31,422 This is continental war. 814 00:42:34,310 --> 00:42:34,920 What else? 815 00:42:40,020 --> 00:42:41,710 What song is this? 816 00:42:41,710 --> 00:42:43,520 Does anyone recognize the music? 817 00:42:47,413 --> 00:42:49,908 STUDENT: Does anybody hear anything other than music? 818 00:42:54,898 --> 00:42:57,892 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 819 00:42:57,892 --> 00:42:58,890 PHILIP TAN: Thunder? 820 00:42:58,890 --> 00:42:59,888 STUDENT: Is it thunder? 821 00:42:59,888 --> 00:43:03,410 STUDENT: It's this explosion. 822 00:43:03,410 --> 00:43:05,430 PHILIP TAN: Where do you think-- 823 00:43:05,430 --> 00:43:07,450 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 824 00:43:07,450 --> 00:43:12,280 PHILIP TAN: It's a little [INAUDIBLE], really soft. 825 00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:13,570 Where are you? 826 00:43:13,570 --> 00:43:16,992 Where are you supposed to be while you're playing this game? 827 00:43:16,992 --> 00:43:18,170 STUDENT: War room. 828 00:43:18,170 --> 00:43:20,650 PHILIP TAN: In a war room underground, 829 00:43:20,650 --> 00:43:22,306 several miles underground, maybe. 830 00:43:26,982 --> 00:43:27,940 It's a disturbing game. 831 00:43:33,370 --> 00:43:38,650 The music-- I believe it's all classical music. 832 00:43:38,650 --> 00:43:43,870 But it's heavily filtered through a lot of audio filters, 833 00:43:43,870 --> 00:43:48,840 giving it a sort of a reverb effect in the sort of sense 834 00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:53,190 that you might be hearing this inside a small enclosed space. 835 00:43:53,190 --> 00:43:56,650 There's a little cassette player inside your bunker somewhere. 836 00:44:01,810 --> 00:44:04,060 So besides the font, what about the UI? 837 00:44:04,060 --> 00:44:07,020 What about the UI seems to be-- in the way 838 00:44:07,020 --> 00:44:08,270 how the units are represented? 839 00:44:16,426 --> 00:44:18,300 Like those ships-- are those ships life-size? 840 00:44:21,730 --> 00:44:22,538 They're not, right? 841 00:44:22,538 --> 00:44:25,440 They're not the size of several cities put together. 842 00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,830 These are some abstract representations. 843 00:44:28,830 --> 00:44:33,490 These are sort of army pieces that you're moving on a board, 844 00:44:33,490 --> 00:44:37,840 only it's a digital board, that represent armies that 845 00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:39,430 are out there in the water or flying 846 00:44:39,430 --> 00:44:44,130 through the air, squadrons that are flying through the air 847 00:44:44,130 --> 00:44:45,670 somehow. 848 00:44:45,670 --> 00:44:51,030 So I'm going to quit now. 849 00:44:51,030 --> 00:44:55,530 So Defcon is, again, a very small team, 850 00:44:55,530 --> 00:44:57,260 I think less than five people. 851 00:44:57,260 --> 00:44:58,950 At least they were less than five people 852 00:44:58,950 --> 00:44:59,866 when they made Defcon. 853 00:44:59,866 --> 00:45:01,930 Now they're making other games. 854 00:45:01,930 --> 00:45:03,866 It was one of the first successful games 855 00:45:03,866 --> 00:45:06,240 by Introversion, which is the name of the indie developer 856 00:45:06,240 --> 00:45:07,420 that did this. 857 00:45:07,420 --> 00:45:11,840 And yeah, they explicitly stated that this is very much inspired 858 00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:14,640 by War Games the movie. 859 00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:18,000 It's about global thermonuclear war. 860 00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,670 It's about specifically the movie 861 00:45:20,670 --> 00:45:21,830 that was done in the '80s. 862 00:45:21,830 --> 00:45:25,740 So it's very much about what global thermonuclear war would 863 00:45:25,740 --> 00:45:28,619 have made sense in the '80s. 864 00:45:28,619 --> 00:45:30,160 Obviously, the graphic representation 865 00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:32,990 of what you see in that game is a little bit higher end 866 00:45:32,990 --> 00:45:35,330 than what you would normally have had in the '80s. 867 00:45:35,330 --> 00:45:37,621 But they're trying to sort of not necessarily represent 868 00:45:37,621 --> 00:45:40,470 things realistically, but sort of how things as Hollywood 869 00:45:40,470 --> 00:45:43,260 might have seen it. 870 00:45:43,260 --> 00:45:46,180 And even the marketing of the game 871 00:45:46,180 --> 00:45:50,565 says-- I believe it's, "Everybody dies," or something 872 00:45:50,565 --> 00:45:52,200 like that. 873 00:45:52,200 --> 00:45:55,820 And you can't really win that game, right? 874 00:45:55,820 --> 00:46:00,585 This is what the packaging of this game looks like. 875 00:46:00,585 --> 00:46:01,960 I think if you go to [INAUDIBLE], 876 00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,370 this is what it looks like now. 877 00:46:04,370 --> 00:46:06,065 Uplink is another game by them. 878 00:46:06,065 --> 00:46:07,990 It's worth checking out. 879 00:46:07,990 --> 00:46:09,680 It's a game about hacking. 880 00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,130 And if you look at that, you'll see all the same sort 881 00:46:12,130 --> 00:46:13,324 of '80s influences. 882 00:46:13,324 --> 00:46:15,490 But it's not about launching missiles at each other. 883 00:46:15,490 --> 00:46:17,073 It's about breaking into bank accounts 884 00:46:17,073 --> 00:46:20,365 and changing your school grades and things like that. 885 00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:24,690 Finally, this is a game I actually 886 00:46:24,690 --> 00:46:25,890 do want people to play. 887 00:46:25,890 --> 00:46:27,900 So who hasn't played Aaaaa!? 888 00:46:30,810 --> 00:46:34,670 All right, I want a volunteer to come down and play this game. 889 00:46:34,670 --> 00:46:36,026 Come on down. 890 00:46:36,026 --> 00:46:37,998 NARRATOR: Dejobaan Games and Owlchemy Labs, 891 00:46:37,998 --> 00:46:42,930 two lovers entwined in an awkward embrace. 892 00:46:42,930 --> 00:46:45,544 PHILIP TAN: This is from Boston, by the way. 893 00:46:45,544 --> 00:46:48,532 [ROBOTIC VOICE] 894 00:46:54,508 --> 00:46:55,504 STUDENT: Jump? 895 00:46:55,504 --> 00:46:56,430 PHILIP TAN: Go for it. 896 00:47:07,100 --> 00:47:07,720 What can you-- 897 00:47:07,720 --> 00:47:09,732 STUDENT: Stage-- I don't know, [INAUDIBLE]. 898 00:47:16,870 --> 00:47:20,870 PHILIP TAN: Hit Unlock. 899 00:47:20,870 --> 00:47:21,650 Oh. 900 00:47:21,650 --> 00:47:24,920 STUDENT: Oh, bye. 901 00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:26,585 PHILIP TAN: Just try-- OK. 902 00:47:29,810 --> 00:47:30,310 That one? 903 00:47:30,310 --> 00:47:31,282 Try it. 904 00:47:31,282 --> 00:47:35,656 Yeah, OK, then hit Play. 905 00:47:35,656 --> 00:47:38,160 OK, so the basic idea of this game 906 00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:39,730 is it's a base jumping simulator. 907 00:47:39,730 --> 00:47:42,780 So use WASD to jump off the side of a building, 908 00:47:42,780 --> 00:47:43,886 and then just fall. 909 00:47:43,886 --> 00:47:44,760 NARRATOR: Checkpoint. 910 00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:46,260 PHILIP TAN: Try not to hit anything. 911 00:47:49,365 --> 00:47:49,948 STUDENT: Shit. 912 00:47:55,910 --> 00:47:59,670 PHILIP TAN: But try to get as close to things as possible, 913 00:47:59,670 --> 00:48:01,470 because that's how you get points. 914 00:48:05,398 --> 00:48:06,871 Oh, something [INAUDIBLE]. 915 00:48:13,736 --> 00:48:14,236 Ouch. 916 00:48:17,700 --> 00:48:19,490 Is this in Endless mode? 917 00:48:19,490 --> 00:48:20,710 STUDENT: Ah, I don't know. 918 00:48:20,710 --> 00:48:24,258 PHILIP TAN: This seems like it is. 919 00:48:24,258 --> 00:48:25,878 STUDENT: No. 920 00:48:25,878 --> 00:48:26,753 NARRATOR: Checkpoint. 921 00:48:31,244 --> 00:48:33,710 STUDENT: Sorry, controls are really light. 922 00:48:33,710 --> 00:48:35,800 PHILIP TAN: OK, try hitting space bar. 923 00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,046 Oh, no, no, no, not yet. 924 00:48:38,046 --> 00:48:39,045 STUDENT: Oh wait, oh no. 925 00:48:39,045 --> 00:48:39,310 PHILIP TAN: It's cool. 926 00:48:39,310 --> 00:48:40,325 It's fine. 927 00:48:40,325 --> 00:48:44,390 All right, now try to land in that little circle, 928 00:48:44,390 --> 00:48:48,034 little red circle behind that building. 929 00:48:48,034 --> 00:48:48,534 Yep. 930 00:48:56,390 --> 00:48:57,863 STUDENT: Come on. 931 00:48:57,863 --> 00:48:59,850 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, try landing there. 932 00:48:59,850 --> 00:49:02,370 You did it. 933 00:49:02,370 --> 00:49:05,212 OK, thank you. 934 00:49:05,212 --> 00:49:08,056 [APPLAUSE] 935 00:49:11,380 --> 00:49:15,537 PHILIP TAN: OK, I'm going to turn the volume down. 936 00:49:15,537 --> 00:49:17,245 What's working for this game's aesthetic? 937 00:49:20,690 --> 00:49:23,385 Did I see a hand back there? 938 00:49:23,385 --> 00:49:24,870 Yeah, right there. 939 00:49:24,870 --> 00:49:26,602 STUDENT: We're all really used to games 940 00:49:26,602 --> 00:49:29,562 with cylindrical coordinates through a camera. 941 00:49:29,562 --> 00:49:31,740 And this game appeared to have it be the case 942 00:49:31,740 --> 00:49:34,297 that as you look down, one can then rotate your camera. 943 00:49:34,297 --> 00:49:36,338 It really felt like you're looking straight down. 944 00:49:36,338 --> 00:49:38,758 And so we're very used to having cylindrical coordinates. 945 00:49:38,758 --> 00:49:39,995 PHILIP TAN: Mhm, yeah. 946 00:49:39,995 --> 00:49:44,810 This is a game that uses sort of WASD first person controls. 947 00:49:44,810 --> 00:49:48,462 Only first of all, you're not carrying a gun 948 00:49:48,462 --> 00:49:49,670 and looking around like that. 949 00:49:49,670 --> 00:49:52,130 You're pretty much doing this for the entire game. 950 00:49:52,130 --> 00:49:58,080 So you're always kind of rotating around your center. 951 00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:01,554 So that's a systemic-- essentially 952 00:50:01,554 --> 00:50:02,470 how the controls work. 953 00:50:02,470 --> 00:50:04,595 STUDENT: Checkpoint restart happened really, really 954 00:50:04,595 --> 00:50:06,680 fast when you screwed up. 955 00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:09,710 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, yeah, so it's like, survive to this point, 956 00:50:09,710 --> 00:50:12,140 get to the next checkpoint. 957 00:50:12,140 --> 00:50:14,250 And things are actually flying past you 958 00:50:14,250 --> 00:50:16,670 at a pretty high rate as well. 959 00:50:16,670 --> 00:50:17,610 What else? 960 00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:22,860 Music? 961 00:50:22,860 --> 00:50:24,331 Art? 962 00:50:24,331 --> 00:50:24,830 Storyline? 963 00:50:28,847 --> 00:50:29,680 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 964 00:50:35,985 --> 00:50:37,655 PHILIP TAN: I think the music-- does 965 00:50:37,655 --> 00:50:41,540 it start the moment your foot leaves the first building? 966 00:50:41,540 --> 00:50:43,690 I think there are some levels where 967 00:50:43,690 --> 00:50:46,147 it does that, where the music only starts the moment 968 00:50:46,147 --> 00:50:47,230 you jump off the building. 969 00:50:47,230 --> 00:50:48,570 It's like, you can stay on top of the building 970 00:50:48,570 --> 00:50:49,403 as long as you want. 971 00:50:49,403 --> 00:50:50,270 But nothing happens. 972 00:50:50,270 --> 00:50:52,810 And then as soon as you jump off, the music starts. 973 00:50:52,810 --> 00:50:55,990 So it's like, all right, now you're doing something that you 974 00:50:55,990 --> 00:50:58,317 should feel excited about. 975 00:50:58,317 --> 00:51:00,400 So we're going to play this exciting music at you. 976 00:51:02,816 --> 00:51:04,940 STUDENT: You can hear the air while you're falling. 977 00:51:04,940 --> 00:51:08,090 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, there's a very strong sort of rushing sound. 978 00:51:08,090 --> 00:51:10,710 And you're getting other UI sounds as well. 979 00:51:10,710 --> 00:51:13,840 Those are the things that are actually giving you 980 00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:15,580 points, getting close to other buildings. 981 00:51:15,580 --> 00:51:17,680 And so there's some visual feedback. 982 00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,474 STUDENT: The game menu before it starts is really confusing. 983 00:51:20,474 --> 00:51:21,640 There was just way too much. 984 00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:23,630 I don't think that was working at all. 985 00:51:23,630 --> 00:51:27,110 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, the thing is I've played a bit of this game. 986 00:51:27,110 --> 00:51:31,760 So it normally directs you to the first thing 987 00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:33,210 that you can click really clearly. 988 00:51:33,210 --> 00:51:35,050 And then at some point of time, it 989 00:51:35,050 --> 00:51:39,119 stops leading you to a linear path. 990 00:51:39,119 --> 00:51:41,160 So you've got this whole grid of different things 991 00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:42,560 that you can do to choose one. 992 00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:46,920 So admittedly, the game UI may not 993 00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:48,390 achieve what it's trying to do. 994 00:51:48,390 --> 00:51:51,230 But what do you think it's trying to do, 995 00:51:51,230 --> 00:51:54,260 even if it fails at it? 996 00:51:54,260 --> 00:51:56,700 It's sort of like, here's this ridiculous grid 997 00:51:56,700 --> 00:52:00,160 of all of these different things that you can do. 998 00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:02,380 But maybe some of them are unlocked, or some of them 999 00:52:02,380 --> 00:52:06,330 are still locked and some things are still locked out. 1000 00:52:06,330 --> 00:52:08,470 What's the point of showing you all these things 1001 00:52:08,470 --> 00:52:11,180 that you can't do? 1002 00:52:11,180 --> 00:52:13,180 STUDENT: Try and motivate you to unlock them 1003 00:52:13,180 --> 00:52:14,180 so that you can do them. 1004 00:52:14,180 --> 00:52:17,070 PHILIP TAN: Right, this whole idea 1005 00:52:17,070 --> 00:52:20,370 is that-- it's the same idea in Zelda. 1006 00:52:20,370 --> 00:52:22,490 Sometimes you see this heart in a location 1007 00:52:22,490 --> 00:52:24,730 which you know that you can't actually get to yet. 1008 00:52:24,730 --> 00:52:28,480 But the whole point of that is to make you want to get there. 1009 00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,560 And that's what the unlock system in this game, I believe, 1010 00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:33,310 is trying to do. 1011 00:52:33,310 --> 00:52:36,462 It wants to give you an incentive to keep playing. 1012 00:52:36,462 --> 00:52:38,045 Because there's all this other content 1013 00:52:38,045 --> 00:52:39,350 that you haven't seen yet. 1014 00:52:39,350 --> 00:52:42,129 But you kind of have a clue that it's out there. 1015 00:52:42,129 --> 00:52:43,670 At the beginning of the game, there's 1016 00:52:43,670 --> 00:52:46,044 a little narration actually that you may not have caught. 1017 00:52:46,044 --> 00:52:50,110 It says, the city of Boston has outlawed base jumping, 1018 00:52:50,110 --> 00:52:51,950 so this whole idea that what you're doing 1019 00:52:51,950 --> 00:52:54,280 isn't actually sanctioned by the authorities. 1020 00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,810 And eventually, you get these commands later 1021 00:52:56,810 --> 00:53:01,332 where you can flip off people while you jump off, 1022 00:53:01,332 --> 00:53:02,790 unless they happen to be your fans. 1023 00:53:02,790 --> 00:53:04,248 And then you give them a thumbs up. 1024 00:53:06,690 --> 00:53:14,140 So there's a sense that what you're doing isn't advisable. 1025 00:53:14,140 --> 00:53:18,730 This is not supposed to be just how the future looks like. 1026 00:53:18,730 --> 00:53:22,170 Even in this weird future where you have these mega skyscrapers 1027 00:53:22,170 --> 00:53:26,146 that go all the way into space, this is still not a good idea. 1028 00:53:26,146 --> 00:53:27,520 But you're going to do it anyway. 1029 00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:30,220 That's what this game is about. 1030 00:53:30,220 --> 00:53:33,350 So it's a 3D game. 1031 00:53:33,350 --> 00:53:35,650 This one was done in Unity, actually, 1032 00:53:35,650 --> 00:53:38,390 although it was on port from a game that wasn't originally 1033 00:53:38,390 --> 00:53:39,280 developed in Unity. 1034 00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,550 So you think of the very first version, 1035 00:53:41,550 --> 00:53:45,340 which is just called AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!-- 1036 00:53:45,340 --> 00:53:47,390 A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. 1037 00:53:47,390 --> 00:53:48,080 Is that right? 1038 00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:48,580 Yeah. 1039 00:53:48,580 --> 00:53:51,010 That game only runs on Windows. 1040 00:53:51,010 --> 00:53:53,410 And all the versions that have come since then 1041 00:53:53,410 --> 00:53:54,990 have all run on multiple platforms. 1042 00:53:54,990 --> 00:53:56,531 Because they were developed on Unity. 1043 00:53:56,531 --> 00:53:57,880 STUDENT: Including Oculus Rift. 1044 00:53:57,880 --> 00:53:58,940 PHILIP TAN: Including Oculus Rift, an Oculus Rift version 1045 00:53:58,940 --> 00:54:00,460 of that game. 1046 00:54:00,460 --> 00:54:02,700 You can imagine how that would work. 1047 00:54:02,700 --> 00:54:08,850 Anyway, so something that I want to end on today-- 1048 00:54:08,850 --> 00:54:12,320 there's a second presentation very quickly. 1049 00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:13,320 Actually, you know what? 1050 00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:14,770 I've been talking for an hour. 1051 00:54:14,770 --> 00:54:16,548 Let's take a quick break. 1052 00:54:16,548 --> 00:54:22,500 And we'll come back in 2:15, 10 minutes. 1053 00:54:22,500 --> 00:54:25,540 All right, let me see, am I on mute? 1054 00:54:25,540 --> 00:54:28,680 OK, so what I'm going to do now is 1055 00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,340 I'm going to have your groups actually 1056 00:54:32,340 --> 00:54:36,390 have a discussion about what you want your game mechanics to do. 1057 00:54:36,390 --> 00:54:38,280 And the reason for this is because I 1058 00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:41,730 feel that a lot of you probably are decently equipped 1059 00:54:41,730 --> 00:54:45,470 to talk about what you want your story lines and your characters 1060 00:54:45,470 --> 00:54:49,360 or your art style or your sound design to achieve in your game. 1061 00:54:49,360 --> 00:54:51,950 And the reason for that is we've seen a lot of movies. 1062 00:54:51,950 --> 00:54:54,910 We know how we react to music. 1063 00:54:54,910 --> 00:54:58,520 We realize what visuals have on sort of human emotion. 1064 00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:00,880 But I'm not sure if you've had this discussion yet 1065 00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,940 in your team about what you want your mechanics to do 1066 00:55:03,940 --> 00:55:04,740 aesthetically. 1067 00:55:04,740 --> 00:55:07,090 What kind of experience do you want 1068 00:55:07,090 --> 00:55:09,100 to generate for the player? 1069 00:55:09,100 --> 00:55:12,231 So really, it's what you want everything in your game to do. 1070 00:55:12,231 --> 00:55:14,230 But right now, I'm asking you to do a discussion 1071 00:55:14,230 --> 00:55:17,820 about what you specifically want your games to do. 1072 00:55:17,820 --> 00:55:19,372 I'm going to throw some words at you 1073 00:55:19,372 --> 00:55:23,320 to help you be able to frame these ideas inside your team. 1074 00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:24,842 First is that, is this a game? 1075 00:55:24,842 --> 00:55:27,050 How many of you feel like you're making a game that's 1076 00:55:27,050 --> 00:55:32,760 kind of about strategically outwitting the game system, 1077 00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:34,930 being smarter than the computer, basically, 1078 00:55:34,930 --> 00:55:38,080 or being smarter than the game designer, that's 1079 00:55:38,080 --> 00:55:41,150 how you win the game? 1080 00:55:41,150 --> 00:55:43,380 How many of you feel like your game is really 1081 00:55:43,380 --> 00:55:46,840 about some random thing happens, and now you 1082 00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:49,080 have to deal with it? 1083 00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:53,210 OK I see a couple, a few, hands out there, maybe. 1084 00:55:53,210 --> 00:55:54,970 And some of you don't know where your game 1085 00:55:54,970 --> 00:55:57,810 falls in that spectrum. 1086 00:55:57,810 --> 00:56:02,835 Of course, it could be a bit of both, right? 1087 00:56:02,835 --> 00:56:06,170 A French writer named Roger Caillois came up 1088 00:56:06,170 --> 00:56:09,822 with a categorization of what these different kinds of game 1089 00:56:09,822 --> 00:56:11,920 play could be termed. 1090 00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:14,570 And he came up with Agon and Alea. 1091 00:56:14,570 --> 00:56:18,150 Alea, some of you, if you've ever studied Latin or Roman 1092 00:56:18,150 --> 00:56:19,870 history or anything, might recognize it 1093 00:56:19,870 --> 00:56:24,210 from alea lacta est, which is, the die is cast. 1094 00:56:24,210 --> 00:56:25,990 So that word comes from dice. 1095 00:56:25,990 --> 00:56:28,460 And it sort of represents games of chance. 1096 00:56:28,460 --> 00:56:30,760 And Agon is a little bit more about conflict. 1097 00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:34,400 It's about usually person versus person conflict. 1098 00:56:34,400 --> 00:56:35,900 But in case of games, it's just kind 1099 00:56:35,900 --> 00:56:41,040 of like competitive contests of skill. 1100 00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:44,826 Basically how well can you deal with this challenge 1101 00:56:44,826 --> 00:56:45,950 that's put in front of you? 1102 00:56:48,247 --> 00:56:50,830 Caillois goes on and describes this as, this is sort of ludus. 1103 00:56:50,830 --> 00:56:53,000 This is the ludic kind of play where 1104 00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:56,370 you're sort of playing-- it's very specific to what 1105 00:56:56,370 --> 00:56:58,170 games are all about. 1106 00:56:58,170 --> 00:57:00,350 There are other forms of play out there 1107 00:57:00,350 --> 00:57:03,040 in the world that don't necessarily 1108 00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,180 have anything to do with games. 1109 00:57:05,180 --> 00:57:07,880 A game isn't required to have one of these things. 1110 00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:10,130 But for the most part, what Caillois 1111 00:57:10,130 --> 00:57:13,540 claims is that these kinds of actions 1112 00:57:13,540 --> 00:57:15,700 are the things that really, really sort of 1113 00:57:15,700 --> 00:57:22,580 set games apart from other kinds of play, this Agon and Alea. 1114 00:57:22,580 --> 00:57:24,940 But then there's-- what else is there in play? 1115 00:57:24,940 --> 00:57:27,320 There's paidia and ilinx, which are, again, 1116 00:57:27,320 --> 00:57:29,730 words that I don't necessarily expect you to remember. 1117 00:57:29,730 --> 00:57:32,540 But here are words that might be a little bit easier 1118 00:57:32,540 --> 00:57:38,230 to recollect, the sense of being someone that you are not, 1119 00:57:38,230 --> 00:57:43,050 mimicking something that you might fantasize in being, 1120 00:57:43,050 --> 00:57:45,170 or that you're being asked to perform. 1121 00:57:45,170 --> 00:57:48,350 Are you a person on the run from zombies? 1122 00:57:48,350 --> 00:57:50,080 Are you a military soldier? 1123 00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:53,740 Are you a detective? 1124 00:57:53,740 --> 00:57:58,650 Are you an assassin, a scoundrel, that sort of thing? 1125 00:57:58,650 --> 00:58:00,380 You're being asked to play that part. 1126 00:58:00,380 --> 00:58:03,550 Are you a town hall mayor? 1127 00:58:03,550 --> 00:58:07,370 Whereas vertigo, it's about the sort of physical sensation 1128 00:58:07,370 --> 00:58:09,140 of playing the game. 1129 00:58:09,140 --> 00:58:10,900 And when it comes to digital games, 1130 00:58:10,900 --> 00:58:13,390 usually that's one of the things that digital games 1131 00:58:13,390 --> 00:58:14,620 have the biggest problem. 1132 00:58:14,620 --> 00:58:17,440 Unless you're doing something like Dance Dance Revolution, 1133 00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:20,260 where you're actually having to play the game as a full body 1134 00:58:20,260 --> 00:58:21,540 or a Kinect thing. 1135 00:58:21,540 --> 00:58:24,590 But even games like Aaaaa!, we were 1136 00:58:24,590 --> 00:58:27,530 describing a game that's very much trying to give you 1137 00:58:27,530 --> 00:58:30,390 this sense of physical motion. 1138 00:58:30,390 --> 00:58:32,670 So they're trying to sort of conjure up 1139 00:58:32,670 --> 00:58:38,850 this sort of bodily freedom, even if that freedom 1140 00:58:38,850 --> 00:58:41,640 necessarily means a loss of control, 1141 00:58:41,640 --> 00:58:45,260 to sort of give you a pleasurable experience. 1142 00:58:45,260 --> 00:58:47,227 And you get that in other kinds of play. 1143 00:58:47,227 --> 00:58:48,810 How many of you played that game where 1144 00:58:48,810 --> 00:58:51,740 you go around a baseball bat with your head down, 1145 00:58:51,740 --> 00:58:54,410 and then you have to walk? 1146 00:58:54,410 --> 00:58:56,480 No one does this? 1147 00:58:56,480 --> 00:58:58,562 That's my favorite game. 1148 00:58:58,562 --> 00:59:00,310 STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE] 1149 00:59:00,310 --> 00:59:02,635 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, you get yourself as dizzy as you can. 1150 00:59:02,635 --> 00:59:04,219 Sometimes you look up and you spin. 1151 00:59:04,219 --> 00:59:05,760 Sometimes you look down and you spin. 1152 00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:07,250 And then you try to make your way 1153 00:59:07,250 --> 00:59:09,580 across to the other side of the finish line. 1154 00:59:09,580 --> 00:59:14,000 And that's like literal vertigo, right? 1155 00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:18,110 So we've got these different kinds of sensations 1156 00:59:18,110 --> 00:59:24,300 that this one series has already described, and probably not 1157 00:59:24,300 --> 00:59:27,830 everything that games can possibly do. 1158 00:59:27,830 --> 00:59:31,660 But they're kind of, in one way of describing it, kinds of fun. 1159 00:59:31,660 --> 00:59:36,040 There is the sort of competitive test of skill. 1160 00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:42,920 There is the, does fortune favor you today? 1161 00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:45,510 Are you feeling lucky right now? 1162 00:59:45,510 --> 00:59:46,865 Do you want to press your luck? 1163 00:59:46,865 --> 00:59:51,580 Do you get to be somebody else and live 1164 00:59:51,580 --> 00:59:52,630 through that experience? 1165 00:59:52,630 --> 00:59:55,680 Or do you just get to be in a sort of physical situation 1166 00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:57,259 that you haven't been? 1167 00:59:57,259 --> 00:59:59,550 These are all different things that your game mechanics 1168 00:59:59,550 --> 01:00:01,940 can achieve. 1169 01:00:01,940 --> 01:00:05,110 What I'd like to describe is like the stuff on the right 1170 01:00:05,110 --> 01:00:08,580 is the stuff that sort of puts you into the moment. 1171 01:00:08,580 --> 01:00:14,480 This is where you're being asked to spontaneously react. 1172 01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:19,520 Can you think like a mayor of a city, or president, or monarch? 1173 01:00:19,520 --> 01:00:24,210 Can you react in a way as if buildings 1174 01:00:24,210 --> 01:00:29,060 were flying towards you at 200 miles per hour? 1175 01:00:29,060 --> 01:00:33,950 Whereas everything on the right is what we typically described 1176 01:00:33,950 --> 01:00:35,420 as the structure of the games. 1177 01:00:35,420 --> 01:00:38,050 You've been experimenting with this in your prototypes 1178 01:00:38,050 --> 01:00:41,120 since day one. 1179 01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,480 But there's also kind of the differences 1180 01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:47,520 between the decisions that you get to make 1181 01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:49,810 and the things that kind of just happen to you, 1182 01:00:49,810 --> 01:00:51,390 and you get to react. 1183 01:00:51,390 --> 01:00:55,510 So I like to describe the stuff at the bottom as kind of fate. 1184 01:00:55,510 --> 01:00:58,880 This is the fate that you have. 1185 01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:02,230 Buildings are going to fly into your face. 1186 01:01:02,230 --> 01:01:05,940 And you kind of need to be able to then make 1187 01:01:05,940 --> 01:01:09,180 decisions to be able to just deal with that reality. 1188 01:01:09,180 --> 01:01:14,700 Or fate being, well, the dice is going to show what it is. 1189 01:01:14,700 --> 01:01:16,462 But the test of skill is the part 1190 01:01:16,462 --> 01:01:17,920 where you get to decide what you're 1191 01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:20,445 going to do given that you know the odds 1192 01:01:20,445 --> 01:01:26,730 and that you know what kind of actions that you can take. 1193 01:01:26,730 --> 01:01:29,690 So right now, in your teams, what 1194 01:01:29,690 --> 01:01:35,050 I'd like you to do is actually have a discussion about given 1195 01:01:35,050 --> 01:01:38,405 your prototypes that you've developed so far-- 1196 01:01:38,405 --> 01:01:40,030 I don't think we're doing a test today. 1197 01:01:40,030 --> 01:01:41,630 We're doing tests on Monday, right? 1198 01:01:41,630 --> 01:01:44,770 So what do you want your prototype on Monday 1199 01:01:44,770 --> 01:01:46,880 to try to achieve? 1200 01:01:46,880 --> 01:01:48,500 It could be any combination of this. 1201 01:01:48,500 --> 01:01:50,150 It could be all of it. 1202 01:01:50,150 --> 01:01:52,850 But I would like you to have that discussion in your team, 1203 01:01:52,850 --> 01:01:56,520 just maybe 15 minutes? 1204 01:01:56,520 --> 01:01:59,160 Yeah, that's plenty of time. 1205 01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:01,170 And then what we're going to do is just 1206 01:02:01,170 --> 01:02:04,820 do a very quick report back about where you think 1207 01:02:04,820 --> 01:02:08,790 your team-- just one person from each team will come down 1208 01:02:08,790 --> 01:02:10,900 and tell us, what are the things that you think 1209 01:02:10,900 --> 01:02:13,420 you want your game mechanics to achieve 1210 01:02:13,420 --> 01:02:17,970 in your prototype on Monday, OK? 1211 01:02:17,970 --> 01:02:19,070 15 minutes. 1212 01:02:19,070 --> 01:02:25,200 That will get us to basically about 2:40. 1213 01:02:25,200 --> 01:02:28,790 All right, so go right ahead. 1214 01:02:28,790 --> 01:02:30,440 I'll just leave that up. 1215 01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:33,870 [BACKGROUND CHATTER] 1216 01:02:53,752 --> 01:02:55,460 STUDENT: So our game, as it is right now, 1217 01:02:55,460 --> 01:02:57,670 you're basically playing like a child or an animal. 1218 01:02:57,670 --> 01:02:59,350 We haven't decided. 1219 01:02:59,350 --> 01:03:01,470 And you're basically going to go around 1220 01:03:01,470 --> 01:03:04,520 town figuring out this mystery. 1221 01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:09,260 So you're kind of playing like a detective type story. 1222 01:03:09,260 --> 01:03:12,310 So based on the slide, ours is more 1223 01:03:12,310 --> 01:03:13,782 like structure and decision. 1224 01:03:13,782 --> 01:03:15,490 So it's going to be sort of a competition 1225 01:03:15,490 --> 01:03:18,210 against the computer where you're trying to figure out 1226 01:03:18,210 --> 01:03:20,684 this mystery of what's causing cholera, 1227 01:03:20,684 --> 01:03:22,600 or what's causing people to be sick, actually. 1228 01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:24,720 You won't know that it's cholera. 1229 01:03:24,720 --> 01:03:26,720 So yeah, that's basically where our game stands. 1230 01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:28,053 PHILIP TAN: OK, all right, cool. 1231 01:03:28,053 --> 01:03:29,030 Thank you. 1232 01:03:29,030 --> 01:03:32,640 A very analytical detective game that you're 1233 01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:38,010 working towards-- that's for the prototype and tests on Monday. 1234 01:03:38,010 --> 01:03:40,820 Who's next? 1235 01:03:40,820 --> 01:03:41,849 Come on up. 1236 01:03:46,540 --> 01:03:47,970 STUDENT: Hi, we're Snap. 1237 01:03:47,970 --> 01:03:51,690 So we're planning on making a very competition heavy game. 1238 01:03:51,690 --> 01:03:53,630 Because you're going to be playing 1239 01:03:53,630 --> 01:03:55,410 with a bunch of other people. 1240 01:03:55,410 --> 01:03:57,990 So for Monday, we want to have that competition 1241 01:03:57,990 --> 01:04:00,699 structure in place so that we can see how it works. 1242 01:04:00,699 --> 01:04:02,490 We're also adding a little bit more fiction 1243 01:04:02,490 --> 01:04:04,790 to Snap, which is very abstract. 1244 01:04:04,790 --> 01:04:08,739 And so we're going to later on test how that works out. 1245 01:04:08,739 --> 01:04:10,197 But for now, it's just really going 1246 01:04:10,197 --> 01:04:14,199 to be the basic competition of the game that you've played. 1247 01:04:14,199 --> 01:04:15,740 PHILIP TAN: OK, all right, thank you. 1248 01:04:28,140 --> 01:04:30,190 STUDENT: So for Heatwave, we're mainly 1249 01:04:30,190 --> 01:04:32,910 going to focus on originally decision, 1250 01:04:32,910 --> 01:04:34,660 deciding who you're going to help 1251 01:04:34,660 --> 01:04:37,230 and how long you're going to try and convince them 1252 01:04:37,230 --> 01:04:39,610 to drink some water or go inside. 1253 01:04:39,610 --> 01:04:42,010 And there's also going to be a small aspect of fate. 1254 01:04:42,010 --> 01:04:45,750 Because you can spend 10 turns trying to convince a person 1255 01:04:45,750 --> 01:04:46,641 to go inside. 1256 01:04:46,641 --> 01:04:48,140 And at the end of the 10 turns, they 1257 01:04:48,140 --> 01:04:50,110 say, no, I don't want to talk to you anyone. 1258 01:04:50,110 --> 01:04:51,140 I'm not going inside. 1259 01:04:51,140 --> 01:04:53,170 So decision and fate. 1260 01:04:53,170 --> 01:04:55,110 PHILIP TAN: OK, cool, thank you. 1261 01:05:04,820 --> 01:05:07,740 STUDENT: Our team is working on forecast based financing. 1262 01:05:07,740 --> 01:05:10,650 So because we're about planning for disasters, 1263 01:05:10,650 --> 01:05:12,990 our game is pretty heavy on chance. 1264 01:05:12,990 --> 01:05:15,130 But what we want to teach the players to do 1265 01:05:15,130 --> 01:05:17,600 is to use planning and forecasting 1266 01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:20,860 in order to reduce the effects of that chance and sort of gain 1267 01:05:20,860 --> 01:05:24,212 valuable skills in mitigating that. 1268 01:05:24,212 --> 01:05:26,532 PHILIP TAN: All right. 1269 01:05:26,532 --> 01:05:30,731 So it's very much on the right side of this screen. 1270 01:05:30,731 --> 01:05:31,230 OK. 1271 01:05:36,510 --> 01:05:38,600 STUDENT: Hi, so we're the other cholera group. 1272 01:05:38,600 --> 01:05:43,020 And we decided to create a simulation based 1273 01:05:43,020 --> 01:05:44,890 game where there are many villages, 1274 01:05:44,890 --> 01:05:47,770 and they have their own water source. 1275 01:05:47,770 --> 01:05:51,830 And we have cholera as some sort of entity 1276 01:05:51,830 --> 01:05:53,820 that can sort of spread from village 1277 01:05:53,820 --> 01:05:55,810 to water to other villages. 1278 01:05:55,810 --> 01:06:00,660 And pretty much every village has their own population. 1279 01:06:00,660 --> 01:06:02,160 They have their own infection rate. 1280 01:06:02,160 --> 01:06:07,300 And what you are, you are pretty much some sort of person 1281 01:06:07,300 --> 01:06:10,080 who really has a lot of power and wants 1282 01:06:10,080 --> 01:06:12,290 to fix this cholera outbreak. 1283 01:06:12,290 --> 01:06:14,780 So this game focuses a lot on decision making, 1284 01:06:14,780 --> 01:06:18,295 because you have many different ways to try 1285 01:06:18,295 --> 01:06:22,440 to fix this problem-- either short term using 1286 01:06:22,440 --> 01:06:25,540 simple purification systems to launch for waste management. 1287 01:06:25,540 --> 01:06:27,190 But this game also has a lot of chance. 1288 01:06:27,190 --> 01:06:31,574 Because obviously, these things aren't 100% efficient. 1289 01:06:31,574 --> 01:06:32,990 There's going to be some failures, 1290 01:06:32,990 --> 01:06:34,540 going to be some breakdowns. 1291 01:06:34,540 --> 01:06:36,350 What we want to focus on right now 1292 01:06:36,350 --> 01:06:40,600 is to make sure that we can get our villages to have 1293 01:06:40,600 --> 01:06:42,700 their own sort of parameters, make sure 1294 01:06:42,700 --> 01:06:47,390 that the cholera-- we have some way of representing cholera 1295 01:06:47,390 --> 01:06:51,710 and how they spread to all the other villages. 1296 01:06:51,710 --> 01:06:52,956 PHILIP TAN: Cool, thank you. 1297 01:06:52,956 --> 01:06:55,638 Is that all the teams, or was there one more? 1298 01:06:58,270 --> 01:06:59,880 That's pretty much it. 1299 01:06:59,880 --> 01:07:05,370 OK, just a quick thing, so a couple of thoughts-- one thing 1300 01:07:05,370 --> 01:07:08,760 that you should be trying to figure out 1301 01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:13,450 as you work on your prototypes is to what extent 1302 01:07:13,450 --> 01:07:14,890 the decision making, which came up 1303 01:07:14,890 --> 01:07:16,380 with a lot of the different groups, 1304 01:07:16,380 --> 01:07:20,280 going to be reacting to things that you hadn't anticipated, 1305 01:07:20,280 --> 01:07:23,950 versus crafting a long term plan. 1306 01:07:23,950 --> 01:07:26,760 The stuff that you deal with on the short term 1307 01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:30,480 is going to go very heavy on this side. 1308 01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:32,780 And it's going to play a very big part 1309 01:07:32,780 --> 01:07:35,514 in making someone feel like the kind of person 1310 01:07:35,514 --> 01:07:37,680 that you want to feel, whether you're a big decision 1311 01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:41,220 maker or an individual on the ground. 1312 01:07:41,220 --> 01:07:43,667 The long term plan part of it is really more game-y. 1313 01:07:43,667 --> 01:07:46,250 You're really thinking more as someone who's playing the game, 1314 01:07:46,250 --> 01:07:49,410 rather than someone who's actually living the game. 1315 01:07:49,410 --> 01:07:52,850 And you can also decide that's more 1316 01:07:52,850 --> 01:07:55,024 what you want people to be going for, 1317 01:07:55,024 --> 01:07:56,440 especially games that have to deal 1318 01:07:56,440 --> 01:07:58,800 a lot with planning for chance. 1319 01:07:58,800 --> 01:08:01,870 Now, just because you have random numbers in your game, 1320 01:08:01,870 --> 01:08:03,560 and probability rates and everything, 1321 01:08:03,560 --> 01:08:07,630 doesn't necessarily mean that your game is all about chance, 1322 01:08:07,630 --> 01:08:11,130 even though you have these things in your system. 1323 01:08:11,130 --> 01:08:14,532 Because if what chance in your game really means 1324 01:08:14,532 --> 01:08:16,990 is that there is a certain rate at which certain things are 1325 01:08:16,990 --> 01:08:19,680 going to happen, then really that's just a rate. 1326 01:08:19,680 --> 01:08:21,529 That's something that you can plan for. 1327 01:08:21,529 --> 01:08:25,109 You can just expect every 10 turns, 1328 01:08:25,109 --> 01:08:27,010 you're going to get three outbreaks. 1329 01:08:27,010 --> 01:08:29,149 That's how the numbers are going to break down, 1330 01:08:29,149 --> 01:08:31,440 even though you don't know exactly when those rates are 1331 01:08:31,440 --> 01:08:32,830 going to be. 1332 01:08:32,830 --> 01:08:37,779 And if your game is where every single one of those times where 1333 01:08:37,779 --> 01:08:40,059 chance hits is really catastrophically or really, 1334 01:08:40,059 --> 01:08:42,000 really beneficial, then you've got 1335 01:08:42,000 --> 01:08:43,346 to get more of a game of chance. 1336 01:08:43,346 --> 01:08:45,970 If it's the sort of thing like a certain number of these things 1337 01:08:45,970 --> 01:08:47,600 are going to happen at a given rate, 1338 01:08:47,600 --> 01:08:50,180 and you just have to plan for that rate, that is, to me, not 1339 01:08:50,180 --> 01:08:51,770 really chance anymore. 1340 01:08:51,770 --> 01:08:56,279 It's more about that skill based test 1341 01:08:56,279 --> 01:08:58,050 of whether you can plan well. 1342 01:08:58,050 --> 01:09:02,290 So again, always keep in mind, what 1343 01:09:02,290 --> 01:09:05,210 do you want your game to feel like, 1344 01:09:05,210 --> 01:09:08,559 while you're trying to figure out whether your simulation is 1345 01:09:08,559 --> 01:09:11,100 right, whether your facts are right, whether this is actually 1346 01:09:11,100 --> 01:09:14,879 what happens with the diseases or the catastrophes 1347 01:09:14,879 --> 01:09:15,920 that you're dealing with. 1348 01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:18,420 Also keep in mind this is what you want your game 1349 01:09:18,420 --> 01:09:19,270 to feel like. 1350 01:09:19,270 --> 01:09:21,899 Make sure that's also informing how you're designing your game 1351 01:09:21,899 --> 01:09:25,370 mechanics and your art style and your story 1352 01:09:25,370 --> 01:09:27,939 line and your characters and so forth. 1353 01:09:27,939 --> 01:09:30,670 That's what I've got to say. 1354 01:09:30,670 --> 01:09:33,279 PROFESSOR: So administratively for Monday, we 1355 01:09:33,279 --> 01:09:37,078 have a lecture in the morning about games for learning. 1356 01:09:37,078 --> 01:09:38,494 Then we're going to do play tests. 1357 01:09:38,494 --> 01:09:40,109 And then at the end of play test, 1358 01:09:40,109 --> 01:09:42,350 we're going to do the two minute presentations, 1359 01:09:42,350 --> 01:09:44,600 so that when you're play testing, even though we heard 1360 01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:46,225 a little bit about what your games are, 1361 01:09:46,225 --> 01:09:48,696 we're not completely-- we'll still be a little naive when 1362 01:09:48,696 --> 01:09:49,779 you're playing your games. 1363 01:09:49,779 --> 01:09:52,950 We'll know exactly what's going on within the games. 1364 01:09:52,950 --> 01:09:54,560 In that two minute presentation, we 1365 01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:56,340 want to know a lot about process. 1366 01:09:56,340 --> 01:09:58,920 So let us know how you got to the point where you are now 1367 01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:00,315 and where you think you're going. 1368 01:10:00,315 --> 01:10:03,670 I believe product backlogs are due at that point, too. 1369 01:10:03,670 --> 01:10:07,350 So use your product backlog as part of your telling us 1370 01:10:07,350 --> 01:10:10,805 what you're planning on doing on your projects. 1371 01:10:10,805 --> 01:10:12,400 I know a few of you have come to me 1372 01:10:12,400 --> 01:10:15,420 and asked me about certain aspects of your projects 1373 01:10:15,420 --> 01:10:17,587 that might not be answered by the resource materials 1374 01:10:17,587 --> 01:10:18,461 that we've given you. 1375 01:10:18,461 --> 01:10:20,490 So hopefully you've read through the resources, 1376 01:10:20,490 --> 01:10:22,760 and you're finding some of your answers there. 1377 01:10:22,760 --> 01:10:24,840 If there are any questions you have 1378 01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:27,530 that are not being answered by your research, 1379 01:10:27,530 --> 01:10:30,610 email that to videogame-bosses, and we'll forward that along 1380 01:10:30,610 --> 01:10:32,800 to the clients. 1381 01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:37,160 I'm working to get them to allow me to just give you 1382 01:10:37,160 --> 01:10:39,430 their email address so you can contact them directly. 1383 01:10:39,430 --> 01:10:41,004 I'm still figuring out who exactly 1384 01:10:41,004 --> 01:10:42,920 for each of those projects that's going to be. 1385 01:10:42,920 --> 01:10:46,590 But that should be solidified by Monday. 1386 01:10:46,590 --> 01:10:48,740 But yeah, things to look out for that might not 1387 01:10:48,740 --> 01:10:52,240 be answered in your resources are cultural sensitivity, 1388 01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:56,630 particularly because of who your target audience might be. 1389 01:10:56,630 --> 01:10:58,740 So if you're doing anything graphical, 1390 01:10:58,740 --> 01:11:00,490 if you're doing anything representational, 1391 01:11:00,490 --> 01:11:03,320 really think hard about who it is is playing the game, what 1392 01:11:03,320 --> 01:11:05,830 kind of cultural background they have, 1393 01:11:05,830 --> 01:11:08,200 and how are you representing it to them. 1394 01:11:08,200 --> 01:11:13,120 Are you doing it both authentically and also 1395 01:11:13,120 --> 01:11:15,049 not patronizing them? 1396 01:11:15,049 --> 01:11:17,090 It's going to be a really hard challenge for you. 1397 01:11:17,090 --> 01:11:19,381 We don't expect you to actually solve it this semester. 1398 01:11:19,381 --> 01:11:21,785 We expect you to come up with some ways 1399 01:11:21,785 --> 01:11:23,910 to figure out how you might solve it in the future. 1400 01:11:23,910 --> 01:11:26,118 And that's kind of what we want to hear about in some 1401 01:11:26,118 --> 01:11:27,240 of these presentations. 1402 01:11:27,240 --> 01:11:30,780 Or how are you solving those kind of problems? 1403 01:11:30,780 --> 01:11:32,770 Any questions before we let you go and let you 1404 01:11:32,770 --> 01:11:35,185 work in your teams? 1405 01:11:35,185 --> 01:11:37,560 STUDENT: Can you give us an idea of how much time we'll 1406 01:11:37,560 --> 01:11:40,018 have in class to work with our teams so we can better plan? 1407 01:11:40,018 --> 01:11:42,120 PROFESSOR: Hour and a half. 1408 01:11:42,120 --> 01:11:44,420 We went a little bit long today, about 20 minutes long. 1409 01:11:44,420 --> 01:11:46,670 PHILIP TAN: That's all my fault. I'm sorry about that. 1410 01:11:46,670 --> 01:11:49,490 PROFESSOR: Blame him, but hour and a half basically. 1411 01:11:49,490 --> 01:11:52,807 If there's a guest lecture, those tend to be an hour long. 1412 01:11:52,807 --> 01:11:54,390 And then that would be two hours long. 1413 01:11:54,390 --> 01:11:56,260 If it's not a guest lecture, we tend 1414 01:11:56,260 --> 01:11:59,449 to ramble, so hour and a half. 1415 01:11:59,449 --> 01:12:01,615 Also part of that is because we start class at 1:10. 1416 01:12:01,615 --> 01:12:02,930 That kills some of the time. 1417 01:12:02,930 --> 01:12:04,997 So if you want to come into class at 1:00 1418 01:12:04,997 --> 01:12:06,830 and be in your teams and work in your teams, 1419 01:12:06,830 --> 01:12:09,025 and then we yell at you to shut up, that's fine. 1420 01:12:09,025 --> 01:12:09,900 That's actually good. 1421 01:12:09,900 --> 01:12:11,067 You're using your time well. 1422 01:12:11,067 --> 01:12:12,650 PHILIP TAN: Yeah, you come in at 1:00, 1423 01:12:12,650 --> 01:12:14,379 and then do a daily scrub, and then you 1424 01:12:14,379 --> 01:12:16,629 are ready to start class. 1425 01:12:16,629 --> 01:12:17,920 PROFESSOR: Any other questions? 1426 01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:23,250 All right, so I'm putting these materials up here. 1427 01:12:23,250 --> 01:12:24,830 And also a reminder, the play test, 1428 01:12:24,830 --> 01:12:26,770 if we weren't really specific about it, 1429 01:12:26,770 --> 01:12:29,486 we are expecting low fidelity prototypes. 1430 01:12:29,486 --> 01:12:30,860 But it could be digital or paper. 1431 01:12:30,860 --> 01:12:33,280 It's really whatever is useful for you, that's 1432 01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:34,600 what we want to see tested. 1433 01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:37,950 [BACKGROUND CHATTER]