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Character Aesthetics

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Time to try some smaller, more frequent blog posts!

I’m reading through ‘Character Development and Storytelling for Games’ by Lee Sheldon, and I’ve just finished reading this paragraph the first tier of well-rounded characters, the Physical Character:

“So we draw (both in word and picture) our characters to fit their roles in our games. And most often, they’re drawn to reflect the character’s personality or function in the game. But often we stop there, simply layering on a toolbox of skills, mannerisms, and catch phrases as we need them in the game. To create the well-rounded character, we need a bit more.”

Character-based storytelling is done mostly through dialogue, body language and how they react to the events happening in game. However, as with most media, the physical appearance of a character can also tell us a lot about who they are.

However, by matching their design purely to their personality, and given the heavy usage of certain character archetypes in games, we run the risk of having the same characters in everything we experience. Not ideal.

So what can game designers and writers do to stop this from happening? Subverting the expectations of the player is a good method. By not designing your characters to fit their personalities perfectly, they remain slightly more complex, with a simple reading of their aesthetic features suddenly not enough to work out every last detail behind them.

A technique that might be useful when designing characters is to pretend you are Sherlock Holmes while looking at them. What can you work out about them purely from their appearance? Is absolutely every part of their personality and past visible for the world to see? If so, then perhaps the character isn’t as well-rounded as they could be.

Likewise, it’s also possible to give a character aesthetic features that are not so obvious, such as a tattoo, or a piece of jewellery. The same things that we may attach sentimental value to in real life can be applied to fictional characters, and it’s amazing how many times these opportunities are missed.

People in reality are somewhat less clear-cut in terms of their aesthetics than fictional characters are. This is down to factors such as fashion, status and social norms. This is the reason that Sherlock Holmes’ deductions of character work so well in fiction – Arthur Conan Doyle had the power to dress the characters he meets at will.

As (some) designers strive for more convincing characters in games, it’s worth considering the smaller details. A character that can be entirely worked out by the player at a glance is not a well-rounded character. We are more complex than that, and they should be as well.

Age and Imagination

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As a child the imagination is one of the most important tools humans have. Many consider the imagination to be a lot more powerful when we are younger, and I believe this is due to our need to learn and understand concepts that we have no previous experience with, or grasp of common sense. It is this powerful imagination that allows children to invent systems of play that give them an opportunity to try and understand the ways the world works (games such as playing House).

My first memories of Game Design come from when I was 7. As a child I was a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan (some would say obsessed), and in year 3 of Primary School I began drawing out level designs for platformers like Sonic and Crash Bandicoot. Not knowing any better at the time, none of these level designs were impressive or groundbreaking (mostly just horizontal lines of differing length and height), but the environments, settings and premise were unique, not bound to any world rules. My mind was free to create with absolutely no previous influence.

Whether this is just fond nostalgia on my part or if there is any truth to this matter is up for debate. However, I do believe there is something to be said for a child’s imagination. The trouble is that as we grow older, the imagination (or at least this type of imagination) appears to fade.

So what happens to the imagination? Adults still possess it, some of them large amounts of it. Without looking into the psychology of imagination, I believe that as we grow up, we begin to create a rational view of the world in our minds. I believe it is this rational view that causes our imaginations to fade. Simply put, we don’t need to rely on our imaginations to understand how the world works anymore. We build up common sense, which we begin to rely on more and more to solve problems which used to require pure creativity based on imagination when we were younger.

What can be done to maintain a powerful imagination? We slowly build up this common sense as we reach an age where we can explore and experience for ourselves, this world we have been trying to understand.

So let’s experience it!

The creativity we channel as children doesn’t have to go away, it just needs to be expanded by experiencing as much of the world as possible. And there’s a lot to see and do. Some of the greatest designers I have met globetrot and take in as much varied culture as possible. They then draw upon these experiences to influence their designs. The difficulty comes from growing up and having not yet experienced enough to offset your childlike imagination against your experiential imagination (which sounds quite similar to Experiential Learning, but the application of experience to creativity).

If you find yourself short on experiences to draw from, it never hurts to approach the world with a childlike sense of wonder and playfulness, (which in some cases has led people to question my age!) as this may allow you to tap into that great imagination that we all once had when we were kids. I have tried to keep that part of me alive and hope to for years to come.

Don’t be afraid to be seen as playful or immature, if it allows you to create things others can only dream of. Instead consider yourself lucky that even after growing up you have managed to save something sacred from your childhood.

Be daft! Be daft at any point you feel you can get away with it! If nothing else, you will at least have more fun with your endeavours!

P.S: If anyone wants to sit down and build some Lego with me, I am so up for that.

Adventures in Brighton – Monday – Pub Quizzing

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I’m back from Develop Conference, and after a significant amount of catch-up that was waiting for me upon return, the dust has settled. There is so much to both think and talk about, so what better a time to start a blog? This is the one about my experiences, for useful stuff you are probably better off reading the Tuesday and Wednesday ones if you are short on time.

It was a hectic week leading up to Develop, with Unreal University on the previous Thursday (which deserves its own Blog Post). I’d been saving up all year since the previous one (for which I had an expo pass but could not attend due to illness).

Ultimately I had no idea what to expect, I just wanted to learn as much as possible, make some new friends in the Games Industry, and if possible have some fun too.

I wasn’t disappointed. I arrived on the Monday, and went to the Guardian-sponsored Pub Quiz with Keith Stuart. Not knowing anyone going, I was very nervous, but using the power of Twitter I managed to find some friendly people and joined their team. The friendly people I am referring to are Andrew Smith (@spiltmilkstudio), an iOS game developer responsible for Hard Lines, which is an excellent game that anyone with an iPhone should buy! Colin Anderson of Denki Games (@denkicolin), who are currently working on several titles for iOS, XBLA and Facebook. Last but not least, Lewie Procter, creator of SavyGamer and witty journalist (@LewieP) who has written an article for just about every good game news website now. Why am I going to the trouble of listing their Twitters? Because they are fantastic folk who pretty much made sure I didn’t drown at my first Develop, and were really helpful throughout. They are a great bunch of guys.

After introductions and swapping of business cards we knuckled down in our attempt to triumph at the pub quiz. All in all I didn’t answer that many questions the others didn’t know, but I buffed us by a few points. In the end we came third, which meant, and I quoth, “We get to delve into @keefstuart ‘s sack as a prize ”

We were sat next to Mike Cox and Roderick Kennedy from Simul, and my god Mike can put drinks back. In hindsight it was probably a mistake to mention that it was my birthday. Three of the roughest shots of tequila I’ve ever put away in my life later, and I was definitely feeling it.

This was what became clear and is something I should’ve realised long before I came to Develop – Game Developers like to party. They work in a very stressful industry, and when they all come together in the same place, with no obligations and with a chance to see old friends, they let off as much steam as possible. And they can’t be blamed for it – in fact, it should be encouraged! When it comes down to it, the Games Industry would be a darker place without a friendly environment such as Develop to catch up.

Staggering back to my hotel room involved the first Kebab of my life (shocking, I know). The week was filled with new ground. The guys told me the Kebab would sort me right out, and I have to say there was a distinct lack of hangover the next morning!

Brave new world.

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This is my testament.

My name is David Smith. I am currently awaiting the third and final year of my Beng Computer Gameplay Design and Production degree this September.

I have wanted to be a Game Designer almost as long as I can remember, long before realising that it was an actual career. I was the kid in primary school who would sketch out level layouts, badly draw imaginary characters (I still to this day badly draw imaginary characters, but I leave the real drawing to the artists on my team ), and write the most ridiculous game design ideas in my spare time.

I *wish* I still had that sketchbook from year 4, I really do.

I love designing games. I practically burn with it. You can ask anyone who knows me, or talk to me in person and it will become clear. Since I was 11 I clocked on to the fact that it is possible to do this is a career, and since then I’ve been doing what I love in my spare time.

I started out small, mostly creating Sonic Fan Games using The Games Factory Pro (hey, everyone has to start somewhere). I remember the first game demo I ever released to the Internet. It was a 2D platformer game called ‘Sonic Titans’, and it was hosted on the ‘Sonic Amateur Games Expo’ in what I imagine was 2004 or 2005. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately in my case) the old SAGE websites are lost to the depths of the internet.

This carried on throughout high school (with a tiny bit of Doom WAD creation, but GCSE’s were a-happening, so I didn’t get the chance to explore it fully).

Through college I learnt the basics of C++ (my earlier experience with The Games Factory Pro taught me about if…then and it’s use in game events), and discovered Unreal Tournament 3′s Editor and Modding Capabilities. I spent a LOT of college messing around and finding my feet. I kept building quick levels and trying out the many features of the editor.

With an idea of the direction I wanted to head in, I chose Staffordshire University because had a good quality Games Design course, that had modules featuring the UT3 Editor. It wasn’t long after I arrived at Uni that Epic Games announced UDK. Needless to say I was a very happy guy called Dave. At the end of the year, a new course was announced with a greater focus on design theory and scripting. I hopped straight onto the second year of the new course, Computer Gameplay Design and Production.

This brought about the implementation of game mechanics using UnrealScript. At this point, with a very solid understanding of most of the tools in Unreal Engine 3 and with a great enthusiasm for scripting, I was feeling somewhat confident in my practical skillset.

Second year at my University is sometimes referred to as ‘Iron Man’, because the Games Design module runs yearlong: 12 weeks pre-production, 12 weeks production. Ideas were submitted in the previous summer, and I chose to join the team that would make ‘That Monkey Stole My Cake’. It was here where my passion for working in a team was realised. My already enthusiatic approach to my work was suddenly tripled by this feeling of shared responsibility. I began to try even harder than I believed I could, and did my absolute best to never let the team down.

I was the Lead Scripter on the project, responsible for implementing the game mechanics in UnrealScript, and notably for creating the drop-in, drop-out co-op system that arguably makes the game so fun to play. Another part of my role was exploring the many workflows and proceedures required to import the different types of assets into UDK. This has included importing animations, creating animtrees, creating custom postprocess effects and scaleform HUD’s.

Despite only beginning to learn UnrealScript at the time the project began, we still managed to showcase a demo at the end of the academic year which was well recieved. The team were fantastic, turning out good quality assets constantly and to strict deadlines. I was immeasureably proud at the end of the project. Not just of my own work, but of the rest of the team’s. Together we managed to create something special, that made many people laugh and smile during play. You can find ‘That Monkey Stole My Cake’ on my portfolio.

At the time of writing, I find myself at the beginning of a year that I am going to use to make myself as employable as possible, by furthering my skills as a designer by exploring more in the way of actual design, rather than just a scripting standpoint. I will also create and see through several projects of varying scope and platform. I hope to use my Final Year Project at University to do something different that no one has explored before, but I am still at the drawing board stage.

To enhance my portfolio, this Summer I am the Lead Designer and Scripter of ‘Assassin’s Tweed’, which I am creating with a team of Students from my Unviersity I have named ‘GigaBiscuit Productions’. Assassin’s Tweed was originally a quick level design document I threw together for an open day design test, but it’s design has since evolved into a more expansive and rich game than it’s original satirical roots. The aim of the project is to prove that as a team, we can take an idea from the design stage, through the production stage and have a high-quality game demo at the end of it. Also, I love the feeling of working in a team. To look around and see your colleagues, no, friends, making incredible work just makes me incredibly proud to do what I do.

This blog will follow my *fingers crossed* successful journey into the Games Industry. The journey so far has involved some already difficult work, but this year is going to be the most challenging yet, and I welcome it, because in a year’s time I want to be working in the Games Industry as a Game Designer or a Level Designer. I have wanted to do this for a very long time now, and my dream is slowly becoming more and more a reality as time goes by.

Wish me luck?