266: Making Fun Ain't Always Fun
- Thread starter Wendy Despain
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Great article. You don't get ones like this on other sites, that's why I started frequenting this place.
Being in the Game Design major myself, I kind of knew what I was getting into, but I think it's more than worth it because I can't see myself doing anything else.
Being in the Game Design major myself, I kind of knew what I was getting into, but I think it's more than worth it because I can't see myself doing anything else.
As somebody who has been trying to come up with original game concepts over the past couple years, I can totally relate to just how hard it is to generate magic out of nothing. Part of the reason you see so many clones on the market isn't because its' all investors will take a chance on, but rather because it's a whole Hell of a lot easier to base a concept on an existing model than pull one out of a hat.
Great article.
I took a game design class my first semester at college, and it was definitely not all fun and games. Specifically, I remember the crunch during the last week of the semester. Our final project was (unsurprisingly) to fully design and create a board game. The game we were making was a board game with a computer program supplement: the pitch was Carcassonne meets Sim City. We had been working for weeks, but always had more to do. The project was due on a Thursday afternoon; Tuesday night, I got barely any sleep working on the project. Then Wednesday came. We met after classes were done for the day at 4pm, and worked straight until 9, when we moved to another building which was open later. We were there all night; I remember texting my girlfriend good night and good morning while working.
There were three of us: one person ironing out the final mechanics, one working on the art for the game, and I was writing the program for the computer supplement. It was miserable. I kept finding bugs that needed fixing, the girl working on the mechanics kept asking me to add features, and I was so sick of programming that I wanted to vomit. We continued work straight through the morning; I missed my final English class of the semester, and we worked right until it was time to present. I had never slept so little and gone so crazy over one project... but even though the work was miserable, I ended up really enjoying it. It was a shame that I actually had to turn in the game and could not keep it. (Man, I should really be a game designer...)
Anyway, anecdote aside, I only have one comment on the article itself.
I took a game design class my first semester at college, and it was definitely not all fun and games. Specifically, I remember the crunch during the last week of the semester. Our final project was (unsurprisingly) to fully design and create a board game. The game we were making was a board game with a computer program supplement: the pitch was Carcassonne meets Sim City. We had been working for weeks, but always had more to do. The project was due on a Thursday afternoon; Tuesday night, I got barely any sleep working on the project. Then Wednesday came. We met after classes were done for the day at 4pm, and worked straight until 9, when we moved to another building which was open later. We were there all night; I remember texting my girlfriend good night and good morning while working.
There were three of us: one person ironing out the final mechanics, one working on the art for the game, and I was writing the program for the computer supplement. It was miserable. I kept finding bugs that needed fixing, the girl working on the mechanics kept asking me to add features, and I was so sick of programming that I wanted to vomit. We continued work straight through the morning; I missed my final English class of the semester, and we worked right until it was time to present. I had never slept so little and gone so crazy over one project... but even though the work was miserable, I ended up really enjoying it. It was a shame that I actually had to turn in the game and could not keep it. (Man, I should really be a game designer...)
Anyway, anecdote aside, I only have one comment on the article itself.
While this is true, I think it's worth adding that there's an upside to this. Sure, you become more critical of games once you see how they work and learn the tricks, and it becomes more difficult to enjoy some games, but when you happen across a game you can truly love and enjoy even after all the game design experience.... it's a wonderful feeling. Your appreciation of the game is so much richer since you can enjoy the game and appreciate its design merits. I would happily trade my naivete and enjoyment of perhaps lesser games in exchange for a fuller enjoyment of my favorites again, and encourage anyone with the opportunity to do the same.
The thing is, you can say the same about any industry. I'm sure the marketing industry isn't entirely as sweet compared to the video games industry (though I don't know marketing, so I could be talking bullshit).Veterinari said:
To be perfectly frank, though, if you think that video games is all just "fun and games" (har har) then you deserve a wakeup call like this. Developing video games is just like any other industry, it takes hard work, determination, and passion to really pull through with it. Like you said, only a few dellusional people really think that it's just all play and no work, but they are the few.
For the "sane" people, we know that the industry is tough. We know that it's hardwork and we know that it's not always going to have a pretty light at the end of a tunnel. But really, what I got from this article was "It's PURE HELL for ANYONE who goes through with it, only the EXTREME of people live for that SMALL SATISFACTION and they are NEVER THE SAME!@#!@"
Again, I'm not trying to downplay the article, just saying what I got from it. Overall it was a good read, but I just find it a bit too overly negative in tone.
EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot, this has also made me wonder this particular question;
Do video games have a set development cycle? Like you know how with movies there are certain stages, Pre-production, production, and Post-production, with certain things going on in each stage so it's (hopefully) organized. Do video games have a similar thing? Because I've read different developers takes on how to develop a game and most of them are actually pretty different.
This article is certainly interesting, and it's a good read for those who want to go into gaming development.
BUT:
I don't like that it constantly contradicts itself. "Game development isn't fun, except when it is!". Then it /can/ be fun. I'd phrase it like, "Game development is tedious; if you enjoy the work you need to put into it, solving problems and working with others, then it can be enjoyable. There are even parts of it, albeit rare, that are genuinely fun".
BUT:
I don't like that it constantly contradicts itself. "Game development isn't fun, except when it is!". Then it /can/ be fun. I'd phrase it like, "Game development is tedious; if you enjoy the work you need to put into it, solving problems and working with others, then it can be enjoyable. There are even parts of it, albeit rare, that are genuinely fun".
nope, but the sensible types would design the concept, prototype the gameplay/renderer/art, play test the hundreds of idea they came up with in concept and work out which ones not to dump, make an alpha with whatever assets and renderer is working. playtest the alpha's remaining gameplay ideas and preliminary level designs. keep re-iterating that until it's "fun" (a moving target if your constantly redoing something) once you gave all the features you plan to keep and the art has further caught up move into beta's and polish the remnant feature set, finalise the art, tune the renderer. get QA's to test the game doesn't break. release a demo/open beta to catch any bugs using freebie QA testers. release the final product.Jumplion said:
that's the "start with loads of idea's cull it down to what works" path, the opposite path would be a nightmare, "start with a few idea's and keep adding more til you find what works, then cut those back to what still works" i'm pretty sure games like alan wake, borderlands, anything valve makes and nukem forever went down that path and paid for it in dev time.
while some people are claiming most jobs are like that, hell if you actually do them, most of those jobs see an income. game studio's don't make alot of cash until the game launches. so if your game is taking 6 years to make stress is building up that this thing could bankrupt your employer. the more people involved over a longer period of time...the higher the minimum sales figure to keep your job. if your an indie it's a case of bankrupting you.
i am only a hobbyist 3d artist but the personal cost to learn the tools i'll need to join the games industry as an artist is high. all my free time, thousands of dollars in software, even my monitor is about 2000 usd. it's not helped by autodesks pricing system
You're wrong.
Well, you're right, but departing from a strange point of view. Are there really people who think that making games is just sitting around popping headshots and drinking beer? If so, I am certain that those people have never seen a computer code. Not even html. Anyone who's tried writing those knows that computers are fickle and strange creatures, and anyone who didn't probably thinks they could make a great porn star as well.
Part of it is probably the industry. No way the reliance on dreary crunch times is inherent to gaming, it's something big companies have invented to release games in time for Christmas, for example. And like any creative field, you can truly enjoy the act of creation even if it's objectively work.
Regarding that, I think gamers should be encouraged to create games. You can't wander into a library without bumping into a wannabe novelist, you can barely walk out of a record store without being given a flyer for someone's garage band[footnote]And can't walk into one without traveling back to the 90's, I reckon.[/footnote], and just being in the same college building as any movie-related course is taught will land you in someone's experimental movie (yeah! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUgMpG1I_o8]) but few gamers have a desire for creating a thing of their own. Creating a game is for one person as easy as shooting a movie (that is, not at all, but not impossible if you skirt around your weaknesses). I plan to try my hand at creating a roguelike as soon as I figure out what language to use and emerge from that hideous failure considering myself even more superior to others.
Well, you're right, but departing from a strange point of view. Are there really people who think that making games is just sitting around popping headshots and drinking beer? If so, I am certain that those people have never seen a computer code. Not even html. Anyone who's tried writing those knows that computers are fickle and strange creatures, and anyone who didn't probably thinks they could make a great porn star as well.
Part of it is probably the industry. No way the reliance on dreary crunch times is inherent to gaming, it's something big companies have invented to release games in time for Christmas, for example. And like any creative field, you can truly enjoy the act of creation even if it's objectively work.
Regarding that, I think gamers should be encouraged to create games. You can't wander into a library without bumping into a wannabe novelist, you can barely walk out of a record store without being given a flyer for someone's garage band[footnote]And can't walk into one without traveling back to the 90's, I reckon.[/footnote], and just being in the same college building as any movie-related course is taught will land you in someone's experimental movie (yeah! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUgMpG1I_o8]) but few gamers have a desire for creating a thing of their own. Creating a game is for one person as easy as shooting a movie (that is, not at all, but not impossible if you skirt around your weaknesses). I plan to try my hand at creating a roguelike as soon as I figure out what language to use and emerge from that hideous failure considering myself even more superior to others.
I think this quote really fits in with what's been said, which I have taken the liberty of digging up from my blog-like apparatus:
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create ? so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." ~Pearl S. Buck
This is how I feel as a (highly amateur) novelist, this is how I feel as a (pathetic) composer, and this is how I feel as a (wannabe) game designer. This sort of article reminds me how much I want to do all three. (Someday, I may have to pick one. But hopefully it won't come to that.) There's an almost inexpressable joy when it all comes together to make something great.
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create ? so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." ~Pearl S. Buck
This is how I feel as a (highly amateur) novelist, this is how I feel as a (pathetic) composer, and this is how I feel as a (wannabe) game designer. This sort of article reminds me how much I want to do all three. (Someday, I may have to pick one. But hopefully it won't come to that.) There's an almost inexpressable joy when it all comes together to make something great.
I've heard this argument before, but mostly in reference to writing. Definitely all true, though.
Usually goes something kind of like this:
Really, this is hard. It'll take years of hard, hard work, and even if you manage to get it published, everyone else will probably think it sucks. So you do the only thing you can do-- try again, because you can't help it, you'll write on a napkin or something when you should be doing the thing that you actually get paid decent amounts for.
Oh, and I particularly liked the 1337 words bit. I wonder how many characters I have?
Usually goes something kind of like this:
Really, this is hard. It'll take years of hard, hard work, and even if you manage to get it published, everyone else will probably think it sucks. So you do the only thing you can do-- try again, because you can't help it, you'll write on a napkin or something when you should be doing the thing that you actually get paid decent amounts for.
Oh, and I particularly liked the 1337 words bit. I wonder how many characters I have?
I agree with this article, but does anybody really believe that making games is all sunshine and roses? Even when I was entertaining the thought of entering that industry when I was a kid, I was vaugely aware that it would be a lot of hard work and frustration.
And susddenly, your director walks into the ofiice, and yells "Crucnch time people!".
D:
Heh, but you survive, get promoted to director, and need to attend even more meetings, leaving no time left to do what you thought would be your actual job, and then everyone gives you a mad look when you're the one entering the office and yelling "Crunch time!".
But still, when you work as a team -the kind where everyone supports one another- it's almost as much a rush to get just one big task done, as it is when you get to ship the game itself.
D:
Heh, but you survive, get promoted to director, and need to attend even more meetings, leaving no time left to do what you thought would be your actual job, and then everyone gives you a mad look when you're the one entering the office and yelling "Crunch time!".
But still, when you work as a team -the kind where everyone supports one another- it's almost as much a rush to get just one big task done, as it is when you get to ship the game itself.
I liked this article.Wendy Despain said:
It left me with one thought though:
"Isn't that how most jobs are?"
Of course they are not, but in the broader field of product development (which I view games to be a part of) it often is the case.
I think whenever you create something new there will be a lot of lows, but the highs are so much more rewarding when you can point at something and say "I had a part in that" and be proud.
But yes, I think a lot of people believe game design is a constant fun job, a belief I do not share.
The only sad part is the work hours VS pay. It is a sad thing to hear that people are worked hard and not payed for it, and I think the industry might have gotten a lot of really good people if the pay was correct (I know a lot of people that refuse to work in the industry because they want to be payed for the work they do)
To me it appears that making games with a small team of people as an independent developper generally is far more fun than having to answer to the wishes of a big publisher. Of course you shouldn't become an indie developper because of the money, because you'll usually won't make a lot of it.
