Blog 4 - Exploring Playability

2) Speed summary of Phil Co: Level Design For Games - the level designer plays a key role in the overall process of game development. How do the ideas move from paper, into development and onto the shelves. Every game development project is unique and it all depends on the aspects of the game itself. Some games can be limited to short development times, whereas some can take as long as they need. Project creation and length can depend on the teams budget. The game creation world is constantly changing, team members might change positions or jobs, or change from project to project. Games contain a pre-production and post-production phase. An initial plan can save time and money later on. An asset pipeline and resources are key to game development, i.e. the workforce, computers etc. The team is split up into three areas: programming, art and design. Each team has a project leader. Designers must have an overall vision before the game goes into production, for example what the type of the game is, who is the game aimed at etc. The high concept can change through the design process. The design document is the blueprint for the game. It contains input from the entire team. There needs to be communication between the producers, the workers and the lead person to work around problems. Game designers are level designers and vice versa. The design document contains a menu diagram and a world diagram. The world diagram contains levels, hubs, cinematics and warps. World diagrams map out changes in the game very early on, for example scenery changes, objective changes etc. Plot points and locations have to match the games story, for example if certain changes in the story take place at specific locations. Level designers have to take into account lighting, puzzle elements, enemy placement and balanced gameplay, among other things. Level designers can break up the world diagram into a level diagram for each environment. These describe events that take place in the level and be as detailed or vague as the designer wants. Potential problems need to be identified before the levels are designed, for example is it consistent with the high concept, and can it actually be implemented. The artists need to look at reference materials from books and movies to make sure the visuals are accurate with the genre of the game. Concept art helps to get artists ideas across. These can be verbal and graphical descriptions of the backgrounds and characters in the game. The directors take charge of the leaders, which in turn take charge of the workforce. The engine needs to be created to run the game and display the visuals. The engine grows as the game gets further into development, for example new features are added. Assets are things like development tools, and art, animation, effects and levels in a game. The pipeline is where the rules and standards by which all content is referred have a consistent set of tools for the workforce to use. The pipeline should be established early on in the development cycle so that the workforce can start creating content. Games nowadays are developed by one company and published by another. Everything in the levels need to come together in the production phase. The core gameplay, which describes how the user plays the game, is first built in a prototype so that the rest of the game can follow on from that. Scripters help the level designers create sequences which take place in the level. The art style and the visuals of the game are important as it helps to sell the game. The character designer creates the characters in the game. Character and background artists base their work on the concept art. Animators animate the characters and backgrounds with things like making them run, fight and taking damage. Textures take up a lot of memory so the designer has to budget between creating different textures and how much memory they are taking up. The audio then has to be implemented into the game, and these help with the mood of the game. There are two types of sound, ambient and triggered. The game then enters the alpha phase. This is where the game can be played from beginning to end, but it is not perfect and a lot of things still need to be fixed. The Quality Assurance testers (QA) test different parts of the game to test if they are bug-free. Any errors found are submitted into the Bug Database. The lockout date indicates when no new art can be added to the game, to make sure production is on time. The Beta stage is where the assets are locked down and where the game is nearly complete, but there are still some errors to fix. There are different stages of bugs (A,B,C,D) which are more serious as they progress. Sometimes, not all bugs can be fixed so the game must ship with them still included. The last stage is the Final Candidate, and this is where there is a final build of the game and where final errors are fixed. The game is then Gold Master, which is the version shipped to stores.

3) The similarities between these two articles are that they both thoroughly explain the games design document. They go through each of the separate stages which tells you how to write it, what it should include etc. Both articles have subheadings breaking up each of the different sections of the design document, e.g. defining the game, setting the mood, core gameplay etc. They both make use of diagrams to illustrate their points such as level design, control mappings and in-game HUD's. They both have little sections throughout the articles where they explain important bits such as examples of the work or highlighted points. Both articles also give an introduction at the start about what a games design document is.

4) The differences between these two articles are that the Phil Co document focuses more on the level design aspect of games design, rather than generalising over all areas, like in the Bethke document. The articles ask different questions in the subtitles, such as "what should go into the game design document?" and "how do you make a game?" The Phil Co document explains more about inside their own company and gives examples of games they have made themselves. For example they talk about Avanging Angel and the piepline in their company, but Bethke only talks about things in general, although he does talk about his companies projects as well. The Phil Co document goes on about job roles more, such as level designers, project managers and character designers, but Bethke goes on more about the actual jobs within games design such as game mechanics, multiplayer mechanics, the in-game GUI, the story etc