Translator: Viviane P. Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
How are games made?
I work in the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab here at Michigan State,
and when I asked my coworkers this question,
they came up with a pretty good list.
They said, "Games are made with stories.
Games are made with passion.
Games are made with overflowing buckets of blood, sweat, and tears."
And they're not wrong, but what goes on behind all the smoke and mirrors?
This is the question I'll be answering today,
this process of game development.
So, games -
I didn't always want to go into game development.
It's one of those industries
that makes parents worried for their childrens' futures,
and it took me a while to convince my parents
that it was a legitimate way of putting food on the table.
So, on that note, how are games made?
How are these three things connected? Let's play a game here.
Women,
adults over the age of 35,
and America.
Got it?
These are all reasons why we should take games seriously.
So, just last year, the ESA, Entertainment Software Association,
found that 155 million Americans play video games.
That's close to half of the people in this country.
Also, this whole idea that games are only a pastime for boys is changing,
as we're seeing that 44% of the people who play games are women
and 74% of the people who play games are over the age of 18.
So there's a lot more people playing these things than there used to be.
Also, we're noting that games
are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year,
and on the global scale, it's in the billions of dollars,
so this is a legitimate industry,
and to dispel any misconceptions about who's making these things,
it's not just scruffy dudes hanging out in their parents' basements anymore.
Take Blizzard Entertainment, for example.
You might have heard of them -
they made that little game World of Warcraft?
So, in 1991, they had three employees.
That was it.
And then, as soon as 2012, now they have 4700 employees
in areas from programming to marketing to sound design.
So hopefully that tells you this is an industry that we should take seriously.
But those are all statistics,
so let me dive into my favorite part:
making games.
When we talk about game design here at Michigan State University,
we usually talk about three disciplines:
we have art, programming, and design.
A sort of game design trifecta, if you will.
And these are all so important that without them,
few games would be complete.
So, let's dive into art first.
Art is everything that you see on screen.
It's my personal favorite because I myself am an artist.
So, that can be the character designs,
the environments, 3D models, animations, menus, etc.
So, when you're making a 3D game, that'll include -
well, first you'll start with concept art in traditional or digital mediums,
and then you'll take that into a 3D modeling software.
So, say for example that we wanted to make a baby dragon.
We would start with a concept sketch like this,
and I don't happen to have a baby dragon running around with me here on stage,
so I'm going to be looking at various other animals,
in this case, a pug,
and then we'll bring that into Autodesk Maya -
that's my favorite 3D modeling software -
and start with something simple.
A cube only has six sides, so we can think about that pretty easily,
and then when we subdivide that, it'll now have 28 faces,
and we're starting to elongate the tail and the head,
just to give a good approximation for the body.
And those are some of the basic operations.
So, since you're all professionals now, we make the rest of the baby dragon.
(Laughter)
But it's still missing something:
It can't move, so we need to give it bones.
A series of spheres and rods will do the trick for that,
and by binding the bones to the skin, now we can animate it.
And finally we slap a texture on it and make it look beautiful,
so now our baby dragon's ready to fly into action.
This was all actually made for a student project last semester, Ember,
made with four other game design students from the program.
So, art is very important because it's everything that we see on screen,
so without the artists,
there wouldn't even be anything to look at.
Moving on to programming ...
This is code.
(Laughter)
It's not my favorite,
but I will say that these brave men and women come in
and make our game actually work.
So, that could be something as simple
as making the forward key move the player forward,
or it could be simulating the effects of physics on an arrow,
which is what this script does.
They use a variety of scripting languages
in order to communicate to the computer exactly what they want it to do,
and it looks complicated, it sounds complicated,
but this is what it'll look like in-game, which is actually pretty cool.
So, those arrows sticking out of that mushroom there
are only sticking out of that mushroom because of the code.
Also, they'll lose velocity based on the equations in that script.
So without programming, nothing would actually work,
and the characters, no matter how beautiful,
would just sort of stand there.
And finally, we have design.
Designers are like the glue of the team.
They bring together the artists and the programmers,
and without them,
the game might not even make sense -
nothing would fit together.
And they'll be working on the direction of the game;
they're in charge of story, level design, and game balance, for example.
So, this project was a success
because everyone was able to work together on the same art style
and complete one final product,
so art, programming, and design was needed for that.
Given art, programming, and design,
I'd like to share an example of that with you in action.
So, this past summer I went on a study abroad to Japan,
and I was truly inspired by the traditional architecture that I saw,
but I also noticed this theme,
this juxtaposition between the desire to preserve nature
and the desire to further infrastructure.
So I took that idea back to my game design team at Michigan State,
and we turned it into a game, Yozakura.
In Yozakura,
you play as the ninja protagonist, protector of nature,
as you try and defeat the evil samurai robots
who are trying to destroy the sacred cherry blossom.
So, the mechanic was diving forwards and backwards in space
instead of just walking side-by-side, left to right.
That was really difficult even for us to wrap our heads around,
so a lot of design and initial planning, as you can see, was key.
And we only had five weeks to do it - that's the other catch.
So we know we needed a simple, low-poly art style to make it happen,
and to give you an idea of what all that looks like,
I'll show you a level at different stages of development.
So first, programming.
Not much to look at, but it's beautiful, I promise; everything's working.
And then we add in the designs.
The designers will place blocks and rectangles
to show the artists where everything needs to go,
and then the art, once it's implemented,
looks like this,
and now we're starting to see some of that traditional Japanese architecture,
the bamboo trees, the mountains coming through,
but something's still missing, and it's the lighting.
So when we add the lighting - looks a lot better, if I do say so myself.
So, art, programming, design - all key parts of this process.
Games are a reflection of life.
Life inspires games, which inspires life.
So, if that's confusing, let me give you an example there.
Games were the first ones to put this idea in my head that martial arts are awesome,
which they are,
so in my freshman year of college, I joined MSU Karate Club,
but in joining karate and practicing karate,
I actually ended up improving my animations and games
because I had this better understanding of how the human body works,
and the games that I make now may someday inspire some other little Asian kid,
who might in turn practice karate.
So everything is connected.
(Laughter)
And if this were a role-playing game, if life were an RPG,
each of you would be heroes of your own epic story,
your own epic journey,
and I would just be an NPC, a non-player character,
who's up here spewing wisdom and giving you guys quests.
So - I recognize that most of you won't be game developers in the future,
hopefully a few of you after this talk,
but maybe not most,
so I would like to make this relevant to your own quests.
So we'll take a step back to art.
Art at its core is about perception.
See the world in a different light, have diverse life experiences,
because the ideas you'll learn will inform and enhance other parts of your life.
So, most people talk about traveling the world or studying abroad,
and if you have the opportunity to do that,
I highly encourage it - it's great.
But since most of you might not be waving around a plane ticket,
look around you.
Try something new close by,
whether it's joining ballroom dancing
or reading an autobiography
or trying Indian food for the first time,
because that plate of chicken curry will help you one of these days,
you just don't know it yet.
(Laughter)
Programming at its core is about iteration.
Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to get things right the first time.
You're allowed to make mistakes; that's okay.
As Henry Ford once said,
"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again,
this time more intelligently."
And design - design at its core is about connections.
Take in the world with a critical mind.
Whether it's going to class or reading an article,
listen to what's being said, understand it, and then challenge it.
Find out what your end goals are, because if you can find out that,
then you can orient yourself and orient the way you look at the world
in relation to that goal.
So, we have art, programming, and design,
and we have our answer.
Games are made by creating harmony
and making connections between seemingly unrelated things.
So, let's play a game.
How are you connected?
Thank you.
(Applause)