GameCity5 - Day One - The Braid Director's Commentary

I have to start by being completely up-front about the fact that I haven't played Braid. I had assumed it had only been released on XBox 360 and PC but in searching to read about it in advance of GameCity, I find that it is out for PSN. Oh dear.

Nevertheless this session with the creator of the game, Jonathon Blow, in which he presents the game live via a project and talks the audience through elements of creating the game was absolutely fascinating and compelling from start to finish.

What is eminently clear from the presentation and the Q&A is that Jonathon is an enormously smart individual. From the way he tells it, the technology of the game was comparatively simple to put together but working out the laws of the universe in the game, how time travels through it and how this impacts upon the puzzles was of prime importance. At times, the discussion bordered on the philosophical. "There's been more focus on the text than the game design," he explains, "so I'm going to take about the design."

The assembled crowd is clearly in awe of the achievement represented by this game and the audience hangs on every word. It's clear that Jonathan is among like-minded people; there's a lovely moment where the Braid process hangs and he sheepishly calls up Task Manager to kill the process, muttering sarcastically when Windows asks if he is sure. This is followed by a knowing ripple of laughter from the audience and a recognition that even a feted indie developer is beset by the same problems as the rest of us.

I'll present some of my highlights of the presentation, because it was really great to be there and I really felt this session deserved its own blog entry:

A "Mario clone with crappy graphics"?

Jonathan started by presenting his original prototype - produced in 9 days. He described it as looking like "a Mario clone with crappy graphics" and highlighted that one of its failings was that the USP of the time-manipulation wasn't introduced until world 2, meaning that only the most enthusiastic player would make it past the initial levels to the really interesting features. This was why the final Braid would introduce the time-control from early on.

It interested me that he highlighted how quickly the player is in control. The opening title screen has the player able to move the character around and take part. Jonathan felt it was essential that the player would be straight in. This echoed, to me, what Jonathan Smith (Travellers' Tales) has said earlier about Lego Star Wars, that one of the key features was getting the players in and messing about as soon as possible - are people put off games by the layers of introduction, menus and tutorials that front so many games as standard?

He also showed how puzzles were framed, in the sense that he wanted to try and make sure all puzzle elements were on-screen at the same time and that where they were not, this was a deliberate choice. In fact, he said that with three years polishing, "everything" in the game that was present or not present was for a definite reason. (although he debunked any theories about the cloud in the final screen representing some kind of secret, saying "I just wanted a vantage point to look down on my castle".

The presenter is pleasantly candid about mistakes, pointing out sections of the game where a particular puzzle design or enemy placement did not sit well with him and that he would remove if given the chance to do the game over. Although, he defends some of the more controversial levels that he describes as "not fun" for a lot of players, saying that the "not fun" levels were kept that way for a purpose and to provide the game with depth and make it a more complete experience.

And how does a game like this get created? There's a clue when Jonathan is asked "at what point did you know you were committing to the game for three years" and he answers "I didn't ... honestly two years in I was convinced i was always 6 weeks away from completion." As each new element got refined and improved it provided inspiration for new ideas and possibilities and the game kept growing. Many game elements came from studying the code itself, for example time-insensitive objects.

In conclusion...

The opening day of GameCity 5 was, for me, packed with content, interesting discussions and chances to meet people as enthusiastic about games as me.

Now it's late. My writing is probably deteriorating by the word and I shall be doing it all again tomorrow. See you then!

Photo used courtesy of GameCity with thanks

GameCity5 - Day One - Working Lunch and Remakes

Sadly events took a turn for the confusing and frustrating. I arrived at the Tonic venue for a session entitled "Who should save video games?" This was to be a debate around if and how we should preserve gaming's heritage, in the face of changing technology, quickly obsolescent hardware and games makers with neither the time nor the remit to store cultural product for future generations of historians.

However before I could get into the venue I was blocked by door stewards who had a clipboard full of names. It turns out that the session required a sign-up beforehand. There were probably about 10 or 15 of us outside who were a little bemused, as the website had not indicated that any kind of sign-up was required.

This reared its head again at the Braid discussion, although this time I found (much to my bemusement) that I was actually on the sign-up sheet, despite having had no memory of doing so.

It turns out that the 'my event' part of the GameCity website was in fact being used to create attendance lists for the venues. Most users seem to think that this was simply a Web 2.0-style calendar app to help attendees plan their day but it seems it is actually being used to determine numbers. However, people signing up on the website and adding events to a calendar is certainly no guarantee they are actually planning on attending GameCity, let alone a specific event. Surely enough, when only about 20 of the people on the stewards' check-sheet actually turned up for the discussion the rest of the stragglers were let in.

This was a minor flaw in the organisation of what was otherwise a very well co-ordinated day.

Anyway a good discussion was had around the issue of archiving and preserving with an excellent panel:

From left: Jonathan Smith - Travellers' Tales/Time Warner, Tom Woolly - National Media Museum, Spencer Neal - New Statesman, Michael Rawlinson - UKIE

If I'm honest my opinion got a little turned around as a result of the debate. I've always been a strong advocate that games from the past should be emulated on current formats so that the history of gaming is always accessible, in the same way that if I want to watch a film from 1926 there is nothing stopping me, as long as the film has been transferred to a modern format.

However the debate really brought to my mind the fact that gaming has come from such a basic infancy that many of the games we used to play are simply not valid for a modern audience. James, from the National Media Museum, pointed out that what is more interesting is to try and capture the experiences of the players who were there at the time.

This struck a chord with me as I am aware that many old films really mean little to a modern audience without first gaining some knowledge of the context of the film. In the same way my own experiences with "retro" gaming have been mixed. Games I used to play I can re-play with a certain fondness, although I am often surprised at how frustrating the experience is; old games with which I have no nostalgia actually provide very little as a result of playing them myself.

There was a consensus (well, totally majority) in the room that the public purse should be funding an organisation to maintain gaming's cultural history, in the same way that the British Museum legally requires a copy of every published print work to be delivered to them for storage. Having said that, given that the room was populated by either gamers, industry figures and anyone else interested in the subject it's probably not a representative cut of the population, but still...

Problematically, this raises a whole raft of questions around what should be archived and how it should be stored. I did ask the panel whether they though the current generation of games posed more of a problem than older games as so much of today's content requires online activation, patches. And what of World of Warcraft? With so much of the experience based around the user experience of a multi-million player community?

Ultimately more questions posed than answered, I think and certainly this is a topic which requires an article all of its own, so for now I will move on.

After a brief chat with the panel afterwards, including a great chance to chinwag with Jonathan Smith from Travellers' Tales (who I learned was sadly not at the company during its Leander days). Following this session he took up residence in one of the pods and encouraged a couple of gamers to play through the PS2 version of Lego Star Wars II, using it as an opportunity to highlight some differences between how games were made - even 5 years ago - compared to today (I confess I hadn't even noticed that Language-selection screens had disappeared from games!). Really nice to get to spend a bit of time chatting to a thoroughly nice chap from a company that makes decent games. At least I didn't have to be diplomatic about their output...

Following this I headed into the beautifully ornate Council House for a discussion about the re-making of games. With Martin Hollis, creator of the original Goldeneye, on the panel it was inevitable that a certain amount of time was going to be given over to that topic but other things were covered, too. The other members of the panel were Paul Carruthers (creator of Archipeligos on the Amiga!), Rob Fearon from Retro Remakes and Tom Woolley from the National Media Museum.

The most interesting aspect of the discussion, for me at least, was that it gave a real and rare insight into the attachments that game creators feel for their work. In the modern marketplace we expect game producers to view their work as so much product or ephemeral projects. It's refreshing, then, to hear Paul Carruthers describe the experience of discovering that one's own work has been 'remade' without his knowledge as "weird... I felt like I'd been burgled". Tom Hollis agreed and said "if you create something [artistic] you feel you have a right to control it forever and ever".

In spite of all this there was a general feeling that the panel wish re-makers the best of luck with their projects, although they did express that, given the ease of contacting industry figures via the Internet, it is at least polite to contact the originators and ask for permission.

As for the Goldeneye remake, Tom Hollis is only too aware of the mountain to be climbed and the weight of expectation fans and those who have heard the legends surrounding the original will bring to bear. Tom was asked if he had wanted to be involved in the remake: "Actually I've been asked to be involved and it's a tough project - I'm not really up for it!"

All pictures in this post courtesy of GameCity with thanks

GameCity5 - Day One - Guardian Breakfast and The GameCity Lounge

And so it came to pass that I arrived not only to GameCity, but also Nottingham for the first time.

I shall use this as my primary excuse for missing most of the first session I had intended to join - Guardian Breakfast. It was shame to come into this late as there seemed to be some reasonable topics being proposed by the compere and the assembled crowd either had little to offer or were nervous speaking out loud in public.

It was tricky from this to "gauge the temperature" of the gathered representative's of society's gamers. It was particularly interesting that when the question was posed "who has had any stand-out moments in gaming the last 12 months?" there was very little response and almost as little to the question "which games are you particularly looking forward to in the next few months." I wasn't sure whether to be worried about the state of gaming that there was so little affecting the most core group of players. As I say, perhaps it was that most people were a little nervous to speak out on the first morning (or maybe didn't want to admit in front of the hardcore that their most anticipated game is Pokepark Wii:Pikachu's Adventure).

Still, having got my bearings - and had a cup of tea - I headed off into the unfamiliar streets to find the GameCity lounge. Sadly, without camera on this first day I cannot share with you the GameCity tent, but suffice it to say there is a gleaming Bedouin palace in which the GameCity organisers have gathered gaming pods, a huge screen, music and a colouring-in and writing table for Saltsman's Ideas Bucket: from which videogame creator Adam Saltsman and musician Rebecca Mayes will attempt to craft a game during Friday's event.

The games being played on the big screen had two things in common: chaos and carnage. I managed to get in a few games of Sky Kids - A 25 player air race to the finish. It took most new players the first two rounds to figure out which avatar they were controlling and then a further few rounds to fathom the controls. Once this phase had passed I applied myself and managed to climb the scoreboard, finally reaching 1st place and then deciding to retire as champion in my own consideration!

There were a number of indie and university graduate games on display. Here are some of the highlights with which I managed to get hands-on:

Yours truly snapped while trying out ColourRunners

ColourRunners (this is the best link I can find) is an inventive final-year games design course project by Hannah Payne and Harry Corr. The game requires the player to traverse a monochrome town, able to walk only on painted surfaces . The player paints their own path in search of hidden 'tags'. Visually the stark monochrome aesthetic and clean building lines are reminiscent of Mirror's Edge. Hannah told me "we wanted to do something simple with lots of visual feedback." I did try to talk to Hannah and Harry about how it reminded me of Wizball on the Speccy, but when I saw their blank, young, young, young faces I realised this was probably not a reference that would get me far. The game is very attractive looking indeed and I think could find an audience among players, if developed, although in its current form the lack of distinctive colour means that the opening scene showing the locations of the markers for the hidden tags is largely unhelpful once the player is on the ground and searching for familiar landmarks.

I also spoke to Ben Bradley, creator of Substream. The game is a 3d flying shooter with a couple of nice twists. The first is that the whole game world is repeated to the left and right of the player, meaning that some enemies can only be destroyed by attacking a parallel version of itself to the left or right of the player, creating some interesting strategies in the game-play. The second is a relationship between the shooting action and the soundtrack. Although this was difficult to hear in the noisy atmosphere of the GameCity Lounge, Ben spoke of his enthusiasm for the games relationship between the atmosphere and setting and the soundtrack. The final version is said to contain all kinds of tracks even venturing into Tango territory...

I also managed to get a brief hands-on of Avoid, to be the first game from small games developer Nerf Games. This is closest to capture the flag taken to its most pure form. 4 players each try to avoid floating squares on a colourful geometric grid. When a shining white light appears, each player must try to grab the object and bring it back to their goal. General feedback was that some form of tackling move is really needed and the guys from Nerf Games were all on hand, enthusiastically taking on board all comments and promising to look into the suggestions made. It's a game that's great fun with 4 players on screen - sadly I didn't get the chance to try it with less players, such was the popularity of the game at the time.

I also managed to have a look at Lego Universe but didn't get much time with it. I'm hoping to get a second look because my first impression was that the game compared very poorly to the excellent standard of platform games produced by Travellers' Tales. This is being produced by an entirely different company and is being pitched as a Lego-based MMO for young players. Graphically, however, it seems to bear a heritage more akin to Playstation Home and the controls were awkward - although it could be that I am less familiar with claw-shaping my hand around a PC keyboard for gaming these days. The game has been clearly designed with protection of young minds as a foremost concern. Player names are chosen from a pre-defined menu and the chat window restricts the player to a predefined dictionary of words. One player next to me was unable to explain that he was playing at Game City because "City" was not in the allowed words list. Sadly then I shall not be able to discuss my experiences in Scribblenauts of dressing the player in stockings, handcuffs and a blindfold. *sigh*

All pictures in this post courtesy of GameCity with thanks