Brick #3: What is Game Development?

This is not a simple nor a complex question. Everyone has been thinking to themselves "I will become a game developer!" up to this point, but to make things simple let's see the meaning here:

Game Developer = Someone who develops games...! That's about it! It's someone doing something little in the game industry but when combined with stuff everybody else does it's becoming huge.

Everyone can support a game with their work whatever that may be. So, in general game development is the act of developing a game from plain nothing to a fully playable experience! Though, you may be wondering:

"Soooo, I'm a game developer, and i contribute to making the game. Woohooo! Alright! But what exactly do i do?" 

The answer to this needs some thought. We have to see the ways in which someone can contribute. I will NOT cover all the roles in the game development industry here, but i will try and share my lights.

Disclaimer: I am NOT currently working in any way in the game indrustry, thus the information i will provide is purely based on my research and only that!

Career paths in the industry:

• Game Design
• Asset Creation
• Programming
• Quality Assurance

These 4 are the core of game development. Of course, there are higher roles, such as Production, Management and Sales..!

All these are paths in the industry, and of course, can be broken down to bits! For Example you can't apply for a plain "Programming" job. You gotta chose if you are going to be a Game Engine Programmer or a Graphics Programmer.

Let's see more carefully:

Game Design:

Possible Roles:

• Game Designer
• Script Writer
• Map Builder
• Storyboard Artist
• GUI Designer
• Object Planner
• Level Designer

The roles in design are by no means need to be confused with art. Design is creating a game from an idea. It's all about creating a world, its' set of rules, the maths behind it, the background of a character, the story of the game, the plot, the twists, the surprises, the emotional triggers, the educational value. Basically it involves creating a parallel universe in your head and applying it somewhere else. A Game designer is no entry-level job as it requires knowledge of the industry, huge creativity, imagination and storytelling skills. You are practically a God, or in simpler terms, just like a director in a movie.

Asset Creation:

Possible Roles:

Can be broken down to 2 subcategories:

Graphical Assets

• Illustrator
• Graphic Designer
• Artist
• Animator
• 3D modeller
• Environment / Level Artist
• Concept Artist
• Texture Artist
• Pixel Artist
• Spritesheet Animator

Sound Assets

• Musician
• Audio Engineer
• Composer
• SFX Designer

And here comes the asset creation team, responsible of creating all the kinds of graphical sounds or assets. They will create all the 2D / 3D graphics for the game, either it is a spritesheet animation of a character through Pixel Art, or a 3D Model rigged in Maya, and Animated by another artist. They integrate the ideas of a game designer and bring them to life. Musicians are also needed in this part, as they compose the scores and official OST of the game, as well as sfx designers need to create all the sound effects for the game such as swords bashing or doors cracking..!

Programming:

Possible Roles:

• Software Engineering
• A.I. Programmer
• Middleware Programmer
• Tools Programmer
• Game Engine Programmer
• Graphics Programmer
• Gameplay Programmer
• Action Programmer
• Platform Programmer
• Database Designer
• Systems Analyst
• Server Architect
• Sockets Programmer
• Physics Programmer
• Sounds Programmer

As you can see there is a ton of jobs for a programmer in the game industry. Their job is to take the ideas of the game designer, meaning the assets of the artists and through lines of code put it all together to create the needed experience of gameplay. Pathfinding, Artificial Intelligence, Colissions, Dialogs, Battle Systems, Maps, Explorations, Quests, everything is being created by them. A Game Engine is their friend, while a custom game engine is their best friend!

Quality Assurance:

Possible Roles:

• Localisation Tester
• QA Technician
• QA Tester
• Alpha Testers (Similar to Beta Testers, though inside the company)

Testers are one of the most entry-level jobs in the industry as most can begin their career in QA. Their responsibility is to test our games written by the programmers and find out bugs, provide feedback to them, in order to make it run correctly. This involves playing levels a lot, going for 100% clearing of the game, in order to find all the possible errors it may have. There can also be bugs in design where an idea may not fit correctly with another concept of the game so that would require redesign, and refactoring in code. Testers need to be game nerds in order to fill out the gaps either in code, story or gameplay in the fastest time possible.

And that sums up the roles of a game developer. All of the above contribute to making a game, and thus are classified as game developers !!! So, game development in general is the contribution of programmers, testers, designers and artists to develop a game. 

You said you were a game developer. What is your path now?

Brick #2: What are the game types?

Games are an exhausting thing after all! They are so many things together! So let's build some games in my computer together! You may think that games = video games. That's a wrong assumption my friend. You see games have many types and can be found in many places and situations.

Some things that need to be clarified before we continue. When we refer to Game Bits, we refer to those small physical parts of a game set that are used in the game. ie Cards are Game Bits of Card Games, Pawns are Game Bits of a Chess Game, so on and so forth.

There are Video Games, that are actually a digital / virtual representation of a real game or just a mere simulation in a virtual life, creating specifically in a computer and are distributed to many platforms, such as the PlayStation , XBox , Wii which are consoles, iPhones, Android, and Windows Phones, considered a mobile game, then there are the classic PC games, all considered video games, ranging from the Atari to MegaDrive, NES , SNES to the high end PS3 , or X360 with Kinect. These are just one type of games.
Also, don't forget the handheld version of these games, you may consider me a console guy if i don't refer to these as well: GameBoy , Nintendo DS , Sony PSP, all belong to the Video Game game type.

There are also Card Games, mostly a deck of physical cards, some company, drinks and let the games commence! You know, games like Poker , Blackjack and UNO are all considered Card games. They can stand on their feet alone as a type of game.

Another variation of a game would be a Playground Game. The imagination and creativity in these games are great! Born from pure childrens' minds and hearts, these games are surprisingly fun and you can see here, that children are game designers at heart! Games like these are played in playgrounds of course, on the street, at school, at home, practically everywhere and most don't require any physical tools to play with!
Classic examples are Red Hands, Hide and Seek, and Tag!

There is more to it, the well know to all, Board Games! Such games require Game Bits on the table, a couple of friends and others have mini avatars, tokens, gems, cards, all kinds of crazy stuff going on!
The age range is wide. You can find such games for 3 year old children as well as 100 year old... ladies and gentlemen! Some examples of a board game you say? Try looking around your room, if you still can't find any, Trivia Pursuit, Monopoly, even Chess, can be considered a board game!

An honourable mention right after Board Games would be Pen'n'Paper Games! Mostly fans of the RPG genre will recognise such games immidiately, such as "Dungeons and Dragons", "World of Darkness" and many many more! All you need is imagination, paper, pen and you can practically live the most epic adventures ever!

Similar to playground games, there are also Party Games. Such games can be ultimately games played by a lot of people together and often don't require any game bits. Simply enough, these games can be "Truth or Dare", "Spin the bottle", "Slap the guy to your right", and of course "Beer Pong"..!

Are we forgetting anything? Why of course, there is a HUUUUGE category of games left untouched until now, try and guess people! Sports! They are a category standing on their own! To support this consider something that takes place every 4 years! That's right! The Olympic Games! Notice the "Games" part? It just clarifies that sports are a type of game all by themselves! Teams, Scoring, Rules, Game Bits! You don't need examples of that now do you? ;)

How many types did we actually cover?

1. Video Games (Console, PC and handheld)
2. Card Games
3. Playground Games
4. Board Games
5. Pen'n'Paper Games
6. Party Games
7. Sports Games

Can you think of more types? As said before, games are no science, they are ART. You are considered an artist if you plan on creating games. Rest your brain for now, and let's see more bricks tomorrow.

Brick #1: What is a game?

So, you are a game developer, but where are you supposed to start? Let's begin the destruction of the wall by taking out the first brick: " What is a game? "

Let's try to find a common term of what a game is... Hmmm...

"We could say that a game is practically an experience you go through willingfully, in order to have fun, by solving a series of problems, alone or with teamates/enemies in order to achieve a specific goal by utilizing creativity or not, under a specific set of rules that can either speed up or slow down your progress by triggering you emotionally and can be also classified as a form of passive training."

Would that suffice? Maybe not, since, really, games are not rocket science, they are rather a kind of art. Trying to interpret this we can get some facts straight:

"a game is practically an experience" : Intrestingly put, a game is trying to grab the essense of memories or experiences from real-life and try to make you go through the very same. It's an experience we are trying to create here. And that comes through memories, dreams, nightmares, important life events.

"you go through willingfully" : Meaning freedom. You are not forced to play a game! Else you can't see that as a game! It would be rather a job, or something that you do to get paid whatsoever! When you do it without having any second thoughts or just because someone else wanted you to, you are NOT having fun and thus, not feeling the experience of a game.

"in order to have fun" : Practically, what the last paragraph said. You play games in order to have fun! But then again, children have fun without playing games, rather with their toys. But toys are objects, they are something you can have fun WITH, and have no rules or whatsoever. Fun is a very important fact when playing games, and it has a different meaning than pleasure...

"by solving a series of problems" : We humans like solving problems. We take pleasure in solving difficult problems, with either creative thinking or with our problem-solving skills. Notice the use of the word "pleasure" now? Things are probably starting to get clearer here. As intellectual creatures as we are, we are fascinated by solving problems that tend to trouble our thoughts from time to time.

"alone or with teamates/enemies" : Ah, so there are others in the "battlefield" with us as well! This can fairly well introduce us to the aspect of multi-player gaming. There are games that can be played solo, by solving clues that the game gives us, or there are games that force us to fit in a team where teamwork and co-operation are required in order to "beat" the opposing team, either it is the AI or just other players. Chemistry of a team is a core aspect. Though that's something for us, human beings to develop. A game is merely a push towards that direction.

"in order to achieve a specific goal" : Yes, all games that respect themselves should have a goal, a primary objective, a main quest, the important mission that will forever stay in our minds as we play and play and play until we fulfil our destiny as players and achieve our goals. A goal can be considered as our "oil" that keeps us going until the very end and try to solve everything that comes in our way. The goal itself, though can't act as a motive.

"by utilizing creativity or not" : Either we like it or not, some puzzles in games or some problems can be too easy to solve if the path we chose is straightforward, so in games we either utilize the element of creativity , meaning something can be solved either by following a split path (Many solutions) or an invisible path (A creative solution), or just don't utilize that element and leave our game linear and straightforward.

"under a specific set of rules" : That's very important. Games have rules, as a matter of fact, rules in a game are one of the most important pieces of a game! For example, we control a hungry creature that is supposed to be herbivore only, so we avoid meat and hunt for bushes, leaves, etc while we avoid other creatures, dead bodies and meat in general. Another example: We are playing in a shooter, and our character cannot shoot a target that's closer than let's say 10 yards! A final example: In a turn-based RPG our character cannot act twice before the enemy, and that's the reason it's being called "turn-based", but then again, by implying special rules like the enemy is terribly slowed by a sickness, while our hero has the blessing of a God , he can act twice for X turns. It's our world here. We can do it all. The rules though, need to exist in every type of game, and must be obeyed by every creature, virtual or not.

"that can either speed up or slow down your progress" : To extend what we said, when being fully obedient of the rules, the game can sometimes reward you, or can punish you, if you aren't. The rewards usually speed you up to achieve your goal or slow you down. It's the game's way of saying "Thank you for listening to me" or "Obey me or else!". Typical examples: The Elder Scroll games. You help a civillian? Extra gold for you, buddy, go buy yourself medicine, or special equipment. You KILL that civillian instead? There is bounty on your head and YOU gotta pay for your vile acts, imbecile!

"by triggering you emotionally" : Oh yes, when you are being called a hero can make YOU (The player) to feel like a god inside a game, when they hunt you however you do feel a bit weird. (Maybe fear of what's about to follow? This applies to games you have not yet fully experienced and you can't tell what will happen.) Emotional triggers can be the element of creativity, as previously discussed, the element of chance, the element of surprise, a steamy romance between you and another character, unexpectable twists in the plot of the game, generally, the art of storytelling can do wonders here, if played right. A game that can manage to strike fear in you, make you scream, laugh, cry, touch your soul, or even frustrate you and make you smash things around you when you play it, it is said that it CAN trigger you emotionally.

"and can be also classified as a form of passive training." : Oh, the final phrase, we have stumbled upon a gem here people. That's one of the most important aspects of a game, and i tend to call it "passive training". Can you think why? Games in general are being critisized by enfeebling your mind, making you dumber and dumber, whilist the exact opposite is trully the fishy story going on in the background.

Tell me, have you played Pokemon? So, how on earth can you manage to recall 350 names, and 1500 attacks? How on earth do you know which one can you encounter where and at which level range? That's passive training to you. You are being taught subsequently about Pokemon, you are memorizing such a huge array of names without even noticing it! That's trully a GEM for me. The ultimate educational value.

I personally learned all the English i have learned through gaming! No, i have never studied the subject, and it's not my native language! I just played a lot of games! On top of that, think of shooter games. Have your mother play a shooter. Unless your mother is a seasoned gamer who owns a blog about gaming and is writing on a PC Games magazine, you will notice how slow her reflexes will be. See other games playing a shooter. BOOM headshot! Running around, jumping at crypts, changing guns and reloading, then BOOM another headshot with a newly acquired sniper rifle from the corpse of a dead marine! Shooters increase Hand-To-Eye coordination, and thus a gamer who goes for a driver's licence tends to find holding the wheel, changing speeds and looking at the mirror dramatically familiar.

Last, let's discuss about RPG games. How on earth is someone supposed to remember which weapon or which skill is best used against which monster? What about the turns? It's a formula of calculating Speed differences! How about the damage of each skill? It's all about adding your character's strength, multiplying it by a set value, then removing some value based on the opponent's defense, and then throw in a probability for a chance of critical strike, meaning even more multipliers..! That's a simple damage formula for those intrested in RPG games, then again, they have to calculate their health points based on the enemy's level and buy the correct amound of healing and mana potions to replenish their energy while keeping in mind the chances of their character going beserk. To be honest, someone not familiar with this is the one who should worry about going beserk. So many things to keep track of. A minimap, a bag of supplies, a health meter, maybe a thirst meter and some energy meter. How about the enemies circling around you? What about your goal?

To conclude, someone who is into games is forced to THINK, to SOLVE, to CALCULATE before they ACT, and as a result, all this is interpreted into "A great learning experience"..! Let's see what we have learned today:

1. Games offer experiences.
2. Games are played willingfully.
3. Games are a fun hobby.
4. Games enhance our problem-solving abilities.
5. Games can be played alone, cooperative or competitive, for the sake of challenge. 
6. Games enhance our creativity.
7. Games aid us in focusing on single goals.
8. Games have rules.
9. Games can reward or punish us.
10. Games can trigger our feelings and emotions.
11. Games have hidden educational values.

So, games are all that... Yep, and now we trully know what a game consists of...!

The Mindset of a game developer

So, before we start let's first chose a tool to deconstruct the wall ..! How about a strong sledgehammer? Allright let's do this!

....Okay so the guys who agreed on me taking the sledgehammer and take the thing down must read the full post. The rest who either had doubts or just disagreed with me, you have the mindset you need! The rest of you guys, help me put this sledgehammer down and let's take a magnifying glass.

So, what should reside in the mindset of a game developer? Well, he has to know that the job he is about to do, whichever that may be is that he has to do it without ever thinking of stopping. He has to know that this is a tough job without any limitations and has to keep working around the clock in order to achieve a proper game release.

Rule #1: "Never look down, or behind you. Just keep going forward and never stop!"

Moving on to our next rule. A game developer must be fully aware of what he is doing, he can't just ruthlessly do things without thinking first..! Reading the first rule may seem to you something like: "Okay, so let's keep doing things until we tire to death, even if we are out of ideas..!" WRONG! You just keep doing things as long as you have a goal in your mind. Don't just sit, thinking about "Oh, when am i going to achieve that goal, i don't have time etc etc.." Trying to organise stuff that are primary for you will kill you out of boredom! Just DO IT!

Rule #2: "Always have a specific goal in your mind, and always know which path to follow in order to achieve it, be fully knowledgable of all the means you have in your arsenal and use them without being distracted!"

That leaves us with effort. To put it simply, you must be aware of the difficulty of this path. But you have made your choice already by reaching this post. So go and look yourself in the mirror and yell out:
"I am a game developer"
So, feeling any better? Try it again in higher tone.
"I am a game developer"
What? I can't hear you!
"I am a game developer!"
Sorry? I just didn't get your meaning. You are a what?
"I AM A GAME DEVELOPER!"
Oh. A game developer you say? Allright. That means you can truly see what's in the mirror. That's good for you, just getting in the right mindset.

Rule #3: "Be confident about yoursself, and never give up, believe in your powers, and act like you are a game developer already, because, you are!"

Congratulations, you are now officialy a game developer! Just keep it our little secret, as you currently have no projects to promote yourself! BUT, we will work on that part soon!

So, You want to make a game?

A new day has come, where YOU, woke up and just wanted to make a game. Everyone has their starting point! But let's consider some elementary stuff first.

Get yourself a nice notebook. Find some label, and stick it at the front of it. Now write "Game Developer's notepad" on it. Then, before you even begin thinking of creating World of Warcraft II, start asking yourself some questions.

Let's begin :

• What is a game?
• What are the game types?
• What does game development even mean?
• What's the typical workflow of creating a game?
• What's a game's anatomy?
• What's this game's target audience?
• What's the game's genre?
• What's a serious game?
• What are the tools / technology i can utilize to manage this?
• What's my role in all this?
• So, how do i start?!

Did you write all this down? Cool. Now we'll start filling in the gaps... You see, game development is no easy task. It's not just fetching building blocks and mashing them all together to create a unique experience. It requires planning, skill, organization, communication, testing, knowledge, and a lot, a lot, A LOT of time.

Do you still think you have what it takes? Before you kill yourself by smashing your head against a wall going the brute's way of creating games, together, we'll take a much smoother approach to that wall and slowly remove it from our way by taking out all of its' bricks, one at a time, meaning before we take a deep dive in the world of game development there are some key..."terms" you can say, that will require you to be fully knowledgable of them before going for the big catch.

There is plenty of time though if you are still intrested. Let's try and discern each brick and reduce this wall to dust! Operation Deconstruction, commence!

Experimental Learning

Right now I'm mostly into 2D game development.

If you want to learn about game logic, sprites, some event-driven coding, and many wonderful effects, MMF2 is for you and it's a perfect starting place for aspiring game developers that want to go out to the big field, 3D games.

It really helped me make a lot of games , and i will be posting them here eventually. My main goal was to make some remakes of old retro games like pong, oil panic, arkanoid etc, and from such games , grab the techniques i used just to take the next game i will make to the next level.

That's pretty much the most important thing for me. Learning. If you learn to do something, how to utilize it, how to play with it in the future, how to expand it to something more complex and in some cases , much more beautiful , you are bound to become great and evolve your skillset at the same time.

Others learn by viewing tutorials, others by following tutorials, and some others learn by doing, by failing, by experimenting with all these diferent settings MMF has to offer.

For me, it's a really fun way to learn, which only makes you want to learn more. And at least in the early stages of my learning, i just didn't care too much for the graphics of my game, as my main concern/focus was the technique to make the game itself , which was important. Why? Because now i know that technique , and can easily implement it in another game.

Consider yourself in the same spot as me. You will, naturally, go out and do some research, looking at old retro games and you will wonder: "can I make that game? What can I learn from it?". Then , you will try to make the game and if you manage to , you will surely learn more about game mechanics, AI, sprites, animations. That technique can be used in your next project. Or you can also just be in the lookout for more retro games = more techniques. And eventually you will reach that level where you have made 10~15 small remakes of a retro game (just the first level or so.)

You are now in the spot where you can begin your very first FULL GAME, featuring ALL the techniques you learned from ALL other previous games. Imagine yourself as a Dungeons and Dragons' Mind Flyer.
You just learn skills and abilities from your enemies , resulting in you becoming stronger and stronger.
Then you can use these abilities to defeat your foes in a much much MUCH easier way, rather than going heads on with a boss enemy and you don't know any abilities that may help.

It's like going for a Complex 6-man party , time-based RPG with multiple enemies, item system, experience, abilities, status ailments, party swaps and scripted attack animations with special events without ANY previous experience. Will you ever code something like that? Will you ever create such a mechanic from scratch when you don't even know what's being done in the background? NO.

Nothing to worry about though, just go and try figuring out how everything works by working on small games at first and as many as you can. Trust me, you WILL learn and things will go naturally as you make more and more games. And please don't get discouraged if you make crappy games. Everyone does. I currently have made 20 games which are ALL crappy. What have i learned from that though? A LOT.

When I get some time i will start working on my first big project. Some full game perhaps, till then I will just keep learning and learning.

Starting tonight

Hello everyone, my name is Kostas Dokos and this is my first blog post, yay!

Some stuff 'bout me and this blog in general: I am a student and also an indie Game Developer and I will be posting here about game development in general. I am also a Microsoft Student Partner and I spend a lot of time developing Applications for the Windows Phone mobile platform. When I get some time I will usually post here now and then.

I also enjoy Pixel Art, to be honest I just started out, because I wanted to try out my creativity and provide graphic assets to myself just the way I want them , and it's rather cooler, than trying to find out exactly what you want from out there , or from an external source, so from time to time, you may find me posting about my new silly Pixel Art! (An especially useful technique to pickup if you can't find yourself a graphic artist..!)

Game Engine for 2D: Multimedia Fusion 2 developer
Game Engine for 3D: Unity 3D

Coding: C# / javascript (Unity)
Pixel Art: Sometimes PIQ, mostly Photoshop.
Sprite Animation: Either Natively in MMF2Dev or Photoshop.

That's about all the info I can share for now.

Cheers.