GDC 2008: Scattershots of Play - The Potential of Indie Games

This was the first session that I went to.  It was presented by Kelle Santiago of ThatGameCompany, Jon Mak of Queasy Games, and Pekko Koskinen.

ThatGameCompany developed a game called Flow for the Playstation Network.  Jon Mak developed Everyday Shooter also for PSN.

Both of these games are amazing.

Kellee started off the presentation by talking about how games are measured in terms of quality.  Specifically, she talked about intrinsic reward systems in games.  For Flow, the intrinsic rewards built into the game involves finding different levels and eating food.

However, games are currently assessed using linear measures.  For example, reviews for Katamari Damacy mention how you get a 10 hour game for $20.  Length of gameplay is the best example of a measure of extrinsic reward.

The quality of a book is not generally measured by number of pages.

Jon Mak talked about what he called Input/Output Theory.  Movies are not games or interactive because there is no input.  It’s not really a game if the player can’t own the output.

Jon used Guitar Hero as an example.  The gameplay itself kinda sucks.  There are five buttons and you hit a button when you are told to on screen.  But the magic of Guitar Hero is that you own the output.  The music coming out of the speakers feels like a huge achievement because there is a sense of ownership.

Gameplay isn’t just about the rules, it is also about the feedback.

Jon showed a very early prototype of Everyday Shooter.  All of the rules were in place in this prototype.  However, the visual feedback and most importantly the music were not there.  Everyday Shooter is not Everyday Shooter without the acoustic guitar.

Jon showed another experiment.  It was a Mario-type platforming game with only a dot.  Essentially a dot is the main character.  It can walk right and left and it can jump up and down.  Jon then added a spinning propeller to the dot.  The propeller spins when the dot moves left and right.  Then squishiness and a drop shadow was added to the dot.  The dot squished on itself when it jumped and landed on itself.  All of this very simple feedback makes the movement of a dot a whole lot more compelling.

Pekko talked about how games can be designed for any medium.  There was a whole lot of BLAH, BLAH, BLAH to say that gameplay really happens somewhere in your brain.  Think about what happens in your head when you read a great book.