For those of you not in the know, the Vancouver Film School holds an annual event called the Game Design Expo to give potential game design students a chance to rub elbows and learn from some of the biggest names in video games. The undertone in the event is to drive up the enrollment in their game design program, but this doesn’t stop VFS from bringing in big name developers and showing off what has come to be one of the highest rated video game design programs in the world.
The days Industry Speaker Line-up starts out with clips of all the successful student projects, and then a reel of all the professional bit time projects that past students have moved on to work on. The biggest movies and biggest games of the past year all had a VFS grad working within the team. The show floor this year had just as much Vancouver (local) feel that there has been in earlier years. I’m always just slightly disappointed in the display of corporate money spread through the hall. There was the ambiguous PlayStation stand up stations with games that are months old and had zero ties to the Vancouver gaming community, which is always my least favorite thing to see every year.
The first speaker of the day was Bruce Nesmith (Director of Design, Bethesda Softworks, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) who talked about the struggles and creativity in designing dynamic content in Skyrim. Nesmith focused on talking about where the group wanted to take Skyrim and how they were going to make it memorable above the latest Fallout games and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The main goal was to make a world that felt more responsive, both to players choices and to their actions period. Nesmith mentions how they wanted everything that they designed for Skyrim to force immersion for the player.
“Everything the player does, should provoke a reaction from the world around him.” – Nesmith
Next up was Ian Christy (Senoir Game Developer, Slant Six Games, Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City) who took the stage with high anticipation that he would explore some of the highs and lows of developing one of this year’s most anticipated multiplayer games. Instead, we were filled with a lot of stories about Christy’s earlier work on the Scarface game and leaving out Resident Evil almost entirely. The info was worthy, a lot of chatter about the kind of issues a developer can run into when working with a previously established ip. The clearest and most important part of the talk by Christy is that when handling an established ip you have to reach new fans without alienating ANY of the old fans.
“You MUST define your constraints, whether is be iconic characters, monsters or locales.” – Christy
The rest of the panels provoked little adherence to the outside world. Once again this event is for emerging game designers so it consists of a lot of behind the scenes “advice” for those in the audience thinking/about to get into the video game design universe. I pulled a few quotes that were wise and interesting.
“Designs made in a vacuum don’t always fit in the game” – Mark Acero, Senior Combat Designer, Radical Entertainment, Prototype 2
“The difference between storytelling and storyplaying; Make is personal, make it relevant, make it relate.” – Bruce Kelly, Game Designer, Eidos Montreal, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
“Make the gamer able feel special” – Patric Mondou, Gameloft Montreal, Modern Combat 3 iOS
The Sony Reps put on the "moves". No? Too dry?
Emmanuel Lusinchi (Assistant Lead Designer, BioWare Austin, Star Wars: The Old Republic) had a very great presentation about all the pieces to make a development cycle run smoother. He outline seven simple rules.
- TOOLS: Work harder on your tools. Optimize your tools. Identify and improve them. Better Tools > New Tools.
- Communication: Everything you say can and will be used against you. DO NOT over commit. Only walk when it’s done, tested and proved. Intervene issues fast. Leave no room for ambiguity.
- Irrationality: “Peer Validation” is necessary. Allow the player to make a “Lifestyle Investment”. Perception > Fact.
- Social: Enforce the importance of strangers. Make instances relate to real life. In game solutions to social boundaries include; Friendly hello buff, “1-click add”, give social points, bonus group quests.
- ANGER! Anger is a powerful motivator to not only the player, but the developer. As a dev, it provides reasons to change an impactful mistake.
- The Cool Stuff: Let the really cool, unexpected stuff happen. There is a fine line between a loose canon and a company hero.
- Hire Well: Single most important part of development. Interview seriously. Use the “Veto” rule. Test potential before and during an interview.
I hope that more people check out these rules, after all the guy did put in years of work with multiple teams making the years biggest game.
This year was another good year for the VFS Game Design Expo and it was over all to quickly. I really hope that in the coming years, VFS makes the event more obtainable for not only press, but for potential students. I hope the attendance goes up and production value rises a tad. I would love to see a bigger focus on Vancouver video game developers and less about displaying who paid the bills. We have so much great talent in this city and we should show it off.
To all those who are interested in getting into the video game industry, and don’t have the know-how, PLEASE come to this event next year. The VFS Game Design program is rated in the top of the world for a reason. With a brand new campus downtown and the cream of the crop when it comes to teachers, this program is a shining light in an otherwise dim vision of our post-secondary reality.
I look forward to next year.