What Lies Beneath

Mid-way through November, Australia’s Game Developers and a few notable international guests gathered in Melbourne for the annual Game Connect Asia Pacific conference (GCAP). The conference is a chance for the development community to learn, to share war stories and, of course, to drink to excess. After a year that saw a lot of larger Australian studios shut down, GCAP focused on the potential for new life springing from the ashes. There were keynotes from people like Richard Iwaniuk of Bioware and Mike Acton of Insomniac that were real calls to arms for the Australian industry. Other speakers presented on topics like developing mobile games for China, or offered introductions to marketing and advertising for start-ups.

However, there were other perhaps more interesting sessions, too. Australian developers talking about the games they and their companies have made and how they made them. Telling stories of the development process, giving others a chance to glimpse the inner workings of their games.

Luke Muscat, a Lead Designer at Halfbrick, talked about just how they dealt with the concept of ‘random’ in their games with procedurally generated content. The idea that players have their own notion of what constitutes ‘random’ – and that it usually isn’t – gave a fantastic insight into why Halfbrick’s games like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride are so addictive and fun to play.

Yangtian Li, Lead Artist at the Voxel Agents, described her process in trying to find an art style for the company’s new puzzle game. She showed something like sixty screenshots – each of a different iteration – and explained why each version didn’t work. Whether it was too cute, too sad or not ethical (we can’t teach children it’s OK to cut down trees!), she explained in detail why the changes were made. Those who only ever see the final product will never understand how the game reached that point, which is a shame, given how much work she has clearly put in to get things just right.

The final keynote of the conference was given by Amir Rao of Supergiant Games. He gave a fascinating account of his experience creating Bastion at a tiny start-up studio. The highlight was his decision to show multiple early builds of the game, and to even demonstrate some of the tools used in its creation. It’s one thing to explain a game mechanic’s evolution, but another entirely to show it. Attendees saw the first ever build of Bastion – using monsters scanned in from Dungeons & Dragons books as sprites for the enemies – showing even then the early version of the Bastion building itself around the player. He went on to detail some of the design decisions that were made, punctuating each step in development with a different build.

Learning about the process of developing Bastion was inspiring. This sort of thing should be shared with everyone, not just developers at conferences. The industry needs more ‘making of’ special features, more production diaries and in-depth looks at the process of game development. Amir’s talk, in fact, would be a perfect ‘extra’ for a special edition of Bastion, should Supergiant ever consider making one.

Yet, it’s something we very rarely see. As an example, look at Batman: Arkham City. An amazing game that does a stunning job of making the player feel like they’re inhabiting Batman: the character is perfectly represented by the gameplay. Rocksteady achieves this with the help of seventy years of back-story, but also with exquisitely designed mechanics.

The best of those is the brawling. Certainly there are more tactical or involved brawling mechanics, but here it’s as simple or as involved as you choose to make it. The system will work perfectly if you never chain more than a few attacks together, if you never master more than the most basic moves. But if you dive in and learn the ins and outs – and there’s plenty of YouTube clips out there detailing just what some people have been able to do – you are rewarded with absolutely amazing gameplay.