Guest Blog: The Art of the Small

When opportunities arise, it is important that we make the most of them. In this article I want to look at the small opportunities; the events and funding pots that give studios a bit of breathing room to try something new. It is all too easy to think of these chances as the right moment to execute a master-plan; to start working on the passion project that will make you into a superstar. While I'd never say to anyone it’s not worth working on that dream game, it would be wrong to not pass on the advice I've gained from where I have gone for the passion project, as well as from the times I haven't.

Before I get into the how of the small, I want to talk about the why of the small. I'm going to talk about two examples where I think this ideology applies, the small grants (<£5k) and game jams. Both opportunities give you a chance to create something new; to take a step back from ongoing projects to realise an idea that’s been at the back of your mind. It is surprisingly easy take that opportunity for granted and try to fill it with the first thing that comes to mind. An example of this would be using a small grant to make the proof of concept for a huge RPG from scratch; with crafting, vehicles, an engaging story, and dynamic characters who develop over time, when you suddenly find two months in that all the money has been spent.

One of the universal truths of games development is nothing is as small as you think it is. If you take a small aspect of a bigger project, estimate how long you think it will take, and added some padding time for unexpected issues, if you doubled the time in your head you might then be close to how long it will take. In contrast, these opportunities give you a fantastic space within which to create something focused. Imagine having a new empty room suddenly appear in your house. A lot of people dream of implementing a minimalist style within their home, but their rooms are already full of belongings and furniture. You could fill the new room with the unsorted belongings from the rest of the house, or you could take advantage of the space to implement your minimalist dream. This is the idea behind the art of the small; to make the best use of the time afforded to you by a small opportunity by creating something focused and polished that showcases your ability to create a complete entity as opposed to your ability to build something wide instead of deep. 

Looking at an event like Develop Game Jam (which you can sign up for this year here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/develop-game-jam-2018-tickets-46545765638), you can see it as just an opportunity to make something new, but I think that undermines a very key aspect of the jam, the competition itself. Game jams present a very compact form of the project bidding process. From a given brief (the theme), groups build a game (the prototype/pitch/spec) which they then take to the judges (the client/brief setter) to have their game judged. At the end one team walks away with the prize (the project/funding). If you responded to a brief with a large amount of documentation without a lot of substance, you'd be unlikely to win. However, if you were to respond with something targeted at answering the questions of the brief in a concise manner, you'd have a much better chance of securing the bid.

It is time to look at ways of implement the small in a project. Every idea can be reduced to modules and components, the parts which make up the whole. Even passion projects are equal to the sum of their parts. For me, the art of the small is about focusing on developing one part (module/element/mechanic) to a high level of detail/completion, and then building the rest of the game around it, only implementing subsequent components based on necessity and how easy it is to then polish the game.

The first game we made with a grant was a huge pirate RPG. At the time, we thought we were building something small; a proof of concept containing a basic version of each mechanic in our game. Ultimately, while what we were was technically impressive, it was always doomed to clunking mess. The reason it was doomed is, although we were implementing only the initial forms of the features, we unable to leave enough time to make sure that those features worked well with each other, or to remove the bugs in the rest of the game. The result was that some people who played our game were put off when the camera froze, or the menu broke, or when the game crashed. Looking back, if we'd taken just one feature (the sailing, the crafting, the boss fights) and spent all our time making that aspect as polished and bug-free as possible, we would've made a much better and more accessible game that would have been more universally enjoyed.

For me, executing a small project comes down to three key elements: the brief, the mechanic, and the polish. In the next three sections I’ll examine each in turn and breakdown how they can be implemented in the game.

It is vital that the brief is adhered to. There's no point making something great if it's not what the judges/funders want. Note I said what they want, not what they say they want. This is all about research and planning. What are the actual judging criteria? What are the judges personally interested in? What's the context of the project? For example, if it's a game jam then fun is probably key, whereas for a prototyping fund the vision and a solid base game matters more.

After coming up with an idea that fits the brief, I usually focus on a singular core mechanic that realises my idea in a simple, clear-cut way. For example, if I concluded the judges wanted something fast paced, but almost finished, and my idea was to create a kind of free running game across a city to get home from work before dark, one of the simplest, clear-cut ways I could do this is to make a 2D grappling game where the player swings across cranes or high buildings to get across the map. In this instance, if I'd gone for 3D I'd enter issues of generating the city/buildings, creating the 3D obstacles, animating a 3D character etc, but this way I get my idea across while minimising the impact on the scope of the project.

Finally, but probably most importantly, the polish is key. A small, broken mess is still a broken mess, but with less features. Polish in this context loosely translates as the removal of edges. By an edge, I mean something sharp and pointy that would stick in a player and diminish their experience. If you're making something small, it's surprisingly straightforward to achieve a high level of polish without a tremendous amount of effort. I see polish as being the sum of three elements: limiting scope, thorough debugging and adding juice.

I've already talked about scope; keeping your game to essentials only. Feature creep and working out-of-scope are killers when it comes to polish. You can address the issue of scope from the outset by only adding features to your game that actually matter to the brief. Do you need a menu? Does that AI need to react dynamically? Do you need a save game system? If you don't, don't include it. It adds more opportunities for the game to break down and more components that you need to debug and juice later.

With regards to debugging, in this instance we're talking about the removal of as many bugs that effect moment-to-moment game-play as possible. You want a player to be totally engrossed in your game. Nothing is worse for a player than feeling at one with a game to get stuck in a wall, or be instantly killed by a random object, or for the whole game to chug and break down. By removing bugs, you give the player the best opportunity to stay totally immersed within your game space, which means when they finish they will want more (assuming you've made something engaging!)

Finally, the juice of your game is the small decorative and aesthetic elements that bring the still aspects to life. There are a lot of great videos about how to juice your game (see above), but the easiest way to think about it is to imagine the most engrossing game you can and imagine what would happen if you stopped still on a single screen. Would you be viewing a static image, or would things be happening? Is the text still, or is animated? What’s happening in the background? How is sound and light used to impose a mood? Very few games have nothing happening at any moment, and those that do use it as a contrast to moments where things are happening. Aspects such a colours, sounds, animations, and moving objects all add to the juice of a game. These are the elements which bring the otherwise static world of your game to life and drawer the player in. 

Just like the art of minimalism, the art of the small requires dedication to implement. I've highlighted every aspect that I've learnt and practiced over many game jams, funding opportunities, and personal prototyping, but it's still very easy for me to fall off the tightrope and build something wide instead of deep. Ultimately, this advice should help you keep your development in check if you're trying to build something small. Every time you want to build a new feature, think about whether you need it? If so, how do you keep it from breaking what you've already implemented? Finally, how do you make it worthy of your game i.e. how do you add the juice? Using these questions as guides, you'll be well on your way to implementing the art of the small in your next project.

Adam Boyne is co-founder at BetaJester and will be speaking at Develop:Brighton on Thursday 12 July. Find out more about his session here.

Guest Blog: The Art of Storytelling

Games are one of the most interactive and immersive mediums available to us as storytellers. They provide the opportunity for players to actively affect the outcome of a scenario in a visceral way which has allowed us, as developers, to explore facets of the human experience in ways film, literature and television cannot.

Games in recent years have pushed the envelope on immersion and found ways to weaponise our interactions with a game, resulting in responses unique to the medium. When we hunt the beast and strip it for parts we feel pride from the kill, but guilt at taking a life. When we are forced to choose between saving one individual over another we feel remorse, but a satisfaction that comes when that decision pays off further down the line.

When I founded my company, I set out to make the games I felt were missing from my Library. I wanted to assemble a team to make something that told human stories from human perspectives, tapping into a wealth of collective experiences to really give the player moments they could relate to – and especially moments they can’t.

In Du Lac & Fey: Dance of Death we never wanted to shy away from important social issues such as abortion, sex, love and race. All of these are framed through the lens of women, as two of the three protagonists in our game are female with very different world views and upbringings. Our third, Sir Lancelot, must grapple with his own demons – monsters that sit outside of the usual male-lead revenge fantasy.

The Victorian era was rife with social upheaval, clashing cultures and contrasting values, and we are proud of the fact that we’ve managed to tell as many of these forgotten stories as possible within the walls of our game. It’s actually extraordinary how many parallels we can draw between us as people, despite there being over one hundred years between us. We have the tabloids and papers on our newsstands now, but this period gave birth to modern day journalism. Stories were fabricated without basis, gossip invented to sell papers, and facts overblown to keep people turning the page.

It is said that history is written by the victors, but, more simply put, it is written by those able to write. There are thousands of stories, both then and now, that’ll be lost to time due to one person monopolising the pen. We attempted to make amends with Du Lac & Fey, offering players a London they will have never seen before. London then is as London is now, a multi-cultural melting pot of ideas, lives and languages that birthed a new era of technology, art and belief. Who better to explore this new world than Arthurian immortals who, after all these years, can look upon this strange, exciting city with fresh eyes?

We are moving into a new era of game storytelling, exploring the way we handle and interact with topics such as mental illness, grief, and different sorts of love. Moreover, the demographic of gamers is shifting, and game developers seem to be accommodating that, or it could well be the other way around? It’s a fascinating time to be working in the games industry, especially when narrative-driven games seem to be at the forefront of our march forward. Above all else, I look forward to an increasing level of diversity in our developers, opening doors to new voices and the new stories those voices can tell.

Jessica Saunders is an Indie developer and and owner of Salix Games

Guest Blog: What To Do When The One Big Deal, Doesn't Turn Into The Next Big Deal

It probably seems a bit strange me writing a blog like this in May; titled nearly identically to the talk that I’m doing in July at the wonderful Develop Conference… The reality is that not even a 3 hour time slot would enable me to convey all of my thoughts and feelings on this subject – which can be seen in the recent interview that I gave with our Operations Director, Gemma, for GamesIndustry.biz. 

In the article on GI.biz we talk a lot about what happened before, during and just after the cancellation. In the talk in July I’m going to talk in more detail about what we did to survive, the trials and tribulations of numerous unsuccessful pitches and the removal of the rose-tinted glasses and ego consequent of having a big deal.

“So, what’s the point of this blog?” I hear all one of you asking (thanks for reading Ma). In this blog I wanted to talk briefly about the emotional and mental impact the situation had on me personally. I have never been shy about being brash, outspoken and, at times, inappropriately open about my feelings on pretty much everything. But, over the last couple of years it seems the industry has become more open in general about mental impact.

Firstly, I want to say that I am in an incredibly privileged position and that I am fully aware of this. I was able to start a studio due to the support of my family and loved ones, and we’ve had a truly incredible journey. Hitting 6 years in June is an amazing feeling and I know how lucky we have been in an industry that has seen wide-spread layoffs and studio closures in the half a decade we’ve been going. I’m also very aware that I am the most cliché typical game developer in the world - I have not had to deal with any real discrimination. In fact, the only discrimination I have ever had to deal with comes about when I occasionally decide to treat myself to a first-class train ticket; apparently sweatpants, trainers, long hair and a beard aren’t the appropriate attire according to the fine ladies and gentlemen in first class, who like to call upon the ticket inspector to check that I’m not bunking the fair…

However, for all my bravado and the joy this company has brought me over the past (nearly) 6 years, and without a single day’s regret, it is fair to say that it has definitely taken its toll on me… At the ripe old age of 33, I’m nearly completely grey. Which is quite depressing when I compare that to pictures of me when I started the company in 2012, without a single grey hair in sight.

My sleep patterns are broken and erratic at best and, unsurprisingly, this is worst around important deadlines. I’ll often very suddenly become completely wide-awake in the middle of night, spend a couple of hours checking/answering e-mails and messaging our US-based partners/staff/publishers/clients.

On the topic of sleep, I’m tired a lot, on average at the moment I’m usually actually in bed by 9pm because I feel completely shattered, which doesn’t help the broken/erratic sleep pattern.

For the better part of the last 18 months all I have been able to think about is when the money is going to run out. When the Disney deal finished, we had a great amount of money to keep us going and, whilst we’ve done some amazing work for hire projects and been smart with some operational cuts, it turns out studios burn money, and it can burn quickly! We’re not 5 guys in a garage on minimum wage anymore; we are 10 people, with two office buildings and a yearly running cost well into the mid-hundreds of thousands.

Whilst I’ve been lucky that I’ve never really felt like I’ve had “imposter syndrome”, I am anxious all the time. This also led me to realise something a while back - I never really “celebrate” the highs and achievements; I am always looking behind them for the next low that could occur. Luckily this isn’t something that has rubbed off on any of my awesome team members or my loved ones who are all an awesome positive presence in my life. However, I do feel at times I’m missing out on being able to feel really happy about the big work milestones, like signing deals and big development milestones.

To be clear, I don’t want this to sound like I don’t enjoy my work-life - I absolutely love what I do and genuinely feel I have the best job in the world. In fact, I’ve had some arguments with one of my best friends in games over which one of us has the best job, and that is an awesome way to feel. My school friends all hate me because when they hit Sunday are dreading already dreading what’s to come on Monday, I can’t wait to get back to the office. But the industry has still broken me down over the years. I’m definitely programmed now to always prepare for everything to go wrong. Although, this does have its advantages; it makes me more cautious about everything and I never trust a deal is done - not until the first payment is cleared – and even then, I am far more aware of potential risks that still may follow.

I say this A LOT, so much so that anyone that has seen me talk or read anything I’ve written is sick of me saying it but: I was a programmer who wanted to be a designer who became a company director. I never had any intention of starting my own company. It just wasn’t something that even registered as an option. Whilst I don’t regret it at all, I was never really prepared for what it meant to be where the buck stops. To be the one with the responsibility of people’s mortgages and kids on your shoulders. Does it feel like it’s a massive burden to bear on a daily basis? 100%. And do I feel like I can’t handle it? Very often. BUT that feeling passes quickly. I know I can do this because I need to do this for my team and for myself.

Every time I’m the last one in the office, I look around and I realise that we built this (not the building literally, however we did paint building 1). That we were just a few guys, with no real plan, who wanted to make games together, and now we’re 10 awesome people (soon to be growing). In these moments of reflection, I suddenly feel completely overwhelmed and lost for breath and then I do something that I don’t necessarily do that often. I smile.

As with everything I do, there wasn’t much of a point to this – it was really just stream of consciousness typing. But, if I had to drill it down to a point and some sort of “Jerry’s Final Thought”, that point would be that it is ok to feel overwhelmed; it’s ok to question yourself, it’s ok to feel anxious and it’s 100% ok to feel however the damn-well you feel. Just make sure that at the end of the day the thing triggering all these feelings is worth it.

Aj Grand-Scrutton is Chief Executive Office at Dlala Studios and will be speaking at Develop:Brighton. Find out more about his session here and to see more talks featured on the Indie track, click here.

Guest Blog: Why speak at Develop:Brighton?

My first speaking opportunity at Develop:Brighton was after applying to a call for new/first time speakers. The format was each new speaker would have a few minutes on stage to argue a case/put forward an idea that they would like to win a talk spot for, for a full talk at the following years conference. Initially there was about 12 speakers lined up, that soon dropped to 6 and I was the only remaining female speaker, and as such I was asked if I would still like to take part.

It’s not new for me to be the only women in a situation, games were my hobby long before becoming my career and I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been expected to defend my validity, but still I was disappointed. I had been looking forward to seeing so many new voices on stage, voices our industry so desperately needs to hear, voices that let the other women in the audience know they belong, voices that encourage other women to join in. Luckily I’m quite a competitive person and being the only female speaker left in the competition only strengthen my resolve to slay my fellow new speakers (spoiler - I won).

Here I am, standing at lecterns talking about games!

My soapbox rant, sorry ‘mini talk’ was about why we should hire more parents into the industry. There are many reasons, not least of all because at that point I had a 1 year old daughter, but most importantly I did the talk because we see so few female speakers at events, and even fewer mothers. My journey into independent game development started when I was 5 months pregnant, between jobs and totally unemployable. My first indie game was released 2 weeks before my first baby was born and when she was around a week old I was multitasking breastfeeding and storefront asset generation for the Android release of Glyph Quest. As much as I knew what I was doing was impressive (game dev with a tiny baby is not easy) I didn’t realise how important my story was for others to hear until I started talking about it at events.

Since I started sharing my experience, I’ve had women at each talk come up to me afterwards and thank me. They were at a point in their career, relationship and life where they were thinking about having children but were unsure how such a move in this male led industry would affect them. Now, I can’t speak for how bigger studios handle maternity/paternity and the struggles of returning to work but what I can tell you is it is possible to work up to the due date (I have, twice) and having a child doesn't mean you suddenly forget how to do everything you did before you got pregnant, you just have to learn how to do some of those things with one hand whilst the other is clamped around a wriggle monster.
    

#Multitasking

You may not feel your experience or you presenting what you do is that big a deal, but it is to someone. Even if it’s only one person you encourage to get into games dev, stay in games dev or change the sex of their games protagonist, it matters. Representation is getting better, it’s changed a lot in the time that I’ve been a developer, but we still have a way to go and we’ll only get there if we represent. So tell your story, sign up as a speaker at this years Develop:Brighton conference and I look forward to meeting you there.

Leanne Bayley from We Heart Dragons is a member of the Develop:Brighton Advisory Board

Guest Blog: VR Goes to Work

After hovering on the fringes of mainstream culture for years, VR was suddenly thrust into the spotlight a few years ago by developers like Oculus, HTC, Sony, and Samsung. As their rapid hardware developments piqued the interest of the entertainment world, the biggest impact was unsurprisingly felt in gaming, with console manufacturers scrambling to be the first to incorporate the tech into their products. As an unfortunate consequence, VR was mistakenly viewed by many merely as a gadget for gamers, a gimmick.

We’ve never seen it that way, and we’ve always strived to combat this misconception by demonstrating the real-world impact this incredible technology can really have. Right from our first VR projects with Pagani and Audi two years ago, we’ve had the pleasure of working within an international community of likeminded developers to apply the cutting-edge of R&D VR innovations to commercial projects with car companies around the world, and with the rate of recent hardware developments, we couldn’t be more excited about our future Virtual Reality projects!

It’s not just in our sector that VR is maturing: recently, its potential business applications have become increasingly clear. The unveiling of Oculus for Business at OC4 is testament to this, with several big-name brands partnering with the hardware firm to give a taster of what VR can really do.

From the initial staff training at companies like KFC, Walmart, and General Motors, to designing state-of-the-art passenger planes with Boeing and Airbus, VR is impacting every level of working life. Staff can now create and test new features and models, practice diffusing potentially dangerous situations, and hold complex conferences all within a virtual sphere, and they can do this from almost anywhere.

Despite these incredible innovations, though, it’s the customer who has benefited most from VR’s dramatic foray into the business world. They can use this technology to design, customise, and test an increasing number of products prior to purchase. No longer reliant on their imagination, consumers are able to see a product in a range of different surroundings, giving them unprecedented insights into potential purchases, and with the recent addition of volumetric video environments, customers can find themselves completely immersed within these life-like experiences.

The only way is up for VR in these exciting times!

If you’d like to join our team and work with us on our upcoming projects, talk to our team at the Develop:VR conference or view our current vacancies.

Chris O'Connor is Technical Director at ZeroLight and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Building World-Class Commercial VR Experiences  

Guest Blog: Virtual Reality is Having Real Impact on the Health Industry

We talk a lot about the potential benefits of VR across a number of areas, talk is all well and good, but actually seeing how it can be applied is when the potential hits home and becomes real. 

Last year at SXSW in Austin, I was lucky enough to meet Sook-Lei Liew, a neuroscientist from USC who had created an incredible VR prototype for treating stroke victims. Combining a swim cap, a standard laptop and an off the shelf HMD she created REINVENT (which stands for Rehabilitation Environment using the Integration of Neuromuscular-based Virtual Enhancements for Neural Training). Yes they worked hard on that acronym! 

This Social VR application uses EEG sensors to provide neuro-feedback when an individual’s neuromuscular signals indicate a movement attempt, even in the absence of actual movement. Stroke patients could retrain their brain to move muscles that have been affected by the stroke - relearning the right brain signals by which to move a virtual arm, which can ultimately lead to them being able to use that rediscovered ability in reality.

I came across a great comment from Mel Slater, a professor of virtual environments, where he talked about the ability to trick the brain: “There is some level of the brain that doesn’t distinguish between reality and virtual reality. A typical example is, you see a precipice and you jump back and your heart starts racing. You react very fast because it’s the safe thing for the brain to do. All your autonomic system starts functioning, you get a very strong level of arousal, then you go, ‘I know it’s not real’. But it doesn’t matter, because you still can’t step forward near that precipice.”

It is the natural reaction that Sook-Lei Liew is utilising with REINVENT, less of a trick, but more like an immersive rewiring of the brain.

As we gain a better understanding of the uses of immersive technology to address key health issues, the number of solutions will grow exponentially. From training surgeons, treatment for depression, to pain relief, the impact immersive technology will have on our collective health will fundamentally change the whole health industry. We’re entering an exciting period of innovation.

James Watson is head of immersive technology at Imagination and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Getting Up Close and Virtual with the Automotive Industry: Using VR for the Right Reasons 
 

Guest Blog: The Possibilities of VR

It is 1911 and the Paris art world is alive with excitement about a revolution in art. The Salle 41 artists have just taken part in the first organised exhibition of Cubist works; images that broke down conventional depictions of space, mass, volume and time. Their work, based on ideas developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, went on to drastically change world art, as developments and reactions to it led to the creation of modernism and beyond. The power of the movement broke through to other genres such as music and architecture and has revolutionised culture and society through the 20th Century and into our time.

Early works in the Autumn Cubist Exhibition, Paris 1912

It is 2017 and the revolution of AR/VR/MR is about to begin. In as significant a way as the Cubist’s broke conventions of perspective, so AR/VR/MR is transforming our relationship with that thing we hold most highly in our culture - the flat screen. We can now enter amazing unseen worlds, we can bring digital creations through into our world, and interact with them in our visual spaces, we can be immersed in stories and experiences in a way beyond anything that has come before.

Immersive gameplay and narrative in Pixel Toy’s Drop Dead on Gear VR and Oculus Rift

I have to admit I was cynical at first of the possibilities of it all - another 3D TV, another gimmick - yet as we developed Drop Dead at Pixel Toys, the possibilities of VR became so apparent - how a Samsung phone in a relatively simple headset could deliver a hugely accessible, immersive VR experience to a mass market, how we could tell stories in such a fresh way. Still the barriers of technology are falling continuing to fall at a dramatic rate: Apple’s significant entry into the AR field with AR Kit will surely speed the adoption and integration of augmented content into mainstream life - particularly as marketers (for they are the primary drivers of mass acceptance surely) begin to invade our lives with interactive enhanced messages.

Image from the Royal Academy’s Virtually Real exhibition in January 2017

A wonderful thing is that our Picassos and Braques are out there right now: artists, developers and creatives taking these nascent tools and pushing them every day to new extremes. Like Cubism and Modernism before, this won’t be limited to a single genre but will be suffused through contemporary culture. VR is already embedding itself into training programmes for doctors, firemen, even fast food outlets. It is entering the world of manufacturing, business, entertainment, games, art. The Royal Academy of Arts, once the bastion of traditionalism, recently hosted an exhibition of VR artworks created by some of their students, and plans further exhibitions in the near future. Jaguar Land Rover use hi-definition VR content to shape their cars as part of their pre-production design and as part of their customer facing sales strategy.

Ultimately the reason for this now inevitable revolution is that VR/AR/MR changes our relationship with the world around us, in much the same way as modernist principles did last century. We need to simply embrace the enormity of that and as developers prepare for the opportunities that this technology affords for creatives, businesses and consumers.

James Horn is lead artist at Pixel Toys and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled - Drop Deadline - A Visually-Excellent, 60fps, Narrative Mobile Shooter to a Fixed Deadline With a Small Team