5 Research outcomes and discussion
5.2 Unveiling environmental conflicts and spatial planning
5.2.2 Allocation of high-impact activities in urban-rural and
E
very aspiring game developer has plenty of very ambitious ideas for the next blockbuster. On the other hand, any professional devel-oper will tell you that, in the game industry, grand ideas are worth noth-ing. All that matters is execution. And this is where things get difficult:unfortunately, time and resources are very limited, so, while I hate to wake you from your daydreaming, a reality check is needed.
Fantasizing about the next Halo or Uncharted will bring you nowhere:
unless you have someone backing you up with $100 million, a large team of experienced professionals, and enough patience to allow for a develop-ment cycle spanning several years, your efforts and big dreams are des-tined to be crushed by the harsh reality we live in.
This doesn’t mean we have to stop dreaming! Successes as diverse as Brain Age (Nintendo, 2006), FarmVille (Zynga, 2009), and Angry Birds (Rovio, 2009) were developed by small teams with small budgets within realistic timeframes. What really matters is knowing ourselves, our strengths, and our limitations and then setting our goals accordingly.
Today we are very lucky to have modern and powerful tools, like Construct 2, that have lowered the barrier of entry into web-based, mobile, and even social games to a level such that anybody can make and distrib-ute games to an almost unlimited audience.
These types of games, though, are much different in concept and appeal than the AAA titles you may be playing on your home console systems and that likely made you interested in game development in the first place, so we may have to revise game ideas and concepts accordingly.
Individual developers or members of small independent teams made up of friends or schoolmates should focus on games that implement straight-forward concepts with clear and easily understandable goals.
Levels should also be structured for playing sessions lasting only a few minutes at a time so that, when played on mobile devices on the go, they can be picked up quickly and stopped any time (see an example in Figure 3.1).
Interestingly, games with these characteristics are not a new concept that emerged recently due to our modern and busy lifestyle or due to the popularity of new mobile devices. These were actually common traits of most games during the 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, in fact, tech-nology couldn’t really support extensive and complex games, like those we have today, on the hardware that was available at that time, so developers had to make that kind of design approach a necessity.
Indeed, it may be surprising for the younger generation to realize that old games still have a lot to teach us about game design, about what works and what doesn’t. Playing the classics can actually be a neverending source of inspiration and ideas for new game concepts!
FIGURE 3.1 Angry Birds: an easily understandable but addictive concept where playing each level takes no more than a couple of minutes. This makes it per-fectly suitable for a mobile experience on the go while commuting, for example.
(© 2009 Rovio.)
About Games and Ideas: Dream vs. Reality ◾ 33
While 30-year-old games do look extremely primitive and lack all the bells and whistles we are used to today, this lack of detail and technologi-cal prowess is actually helpful for exposing all the gameplay elements that made such games popular back in the day and, thus, are very useful learn-ing tools.
This is also the reason why more and more university degrees on game development are incorporating classes on game history. If you follow industry events like the Independent Game Festival (IGF),* you will soon notice that many of the winning games often showcase gameplay and aes-thetics clearly inspired by games of the past.
The influence and inspiring force of these old “relics” shouldn’t be underestimated, and I truly encourage you to spend some time rediscov-ering old classics or little-known games for systems like the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), PC-Engine, Sega Genesis, and the like. Look beyond the blocky and low-resolution graphics and see if you can relate their core concepts to newer games or, maybe, even get new ideas on how to reinterpret them in a mod-ern way for a new audience.
To exemplify how an old game can still be relevant in a modern set-ting, let’s see some actual examples where we can find specific gameplay ideas reinterpreted and adapted into something original across a multi-tude of genres, from casual games to high-budget AAA productions (see Figures 3.2–3.8 for some examples).
In the end, while game development is still a very young field, it is important to be aware that it has an exciting and fascinating history, with many interesting concepts that can be explored in novel ways.
Knowing more about it can only help the new generations of developers to build further on that solid foundation, exactly as writers and artists learn from the works of the people who preceded them in their respec-tive fields.
To stress the relevance of research to inspire new game ideas, the proto-types we are going to develop in the next chapters will be first introduced by an analysis of the early classics they are referencing.
* The Independent Game Festival is held annually in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference (http://www.igf.com).
FIGURE 3.2 In Angry Birds Space (top, © 2012 Rovio), the player bends his shots using the gravity field of the nearby planets. We can find the same idea in one of the first computer games ever created, SpaceWar! (bottom, developed by Steve Russell et al. at MIT in 1962), where players had to shoot at each other while taking into consideration the gravity field of the star at the center of the screen.
About Games and Ideas: Dream vs. Reality ◾ 35
FIGURE 3.3 The Civilization franchise, started by Sid Meier in 1991 with the original game published by MicroProse (top, © 1991 MicroProse), keeps pushing the strategy genre to new heights with each new release, innovating from a core set of ideas that can be traced back to 1981, when a truly groundbreaking game, Utopia (bottom, © 1981 Mattel, developed by Don Daglow), was released for the Intellivision console.
FIGURE 3.4 Still on the Intellivision console, Mattel released Shark!Shark! in 1982 (top, © 1982 Mattel). It was a very addictive arcade-style game where the player started as a little fish who had to eat smaller ones to grow while avoiding being eaten by bigger creatures. We can find the same basic concept, this time with plankton-like microorganisms, in the acclaimed experimental title flOw by Jenova Chen (bottom, © 2006 thatgamecompany). In flOw, though, gameplay is made much more interesting by enabling players to freely experiment with difficulty levels. This allows them to find the right match for their skills, making it possible to enter into a so-called state of flow, where the player’s ability and game’s challenges are in equilibrium.
About Games and Ideas: Dream vs. Reality ◾ 37
FIGURE 3.5 Managing and caring for the life of a virtual character (and his dog) was the main idea behind Little Computer People (top, © 1985 Activision); here, we made our little friend do some aerobic exercises to keep fit. The concept was then upgraded and expanded into a whole community with The Sims (bottom,
© 2000 Electronic Arts).
FIGURE 3.6 Quick Time Events (QTEs) are an integral part of many modern games, like Asura’s Wrath (top, © 2012 Capcom) and have evolved into a very effective tool for building a stronger connection with in-game characters and delivering an engaging story, as in Heavy Rain (middle, © 2010 Sony Computer Entertainment America). They are nothing new, though; QTEs got started with the adventures of Dirk the Daring in Dragon’s Lair many years ago (bottom,
© 1983 Cinematronics).
About Games and Ideas: Dream vs. Reality ◾ 39
FIGURE 3.7 Before getting a modern treatment with Bully (top, © 2006 Rockstar Games), managing a busy class schedule while fighting classmates and avoiding teachers was already the setting for a very original game on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64: Skool Daze (bottom, © 1983 Microsphere).
TAKE AWAY
• Don’t stop dreaming, but dream about something you can actu-ally achieve!
• Playing old games critically is an invaluable learning experience that can inspire new ideas and game concepts.
FIGURE 3.8 The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise has always drawn much controversy, starting from its first installment (top, © 1997 BMG Interactive Entertainment) in which the player could steal a car and run over pedestrians, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Surprisingly, though, there was an arcade game with gameplay based on chasing and running over people more than twenty years earlier: Death Race (bottom, © 1976 Exidy). That game, loosely based on the movie Death Race 2000 featuring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, put the player at the wheel of a car with the task of running over as many zombies as possible; zombies that are run over leave a cross behind them. Most people saw no difference between zombies and pedestrians and, indeed, like GTA in modern times, the game stirred a huge antigaming debate back in the day.
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