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increpare
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« Reply #20 on: July 03, 2008, 05:56:16 AM »

They have abandoned the haiku structure of '5,7,5' because it's 'too restrictive'. So what they're writing now are just really short, non-rhyming poems. It's pretty... laughable.
Why, exactly?
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« Reply #21 on: July 03, 2008, 06:07:43 AM »

They have abandoned the haiku structure of '5,7,5' because it's 'too restrictive'. So what they're writing now are just really short, non-rhyming poems. It's pretty... laughable.
Why, exactly?
Well, the whole point of a haiku is that you're restricted to certain numbers of syllables. Not only is it incorrect to refer to something as a 'haiku' if it doesn't adhere to those restrictions, but it's also highly conducive to lazy writing. Even a free verse poem is usually limited by the restriction that it has to be x lines or more, but these neo-haiku writers don't even have to bother with that. And from what I heard, they are indeed writing pretty terrible poetry. I think when you take away all, or almost all, of your restrictions, it actually makes things worse rather than better.
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« Reply #22 on: July 03, 2008, 06:18:54 AM »

Heh, I have two books of poetry, none of which rhyme. Of course, I also have a few novels, but it was an interesting analogy. Smiley Nothing wrong with deviating from either the Japanese or English variants of a haiku (different rules, actually, Japanese is stricter). Everything is based on something else.

I do think that a lot of it comes down to seeing the very top. People hear or read about Sid Mier, Miyamoto, and Will Wright. They see the fame but not the work it took to get there. Then, they just aim for that, since its easy, right? I've seen the same with interior design (Trading Spaces shows you to the top 1% of 1%, except for Hilde), remodeling, cars, and everything else. Its hard to see the teaming masses who aren't just Awesome everywhere. For me, it is the authors I meet and admire, seeing how easily they create a book that makes me want to do that. It wasn't until I actually started writing that I realized exactly how hard it is. And then I thought it would be fairly easy just to self-publish one of my older novels that was out of print. Heh, talk about "it looks easy at first" verses the hours I spent getting covers, editing, getting into the proper lists, and even making it look really damn good. About as hard as taking an simple idea (danc's CuteGod for a good example) and making a game out of it (MfGames' CuteGod).

Sadly, it is really hard to tell someone with lots of dreams that. You tell them that it takes a lot of work to take an idea, they'll just plan on getting 2 super-coders in the world. Maybe offer them lots of profits because they'll make BILLIONS on the game. My old boss had that problem. She insisted that her ideas would make MILLIONS, damn it, MILLIONS, because it was a great idea. Years later and hundreds of thousands dropped into her great, and it still wasn't making her precious MILLIONS. And she still isn't realizing that it takes more than a grand idea.

Ideas are easy. Putting them into reality is a royal bitch. Doesn't matter the field either. Smiley I'm finally getting out of the dream stage of idea into the "can this be done" reality. Or, having my dreams and ideas be only slightly ahead of my actual skills. Yeah, Running Bomb sucked and the ideas in my head were grandiose compared to reality, but the gap was much smaller than "Ponies Among Us" and "Turf Wars" before that (my last two entries into 4E*). My next goal is to learn how to work with a team to do the things I really can't do well (graphics and music).

As for self-taught verses school-taught. I think most people dedicated enough to teach themselves anything are going to be more motivated. Simply because they have to start so much lower and they have plenty of times to change their mind as they realize it. When you go to school, you have a plan but you also have another goal, graduating. It is easier to realize you hate game programming (or you are taught that all you need is a good idea) but just to suffer through it to get your piece of paper at the end. For self-taught people, you have less goals which means it is easier to realize something specific might be not for you.

It reminds me of a making of feature for a horror movie (something about Illusions, but I can't find it via google-fu). At one point, the director wanted the wall to fall down and for the main character to look out into the abyss. The guy in charges of building the stage asked one simple question: "how much plywood do I need for the abyss?"

Game design is like that, I think.
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« Reply #23 on: July 03, 2008, 07:50:32 AM »

The funniest thing about this thread is that the author separates himself from these 'wannabes', as if he is somehow better than them.  I find that hilarious.  That same elitist attitude is at every college, in every discipline, and in every classroom.

The real 'wannabes' are the people who think that they're better than their peers.  For some reason, people like the author seem to think that their intelligence, or their noble philosophies, give them the right to preach to the people they perceive as the proletariat.

Puh-lease.

The people with real skills keep their heads down and their hands dirty, working every day to slowly achieve their goals.  They don't have time to worry about what other people are doing, or write diatribes about how their peers are so inferior.

These forums are surprisingly full of the latter type of people, as the procedural competition showed.  I don't find it surprising that none of the entrants ever wrote a story like the thread progenitor is writing.  They're too busy working on their games!
« Last Edit: July 03, 2008, 07:59:55 AM by PaulMorel » Logged

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« Reply #24 on: July 03, 2008, 07:55:30 AM »

I left out one important thing in that post: I think we should encourage everyone, even if they are just dreamers.

We don't have to work with them, and personally, I won't work with anyone who can't show me something.  But that doesn't mean that they should be insulted or disparaged.

We were all beginners with big dreams at one point.  The only difference now is that we've had time to actually make some of our ideas happen.  Let's give everyone that same chance before dismissing them as wannabes.
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« Reply #25 on: July 03, 2008, 09:34:53 AM »

The funniest thing about this thread is that the author separates himself from these 'wannabes', as if he is somehow better than them.  I find that hilarious.  That same elitist attitude is at every college, in every discipline, and in every classroom.

The real 'wannabes' are the people who think that they're better than their peers.  For some reason, people like the author seem to think that their intelligence, or their noble philosophies, give them the right to preach to the people they perceive as the proletariat.

Puh-lease.

The people with real skills keep their heads down and their hands dirty, working every day to slowly achieve their goals.  They don't have time to worry about what other people are doing, or write diatribes about how their peers are so inferior.

These forums are surprisingly full of the latter type of people, as the procedural competition showed.  I don't find it surprising that none of the entrants ever wrote a story like the thread progenitor is writing.  They're too busy working on their games!

... burn...

After reading so much about how crappy game colleges seem to be, I kind of want to go to one just for the experience...

Basically, I don't understand how "Game Design" can be taught.  I could write a long explanation of what I mean, but it's something that's like driving. 

You can teach about how to drive all you want, but if you don't actually drive, it isn't worth s**t.

As for wannabes, I agree with Paul.  Let people talk all they want.  The real artists are just getting the job done.
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« Reply #26 on: July 03, 2008, 10:41:24 AM »

Basically, I don't understand how "Game Design" can be taught.  I could write a long explanation of what I mean, but it's something that's like driving. 

You can teach about how to drive all you want, but if you don't actually drive, it isn't worth s**t.

You're assuming that "taught" means that all you do is listen to someone else talk, and maybe do some multiple choice pop quizzes.

Game design can be taught the same way any art or design field is taught - through a combination of theory and practice.  You discuss ideas and current thinking in the field, looking at real-world examples to keep things grounded in actual design practice, and then you get the students to try it themselves.

So in that sense, a good game design program should do exactly what your driving analogy says - you learn some ideas and then you go out and actually do it.

Keep in mind, this is actually what schools like the much-mocked DigiPen do as well.  That's why you see them pushing out student projects left and right.  What I don't like about the approach they seem to take isn't that it's not practical enough, but that it's *too* practical - focusing exclusively on training students to become cogs in the big mainstream game industry rather than learning to dig a little deeper into theories and abstract concepts which could help boost their creative and critical thinking to a new level.

Or the alternate problem is when a program throws around the term "game design" but are really using the term as a synonym for game development in general.  That's a sign of cluelessness that should be avoided at all costs.  Design is a specific part of the development process.
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« Reply #27 on: July 03, 2008, 10:43:05 AM »

Quote
After reading so much about how crappy game colleges seem to be, I kind of want to go to one just for the experience...

The creators of Portal went to Digipen, and now they are at Valve.  Shocked

Long story short, I'm sure that a motivated student can get a great education at most of the new game schools.
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« Reply #28 on: July 04, 2008, 11:31:03 AM »

Thanks for all your feedback so far, this has given me some good ideas on concepts I should and shouldn't push, and the type of attitude I should avoid.

Now, there are a couple of topics that came up that I feel I should address.

First, on game schools:
I dug up a lot of information on the relationship between game schools and game companies, and it's pretty complex. Some developers say they will never hire a graduate from one of these schools, others say it's the best time to hire someone. Some schools like Digipen actually force you to make games, while others like UAT simply provide the tools and expect self-motivation. But at the later type, what mostly happens is that students will simply make some great friends and realize that playing games is more fun than making them after all, then end up with a huge student loan. A disturbing fact: UAT continuously eases the difficulty (and thus content) of their classes due to the insane drop-out rate.

On developer "wannabes":
Perhaps this is too harsh of a word to use, and I realize now that it made me come across as trying to be elite. Personally, I've always been an active developer even before I owned a PC, and we all know that the best way to learn is by doing, not by just talking about it. It seriously bothers me when I do find someone who is passionate about making games but clueless on how to actually become an asset to a project. As easy as it is to ignore the "idea guys" that are going about it completely the wrong way, I think we can do a lot of good by educating them in what a game really takes, and at the rate of would-be game designers today I strongly believe that this is something that should be taught long before they enter college.

To me, it seems like the underlying problem is that colleges are completely cashing in on the fact that so many people want to make games, and they put minimal effort into ensuring that the education will benefit them. In my article, one of my main goals is to help potential students decide whether or not they really want to make games before dishing out the cash. This should result in more people who actually know what they're doing and can contribute something -- no longer just regurgitating the elements from their favorite games and hoping that will help to make a new one (which describes most of my prior classmates).

On a side note, 99% of success stories I've heard from colleges (this includes the Portal one) is from students that worked together on a mod. This pretty much limits them to some kind of FPS or RTS, of course. Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this; it disturbs me a little that making new levels and models for an existing game seems to go over better than a completely new and creative idea. But on the other hand, this may be shifting with the growth in indie games through the current consoles' online distribution methods. Any thoughts on this?
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« Reply #29 on: July 04, 2008, 11:42:18 AM »

The funniest thing about this thread is that the author separates himself from these 'wannabes', as if he is somehow better than them.  I find that hilarious.  That same elitist attitude is at every college, in every discipline, and in every classroom.

The real 'wannabes' are the people who think that they're better than their peers.  For some reason, people like the author seem to think that their intelligence, or their noble philosophies, give them the right to preach to the people they perceive as the proletariat.

Puh-lease.

The people with real skills keep their heads down and their hands dirty, working every day to slowly achieve their goals.  They don't have time to worry about what other people are doing, or write diatribes about how their peers are so inferior.

These forums are surprisingly full of the latter type of people, as the procedural competition showed.  I don't find it surprising that none of the entrants ever wrote a story like the thread progenitor is writing.  They're too busy working on their games!

I think you're missing the point. Yes, it's important to keep busy ourselves and to improve in our own ability, but we won't be working together to make games better in the long run if we don't share our insight with those who want to do what we are doing. I'm specifically writing this article for friends or friends of friends who fit the category I described.

There's definitely a difference between encouraging dreamers, and encouraging them correctly with guidance and resources.
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« Reply #30 on: July 04, 2008, 11:46:59 AM »

On a side note, 99% of success stories I've heard from colleges (this includes the Portal one) is from students that worked together on a mod. This pretty much limits them to some kind of FPS or RTS, of course. Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this; it disturbs me a little that making new levels and models for an existing game seems to go over better than a completely new and creative idea. But on the other hand, this may be shifting with the growth in indie games through the current consoles' online distribution methods. Any thoughts on this?

I think making mods or level is a great learning experience for beginners, but you don't need a college to make a mod. Some of the best game designers I know got started by making mods for Starcraft or Civilization.

I don't see why it'd be disturbing to you. It makes sense from a historical standpoint: in art colleges in the Renaissance it was common to have apprentices copy the paintings and sculptures of professional artists, over and over, until it became second nature. Only after they were able to master copying what others have done did they begin to create things for themselves. You may think this is a stupid way to learn, but this is how most of the best Renaissance artists learned: Leonardo, Michelangelo, the whole lot of them began like that.
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« Reply #31 on: July 04, 2008, 05:44:32 PM »

I totally agree with rinkuhero here. Who among us programmers didn't start with tic-tac-toe and pong clones?
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« Reply #32 on: July 04, 2008, 05:46:28 PM »

I started with a Pac-Man clone.  Cool
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« Reply #33 on: July 04, 2008, 07:31:58 PM »

Modding a commercial engine allows you to learn the practical skills necessary to function as an essential asset on a professional game project.  I think anyone who's serious about getting involved in the industry should dedicate at least some time to modding.  In fact, the amount you can learn from working in a commercial engine leads me to recommend modding to those that simply enjoy making smaller games as a hobby but may not aspire to doing it professionally.
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« Reply #34 on: July 04, 2008, 08:25:08 PM »

Also, a mod doesn't necessarily have to be an FPS or RTS. Sure it's easier to do that because that's what the modded game usually is, but there are quite a few mods that break free entirely from the framework of the original, such as Flipside, Eclipse, Foamzilla, and to a lesser extent Garry's Mod (since the gameplay can be very different, but the interface is largely the same).
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« Reply #35 on: July 07, 2008, 11:06:50 AM »

Well, the skilled ones need to educate the dreamers, for good game designers might otherwise go extinct.

So, if anyone was willing to educate me... Grin
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« Reply #36 on: July 11, 2008, 09:50:44 AM »

On a side note, 99% of success stories I've heard from colleges (this includes the Portal one) is from students that worked together on a mod. This pretty much limits them to some kind of FPS or RTS, of course. Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this; it disturbs me a little that making new levels and models for an existing game seems to go over better than a completely new and creative idea. But on the other hand, this may be shifting with the growth in indie games through the current consoles' online distribution methods. Any thoughts on this?

I think making mods or level is a great learning experience for beginners, but you don't need a college to make a mod. Some of the best game designers I know got started by making mods for Starcraft or Civilization.

I don't see why it'd be disturbing to you. It makes sense from a historical standpoint: in art colleges in the Renaissance it was common to have apprentices copy the paintings and sculptures of professional artists, over and over, until it became second nature. Only after they were able to master copying what others have done did they begin to create things for themselves. You may think this is a stupid way to learn, but this is how most of the best Renaissance artists learned: Leonardo, Michelangelo, the whole lot of them began like that.

Hmm, I guess the reason this bothered me is because I have specific elements of game development in mind, but this really is a broad topic. Thinking it over, mods seem like they're definitely the best way to work on 3d level design or modeling/rigging skills and see it in action without necessarily requiring the help of a team. For someone interested in doing this type of work (especially for the same genre of game) it would work well to create assets very similar to the ones that already exist in the game to gain a solid understanding of the basics, then branch off and try something new, like the old renaissance teachings.

What's less certain to me is the coding/scripting portion. Obviously these scripting languages are designed to make a certain type of game. It's cool that they're becoming more robust and customizable, but this is the side of modding that least corresponds with your renaissance analogy, as the goal is to get things up and moving as fast as possible as opposed to learning the basics of why and how this all works.

This reminds me of when I first started making games and I used a lot of pre-programmed platform engines for my movement and collision. In the end, I had limited control over the feel of my game; it was always a little bit off from what I envisioned, although I didn't mind too much because back then it was still a cool novelty to just be able to make semi-polished, somewhat playable games. A big turning point for me was when I took it upon myself to perfectly mimic the feel of a megaman game. To get all the subtleties just right I had to write the platform engine "from scratch" and the end result was my game MegaGoat (http://tatsusoft.net/MG.html). I'm proud of this accomplishment, but after heavily polishing the first level it dawned on me: in actuality it's "just another megaman game" with some pretty trivial twists. Since then I've been putting more focus on completely new ideas, but taking the time to perfectly emulate a well-loved, solid game engine rather than just making some tweaks here and there to an existing engine really helped me grow as a developer.

But even with that said, it's not like I wrote my own custom method to draw the graphics, play the sound, and read the control input. So I'm trying to figure out exactly where to draw the line; I've coded all of that other stuff later on other projects, but I don't feel like it helped me like the platform engine did. Maybe it's simply that my passion is the "feel" of a game and developing new experiences in that regard, rather than on new kinds of graphical effects or other things that improve the overall play experience in their own way.
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« Reply #37 on: July 11, 2008, 09:59:47 AM »

Also, a mod doesn't necessarily have to be an FPS or RTS. Sure it's easier to do that because that's what the modded game usually is, but there are quite a few mods that break free entirely from the framework of the original, such as Flipside, Eclipse, Foamzilla, and to a lesser extent Garry's Mod (since the gameplay can be very different, but the interface is largely the same).
It's really cool to see the creative things that folks are doing with these mods, but this raises a lot of questions. As far as I can tell, Flipside is the only mod of its kind and I'm under the impression that the programmer(s) had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this to work right under the HL2 engine. I very much doubt that this was the best tool for the job, but maybe this is just proof that the tool isn't as important as the passion. Perhaps the key is to toy around with a tool you're comfortable with, then just start making games with it regardless of its "limitations."

I am curious though; for those who are interested in developing mods, what are the best resources? I'm surprised there aren't any listed in the development resources sticky on this forum. Is it better to find a specialized resource for the tool (like planethalflife.gamespy.com) or is there a more centralized community for creative works of this nature?
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« Reply #38 on: July 11, 2008, 10:47:06 AM »

Having worked (and still working) on mods, I can tell you you are far better going to aspecialized resource site. Given the significant different designs of game engines, sites usually focus onto one game. It is rather nice when the game creator supports modding communities, such as Relic and Blizzard on the rts field.

I tend to prefer modding, because it let me focus on the game ruleset and mechanics (assuming the base game allows for robust moddability, that is), and delegates from me the duties of making graphic and collision engines and stuff I really don't want to be concerned with.

A rather nice example for me is Warcraft 3. I really couldn't care less about skirmsih matches on it (DoW > all), but its built-in modding capabilites by means of scenario creation are huge, making my favorite game to mod. The scenario editor comes with tools such as an object editor, that gives you almost full control about units, environment doodads, abilities, items, among other; there is also the script editor, which uses event based programming by means of triggers. There are many other tools, but just with those two mentioned, you have an extensive set of options that let you recreate the game, and event simulate many other game types, like Survival Horror,Minesweeper,Fast Paced RPGs,Pseudo-Stratego,Dodgeball,Advance War clones, and even Sidescrollers. Despite a few (at times drastic) flaws in the engine developers have to work against (bugs in garbage collection, for example), the engine takes care about graphics, sound , collision, user interaction, networking, leaving the developer with raw game logic to deal with.
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« Reply #39 on: July 11, 2008, 11:54:38 AM »

I am still in the dark when it comes to people talking about the masses of people wanting to be "game developers" and not knowing where to start. Being a highschool student, I am the only person I know that is even slightly interested in any aspect of game development as a serious career.

To me, this thread is just a call for education on what it takes to be a part of the process of developing games, because lack of education and where to start seems to be the main problem with all these (supposed) people wanting to be a part of 'game development'.
It's a hard thing to pinpoint. I experienced the same thing in high school where I seemed to be the only one who made it really obvious that I wanted to make games. Years after graduating, an old classmate found me on myspace and he works for a game company now -- it turns out that it was his lifelong passion all along. I know some people who didn't get into game development until after going to a community college and taking some general programming classes, and it really surprised me that they were starting to take it seriously. (They eventually did learn that what they wanted to do wasn't feasible with modern technology and gave up, sadly.)

Of course there are still success stories, but what I think happens is that a lot of graduating high school students realize that they don't know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. So they think about their passions, and how gaming is their favorite form of entertainment, then throw all their money at some random game school without giving it another thought. There's something missing here... it makes me think of how kids fantasize about unrealistic goals, maybe something like "someday I'll build a giant palace tiled with diamonds with walls made of gold-plated chocolate!" Somewhere early on they'll realize how illogical this is, and you don't see many graduates pursuing architecture for this reason. But when it comes to games, it's as if these same types of fantasies can exist up into adulthood. Instead of helping, it seems like the vast majority of "gaming schools" are just cashing in on this fact. We've all seen their horrible advertisements, and this lesser-known Collins College commercial perfectly illustrates my point:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gwlE1aASc4g

If I were to sum up all of this, I'd say the main problems are that
1) Not enough people take it upon themselves to find out what it means to make a game (perhaps due to a lack of a good starting point -- there are so many options that it's a bit overwhelming).
2) High school teachers generally know little to nothing about game development and are incapable of diffusing unrealistic fantasies as easily as with other professions.
3) Game collages are generally more interested in the education business than they are the education.

Does this sound pretty accurate? I know I'm making a lot of generalizations, but it seems to be true for the most part. The easiest thing is to sit back and see what happens (who knows, the problem might fix itself over time), but I do see a way to help some folks out, and I do appreciate the thoughts that have been thrown around so far.
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