BAF 2012 - Day Two

Christine Phelan of Valve

Day two started off with another potentially brilliant talk - and unlike Bethesda the previous day, Christine Phelan didn't disappoint us and actually gave us a helpful and honest talk about her time in the games industry. Phelan has worked with Valve for the past two years and works as an animator. However it has been quite a struggle for her to achieve her current job, as originally she lived in Georgia, miles away from the games industry hot spot San Francisco. She also admitted that her starting work was awful and she was lucky to get given any work at all. However she did get work and started working at Lucas Arts where she learnt a few things about the games industry:

• Don't be an asshole to people - Phelan was surprised by how rude some of her fellow animators were which hindered them come promotion time
• Hierarchy - Lucas Arts, like many game developers, was a hierarchy with one person making the majority of the decisions and everyone else having to do as they said and if you want to keep your job you need to get used to it
• Everything you know is probably wrong and you will need to re-learn everything you thought you knew
• Gameplay is more important than beauty for many game developers and animation will often take a back seat to game play
• Long hours and lay offs - lots of people get fired or only temporarily hired and the days can be very long

Phelan told us a story with video of one of her first major animations for a Star Wars game for Lucas Arts which was an idea for how the game should play. She showed us the rough animation and it looked really fun and interesting with different camera angles and realistic movement. She then showed us how the game actually played and it was much worse looking with lifeless animation and predictable movements. She told us how devastated she was that the game had cut the more complex animations to save the company money and speed the production of the game up. This is when she realised that she didn't want to work for Lucas Arts anymore so instead she joined Double Fine, an indie games company responsible for creating Costume Quest, Amnesia Fortnight and Brutal Legend.

Although Phelan enjoyed her time at Double Fine she noticed that the company was being overly ambitious, especially with one of the games she helped to animate, Brutal Legend. Although the original game was released to mixed reviews, she admitted that the animation wasn't spot on and the game had suffered due to poor time and money management. Double Fine had given her a chance to be more creative with her work as the company wasn't a hierarchy and left her to her own devices, however this also turned out to be a negative as the company proved to be too unstable and stressful, sometimes lacking direction and authority. She felt she needed to move on  and through a friend managed to get a job at Valve.

Valve is another of my favourite companies, releasing another all time favourite game of mine, Left 4 Dead/ Left 4 Dead 2. Apparently Valve is run with an organic structure in mind, with no management producers and everyone helping out where they want to, effectively making you your own boss and letting you try your hand at everything. Phelan also praised how patient Valve was when teaching her how to use new equipment as apparently the company really cares about their employees. If they see talent in you they see you as a long term investment and make sure you have everything you need to get the best work from you.

This talk was actually very helpful for me as it made me think about where i would want to work. Valve sounds almost too good to be true and seems like an ideal place to work as they are patient with their employees and everyone gets to try their hand at everything which really appeals to me. The other two companies seemed a lot more stressful and if i were to work in a stressful environment i know i wouldn't be able to reach my potential.

Botanicular - Amanita Games

In this talk Amanita showed off their new game 'Botanicular' with a demo. Botanicular is a puzzle game with a simplistic art style and neutral colour palette set in a tree that's trying to survive an invasion from soot like creatures. The playable characters in the game are common objects found in or around the tree and are highly imaginative and diverse, including a seed, a twig, some fungus and a feather, each with unique abilities that help the team navigate around the tree and stop the invading soot creatures.

The game has taken approximately three years to make and includes over one-hundred and fifty different screens, which show different parts of the tree. One-hundred and fifty different music scores would have been too expensive and time consuming to produce, so instead Botanicular features natural noises like wind, rain and creaking branches. This was to provide an interactive and immersible experience for the player.

Although Botanicular looks very pretty and highly imaginative, i wouldn't personally buy it because I'm terrible at puzzle games but i would definitely recommend it to those interested in puzzle games who are looking for an unusual experience. This game really inspired me and made me look at every day objects differently, even the most mundane items could make potentially brilliant characters.

The Future of the Lego Series - David from Traveller's Tales

Unfortunately i didn't manage to write down our speaker's full name and only caught his first name David so apologies in advance. David talked to us about the future of the Lego series of games and how the series was taking a big step by introducing voices to the games.

Previously Lego games had been silent, relying on animation to convey story and emotions but the developers thought that including voices was a natural and progressive step. Apparently whilst making the Star Wars games it was hard to find suitable scenes and films had to be picked apart to find scenes shorter than forty-five seconds that could be simplified to let the player understand what was happening in a scene without using voice - a process which was grueling and often had rather confusing outcomes. From experience i remember not understanding some of the scenes in Lego Star Wars as a kid as they there were only limited facial expressions and too many jokes were put into the cut scenes. Although these jokes were funny, they could often be confusing and misleading and get in the way of the story.

David went on to say that adding voices to the games proved to be a massive help in conveying the story, and let them add jokes into the game through animation whilst the characters talk over it, providing a much less confusing experience. Lego Batman was the first game to include voice acting and provided a better understanding and room for character relationships.

The second Lego game to include voice acting was Lego Lord of the Rings - which instead of featuring the cast of the films doing lines for the game, featured the actual audio from the film, which meant there was much less room to be silly. Instead Traveller's Tales aimed to include some humour but focus on the audio, creating cut scenes you wouldn't want to skip. Scenes from the films were isolated and edited to create the best conversations and most important scenes that wouldn't stop the player playing for too long but also explained what was happening in the film.

This talk was quite insightful and interesting as I've been a fan of the Lego series of games for years, along with liking The Lord of the Rings. It was great to hear the reasoning behind the series' change in direction and hear how the games were naturally progressing. I think it would be great if Traveller's Tales were able to make a Hunger Games or Game of Thrones Lego game. But perhaps that will always just be wishful thinking.

Neil Thompson of Bioware

Bioware is another of my favourite companies, making the amazing Mass Effect trilogy. However, this was another talk that actually had nothing to do with the company following in the Bethesda talk's footsteps. This talk was given by gaming industry veteran Neil Thompson who started working with games in 1987. Apparently his family and friends thought the job was a waste of time back then and many of them still think it is now. However, Thompson believes that games are an art form and that computers are just an expensive brush - which is actually a pretty cool thing to say if you can get over how pretentious it sounds.

Thompson left school as an illustrator and was unable to find any work in the industry and instead worked in a carpet shop for a few years. Luckily though the carpet shop owner's son introduced him to a games company called Lothlorien. His skills were eventually noticed at the company after working on a game called 'Never Mind'.  After this he joined the company Zsygnosis and worked on a game called Microcosm which was a futuristic racer. Although this game wasn't very popular, the idea of Wipeout stemmed from it.

Wipeout is actually the first game name i recognise out of Thompson's titles and i actually really enjoyed the game as a kid. It features very streamline and futuristic looking hovering vehicles that race and battle one another to wina race. Wipeout proved hugely popular and brought a lot of attention to Thompson and his team and they went on to create a company called Curly Monsters. However they failed to achieve the same success they had with Wipeout and after a few failed games, including a very generic racing game for Microsoft that got butchered by Microsofts' own team, Thompson returned to Zsygnosis where he worked on another Wipeout game before falling out with the developer and joining Bizarre Creations, an off shoot of Activision.

Here he made the racing game with a twist 'Blur', a game released to mixed reviews. Although the concept was interesting and the mechanics highly imaginative, the game didn't manage to impress enough people or get very much attention and is now considered an underrated game by many gamers. When Activision closed Bizarre Creations, Thompson joined Bioware, which is when he stopped talking about his career and decided to give us some key points that are crucial for getting into the industry.

• Learn your skill and learn it well
• Find a skill set that is useful and diverse
• Critique your work at industry level with their standards
• Cultivate an inspirational palette and try new things
• Find motivation - many people fail here and it is the most important step to securing a job

This talk was very useful to me as the last point about finding motivation is one of my biggest problems. Although i have a lot of ideas it is always hard trying to get them down on paper and actually starting a project can be very daunting for me, making me put it off and not want to try sometimes. Hopefully this will make me more motivated - although considering that this blog post has been done in April and BAF was in November things aren't looking too good :P