A panic is fermenting among established men of letters.  “Video games will kill the narrative!” they say, and shut their eyes and ears against the perils of lions and tigers and video game writers, oh my!  Keep your eyes open, though, and you see the narrative art is in no mortal danger from pixels and d-pads.  But though predictions of narrative’s imminent demise are hysterical, they draw attention to an important point.  Video games suffer from an ignorance of traditional narrative form and tools.  Story lines are sloppy and weak, character development is non-existent, and I could go on.  Game narrative must have a central role in game design and writing; however, the art is still underdeveloped and its place in the medium still uncertain.

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Or otherwise titled, “Nine Things I Wish I Knew (Before I Went Indie and Made Two Hit Games).”

There was a day, four years ago, when I was not a media whore.

I’ve been indie for almost four years now.  As the sole full-time member of Pocketwatch Games, I tend to do a little bit of everything.  I regularly have to code in C++, PHP, HTML, TorqueScript, Javascript, and Actionscript.  I build games and social media with the Torque Game Engine, Flash, the Wordpress platform, and a PHPBB forum.  I am an Executive Producer, Lead Programmer, Art Director, Customer Support Specialist, Community Manager, Marketer, and Media Whore.

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I can’t remember when I first heard of design patterns. It was several years ago, I’m sure, but my awareness of them was a somewhat gradual buildup, not unlike the sudden dawning that the boss is calling my name while I’ve been daydreaming during a meeting. Whenever it was, I came a bit late to the party, because UI design patterns made their debut into interaction design society about 10 years ago….

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Before making art for Flash games, I spent 9 years working on PlayStation titles in the console games industry. When I first started in games it was fun—teams were small and games were done in 12 months. Usually you had a lot of control over how your levels looked. When I left the games industry, games were 3-year projects, with teams of 50, you were doing collision models for 6 months.
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So where does someone now considered an industry “veteran” go when they fancy a break from “games”? It wasn’t that I’d stopped enjoying working on games, more that I had a sudden overwhelming urge to do something “worthy” with what I’d learned over the last 16 years. Not that relaxation and entertainment isn’t worthwhile, but surely there must be something else?
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This weekend, Electronic Arts Inc. released Spore, the next game from Will Wright, designer of SimCity and The Sims. EA is relying on the new game to reinvigorate its market-leader position and boost its revenue.  And while the company is projecting it will sell two million copies of Spore before the end of the year, not everyone thinks they can do it. Regardless of how sales turn out, Spore will revolutionize the way we think of gaming. The industry is becoming more user-driven and there is no turning back.

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There are a lot of “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games” (MMORPGs) on the market. They are games whose center focus is the leveling of the player’s character. Almost everything in the game is built to provide experience points or items that allow leveling, thus giving access to new content, whether it be dungeons, challenges, or cities to explore. This new content is built so it will provide experience so players can level up, and move on.

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In 1977, kids were listening to Rush, smoking cigarettes and a few of the lucky ones had even gotten to second base with the girls, all of which left Bioshock creator Ken Levine wondering “where am I at this point?” Well last week thousands knew exactly where he was as we gathered for his opening keynote speech at PAX 08 offering us a peek at his inner-nerd and a few lessons on coming to terms with our own.
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As game designers, we need to ask ourselves how far we should go. The Wii is a whole new playing field for experimenting with forms of game play. And right now, the news is abuzz with the upcoming release of Mad World for its violence in physically enacting attacks with the Wiimote. I’d like to remind everyone that this is nothing new–other games such as Manhunt 2 and Red Steel experimented with this play awhile ago. Of them all, Man Hunt 2 is the most overtly violent.
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Maurine Starkey is a founding member of Westwood Studios. She has worked as an art instructor, lead artist, art director, creative director, producer and game designer for over 24 years, plus continues to paint, sculpt, storyboard, and illustrate books, paper games, and comic books. (more…)