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Are you the Protagonist? Or just an NPC?

[Alright, I've got these thoughts in my head, and I need a chance to ramble. I wanted to go over a few talking points, and as I read through this after the fact, I realize that I'm all over the place. Sorry if this is a little unfocused, but it's been driving me crazy thinking about it all, so I just wanted to get it onto the post. My blog, my show. Here we go! - K]

Back during my “film days,” I remember often writing down an adage that seemed rather catchy:

“Each of us is an extra in someone else’s movie, but we get to decide if it’s a speaking part.”

I considered myself rather profound. (My unbelievable modesty notwithstanding.)

But as I’ve gone into games, the medium in my head has shifted. I see games everywhere, and there are a lot of comparisons to be made.

I now see a more clear distinction between different types of “characters” in a game. There’s always the protagonist, whom the player controls. There are supporting characters, who are sometimes there to help, sometimes there to annoy, and sometimes there to even backstab you later on down the line. As you continue on through your quest, this group of yours grows as more and more people shift to your cause for differing reasons.

But throughout games you, as the player, are the motivating factor. Yours are the actions that change the world, save the land, and defeat the great evil threatening everyone. In games, you are the central, pivotal figure in everything that is happening.

That’s why I love this video – Gamers will get it. Even partners of gamers may get it. Others probably won’t, but it’s an awesome video, so I’m going to include it anyway.

Is it any wonder why games often feel so addicting? Who doesn’t see themselves as the center of their own world? Now I’m not talking about the center importance of the world, you understand, but we all contextualize the importance of something by how it affects us. Whether our reaction is to help, to hinder, to hug, to hold, to hurt, or to hassle, we react to the world in very personal ways, with our very personal selves.

We get to choose how our journey continues. We get to choose if we’re going to go out and start gaining XP and get better at skills to eventually take down the dragon, or we get to choose to spend our time just fishing at the pond.

The movie Gamer starring Gerard Butler has been a strange fascination of mine ever since I saw it. The movie has some really interesting things to say once you get deeper into it, especially about our own lives. I don’t want to go too deep, (mostly because others have already done so), but I wanted to discuss a few things that seemed interesting to me.

In the movie, players are controlling these death row convicts for two reasons: 1) It’s the biggest “game” in the world, and 2) If the “avatar” survives 30 rounds, he gets his freedom.

Gerard Butler’s character Kable has, at the beginning of the film, survived 27 matches, which is more than anyone ever has. This has made him, as well as the kid who “plays” him, rather famous. As well, he’s a man who was wrongly convicted, and so has the “not-really-being-a-killer” going for him, which doesn’t mean much in the gunfight, but plays out later in the film With that set-up, here’s the scene (Take note – This is definitely NSFW):

Despite the uber-violence throughout the scene, with all the bullet, explosions, death and destruction, (as well as a gamer-inspired “teabagging” around the :42 mark), I wanted to focus just on a couple of small things.

At the 1:18 mark, you see two people exchanging monopoly money back and forth. This is because, for minor offenders, there is an option for them to act as pre-programmed “NPCs” in the fight (Non-Player Characters). If they survive that round, they are set free. (Hint – They almost never do.)

What’s poignant to me about that little part, though, is the thought that these people are doing this on a gamble for freedom. It’s a risk/reward system to be sure, but at what cost? How often have we, in our lives, stood by while something happened, hoping for no one to notice us, even though the world around us us out-of-control? We see the insanity around us and yet we are still compelled just to keep our heads down, and exchange little pieces of paper like they’re worth something.

What’s most telling to me, though, is when the guy flinches as blood splatters his face, and yet he keeps right on going. He reacts, but doesn’t act, if that makes sense. Do we?

(There is, of course, SO much more to consider in those little situations, but that’s beyond my scope right now.)

At around 1:55, Kable hears glass as it’s stepped on behind him, and he whispers “Turn me around.” Now, in the film, Kable can’t actually talk to the player, so the whisper is more of a plea, but do we do this in our own lives? We get that nagging feeling to “turn around,” to do something, and then we don’t? Perhaps we only write a Facebook post about it. (Or, we write a blog post about it – I’m not above the irony.)

Who is controlling you?

Think back about your own life as a game. In most games, the player controls the main protagonist. As I said before, this individual is the driving force of the game, the mover, the shaker. Nothing occurs except where this person roams, and nothing changes except what this person decides and is able to bring into being. Are you that protagonist in your own life? Or are you simply an NPC, doing only that which you’ve been “programmed” to do – Saying what you’re “supposed” to say, going where you’re “supposed” to go, and being who you’re “supposed” to be?

Are you just an avatar in someone else’s game? Or are you really in control of your own life? Are you a mover and a shaker? Or are you just going along a pre-determined path?

One of the creepiest scenes in Gamer (among several) is a scene starring one of my favorite actors, Terry Crews:

What strikes me here is a correlation between what “freedom” is believed to be, and what “freedom” really is. In this scene, Kable is still scheduled to play another game. In that game, he’s not in control – someone else is dictating his actions. But the killer? The person who is really out to get him? He doesn’t follow the rules. He doesn’t care about the laws. To him – One who already disregards the rules, more rules will not affect him, and he knows it.

In a world where each person is absolutely controlled, fenced, and convinced to do things in a specific way, is the free man really just the one who chooses not to follow the rules anymore? What does it say about a society when the homicidal killer is the one who seems the most “free” in it? Of course, he’s still in the game, and he’s still in the system, but he has no question – when he chooses to move his hand, it’s him who is in control of that decision.

Anyway – Just weird thoughts. Food for thought, I guess, or perhaps just nonsensical ramblings. I guess there’s just one question that it call comes down to, that is really the only thing I wanted to ask all along – In this game of life, as we build up our inventory, gain XP, and strive to “win the game,” there’s just one thing that you need to ask yourself:

Are you the Protagonist? Or Are you an NPC?

GDC – Thoughts and Takeaways

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[NOTE: So, I was a little sick last week - Not sure what happened, but GDC really wiped me out. (I blame the lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, and over-hyped days and nights of being busy for 28 hours per day.) So, here's my thoughts and notes and whatnot from that experience now that I've drank a few dozen gallons of orange juice and am pretty much out of that funk. So, enjoy! - K]

Ah, Game Developers Conference, we meet again. Last year, you had me intimidated. I was taken in by all your sights, your sounds, your flashing lights. But this year… This year I went in prepared. I walked in with resumes ready, confidence in my skills, and a hunger in my heart. I knew what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it, and how I wanted to approach things.

…And then I got there, and things were a little different than I expected.

Interestingly enough, GDC is not the same experience every year. While there are certain standbys, I’m sure, it’s just that the video game industry moves so fast that a year is a really long time. Trends change, companies open and close. Sometimes that dev that you were sure you were ready to talk to isn’t hiring this round. Sometimes the ones that you didn’t think you had a chance at are surprisingly helpful. There’s just a ton of things involved with GDC, and to encapsulate it all in a single post here would be frankly impossible. So instead, let me go through some of my highlights.

The Game Narrative Summit

Anyone who reads through my blog at any regular basis knows that I enjoy the study of narratives. I love to talk about tales, analyzing the meanings of things, constructing and deconstructing the elements of stories in order to figure things out. Now, while I’ve spent lots of time going into things like the Hero’s Journey, the 8-Sequence Structure, and multiple other things, applying that kind of structure understanding to video games has proven a more intricate task than I’d originally assumed.

While of course, you never exactly become perfectly knowledgeable in everything, but figuring out that line between player agency and crafting a proper narrative is a task that I’ve attempted a few times, but am definitely not an expert in. I’d love to sit down with people like Ken Levine, (Bioshock) or Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman (The Walking Dead) just to pick their brains about this kind of thing and how I could apply those kinds of things in my current development challenges.

The next best thing was the Game Narrative Summit.

Here is two days worth of sessions, with material, lectures, post-mortems, and a ton of information, all centered around video game narrative. I was extremely pleased to learn that they’d be transferring this amazing series from GDC Online in Austin to San Francisco. Learning in-depth about the narratives behind AAA and indie games covered all kinds of different aspects. (You can read through my play-by-play on my Twitter feed under the #gdc hashtag.)

Some of the most interesting sessions bear mentioning.

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Walt WilliamsWe Are Not Heroes: Contextualizing Violence Through NarrativeUnderstanding the progression of the character “Walker” in this game was amazing. The little things that I did notice throughout the game were explained in a logical manner, including decisions that helped to compound the guilt of the player without letting him free of it. Spec Ops: The Line was a game that’s really stuck with me from last year, and it was great to hear the thoughts that went into the decisions in the story. (Especially compared to the rather negative response to the later Far Cry 3 talk that was given just about an hour later.)

Georg Backer, Creating Immersive Narrative Games Without Big Budgets or Resources – I’m a little ashamed that I didn’t really know who Georg was before this talk, but I was amazingly impressed with the examples he brought to the table. He discussed Portal’s companion cube, Thomas Was AloneFTL – Faster Than Light, and System Shock 2, explaining rather inexpensive ways to create empathy within the game for your avatar, for NPCs, and even for little low-poly blocks on the screen, without the, for example, prohibitively expensive technology touted by AAA rockstars like David Cage. It was such an excellent discussion, and really opened my eyes about the simple decisions to be made in game narrative development.

Warren Spector, Narrative in Games – Role, Forms, Problems, and Potential – The best way to sum up Warren’s comments would be to just talk about how “We [the video game industry] suck at story structure.” It’s interesting to notice that despite all of our attempts to make a more “realistic” game, all we’ve done is make it easier to shoot someone than to talk to them. We need a new structure that isn’t based on traditional film and novel storytelling. This actually leads into the last one that I want to talk about:

Jesse Schell, The Future of Storytelling: How Medium Shapes StoryJesse’s talk was the closer of the whole thing, as he talked about the verbs that we use in games (jump, shoot, run, punch, etc.) and how our conversations and actual interactions with games haven’t really evolved since practically the very beginning. (I mean, despite all the graphics and voice acting, what are the core differences between the conversation trees in Mass Effect 3 vs Shadowrun? And the idea of consistent game avatars that you actually have a friendship with? Blew my mind.

I’ll be honest – I basically planted myself in the Narrative Summit for two days straight and just let it all wash over me. I’m really glad I did, because there was just so much interesting material, and these are the parts of games that I really find myself drawn to. I’m really looking forward to it again next year, and may go a little more in-depth on my thoughts with them in some future posts.

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The Expo Floor and The Career Pavilion

Last year, GDC’s Expo floor was separate from the Career Pavilion, but this year, they were basically all one big mash of booths, albeit the Career Pavilion was on the far right. Honestly, though, I thought this was a great choice. I spent most of my Wednesday and Thursday in the Pavilion, mostly because I’m unabashedly looking for a job in light of my graduation in the next few weeks. (Hint, hint!)

Strangely, there seemed to be a lot less companies there than last year, including some of the big hitters like Activision and EA, who had rather extravagant booths last year. The only thing that I could think of was that these companies are so large they likely get hundreds of applications every year. (Including a few dozen of my own in the past few months.) Why pay so much for floorspace when you are already getting so many leads?

Regardless, I talked with a whole lot of different people, from small mobile devs to big names like Riot and Microsoft. The most helpful conversations, though, were with the devs at Sony Playstation, who were quite sincere in their conversations. If I had to judge a company based on the interactions at the booths, I’d say that the people at Riot genuinely love to work there, but aren’t exactly looking for “new” devs. Microsoft, it seems, didn’t even really want to talk, but Playstation – They were pretty awesome. It may still be a bit of a pipe dream, but I felt at least that the people there were genuine.

I also had the opportunity to attend one of the Valve Q&A sessions, which left me with some rather interesting ideas. They really don’t have a lot of need for producers, it seems, but I left with a lot of food for thought.

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The Parties

Throughout the week, there were all kinds of parties. Everything from the Newbie Networking one to the Black Hat “Notch” Party. I went quite a few of the events, and while I generally had a good time, there were a few things that bothered me.

I was surprised, especially, just by the sheer lack of actual “activities” at most of these gatherings. I mean, you have a whole bunch of game developers together, and the most creative things that we can do are to stand around inside of  a nightclub with loud music shouting at each other while slinging back open-bar cocktails? My friends and I talked about this quite a bit, especially in light of designers like Jane McGonigal talking about how playing games with others helps to build relationships.

(The Game Narrative “Write Club” was pretty great. It was a little loud in the bar, but the stuff I could hear was absolutely hilarious.)

I was really impressed with the Ouya party, though. They had food, an open bar, and they had actual games there. Now, of course, GDC isn’t some big arcade, but those little consoles sure got a workout as we were hanging around them, competing with one another. There was something to do, and that fostered even more discussion. It got me thinking about ideas for more involving GDC party possibilities.

Why not a bowling competition? A game jam? A night of board games? A gaming tourney? There are plenty of ways that a group of devs could “let off some steam” without every single night being a night on the town. I completely understand that people who eat/sleep/breathe games may want to just do something else, but especially for people who actually want to network, there are better ways to go about it, in my opinion.

Still, I did get to talk with a whole lot of really interesting people, which was great.

Summary

The Game Developers Conference… It’s such an interesting event, with an amazingly revealing peek into the wider industry and the pulse of where we’re headed. Sure, I don’t know exactly where I’m going to fit in all of this quite yet – I have talents for certain things, skills in others, and aspirations for even more. I’m working to prove myself, and while I know I’m not exactly a rockstar (yet!), I feel like I’m walking in the right direction.

I loved being there this year, and I’m looking forward to the next!

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My Introduction to the League

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So, today I finished up my last application to Riot Games, and one of the questions asked about my experience with League of Legends. I’m really not sure if it was too long, or not long enough, but this is the answer I gave, and it seemed like a story that I should put up on my blog. Enjoy!

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I came upon League of Legends when a couple friends of mine in my grad school program introduced me to it a year and a half ago. Because it was free, and I’m always looking for a new gaming experience, I said “Sure!”

I hopped into a game, and after a brief tutorial, my friends had me join their group and we went into a game. Now, I’d never really played a lot of DotA, but I was familiar with RTS games in general, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

After looking over the free characters of the week, I chose a tough-looking chap in yellow-and-blue armor named Garen Crownguard. He was stoic, heroic, and (I figured), just my style with a sword taller than he was.

We started up the match, I made my way to the top lane…

…And I was immediately smashed to the dust, over and over again.

It was a bit of a sobering experience, as I slowly improved a little, but I was resistant to the fact that I couldn’t really figure out the items system right off the bat. I wasn’t sure what went where, and I didn’t even KNOW there were guides out there until much later, so I was really just choosing things in a reactionary sense, looking to combat whatever I happened to be fighting against.

Though I had some fun at the first, and I even picked up the Commando skin for Garen, I moved away from the game for a few months, working on other projects and a little turned off by my perceived complexity of the game.

However, I still took the time to keep going over the different characters’ lore. I read through a lot of the “Journal of Justice” articles, learning about some of the different cities, and the characters of the game interacting in the world of Runeterra. I read through character profiles, and tried to figure out how the kits fit together.

I was fascinated by the world of League, but just couldn’t break that barrier that I’d formed from my beginning experience.

It wasn’t until after speaking with people at GDC in 2012, and even talking to those at the Riot Booth, that I realized that I needed to give the game a second chance. Everyone seemed to be playing this, and so, with friends of mine there in the grad school studio, we started playing the game.

I gravitated towards ranged characters, trying out Ashe and Sivir, but eventually settling on Caitlyn as a main. My only problem with her, though, was that she was far too squishy for me. I could contribute from range, and I could pick off that final fleeing character, but I always wanted to be a little more in the fight.

When I came across Graves, I knew I’d found a more appropriate ADC. The manly man with the shotgun became my reckoning force in the bottom lane, and I generally do alright.

The games continued as my friends and I leveled up a little at a time, often meaning many, many solo games as I rushed towards 30. I generally stuck with ranged characters, though I sometimes tried out tanks, and even spent some time failing at jungling over and over again.

It wasn’t until that following summer, almost ten months after I’d started playing League in the first place, that I noticed I still had Garen as a character, and I still had that Commando skin that I’d purchased so long ago.

On a whim, I tried him out, finding some suggestions for a “Spin-to-Crit” build on Mobifire. In that game, I decimated the competition. Sure it was a fluke, I tried it again, and won again. Suddenly I realized that not only was I better at the game, but with Garen as my character, I was playing at my best.

That first instinct of a stoic warrior who charged into the fray was completely right, and now that I understood the game, and how to play, how to juke, how to dodge, how to use brush and flash effectively… I suddenly just had everything “click” for me.

Garen Crownguard went from my forgotten first champ to my dominant main.

As I play now, still mostly with friends of mine, and even occasionally ranked, I feel very comfortable playing. Those jitters are gone, and I know what I’m doing, even if I don’t always know the character that I’m playing.

Recently, I’ve been running through games with characters that I own that I’ve never actually tried out. (During the $100 extra RP sale, I bought quite a few characters that have just been sitting unused on my account.)

Really, the more that I learn about this game and its world, the more excited I am about the opportunity to work and create within it. Thanks for giving me the chance to apply!

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Confessions of a GameDev Podcast

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For the past few months, I’ve been a regular on the “Confessions of a GameDev” Podcast, with Spencer Buchanan and Trent Baird, along with various special guests. How I ended up involved was pretty funny:

Spencer and Trent had originally been just meeting once a week to go over some game dev ideas, and settled on every Wednesday night. One night, I happened to be in the MGS North Lab, and Spencer was trying to get my attention, but I was deep in the middle of something. (Though I’m not completely sure, I would venture that it was probably a game of League of Legends.) About fifteen minutes later, when I was finished, I walked over and burst into the sound booth, unaware that the two were in the middle of a podcast.

The next week, there was a little more notice, so I hopped into the podcast about halfway through, and the rest, as they say, is history.

We have a podcast about every week, and they’re usually posted up on Thursdays. (This week, we did the podcast on Thursday night, so we didn’t get it up until today.)

If you’re looking for a fun, unfocused, rambunctious discussion about video games, pop culture, and the zany nature of learning game development, you should give us a listen.

Here’s the Link to Episode 17.

Enjoy!

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I am the Alien Collaborator! – Risk: Legacy Adventures

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(Expect some Risk: Legacy spoilers in this one. I’ll probably be making a review later about the game itself, but for now, if you don’t know Legacy, you probably won’t appreciate the impact here. But I highly recommend the game. It’s pretty awesome.)

Risk has been one of those games that, for a long time, I had very little love for. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to love it. I remember convincing roommates in Hong Kong to go along with me for a few sessions of Risk 2210, pleading with them to go along with it. (People can just be adverse to games, sometimes, so this often became a chore.)

But even with all the new little bells and whistles, the commanders and different strategies, the games still always seemed to come down to a heavy amount of luck, with some strategy mixed in. The roll of the dice is what made the game go, and unfortunately, that randomness could be fatal to your well-prepared scheme. The number of times where I watched a small, insignificant force push through by sheer luck… It made for some rather difficult losses.

Risk and I always seemed to have a love/hate relationship.

So, when I heard about Legacy, my thoughts were quite excited, while a little nervous at the same time. I mean, the core point of the game is to not only play, but to actively change the map for future games. What this meant was that a choice that won you game two could have terrible consequences for you in game six.

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The game utilizes factions, and you choose yours at the beginning of a session. In the first game, you choose abilities, which grant you strengths unique to your faction, but not unique to you. Then, after that choice is made, you throw the other ones away.

One of the producers whom I was playing with nearly fainted.

In Legacy, the board gets scarred, you write down everything from who won, to who held on, to who was eliminated, and all these different choices, stats, and other things that you keep track of all combine to affect choices down the road.

(I’d love to go into more detail on the more minute things of the game, and I might later, in another post, but for now, I just wanted to be super excited about tonight’s match.)

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You see, tonight, a good friend of mine decided that she wanted to act the troll. Though I’d already lost the previous game, It was decided that I was supposed to be bottle-necked, blocked into a very narrow strip of territories encompassing Iceland, Greenland, and Great Britain. You see, in Legacy, the goal of the game is not to simply take over the map, but instead the mission is to gain four “stars,” which are granted for various acts, the quickest of which is to take enemy headquarters.

Instead of populating the entire map from the beginning, players choose a starting territory and work outwards, grabbing unclaimed lands and expanding their population. The rules stipulate that two armies cannot start adjacent to one another, and so I was forced from my previously-established major city of Snowhawk, Iceland, and instead began in Greenland. My first act was to leap to Iceland, of course, but that immediately blocked expansion into North America.

The rest of the game was spent claiming single territories, grabbing opportune Territory Cards in the hope of a grand comeback late in the game.

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And my, how grand it was.

Upon turning in ten resource markers, I was granted thirty troops, but the act also allowed us to open one of the game’s “unlockables” – small packets of sealed items that acted as game changers – and I grinned as I unsealed the box:

OPEN WHEN SOMEONE IS ABOUT TO PLACE 30+ TROOPS ON THE BOARD AND HAS A MISSILE.

Suddenly I was crowned the Alien Collaborator, as troops emerged from the box. A new Alien Island was established, connecting Greenland and Argentina (I just know THAT is going to bite me in the ass later!), and ten extra alien troops joined my previous thirty-three as they began their great march across the map.

It was an epic march, as Khan Industries and their Alien buddies crushed territory after territory, all in a rush to the three other headquarters. In a single turn, I went from having almost nothing to winning the entire game, and that feeling of pride began to rise as I just laughed, trying to be as non-malicious as possible.

What began as a game where I was stuck, searching but finding no way out, became a massive turnaround. Though it could have just as quickly gone in another direction, it just so happened that my personal patience paid off.

In Legacy, the game can change at any moment. It’s a game where choices matter, and not only that but are permanent, and that’s such a unique trait in gaming itself, not just in Risk.

Though I ended tonight on a win, tomorrow’s game may end with my crushing and definitive defeat. That’s what makes the game so interesting.

It was a fun night, and it made for some amazing memories, and unique perspectives.

Plus, it was a whole lot of fun.

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