#tone control

Watch your tone !

My Fiesta Red MIM Fender Strat 1960’s re-issue.

I have a couple of MIM (Made In Mexico) guitars from Baja and the fit and finish on them is fantastic, in fact I prefer them to the American made guitars; the last ones that I looked at and played had a few issues that qualify control should have picked up on in Corona.

I don’t think podcasts are really for me. After all just listening to something is how I start falling asleep in class. I need some visual stuff, something shiny, even if it’s something in my own head. They also tend to be long. I get lost easily. There are noises in the background I can’t see the source of.

However since I had to watch listen to a podcast for homework I found some stuff of the 1 hr, 32 min and 11 secs of listening to game developers discuss games interesting. Even if they discussed some games I am not familiar with (and that didn’t help my problem with podcasts that I couldn’t visualise anything for them). It was really nice to hear some of Steve Gaynor’s story of being a games fan and student to game developer. As some looking at trying to enter the industry it’s really relevant.

There were other topics that came up that I have things to say about, but there’s one idea(s) I got a bit more to say about than anything else.

Elements emerging from the process/Exploratory Process To explain quickly this is about how sometimes things aren’t planned out in the game development, ideas for the game can be created through the actual making of the game, and all ideas in the game can evolve when you explore them.

In the podcast they discuss how the monkeys from System Shock 2 emerged from the process of motion capture when Ken Levine decided to start monkeying around (I’m not sorry) and how the concept of Little Sisters and Big Daddies in Bioshock evolved from the idea of showing relationships non-verbally which was inspired by a nature documentary about worker-ants. Another example is the Creeper model in Minecraft being the result of a mix-up with the pig model.

Some of these elements are silly and turn into Easter eggs. Others are radical and literally game changing.

This is a really important idea to think about in terms of game development. Why? Let me explain.

The idea of making a game often feels very intimidating, I think I often come to the assumption that before you start developing a game, you need everything completely planned out. Which is a restrictive assumption. For many reasons. 

Reason one; your ideas are not completely king and it’s important to have other people’s perspective on your work. If you have everything planned out you might be tempted to think that any deviation to that plan as bad, and not take on constructive criticism and new interesting ideas.

Reason two; it stops you from adapting. Whether it’s a technical limitation you didn’t foresee or that the world has moved on from when started coming up with your idea and opinions on things are different, if you can’t adapt and evolve you’ll die out like the dinosaurs.

Reason three; it stops you from coming up with and using really unique and interesting ideas! In my books that one of the worst things ever.

So yeah.

Podcast

So this week I listens to a podcast made by a website called idlethumbs.com with their segment Tone Control, I started my sentence like this because I think this podcast is a great idea to further connect with people interested in the game industry.

The speaker (Steve Gaynor) has a good outlook on the people he interviews and who he wants to interview if he is able to further produce these podcasts and one that stood out to me was he wanted to interview more people from lesser known games which, personally, would be incredibly insightful.

I listened to his interview uploaded on May 1st 2014 where he interviews his former boss and the creator of irrational games and of course the well known bioshock series, Ken Levine.

Gayner was definitely inspired by Levine’s work, which is understandable because of the work he has produced over time. He talks about the hardships of making games when gaming was not a huge infrastructure and how they had to make ways to do things, such as using lights for colours in his earlier games.

Something that I definitely agree with is how Levine said it was very valuable working on a game not just being a director so you are able to make decisions more clearly and show people what you want.

And something that really stood out to me was the fact Levine said decisions come from purposeless actions, just goofing around can make a game truly yours, which is amazing for listeners. If you’ve ever felt disconnected from any work you have created then you must not have been completely enveloped by it. The main point I took away from this podcast was:

 Love what you make.

Levine talks about the difficultly of making a game in the early years like 1999 a there was always slow hype and not really media attention for games, again, gaming was only a small infrastructure.

Being a fan of the Bioshock series, listening to the hardships of making the game were truly inspiring to say the least, learning that a game can be influenced by so many things can really be so influential with how we view the world and take in references.

Levine gave this quote for how he wanted to portray bioshock:

“Nothing can go out, nothing can come in… you’re trapped”

Which, if you know anything about the setting of bioshock is that within these strange worlds you are confined and cannot escape.

Gayner also made a notable point that when you look at your influences you start to question “why?” e.g. with bioshock, why is the city like this? Why did these men create this? All questions that need to be answered by the makers of the game and the direction they want to travel.

Levine never writes back story, he says its something you create during the process, which I believe he means that you can’t just write a fully developed story without questioning it later on; you need to be flexible with what you want to make.

These podcasts are definitely something I recommend, there hasn’t been any updates this year but they are very much worth the listen, especially if you want to hear the origins of Irrational games which, if you didn’t know was originally going to be called underwater horse because of a hexed based war game Levine and his friend played one time and quote “irrational was the name we hated least”.

 If you’re interested to have a listen: