Global Game Jam Keynote 2012 - International version

Hello, and welcome to the 2012 Global Game Jam I am Gordon Bellamy Execute Director of the International Game Developers' Association We are so proud to be hosting, this, the World's largest game creation event. Today, I am in London at SI Games, one of the greatest studios in the whole wide world. This is going to be great, we have a record number of nations, over 45, and a record number of participants, we are hoping 10000 women and men are creating games with you this weekend. This next 48 hours are about innovation, they are about collaboration, most importantly they are about fun! We hope you all have a great time, we are all looking forward to sharing, and playing the board games, the computer games, and everything in between, and everything beyond, that you make this weekend. Without further ado, let's get to it, and enjoy the fantastic keynotes from around the globe. Thanks again! Welcome to the Global Game Jam 2012 I am Brenda Garno Brathwaithe, and I am John Romero, and we are with Loot Drop. John and I worked on three games together. Most recently released was Ravenwood Fair and that was nominated for a couple of awards. My game Cloudforest Expedition, Brenda worked on that as well. We are currently working on my game, which I can't tell you anything about. It will be out sometime this year. The very first thing you need to do when you are collaborating is know your constraints. You have only one weekend, which is even crazier than our six month schedules, and you have a relatively small team who may or may not have made a game before. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, is to get too ambitious with your design. That is something that happens very frequently in game colleges on the final project, and it is even worse if you try and do that this during short weekend, so keep it to a sane amount of design. In Global Game Jams I have participated in, I have regularly seen, you talk about all your coders, I've seen people create enough design for a team of four coders to do in two months, let alone one person in one weekend. It is also important if you are using some kind of engine, that already has a bunch of capability that really influences what you are going to design, Because you might not have to code that stuff or design it, so if you are using a framework or some sort of engine, that totally influences what kind of design you will do. Before you start anything, do a survey of the team, know what your skills are, know what you can do, and I'll borrow this from an old friend of mine; make your design and immediately after you are sure it is everything you need, just cut it, cut two thirds out, almost immediately, and then maybe you will finish on time. If you don't believe us, believe John Steinbeck I am gonna quote John Steinbeck: "There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy, in games." "Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend upon it, but the group never invents anything." "Their preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.", or a woman as the case may be, but John Steinbeck wasn't being politically correct at the time. Anyway, and I also added part about games. The thing is, having one person, who makes the call, will help things get done so much better. When we talk about one person being the lead, that doesn't mean, you need to assign one person to be a tyrant. That person needs to be open to feedback, and needs to be great at receiving it. It is really important that the lead knows how to cut down features, or how to redesign features so that they can be implemented even faster. I will give you an actual example from John's game. He was working on Cloudforest, and there was one particular feature, that I just didn't understand. I understood how it was supposed to work design wise, but it didn't work for me as a player. Turns out he didn't necessarily get my point. He didn't feel the same way when he played the game, but he understood it was important to me, and it was also important to a couple of other people. So rather than just go, "I don't get it, I don't see it, it doesn't matter to me", he knew that he wanted to please as many players as possible, and so he actually did a bit of redesign, based on feedback from other people. Whoever the lead is, they need to be able to make sure they receive feedback the same way. One of the points I have seen happen a lot in collaboration, is that people will endlessly discuss the most minute details for a whole weekend sometimes. The best thing you can do, is put that feature in the game as fast as possible, and the game will tell you if it is good or not. Games never lie! Another important point to note, is that the game is only as strong as the weakest team member. A lot of student projects at game colleges, end up with the project lead doing all of the debugging and coding for all the other team members that are sleeping around behind them on the floor. You don't want that to happen this weekend. I mean at least wait until you get in the industry for that sort of stuff. I've seen people do that all the time. So one of the things you need to do, is make sure you are pulling your weight. Make sure you know the weight, that you can pull. Sometimes people will say, they can do all these things as they head into a game jam or into a high pressure situation. And they can't actually do that, or they are not as good as they thought they were. Understand the weight you can lift, and be sure to pull your own weight all weekend. Remember that when this weekend is done, there are going to be people who can't wait to work together again, and there's gonna be people who are never going to work together work again. Consider this your first interview on your way into the game industry, because some people around you are gonna find a way into the industry, and your resume may cross their desk. You want them to either say "Yes, I totally want to work with this guy", or "Ugh, I never wanna work with her!" I should have flipped the genders there :-) One last thing that is important, is that really there is nothing worth fighting over for this weekend. The phrase that it is just a game, you know, it is just a game, and even when we're making games, and there are millions of dollars on the line, I wouldn't say it is just a game, it is a game, and I've never seen a team that hated each other make an excellent game. Whatever your disagreements are, remember you are there to have fun, you are there to make something fun, and you are here to have a great weekend, and you are obviously going to need to sleep, probably for two days when this is done, so enjoy it while it lasts and have fun! Respect your lead, they can make the decisions when something is being argued upon. John and I, when we are ... Other than a few bruises ... John and I, sure we have arguments while we are making games, but usually, how long do they even last? You know, I don't even think we had an argument.. Ok, that was a lie! :-) Have we ever actually had an argument, when we were creating a game? I don't think so. I don't think we actually have. The point is, I guess, what we must do, if I have a disagreement with John's design or having a problem with something he is designing, and the same goes his way, is we will just talk it out. Here is something that you might want to consider. Ultimately I respect John as a designer, he respects me as a designer, when we are giving each other feedback, it is not coming from a place of "What are you talking about!?", but coming from a place of respect. Have fun! You can have fun from both of us! Have a great weekend. Good luck! Hi! My name is Gonzalo Frasca and it's a huge honor for me to be today in such good company with people from all over the world. I really can't think of anything cooler than the GGJ Let's start by telling you that I'm from Uruguay Here it is... It's a tiny little country where more and more games are being made. My own game studio is now 10 years old and there's a lot going on in the local scene. Uruguay has also 100% implemented the One Laptop per Child Project. Every school kid in the country has a free laptop and is online. It's very exciting. Today I want to tell you a short anecdote that hopefully can help you today with your game. It's a simple story. As I said, my country is tiny. Only 3.5 million people. Of course, Soccer is HUGE in this part of the world. During the last Soccer World Cup we were the underdog team and ranked 4th. Our little team managed to beat countries much bigger than ours. Nobody expected this. Not even us. During the World Cup, our game studio was working on a game for a client in Hollywood. Every week we had a conference call. One day, our client was very excited on the phone: "Something incredible happened today!" "They're talking about Uruguay on TV!!!" "Please don't take me wrong, but Uruguay is never on the news. Ever!" "It seems that you're doing great in the World Cup!" I replied that sure, that we were all very happy about it. Each week, Uruguay kept doing better and our conference calls got more interesting. Our clients were really excited. We taught them songs so they could root for our country. Our team kept winning and everybody down here was more and more excited. Our clients learned to love soccer and to love Uruguay, too. But at the end, we lost a match and ended up 4th. Nevertheless, there was a huge party in Uruguay. Everybody was celebrating. On the next call, our clients were REALLY disappointed. They tried to cheer us up, assuming that we were sad. I tried to explain that we were thrilled, that it's a huge achievement after decades of constantly sucking at soccer. Our clients didn't get it. They assumed we were disappointed. You'll be #1 next time, they said. They couldn't understand that, seriously, we were really happy. At the end, I told them that indeed, it was a huge tragedy and we were all really depressed. Our client seemed to prefer that explanation. I wanted to share this story because it doesn't really matter how big you are or if you have failed before. Winning is not really what this is about. Being #1 on a game means that there's no challenge left. What is really important is to Level Up. Similarly, making a great game is important but it's more important if you level up. The World Cup made Uruguayans so happy because we leveled up. Today, at the GGJ you can do the same. Maybe you won't change the industry, or the indie scene, or the universe or the arts. But you have a chance to get better. Leveling up is the real source of happiness. So go, Level Up, learn new things! Keep improving your games and yourselves! See you! Because this keynote theme is "Innovative" I'd like to talk about what "Innovative" means to me. Probably, an innovative idea doesn't come from one single thing, but comes from the combination of many things, many people and many thoughts. Just like the English word: "Serendipity" When we discover brand new things instead of existing ones. That's what I think it leads us to an innovative idea. It seems a bit strange to say "One causes a Serendipity" but to increase the possibility that it occurs let's start by making a "Springboard" for it. As a kid, when you draw a picture, you were probably given a white canvas. I think that's an old fashioned way, because there is no "Catalyst" to create new things. Nowadays, as grown-ups we find various kinds of rules and we can choose and enjoy what we use and how we use it. So, I think it's better to combine those rules, and make new ideas. For example: In the case of that white canvas I said, Let's try to make a cat walk on the canvas... Or run over the canvas with a car and print a tire trace on it... Or spill tea or coffee on the canvas. That way you can find something out of it Or, what's even better: It can inspire new ideas. For another example in terms of programming: We tend to narrow perspectives when we program for many consecutive hours. So, it's good to just start from scratch when you fall into such case and try to give a ridiculous new value, such as the birthday of you or your girlfriend, as a new parameter. Perhaps, you will be able to find something you failed to see before. As an example, I'd like to introduce my own experience. A while ago, I got bored of using the same favorite colors in my graphic designs. So, I went to a shop to buy new paints, closed my eyes and grabbed paints randomly from the shelves. All the paints I grabbed were sort of green. But I bought them anyway and went back to draw a picture. Of course, I couldn't get what I had in mind. But I was able to find new ideas and a totally different approach. I think such challenges are very interesting. "Pixel Junk Eden" is another example of my work. I used bugged graphics from an 8bit video game console as elements to develop a game. I actually tried roughly placing the cartridges and make really noisy graphics. I stared at those graphics for a while and then patterns or stories started to come up from there! That's a very useful way to get random ideas. Plus it gives immediate results, especially good for fast prototyping needs like the Global Game Jam. For one more example: When you draw a self-portrait you can draw a profile of your face, Or you can draw it using background elements to gradually make a face-like shape out of them. Although each process is different, either way you take will finally get you a self-portrait. Those ways of turning over traditional methods have the possibility to yield something full of exciting new things and inspiration. So let's challenge to turn over traditional ways! Finally, I'd like to talk about "making something". To "make something" is similar to sending a love-letter. If you send a love-letter to a person you know, this person will reply that letter. but, if you send love-letters to one million people, probably you can't get replies from each and all of them. It's better if you focus on a small personal target rather than a huge global one. All of us find it nice when things are made to please our personal needs. So I'm happy if you find the way to make something that's not only for everyone. But first and mainly important to you. And then broadens being appreciated by a lot of people. Hi I'm Will Wright, CEO of Stupid Fun Club, here to introduce the Global Game Jam. When I think about designing games, everybody has a different process. Basically identifying and using your process is one of the most important things you do here. There are so many different ways you can go about designing a game. I will just kind of run you through the way I usually do it, my thought processes around that. Typically, when I design a game, I'm actually inspired by books I've read. A lot of people get inspired by different things, but for me, it's typically that. Other games that I've done, they have been inspired by various books that I have really enjoyed. Sometimes they are books around a particular subject. It kind of draws me in, I get interested and pulled into it. And I figure out how can I take this subject and make it something that somebody else will appreciate and find fascinating the same way I do. There are lot of great books out there about the game design process. I think these are really good for the craftsmanship of game design, but I wouldn't take inspiration from these. A lot of people will start a game and say I'm going to do a first-person shooter or an RTS. I never start with genre. I always start with the topic. I will just be reading random books and at some point I come across maybe one or two books that feel like “Oh I see some idea there”… there's something in here that I want to pursue then I start zeroing in, circling in, on that idea In my mind, I will start formulating the game design directions I want to take. This brings us to the next step, which is taking that idea and starting a prototype. Prototyping can have many different goals. One of the first goals usually when I approach prototyping, is figuring out how are we going to make the mechanisms of the game work. This is very much an engineering exploration, looking at the bits and pieces that are going to make our game, how are we going to engineer them? Are they buildable? And at what cost? That will help us establish things like the team size and the scope of the game. Other types of prototyping can involve more direct interaction. What you're really trying to do is build some system that you can sit and play with, get a sense of how it feels, aesthetically, how it feels psychologically and motivationally. In a game jam situation, you are going to be doing this in a matter of minutes and hours, not days and weeks. Basically you want to get to something that is playable as early as possible so you can really start touching it. What do you like? What do you not like? What's working? What's not working? Games are all about interaction. The sooner you can get this thing interactive, where you can actually start manipulating it, the better. As a designer, what you're actually doing is exploring this very large design space. You are starting with this very nebulous idea then you're looking at all the different branches that the design could take, as efficiently as possible, prune those branches. For instance, imagine your design as a tree. Your starting point, the rough idea, is the base of that tree. Starting at the base of that tree you're starting to go down the prototyping path. You are going to face very fundamental decisions about, you know, is this game real-time? Is it multiplayer? Is it persistent? These very fundamental decisions will take you down various branches. Every time you take a turn, or a branch, you're in effect filtering out and erasing all the branches on that part of the tree. You take one path, and you're basically cutting off all these different branches your game could have gone. At the end you're going to end up on one of these leaves. At the beginning of the process, you don't know which leaf you will end up on but you did have a sense of what directions you wanted to go to at every junction. As you go down these, you're using prototyping, intuition, play testing, and a number of other techniques to figure out what branch am I going to take down this path and doing so, over time, at every branch, if you make the right decisions, you are eventually going to end up at one particular spot on the tree. This will be the game that you're going to put into a box. Typically, a long segment of this design process will be building prototypes, testing things. There is an equally important process that is going on and that is: How do we convey this idea to people in the most efficient means possible? A lot of times, we'll turn to sketches, visual representations of the idea, metaphors we can wrap around this game is like something you know, except it does that. These will get more developed over time. We find more and more effective ways to convey this idea to somebody from a distance. Basically, if somebody was looking across the room at a box on a shelf, what would attract them to go pick up that box, and maybe turn it around and start looking at the back of it? As we refine this message, a lot of times this is done by just talking to friends, describing the game, finding out what parts they latch on to and use as a handle to grab onto, to start to understand and get interested and motivated and wanting to experience this. Then we'll actually start refining that message, deeper and deeper. In a lot of cases, I'll actually design a kind of a fake box, early in the design stages. I will have things on the back of the box, sales points, bullet points, etc. Basically, it's a process of me understanding conceptually, how to convey this idea to somebody who has no idea they want to play this thing, no matter what it is, or how odd. That's almost as important as the game itself because if it doesn't sound fun to them, they're not playing in their imagination. They're not having fun, they will never give the real game a chance. I would say that kind of conceptual representation of your game, why it's fun, why somebody would want to try it out is equally important to you actually crafting a great game. I want to wish everybody good luck. Think outside the box. As a designer, try to understand the way you think through this entire design process, as you design your games Try to build something that you enjoy, that you actually are having fun with. Again, best wishes! Global Game Jam Keynote Speech by Will Wright.