Hulver's site || Title Error #41226

Diaries
Everything
Who's Online?
FAQ / Help

Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008

By codemonkey uk (Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 12:26:26 PM EST) (all tags)

Part 1, Thursday, continued. Previously:

"The Independent Developer Shall Rise Again" - Grey Costikyan (Keynote)

Now:

"Programming is easy, Production is harder, Design is hardest" - Jonathan Blow

To follow:

"Inside Out Game Design" Stéphane Bura
"Zen and the Art of Project Maintanence" - Risa Cohen
"Pragmatic game development practices for small (and not so small) companies" - Noel Llopis

"Programming is easy, Production is harder, Design is hardest" - Jonathan Blow

Developer of Braid (XboxLiveArcade) - Indie game.

Demo looked really nice. Painted hand-drawn art style. Intelligent story driven 2d platformer. Time rewind feature. Death -> Pause (go back and try again).

110 bug fixes needed before it ships. None of them are anything to do with the game -> TCR handling.

500 items on game to do list ... and growing.

3 years work for 1 small downloadable game. What next? Do it again? Give it up for a big corp? See Molly Rocket “About” page. Compare to EA’s “About” page (info.ea.com).

Programming / Design / Production -> consider -> Volume/ Barrier to Entry / Improvability / Purpose

by Volume: Programming (Most) / Art (Half that) / Design (Less) / Production (Least)
by Barrier to Entry: Programming (Hardest) / Design (Easy) / Production (Harder)
failure in each category has corresponding levels of fatality to the game
by "Improvability": Programming (easy) / Design (hardest) / Production (hard)
opposite to barrier to entry

Rate of change -> poof Combat (1977) vs TF2 (2007). Design is, ~100x(?), programming ~(2000)x(?)!

by Purpose: Programming (somewhat easy) / Design (very Hard) / Production (somewhat hard) - Johnathan’s personal motivation for going them. Ie, design is the root, production and programming are just a means to and end (the implementation of the design).

Life is more than lists of tasks. There are many things you could be doing with your time. You need to have a good reason to do the things you do.

< Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008 | A runner's diary of sorts (health fun challenge wrap up) >

Login

Related Links

- "The Independent Developer Shall Rise Again" - Grey Costikyan (Keynote)
- codemonkey uk's Diary

Google

Hit Counter

86 Husi users have viewed this.

Comment Controls

Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008 | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

just out of curiosity by wumpus (2.00 / 0) #1 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 01:30:03 PM EST

about programming TF2 is ~2000x harder than Combat (I'm assuming the 2600 cartridge). Do they really think they can randomly pull somebody off the TF2 team and get him to write pure assembler code that will fit in a 4k cartridge for a unit that doesn't have a frame buffer? And he can pull that off in 1/2000 the time (maybe (team_size/2000))?

The 2600 was a beast: or maybe more like a mouse coded up to act like a beast. Getting all the housekeeping (inputs, movement, hits, etc.) done during the vertical blank period and then manually drawing each line to the screen is like nothing done today. Comparing any PC game (or likely any Nintendo, Apple, or Atari 5200) to modern games might scale normally by lines of code, but you are comparing an effort to get reasonably fast vs. hard realtime cycle-counted code.

Wumpus

: Agreed by joh3n (2.00 / 0) #2 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 01:53:36 PM EST

And moreover, TF2 has its engine already built. Most 'A list' games already do (be it Havoc, Unreal, Cry, etc), or are building on a firm engine foundation.

----
I just ate about 7 pounds of meat
-theantix
[ Parent ]
: indeed by codemonkey uk (2.00 / 0) #6 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 03:04:06 PM EST

I didn't really agree with his view of programming, and I think his perspective on what is "hard" or not come from the fact he is the sole designer/programmer of a small indie game developer, developing a XBLA platform game.

Not to denigrate his work, but of course programming is easy if the only designer you have to deal with is you, and the only other programmer you have to deal with is also you.

The same argument stands for his view of production. The production organisation complexity of his project is, well, trivial stood next to the organisational complexity of, say, producing a large team implementing a complex AAA title for multiple platforms, with several major stake holders with fingers in the design pie, who all have to be kept happy, and all have their offices in different time zones...

--- Thad ---
developer of ... ?
[ Parent ]

meh, programming is easy by lm (2.00 / 0) #3 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 02:20:56 PM EST

design is hard. this is why entry level folks are given the programming tasks in IT shops and the folks who've been around the block a few times are given the design work.

what's that you say? that's not what you meant by design?

perhaps. one can certainly make an argument for that case. but a far stronger argument exists going the other direction. even if design is restricted to visual design, there is only a low barrier of entry if you don't know what you're doing. proper design takes just as much, if not more, education and technical prowess as programming.

There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic

design in the context of this talk is game design by codemonkey uk (2.00 / 0) #4 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 02:56:00 PM EST

The barrier of entry being low for game design is because any idiot can say: "it's like Doom, but you have more guns/aliens/whatever". That doesn't mean it's a good design, but you still have a design that is basically functional much more easily than you can program a game that is basically functional. The barrier to entry for programming is the basic understanding of syntax, control flow, etc, that is required before you can make any progress at all.

--- Thad ---
developer of ... ?
[ Parent ]

flow control is equivalent to basic algebra by lm (2.00 / 0) #5 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 03:03:52 PM EST

An elementary school student could program a game. In fact, you could easily write a text adventure with only if statements. I don't think this is really any larger barrier to entry than `it's like Doom except with blow guns'

There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic
[ Parent ]

you over estimate Joe Public by codemonkey uk (2.00 / 0) #7 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 03:07:43 PM EST

Yes, even children can write computer programs - I was programming at 7 - but most people can't.

--- Thad ---
developer of ... ?
[ Parent ]

: that isn't because of any real barrier to entry by lm (4.00 / 1) #8 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 03:35:28 PM EST

Most people can't program not because they are unable to learn but because they are unwilling to learn. You don't have to be capable of learning rocket science, just capable of learning something of the same complexity as algebra.
Take a class full of 14 year olds. Give each kid a deck of cards. Ask each to come up with a new card game. Most won't do it. Of those that don't do it, a large number will not do it because they can't. Of those that do do it, a large number of the games will be new games in the same way that Scrabulous is a new game.
There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic
[ Parent ]

Design is funny by webwench (2.00 / 0) #9 Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 10:34:29 AM EST

Even in our itty-bitty boring sales support vanilla-systems team, we had a discussion a week or so ago about design, whether we did it adequately or not, were any good at it or not, knew how to do it or not, could do it better or not... and we couldn't even agree on what we meant when we spoke of design.

^{Getting more attention than you since 1998.}

yeah, design by codemonkey uk (2.00 / 0) #10 Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 12:29:21 PM EST

you know

that thing

we do

our jobs

what is it?

--- Thad ---
developer of ... ?
[ Parent ]

: oh shi wha? by webwench (2.00 / 0) #11 Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 12:49:28 PM EST

Yeah, that thing we just do. Kind of.

^{Getting more attention than you since 1998.}
[ Parent ]

Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008 | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback