Proletariat Inc.

The World Zombination community wants to test the beta on Android—so for the next version, we aim to get our Android version to feature parity with iOS.

Kyle Dahl has made a couple of animations using our World Zombination character rigs recently. This one is of the venerable Lady Squidfingers.

We recently grew and moved Proletariat into the same office as Harmonix. Here’s a breakdown of why I advocate for working with your game development peers.

One of World Zombination's super fans, Tayler (Slayers Guild's leader), made us some pretty sweet fan art during our weekly development update live stream yesterday. I think there's a Gunfighter with a pineapple on her head and a unicorn and a candy cane bike rack or something. This is some Michelangelo-level stuff right here. 

We are excited to release the World Zombination Destrucktor Rig, available for free download here! This is the third character rig from Proletariat. Destrucktor is a mech boss driven by one of our original human characters, The Gunfighter…

We've moved our blog to our new website! And here's the first post, by our new QA guy, Caleb.

We get a lot of questions on our Twitch development streams about working in the games industry. Many folks want to know what it’s like to do what we do and even more are interested in how to get a job. While every story is different and advice will differ source to source, I figured it might be helpful to relay my story while offering up some choice advice I wish I had before I got my first gig in the industry.

1. Study programming

You don’t need to be a programmer to work in games; I’m proof of that myself. However, I strongly believe that everyone who’s interested in making games should have a cursory knowledge of how things work. Today, there are more sources than ever (many of them free) to make learning this stuff as accessible as possible: iTunes U, Code Academy, YouTube, whatever. Years ago, I made the mistake of jumping in the deep end with C++ (a very challenging starter language), before finally settling in with Python (a much easier one), and regretting all that time I put into C++. An easier language like Python will allow you to grasp concepts that are present in all languages without dealing with frustrating language-specific minutiae of a language like C++. It’s like learning how to drive stick first: you’re overcomplicating the process and making it unnecessarily difficult on yourself. Learn to drive, and then use that foundation to learn to drive stick (and you should, ‘cause it’s way more fun).

2. You don’t need to go to school

Up yours, Krabappel!

This one’s certainly an unpopular opinion, and I’ve debated it back and forth with folks in the past, so at the very least I’ll select my words a little more carefully now: school blows. That was a joke, but the way I see it, institutionalized learning is definitely broken. For games jobs, you largely just need a computer. If you can discipline yourself to work hard and teach yourself using the mountain of resources available today, you can land a great gig in the industry and do it without Sallie Mae stealing your lunch money for the next two decades of your life. Yes, there are jobs where you need the resources a school provides to get the learning done, and there are industries where that piece of paper matters, but at least insofar as many games jobs, you just need the discipline to teach yourself and make some stuff.

And if you want another opinion, you can check out what our CEO Seth had to say about it on Quora.

3. Have a social media presence

If there’s one thing my alma mater taught me, it’s to engage in social media and maintain a clean level of online personal hygiene. I kind of break this rule as well, but the point is to get your name out there, engage with the industry, and get to know people. I am intentionally avoiding the word “networking” because it makes everyone cringe, but that’s effectively what you’ve got to do. Put a website together, make it look sharp, and be active in the game community. I largely have Twitter to thank for my first gig; I followed a whole bunch of industry people, one of them tweeted about a holiday party for the then recently christened Zynga Boston, I showed up, and I got a job. Which brings me to point #4.

4. Don’t be a dick

I could speak for days on this one but I’ll do my best to keep it short. First: mean people are dumb. If you can learn to smile and laugh and be a positive influence to those around you, you’re just gonna be a happier person, period. That’s not just video game industry advice, that’s life advice. But if people recognize you as a kind and happy person, you’ll find more opportunities appearing for work than you’d get otherwise. People don’t want to work with awful people, and one awful person can make a whole workplace miserable for everyone. 

Second: learn to read people and don’t be annoying at networking events. Networking is already terrible. If there’s free booze it’s a little less terrible, but honestly, nobody wants to be there. If you can’t just have a normal conversation with a stranger without coming across like you’ve never talked to a human being before, you need to talk to some more human beings (and not ones that have hiring power!) If you can’t find human beings to talk to—and honestly, this is gonna sound weird—jump on eHarmony or Match, OKCupid, or whatever, and go on some damn dates. Make it your express purpose on said dates, regardless of who that other person is and what you think of them, to ensure they have a good time. Learn to communicate and read the other person, find what gets them pumped, and double down on that. Networking is not for getting jobs. It’s for establishing relationships that could maybe down the line result in employment. Be a likable person (it’s easy!) and if somebody clearly doesn’t want to chat or chat about whatever it is you’re saying, read it off his or her face, and leave them alone or change the subject.

In short, the games industry is competitive. What all of my questionable advice boils down to is being more driven to learn and improve independently, and also just being a good person. It goes a long way!

Hey everyone, 

We’ve added plenty of new features to World Zombination since the last big update and are looking forward to making the game even better in the coming weeks! Don’t forget to sign up for the beta if you want to join in on the fun and email us at [email protected] if you’re interested in making World Zombination videos for your Twitch or YouTube channel. 

Here’s what’s new this month:

Tips

We’ve added some helpful tips to the loading screens. Beta players, if you have any tips you’d like to share, please email us!

Lighting

In addition to creating landmarks for different cities, our artists have also created different types of lighting for different areas of the world.

Borrowing Units

  If you’ve ever been jealous of someone else’s Machine Gunner, Undertaker, or another rare unit, now you can borrow them from a member of your guild! Before you go into battle, you can choose from 3 randomly selected units to “borrow” from a guildmate.

Stamina

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people about the “cooldown” system for units after they fight and used that input to reshape it. Now, you can use each unit three times before it becomes exhausted, and it begins recharging after its first use. This makes it easier for you to cycle between your units and use different combinations to form effective and diverse teams, while adding a level of challenge! The feedback we’ve gotten on this new system has already been great.

Strength Meter / Start Wave

A couple more new things within the level: that meter on the top right of the screen will let you know how strong your defense is (or attack if you’re playing as Infected), which is helpful if you’re wondering whether to place more units or spawn more drones. When you’re playing as Survivors, you can also spawn waves of zombies sooner by tapping the wave indicator to cut down on extra time between waves. 

Some other things you may notice:

Yes, we’ve made the zombies SMARTER so they do a better job of following their noses to find human brains

Always working on fixing crashes and speeding up load times

You can now sort your units to find just the ones you want for the right battle

We’ve added new effects to the world map including explosions and flares

For the next update, you can expect quests and bosses! Here are the Survivor and Infected bosses coming your way (and YES, these characters are playable if you can win them):

  In company news, our team continues to grow as we add on QA superguy Caleb Wheeler:

   And the great folks at Unity interviewed Proletariat’s founders in this article.

I want to give a big thanks to everyone who is currently playing the beta and everyone who is waiting for their code. SOON…!

  Kristen Mukai

Hey Internet, I'm Dan Brakeley, and I've been working at Proletariat as a coder since February. I recently got the chance to return to my old high school to take part in a STEM Career Fair. I grew up in rural Maine, where there weren’t a lot of role models for kids who were into computer programming and video games. I would have loved to have met someone who actually worked in the industry when I was a kid (let alone someone who had also graduated from my high school), so I decided it was important to help out, if I could. 

First, I had to figure out what I was actually going to do. STEM stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math" and game programming requires elements of all of those. You want to make a game to fly through space, or jump over a spiked pit, or throw a ball? For all of those, you’ll probably need an understanding of trigonometry, Newtonian physics, and linear algebra. So now I had something relevant to talk about.

They also offered me a projector, so I decided I would plug in my laptop and show off Unity (the game engine we use here at Proletariat). I thought it would be good to show off the free tools that people in the industry actually use. And the students could then download it at home and check it out if they wanted.

The final flourish was to glue a few things to some foam core (high-school style), and I was as ready as I’d ever be. 

  Once the kids started coming in, and I started to talk to them, it turned out many were already aware of tools like Unity, and they were much more interested in seeing a full fledged game in progress. I ended up pulling out my iPad and work laptop and showing them World Zombination, including what the source code looks like and how we used Git to track our work. In retrospect, that's what I would have wanted to see, too. Even if you have programming or computer science classes at that age, you probably aren't going to get much exposure to building large pieces of software or the engineering and tools that are employed to allow that to happen. There is a huge difference between printing "Hello World" or even balancing a binary tree and making a game with puzzles, narrative, music, animations, AI, online play, and everything else you might want to add.

I knew ahead of time that whatever I prepared, I wouldn’t really know what to do until I started talking to the kids, and that just being there was going to be enough regardless—and it turns out I was right. I’m really glad they invited me, and I hope I get the chance to do it again in the future.

I’ll close with some highlights of the day:

A student walks up, sees "class of 1998" on my sign, and says, "Hey, that's the year I was born!" Little bastards.

I got an unexpected amount of love for having worked on the Sly games (at two different times, someone wanted their picture with me, holding the copies of Sly I had brought).

The projector they made available maxed out at 1024x768. I am so spoiled these days. Life in the big city has made me soft.

I underestimated how old a high schooler really is. They are people. I was expecting kids. Does that make me old?

Probably.

Many of you have heard about or even downloaded our multi-character World Zombination rig for Maya earlier this year. I want to thank everyone (teachers, students, professionals, and hobbyists) for all the kind words. It’s because of your feedback that we decided to release yet another rig for your animating pleasure! The original rig was great for a large variety of characters in our production, but some characters require a bit of a modified setup. Our newest character, Lady Squidfingers, has long octopus-like tentacle arms; as you can imagine, this posed quite a challenge.

FK (Forward Kinematics) - Bone rotation at the top of the hierarchy moves bones down the chain.

IK (Inverse Kinematics) - Bone translation down the chain moves bones at the top.

IK+FK – Rotation of controls works as FK, and translation is IK.

After a few initial tests with various FK (Forward Kinematics) and IK (Inverse Kinematics) arm setups, we came to the conclusion that a hybrid IK Spline/FK tentacle rig would be the only way to get the nice arcing motion of an FK control with the dynamic motion and flexibility of an IK Spline setup. The Spline would work as normal IK when an animator translated controls around in space, but those controls would have an FK hierarchy when rotated. Essentially, rotation would be reserved for broad arcing motion, and translation would be for smaller, more detailed movements. Though this setup is far from perfect, given our current project aesthetics, resources, and time constraints, this solution fits the bill for us quite nicely.

Not only does Ladyfingers have tentacle-like arms, hands, and fingers, they also stretch to abnormally long lengths and reach across levels to wrap around unsuspecting survivors. On previous rigs, I would solve limb length control by allowing animators to change the scale of bones with an attribute, but Lady Squidfingers’ setup required a bit finer control than that. The initial implementation of the Spline/FK setup gave us great control of motion, but as you can see in the image above, the model didn’t automatically stretch to compensate for translating controls around. We needed to find a method that would change the length of bones based on the total length of the Spline curve.

Our solution to stretching tentacles came in the form of the curveInfo node in Maya. The curveInfo node can measure the total length of a curve at any given time and allow us to plug that value into other nodes in Maya. In our case, I plugged the IK Spline curve into a curveInfo node, and then used the output value to control the scale of all the bones in the arm (setup demonstrated in the image above). This way, when we translate our controls in space, other bones in the chain will scale to compensate as the length of the Spline curve changes.

After we had all our main control systems in place, it was immediately apparent that the sheer amount of controls to animate with was quite overwhelming. It was a cumbersome task to pinpoint exactly what each control was contributing to the overall motion of the animation, but at the same time, we didn’t want to lose the option for more detailed animation control. To solve this issue, I chose a few main controls to drive the other controls’ movement automatically. In order to maintain the option to fine tune my animations, these auto-animating controls also had to retain their ability to be animated by hand. I accomplished this task by taking the rotation/translation values from the main controls and plugging those values into the auto-animating controls using Average and Multiply nodes. This setup is not too dissimilar to the neck, shoulder, and lower back auto-rotate controls on the rig already.

Put it all together and we have two beautifully rigged tentacle arms that animate in smooth arcs using FK controls, and are also dynamic as traditional IK Spline setups. Our solution isn’t without its flaws, but as you can see, it certainly is a viable method to create a variety of complex animations. One limitation I wish I had enough time and expertise to get right is for the IK to play a little better with the FK. Currently, most of the animation should be done by rotating the controls, while translating the controls should be left for smaller movements. Because of the advanced nature of this character’s controls, I would highly recommend first getting your feet wet with our original World Zombination Rig before trying out Lady Squidfingers. As always, if you have any comments or questions about the rig, how to use it, how it was made, or about working in the game industry in general, just shoot me an email at [email protected]. Happy animating folks! Special thanks to our awesome character team: Damon Iannuzzelli on the design and Lauren Cason for the sweet model/texture!

Along with being the UI dude around here, I'm also responsible for a large portion of the graphic design that happens at Proletariat. Crafting sweet logos is one of my favorite activities as an artist, and much to my delight, the logo project on our current game involved the development of not one, but two logos. AT THE SAME TIME. **FLEX** In the process of coming up with a name for the game, there were two options that we had a difficult time choosing between: "Conflict Dead" and "World Zombination." Since there was no clear winner at the time, we decided to make concept logos for both names to see if the visualization would help with the decision. The following is a step-by-step account of the logo process, both on this project and how I approach this type of work in general. 

1. Reference, a.k.a. Cruising the Interwebs for Pretty Pictures for Work I SWEAR

In general, it's much easier and faster to nail down an initial direction when you're working from already-established sources. By collecting reference images that represent the "vibe" I'm going for, I can narrow down my focus before pen hits paper (or screen, in my case). Back in the olden days, this meant lots of art books and photos, but since we live in the future now, all it takes is protein pills and some Google Image Search mojo. Some people save images to their machines directly, but a lot of folks use online scrapbooks like Pinterest. I personally use Springpad, since it allows you to make your collections private and share them with only the people you choose. Here's what the reference page for this project looks like:

You can see here that I was going for more of a retro feel, with examples from the heyday of monster and zombie films. I especially love the old Aurora model kit boxes. It doesn't get more classic and straight-up awesome, especially the hand-done typography. Some of the references are more playful and whimsical, while others are more sinister—I wasn't sure exactly which "feel" was best, so I grabbed a bunch of varied examples. I also loved the idea of integrating zombie/illustrative imagery into the text.

2. Sketching, a.k.a. Doodling Instead of Listening During Meetings

Once I had enough reference to work from, I began jotting down thoughts as rough sketches. As with most art projects, it's advantageous to put down as many ideas as possible as quickly as possible so you can weed out what doesn't work from what does without spending hours rendering details. With logos, it's important to capture the essence of the product in the mark itself—what is this thing and who is it for? Since we were still stuck on two names, I did sketches for both using a range of tones, type, and imagery. Quick note: you don't have to be a super-duper-draftsperson for this phase. The point is that these are quick and ROUGH. Just enough to get the point across. The name "Conflict Dead" felt a little more serious to me, so the sketches tended to be more Romero-esque, with a little millitary-spray-paint-stencil thrown in occasionally:

A few more that I still love (hand-drawn type is wicked fun, some of the better I've done IMO):

And the beginnings of "World Zombination":

I was generally going more fun and playful with most of these, and tried a few times to get some Earth imagery in there. You can also see in both sets of sketches that the Survivor fist/Infected hand featured heavily early on. I actually tried using them (unsuccessfully) to see if I could come up with a "pull-away" mark that could also stand alone as a logo. Figured I'd share them here, since they're kinda funny.

LOLZ. Not all ideas are winners.

3. Refinement, a.k.a. Al...most...There...

From here, sketches are presented and direction is given as to what to focus on as we move toward a final product. Occasionally, a sketch will nail most of the elements on the first try, but usually the next version or versions feature a combination of elements from different sketches. The consensus was that the fist/hand imagery was working, so I made sure to integrate them into both names. Additional feedback was to keep the tone lighter, in the true spirit of the Funpocalypse ™. Here are some of the variations, still hand-drawn/polygonal lasso tool'd in Photoshop, but a little more refined:

In these versions, the letterforms were starting to solidify, and I was trying to find the best layout/placement of the fist and hand. You can also see that "Conflict Dead" is still more referential to classic zombie-movie-title typography, where "World Zombination" is a bit more general mid-century. At this point, the candidates were narrowed down and one version of each was chosen to receive a final clean-up and presentation, which leads us to...

4. Vectorization, a.k.a. friggin_wizardry.ai

Once final "sketch" versions were chosen, it was time to essentially give each a final art pass, at the end of which we'd have logos that were ready to be used in the game and on all related materials. All of this work was done in Adobe Illustrator, which is a vector-based drawing program that produces art which can be scaled to any size without losing quality. This is opposed to a raster-based program like Photoshop, which deals in pixels that are a fixed size and thus can't be enlarged. Working with vectors is advantageous for images like logos, especially when they need to be printed (which requires high-resolution images). It's also my bread-and-butter, so there. The vectorized, one-color versions of each logo:

And finally, a star is born. "World Zombination" was chosen and I entered the last phase of the process, which was creating a color version.

5. Colors, a.k.a. Colours

Basically, this entails choosing a palette from a bunch of variations. In our case, the choice had wider implications, since each faction would be represented throughout the game by that color. Originally, we had chosen green for the Infected, as the first pass reflected:

Not being 100% sold on green as the color for Infected, I did a few more versions. We also realized that we should use a background to thicken up the mark and make sure the text can be read on any background.

I put the top contenders in some context for the final decision to be made:

There you see it, right smack in the middle, the version that ended up as our logo. Added a little texturing and color variation, and we were good to go.

And there was much rejoicing. Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone,

For a while now, we’ve been out there showing World Zombination to as many people as we can through demos, conventions, Twitch, and now our beta. We’ve been included in a bunch of really awesome local events including Boston Indies, Boston Post Mortem, Mass Digi/Made in MA, the MIT Enterprise Forum, and Games Forum. We were featured as part of Unity’s showcase at GDC alongside other awesome indies like Monument Valley and Night in the Woods and had a great time as part of the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX East. We do all this so we can see what players like about the game, what they don’t like, and what we can improve.

We’ve listened to your feedback and have recently added a bunch of new features to World Zombination. If you’ve been following us, you’ll already know that the game allows you to join the Survivor or Infected faction and battle for control of cities online in a shared world map, as well as play with your friends in guilds, collect characters, and level them up. Here’s what’s new:

Rally Points

We heard a lot of feedback saying that the Survivor gameplay needed to be more interactive. In its tower defense style, you may choose to place most of your units at once, then watch as they fight the oncoming hordes, while reinforcing depleted areas. Now with movable Rally Points, you can adjust your Survivors’ positions within a radius of their starting point on the map. This allows you to place melee fighters in front of ranged fighters, move Snipers around corners to change their line of sight, retreat away from pesky Spitters, and come up with your own useful formations and active strategies.

  The Survivors at the top of the screen can move around the corner to fight or dodge Infected coming down either street!

Make some noise!

Zombie hordes follow their nose and constantly move toward where the tasty brains are. Much of the strategy when playing as the Infected involves managing your horde as it moves into danger and creating multiple hordes to join together when you need increased strength. Now you can delay or redirect your horde by making “noise” on the map to distract them. Tap once to make a little noise or keep tapping the same spot to make a LOT of noise!

  Boom boom boom. 

Search Missions

Search missions add a new type of special event to the world map. Instead of a city battle, it is an opportunity to gain more resources from an abandoned bunker, shipwreck, airplane, or similar point of interest. By sending some of your units to search, they will be taken out of play, but they’ll come back with resources! Some events will require more time and you can send extra units to reap more rewards. This feature will help you advance in the game when you come back to it after putting your device down for a while.

  Chat

We have added world chat and guild chat as great ways to coordinate your play! Simple as that.

We are continuing to work on new features to add into the game during beta and after the worldwide release. Coming up will be more characters, new mission types, power-ups, borrowing units from guild mates, and, yes, something many of you have asked for…PvP play!

There’s really nothing like getting a fresh set of eyes on the game and the feedback is invaluable, so thank you for all that you’ve contributed! If you have suggestions, please let us know in our sprint review stream (every Friday at 4:30 Eastern Time) or send us an email.

As a reminder, we’re currently taking signups for our beta, and if you want to stream World Zombination, please contact me directly at [email protected].

  Kristen Mukai

Hey World Zombination fans and followers (and people who got lost on the internet when they searched for sloths or something)!

I'm Gordon, your friendly neighborhood community guy, and I'm here to let you know that our beta is live and it's wow.

Anyway, if you want to be part of the Early Access Crew of Zombinating Radness (working title), head over to our World Zombination beta sign-up page for more details and to get your name on the list.

It's a pretty awesome club, I promise. And if you do end up playing the beta (you definitely should), you'll likely be that cool kid who's the first one on the block to be doing that cool thing that every other kid then wants to do and you can be like "yeah, I know how you can do it, too" and they'll all applaud and put you on their shoulders and throw you a parade.

Looking forward to playing with you!

Friends and colleagues often ask if I'd mind speaking to someone who is interested in getting into UI as an artist and/or designer, in games or otherwise. In passing on my "advice," I've noticed 2 things:

Few people know what it is I actually do all day, and

There doesn't seem to be a clear place to start learning the specifics.

Since I've had quite a bit of this sort of thing lately (especially from recent Illustration grads), I figured I'd lay it all down official-like on this here blog for the benefit of whoever is interested. And so I only have to type it once. Usability!

What the hell is UI?

You'd be surprised how often I get this question. I'll explain it like I do to my parents (who I'm still not convinced know what I do for a living): the user interface is all the stuff in a piece of software that you click on, or tap with your finger, as the case may be. Anything that's a window, a button, a text box, a check box, a scroll bar, an icon, etc., and the configuration of all of these things on your screen, is considered the UI. In games, that also includes things like health bars, ammo displays, and directional indicators. Essentially, any visuals that aren't covered by character art/animation, environment art/animation, or FX are the purview of the UI, though often all of those other disciplines are closely intertwined.   All that stuff inside Iron Man's helmet?  UI.

You're using an interface to read this right now.  

Who the hell does UI?

This is where I think most of the confusion about what I do lies when I'm being asked about how one would get into this biz. Some assume I'm a programmer (mostly old people). Other artists often think that I simply sit and make sweet icons all day (which is awesome when I do). My answer always is: it depends on the studio and the day. UI jobs can cover a wide range of skills, all of which are dependent on how the structure of the studio or game's production is set up. Typically, UI positions require design experience, which can cover anything from the purely visual (layout and organization—think web design and graphic design), to the more academic (an emphasis on User Experience or “UX,” which entails extensive wireframes, flow charts, and user testing), to the scientific (though less common, I've seen degrees in HCI or Cognitive Psychology listed in "desired experience" on UI job listings).   If a studio has a dedicated UI designer who takes care of the pure design tasks, they might also hire a separate UI Artist. Specialized spots like this tend to be available at larger studios with bigger projects, like MMOs or AAA console games. The artist would be responsible for the style and execution of the UI itself, which would likely include things like window and trim backgrounds, icon design, and possibly animation. While the majority of UI artists are 2D illustrators or concept artists using Photoshop and Illustrator, these days more and more UI is done in 3D with a modeling program like Maya or 3DStudioMax. Other studios, especially those making social or mobile games, or games using the middleware Scaleform, rely heavily on Flash.   As if art and design weren't enough, occasionally UI positions require some technical background. This could be on the more design-friendly side, like HTML and CSS, or programming like ActionScript (particularly in studios using Flash). Jobs like these often involve a lot of prototyping, which ties in to the aforementioned UX work.

So! Depending on the studio setup, the job requirements for a UI professional may cover any or all of the above.  Here at Proletariat, the UI department is just lil' ol' me. I'm responsible for the UX, visual design, and art, with a lot of art support from our other artists Lauren and Damon, and our freelancer Erica. I also prepare all the UI layouts in Unity with NGUI, which is the final step in putting UIs into the game itself before sending to an engineer to make it all work with code and dark magics.

How the hell do you learn UI?

That's a little tougher to describe, since UI covers such a broad array of disciplines. I'll stick to my own experience, since that at least applies to design and art. The following are suggestions, not necessarily THE way to go about getting into UI.   

Learn Page Layout

From a visual and organizational standpoint, I'm talking about graphic, web, and app design. My degree is in graphic design, which is traditional print design, and I think there are a lot of UI folks with a similar background. To scratch the surface:

Page layout: being able to place information and elements in an organized and pleasing way is key. Learning how to set up and use a grid system can help a ton. My bible in art school: http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450

Hierarchy of information: knowing how to arrange the information on a page and in what order with what emphasis is a huge portion of the job. Say you're creating a gig poster, you'd probably want to make sure people could read the band's name, the venue's name, and the date before anything else. The same kind of reasoning goes into any UI.

Learning some web design best practices is extremely helpful. Now that the web page as an interface has been around for a while, there's plenty of info out there on how people navigate around a page. A good place to start is here: http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html

Mobile app design is great as well, since screen real estate is at a minimum, designers are forced to be judicious with their UIs. Regardless of how you feel about Apple and the iDevices (great name for a band from Cupertino), their design docs can be a useful place to start: https://developer.apple.com/design/tips/

Learn Problem Solving

That's essentially what UI design is: when someone hands you a game feature, you figure out how that feature is best presented to the player. You want players to understand with as little effort as possible what the designer of that feature is intending for them to do. Even an icon is a problem to be solved (how do I say "increased fire damage over time with crowd control" in one 40x40 image?)

Play loads of stuff: call it "competitive analysis" if you want to rationalize your playing of a shitload of games. A great way to solve a problem is to see how well someone else has solved the same problem. In general, it's also better to know the rules before you break them.  

Ask loads of questions: ask game designers if you're presenting all the info they need presented and ask engineers implementing your designs if one solution is more economical than another. And especially query your players. Ask veterans about how they use similar features. Ask casual players the same and compare the answers. Ask people who've never played before to give it a shot and see how they react. The best way to solve a problem is to understand how your players actually play.

Make loads of attempts: in the biz we call it "iteration," but what it actually means is “fixing something until it doesn’t suck.” You're rarely, if ever, going to nail it on the first try. Listen to feedback and use that info to solve it further. 

Learn Taste

This one is mostly for the artists. Obviously this is subjective and I'm being snarky, but there is some consensus out there on such matters (like Comic Sans is for jerks). Really all this means is go out there and find some resources and examples of attractive design. Stuff like:

Other accomplished designers. Paula Scher, Saul Bass, David Carson, Shepard Fairey, or whoever floats your boat.

Typography. Chances are you'll be working with A LOT of type, so learn to love it and its minutia, and what works well in what situation.  

Color. Not just theory as it pertains to painting, but as it applies to usability (i.e. red = stop and green = go).

Space. More page layout stuff. Did I mention that was important?

Interactions. Things like button animations and page transitions.  There are plenty of elegant ways to get from one page to another.  

Here's a place I hang out sometimes for inspiration: http://dribbble.com

OK!  That's my spiel.  If you've read this far, thanks!   Be Excellent To Each Other.

These kids have been pulling 60 hour weeks ever since asking to be "crunchatized." 

Work/Life balance has been a hot button issue in the game industry since back before EA Spouse. “Crunch” has become a dirty word, a word that makes engineers and artists shiver and producers hang their heads in shame. I’m here to argue that crunch, in small doses, is actually good for your team, your process, and your game.

I am not, however, advocating for prolonged crunch; months and months of 6-day weeks hurt the creative process.

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The common opinion is that crunch is unnecessary and happens as a result of poor planning, or that it is counterproductive because work during crunch has more errors and worse quality, leading to a net-negative benefit. Like anything else, crunch can be done wrong. I believe crunch can be a way to ramp up, reprioritize, and bring your team together to complete a significant goal—as long as it is done right.

1. Pick a Goal

External groups will impose goals on the team, whether they are publishers, investors, platform holders, or something else. These are not the goals that the team should focus on. The team should factor in external goals but, ultimately, the final choice is up to the team. If the team is not invested in the goal, or if they don’t think it’s the right goal and reasonable given the available time, the entire process falls apart. Passionate people will sometimes crunch on their own because they care so much about the goal that they are motivated to push themselves independently. If possible, set a goal that motivates, excites, and challenges your team.

Goal setting is hard. Your goal must be realistic, but also aggressive enough that the team needs to push to complete it. The better the team gets at working together, the easier this will become—but don’t expect it to be perfect the first time.

2. Track Progress towards the Goal

At Proletariat, we do weekly sprints and 4-6 week milestones. We try to include 1-3 weeks of polish time that is used to iterate and fix bugs. Our philosophy is to get things into the game as quickly as possible and recognize that it will never be right the first time. We track goals weekly and get bids from members of the team to make sure that the goal still seems realistic. We almost always end up eating into the polish time, but that is also the block that is reserved to crunch.

If you do not track your progress, it becomes impossible to plan and set expectations around hitting the goal. This is real work and it is important, so it must be prioritized.

3. Crunch

As soon as possible, the team should decide on when they want to start crunch. Communicating this early is the fairest way to let everyone prepare. At the start, it’s important to have the tasks properly prioritized and the team members balanced. Bidding tasks is difficult and—this may sound silly—it’s important to include the person doing the work in the discussion to make sure that the planning makes sense. This also allows that person to buy-in to their tasks and call out an unrealistic workload early.

There will inevitably be a few members of the team who fall behind. It’s not their fault; it’s the nature of building this sort of product. This is a chance for other members of the team to step in and help them, to creatively solve problems and work together to hit the goal. This will serve to strengthen the team and allow members that may not work together often to have the chance to gain experience together.

The last, and probably most important part of the process, is the re-prioritization of tasks. There will be too much work to complete, even with the team pushing hard, but the goal date should not be moved. It’s time for the team to take a hard look and pick which things are absolutely needed to make the experience that the goal required and which things don’t make the cut. This is a very difficult process, but it will make the game better, more elegant, and more refined. It will also force the members of the team to separate themselves from the project enough to take an objective, holistic look at it instead of only the pieces that they are responsible for.

4. Post Mortem

After each of these milestones, it’s important to leave time for the team to recover. We usually reserve a few days to reflect on what went right and what went wrong. We take those lessons and try to refine the process for the next time around. The whole team had a chance to push themselves and each other and learn more about what they can accomplish together. This process also surfaces more issues about the game, and this down time is a chance for the team to think hard about why they chose to cut or prioritize certain features and talk through what this means for the game.

In the end, it’s healthy to push the team. It is a challenge for the people who are executing and a good forcing function on the people who are prioritizing the work. Each goal that is hit builds momentum and each one that is missed is an opportunity to learn. However, it’s important to remember that when asking the team to crunch, you’re taking them away from their friends and family, so always make sure you're doing it for the right reasons and with the right goal. 

If you’re constantly crunching then, yeah, you’re probably doing something wrong. But a well-timed crunch can be an important part of your process. Crunch doesn’t have to be terrible. The changes that go into a game during crunch are often the ones that really improve the experience in a noticeable way. Crunch can bring strengths to light, forge bonds on your team and, of course, create crucial pieces of work. At the very least, it will teach you something new about your team, your process, and your game. Who knows, you might even feel good after.