Category: News

“So, I was thinking about the subject of what producers do,” begins Oculus’ Bernard Yee. “I was building a house — and you were constantly creating lists of things and thinking about whether they were worth doing or not.”

In this 2015 GDC session, Yee offers advice for producers who manage a team and project’s to-do list, explaining why they are important and how to be effective on a daily basis.

Yee acknowledges the mundanity of the to-do list but encourages producers to utilize them. “The process by which you derive that list is loaded with meaning.” The talk also discusses how Yee as a producer approaches creating a to-do list. He stresses that he’s not going to tell producers what to include in their lists, but rather, provide a conceptual framework. 

Producers who want to learn some tips on how to keep their work organized can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

As reported by VentureBeat, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that head of third-party developer relations Florian Hunziker has parted ways with the company.

The departure comes a year after Hunziker took the job as vice president of publisher and developer relations for PlayStation. This change could potentially affect Sony’s relationship with its game partners and indie developers.

This managerial shift takes place months after Sony Interactive Entertainment president and global CEO Andrew House left the company in October 2017, with John Kodera taking his position.

Hunziker had replaced Adam Boyes, who helped recruit a number of third-party developers to the PlayStation 4. It is currently unclear why Hunziker left.

– Former executive director of the IGDA Kate Edwards on the game industry’s attitude about crunch.

A piece recently published by Game Informer features interviews from various people working in the game industry, discussing a massive labor problem that has been plaguing developers for years: crunch.

“Crunch has been prevalent in the games industry for decades, and while it’s not unique to the games industry, it has become a negative practice that has perpetuated for too long,” explains former executive director of the IGDA Kate Edwards. “It burns people out, discourages them from continuing in the industry, and has seriously negative effects on physical, mental, and social health.”

A survey conducted by the IGDA in 2015 found that 62 percent of developers said their jobs involved crunch and of those nearly one-third said crunch meant 50-59 hours of work a week. A 2014 IGDA survey found the most common reason for developers leaving the video game industry was “poor quality of life.” 

Krzysztof Nosek, the multiplayer programming lead on Call of Juarez: The Cartel discusses how crunch forced him to take a step back and reflect on the repercussions. Not only was it bad for his physical and mental health, but it was affecting his personal life. “In retrospect you see the different directions that you and the world around you have taken, and you must judge whether it was worth it or not,” Nosek says. “It’s a tough moment that can quite often bring bouts of depression or low morale – the infamous ‘post-crunch realizations,’ as they are known.”

What steps can studios take to avoid crunch? Is it that easy? It turns out the the problem isn’t entirely black and white after considering studio culture and the desire to be a team player so no one is let down. “Most, if not all of these people are your colleagues first and foremost so that communal peer pressure plays a much greater role in getting you to push than the decisions coming down from the hierarchy,” admits Nosek. 

So what do these developers suggest when it comes to abolishing crunch? Check out the entire interview over at Game Informer.

Conveying information and maintaining a distinct visual style can be difficult, especially if a game’s user interface depends on having a clear and concise design to relay instructions to the player. 

In this 2017 GDC session, Mini Metro developer Jamie Churchman goes over the successes and failures of visual design in Mini Metro, examining how visual design and user interface decisions play a role in creating a gratifying experience for the player.

“The design process starts with understanding your subject matter,” explains Churchman. “And in this case, that’s understanding a game that’s halfway in development. And that can start with a simple question: what is the game about?” 

Churchman uses that question to break down the parts of Mini Metro which would eventually lead toward a discussion on how to design a user interface that would encourage and explore those facets.

Visual and user interface designers interested in what did and didn’t work for Mini Metro can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

– Founder of Big Robot Jim Rossignol on how visuals affected combat design in The Signal From Tölva.

In a piece recently published by PC Gamer, founder of development studio Big Robot Jim Rossignol discusses how bright visual effects and sci-fi sound clips contributed to enhancing how it feels to shoot guns in The Signal From Tölva. 

“We wanted to have big colorful lasers,” Rossignol explains. “[We wanted] big long trails that last quite a long time and light up the landscape.” This powerful display appears every time a player pulls the trigger, which is intended to help shooting things feel great.

The fantastic display of visuals aren’t used to help gunplay feel better though. It’s also designed to evoke a sense of awe. “When you see groups engaging each other in the distance you get that flicker of gunfire that allows you to see where people are firing from. That brings those battles to life,” says Rossignol. 

Working in tandem with the visual fireworks set off by the guns are futuristic sound effects that help sell the combat. “Rather than having a single sound effect for when the weapons go off, we broke it down to an overall firing noise and a projectile leaving noise, so every weapon has components that make the sound better,” he notes. “As you take your finger off the trigger you hear the end of your shot cut off, that just sells the behavior of the weapon more, and gives them way more life than they had.”

Check out the entire interview over at PC Gamer. 

InnerSpace, out this week on consoles and Steam (including the Switch), is an unusual flying game that trades precision dogfighting for a sense of science fiction exploration. Its worlds are spherical, there isn’t an actual “up” direction, and you spend more time patiently floating through the void than past enemy ships (there aren’t…even any real enemies, actually). 

It’s one of the first big indie titles to land in 2018, and to discuss its development, we invited the fine folks from PolyKnight Games onto the Gamasutra Twitch channel to discuss its development and design. Even though this is the team’s first commercial game, it turned out to be an especially insightful talk about building odd games that happen to run on the Nintendo Switch.

You can watch our full conversation up above, but in case you’re diving into the belly of a demigod as we speak, here are a few key takeaways from our stream. 

In InnerSpace, it’s okay to crash into things

A large portion of our time with PolyKnight Games was spent discussing the game’s unusual flight mechanics, which ALMOST feel like an arcade dogfighting sim but somehow far less stressful. One key mechanic is the game’s “drift” function, which lets the player continue on a vector while re-aligning their ship to move in a different direction. 

According to PolyKnight’s Tyler Tomaseski (who was the lead programmer on InnerSpace), a key part of making this mechanic work was making sure players felt okay slamming into things by accident. In most flight simulators, crashing is damage-inducing or an outright end state. But to create a more relaxing and otherworldly flow, it was essential that the system be programmed to let players fumble about, so they could spend more time paying close attention to details than dodging walls.

An abstract art style can help alleviate frustration

At one point, Tomaseski and his colleagues turned the tables on us, asking our impressions of the game’s puzzles. What followed was a discussion about how InnerSpace’s abstract art direction means that puzzles become less frustrating because players enter the game with less preconceptions about how objects should interact. For instance, it was more surprising and delightful to learn how crashing into certain objects triggered bright colors and vibrations on the controller, allowing us to fill in the gaps between the unusual art assets and the intent of the design.

In a relaxing game filled with large & interesting spaces, the PolyKnight developers explained that it was constantly a balance figuring out when players were lost and therefore frustrated, or when they were idly floating about and enjoying themselves in a relaxing experience. But since the game has such an ethereal art direction, it was easy to tweak those sensations by giving players more things to “do” in this strange world, rather than constantly tune every moment for high interaction.

Joy-Con motors can make weird sounds

Nintendo has made a lot of noise about what its Joy-Con motors can be used for, but did you know they can be used to generate specific noises? Tomaseski explained to us that the chirps that emerge from the Joy-Cons as you approach the game’s collectible objects are generated not by a speaker, but by programming the Joy-Con motor to vibrate in a very specific way that resonates with the controller’s plastic shell. There’s apparently a whole Git library of these sounds, and while it’s not as simple as simply telling the controller to play a given musical note, it’s still possible for designers to come up with interesting noises from those controllers that can improve gameplay. 

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables, and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.