Captain's Blog

http://monomipark.com/jobs/

Monomi Park is seeking an amazing 2D Artist to join our team!

This is a full-time position on-site in our San Mateo, California office.

We’re looking for a 2D artist to help develop Slime Rancher as well as future, exciting projects. Candidates must be well-versed in concept art, digital painting, and 2D animation. Ideal qualities include a strong, personal style but the ability to adapt to other styles, a portfolio with character and environment work, and a basic understanding of 3D modeling and texturing.

This position will be expected to create the following at Monomi Park:

Concept art for characters and environments

Promotional artwork

2D art elements for game UI, such as icons

Digital texture painting

Our art pipeline involves use of Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop, and Unity. Experience with these or similar programs is required.

Industry experience is preferred.

How to Apply:

Send an email to [email protected] with the subject line ‘2D Artist Applicant: YOUR NAME’ and include a url to your portfolio in the body of the email. Web portfolios and resumes are preferred. If attaching a resume, please format as a pdf. Do not attach portfolios.

People love to leave their mark in the world. We pick brands that fit our “style”, listen to the music we love… draw, write, read, share, watch, play, build… everything according to our personal taste. We love to feel unique, to be special ad to let everyone else know. When we do it, we get Expression Fun.

This kind of fun has two directions:

Introversion, when you express yourself inwards and develop your inner self through different activities. The best way to make a game good in this way is to give it depth, that is, to make the possible choice scenarios for the player as many and interesting as possible so he can experience and learn about the game world. The player expresses itself by finding and using new patterns within the game mechanics (e.g.: Chess strategies).

Extroversion, working the other way around, expressing yourself outwards, through some medium and against some element. A good game requires the game to allow the player to leave its personal signature on the world so it can share the uniqueness of its self, that is, too have customization. This can be something as simple as a time attack record or as complex as a fully customized character. The player expresses itself by interacting with game elements and leaving a personal signature (e.g.: Minecraft creations).

When you are designing a game, you should balance both these aspects of the personality, since we all have both in different proportions. They both have in common that they give the player freedom to express itself, either through actions or into objects.

We’ll talk more about emergent design and customization, but for the time being, just remember:

What is Learning Fun?

Learning Fun (our green Color of Fun) is the process of discovering the unknown and the way to feed one of the most characteristic human features: the curiosity.

It should not be confused with academic learning which focuses on the acquisition of new skills of any type as a mean to an end (e.g.: being competent to work in the future). Learning Fun is an end by itself, to satisfy the inner wish to get to know something.

Just to be sure we are on the same page before continuing, some examples of when you do find this kind of fun:

When you watch a movie or read a book and you want to learn how it ends, that’s learning fun.

When you are playing a game and you want to discover every optional path, that’s learning fun.

When you are exploring a place to see what you can find, that’s learning fun.

When you see a link and wonder what’s on the other side, that’s learning fun.

If you stare for a few mins to what’s on the previous link, that’s learning fun.

Where does this come from?

This concept of “Learning Fun” is the sum of what Marc Leblanc calls narrative and discovery. I see them as two sides of the same kind of fun: narrative is the expectation to know and discovery the act of knowing.

Stories are the most common way of enabling this kind of fun, since they are very common in our culture, but there are other ways to enable it like complex topologies, emergent mechanics or simply vast amounts of content… Any kind of system that makes you wonder “What comes next?” is subject to this fun.

How to paint it?

(Note: as I said in other posts, this is not an exact science, so this article, more than providing facts wants to make a definition of the concept, just to make sure we are talking about the same thing)

Learning Fun is one of the best ways to enable a good sense of progression and to improve long-term engagement. Use it when you want to develop deep experiences. You can use storytelling, secrets, surprises, worlds, riddles, quests, puzzles… Anything that triggers curiosity will “paint” this fun into your game.

Remember golden rule for the Learning Fun:

The Game Draft Doc (1xGDD) is cool and that, but its still an overall idea of what the game should be. It’s ok as the design document for small projects like game jams, but it should be further developed for bigger projects.

Once you have a draft of what you think your game should be, you should move on and prototype a few of the core concepts, see if they are fun and, if they are, move ahead to the next step: the Game Description Document, or 10xGDD.

If you want to get serious with your game, you’ll have to describe the major features of your game. The 10xGDD takes a similar approach to the 1xGDD, but this time, instead of fitting the whole game into a single page, the idea is to divide the game in “areas” and then fit every one of them into single page abstracts. The resulting document should ideally be no more than ten pages.

This division could be done in many ways: by department, game parts or any other criteria you choose, just be sure to aim for an even division.

Again, I’ve made a template, with a division based on fun type for the Fun-Driven Design Framework. Feel free to use it, just make sure you make cool games ;)

The first step in creative processes is usually the so-called “amazing idea” that comes out of nowhere. Unfortunately, our brains are made in such way that most of the stuff coming out of them is automagically assigned that “great” tag.

There are ways to fix this, the most common one is a small dose of reality or the opinions of other people (not always guaranteed to work though).

Writing down the details of the idea helps to do a reality check, hence the 1xGDD or Game Draft Document. This is a fancy word for “write down your idea in a single page” and its important, since as you describe the major features the problems will arise. It’s also a back and forth process, so be sure to use a pencil.

I’ve made a 1xGDD template for myself around the areas of the Fun-Driven Design framework. Feel free to use it or any other one you came up with, but keep always in mind the golden rule:

If your idea doesn’t fit in one page, it won’t fit anywhere.

I’ve always liked the idea of classifiying different kinds of fun. After stumbling upon many different models (see end of post), I’ve decided to make my own classification.

The 8 Colors of Fun:

Curiosity: The fun you get from good scripting, storytelling, dialogue, humor, drama, comedy… The power of discovering stories and information. You can find this in some books, movies, TV series and movies. Answers to “Did you like the story?”.

Property: This is the kind of fun you get when you achieve something new or acquire new stuff. Common in games with lots of items, achievements, upgrades and similar systems. A sense of this can be found by asking “How rich do I feel inside this game?”.

Feeling: This is the fun associated with harmony and pleasure of the senses. You get this when you feel something beautiful, either visual, aural or by any other way. Answers to “How nice does this game look/feel?”.

Expression: This is the kind of fun you get when you feel your actions have an impact inside the game’s world, when you feel free to go a billion ways. Examples: improvising when playing a musical instrument or playing with Lego blocks. Answer to “Did you feel you could do anything?”.

Power: You get this kind of fun when the right amount of difficulty is put into place, for example in a Tennis match between two players of similar skill. Be careful though: if too much power is granted to the player, the game gets boring. Ask “Was the game too difficult?”.

Operation: The kind of fun you get when you turn your mind off and let the time go by. Typical of casual games, Sudokus, and other mechanic tasks. Answers to “Did you always know what to do next?”.

Company: The kind of fun you get for sharing an activity or interact with other people in any way. Common in team sports, social games and ranked games, leagues, etc… Answers to “Did you have fun playing with others?”.

Immersion: The kind of fun you get for diving into the game’s universe. A good interface is key to achieve this, but also player connection to the game universe, like in some IPs (Star Wars, Pokemon, LotR, etc…). Answers to “Did you feel into the game’s world?”.

Comparison to other models:

Marc LeBlanc’s “8 Types of Fun”: I liked the number of categories and most were definetly well placed, but I believe the term “Aesthetic” was misplaced, “Discovery” was conceptually too close to “Narrative”. “Submission” was also a weird one and “Challenge” was opposite of fun, since that kind of fun comes from “Skill” actually.

Maslow’s, “Hierarchy of Needs”: all the levels except “physiological” blended well enough with my model:

Safety = Curiosity + Property = Owning knowledge/items

Belonging = Company + Immersion = Being part of people/world

Steem = Feeling + Expression = Being unique

Self-Actualization = Power + Operation = Improving oneself

Bonus track, “Biblical Sins”: Ok, I had to show this one because it did fit so nicely. It has some flaws (specially with “Lust” and “Envy”) but you can imagine the equivalent:

Greed: excess of “Property”.

Glutonny: excess of consumption (excess of ”Feeling”, in a more broad sense).

Pride: excess of “Expression”.

Wrath: excess of “Power” exertion.

Sloth: doing the least possible “Operations”, being inactive.

Lust: wanting to be in “Company” more often than not. Again, the sin is more specific here (you can hang out with your friends and family as much as you like! :D).

Envy: wishing for someone else’s situation, for “Immersion” in the other person’s world.

We had already talk about how to divide design documents into different “zoom” levels, we’ll learn now about when to use each kind of document inside a very special production roadmap: the “Fun Driven Design” framework.

Download printable version

Let’s focus on the design-intensive parts and leave the other ones out for this (marketing, support, publishing…).

The image above shows the different kinds of fun in each row agains different production phases in each column. It can be read as a timeline from left to right.

This scheme alternates between production phases (white) and design phases (grey) but is also meant to be iterative inside each phase itself. It’s an approach somehow in-between the classical 100% ahead planning and the more modern iterative schemes (agile, etc…).

Let’s take a closer look to each phase:

Problem Definition: first of all, a game is made for a reason and with some objectives. These could be defined by a client, by yourself, by the team or anyone else. The point here is to know in detail why are you doing this, and what do you expect to achieve with the project.

Game Propositions (1xGDD): a single page design (1xGDD) proposition describing the overall features of the game. The fields should cover every general aspect of the different kinds of fun: Story, Items, Aesthetics, Gameplay, Goals, Routines, Social & Interface. This process should be polished and repeated until the proposition is satisfying enough.

Concepts & Prototyping: when the 1xGDD is solid enough and the team is happy with it, its time to prototype gameplay mechanics and other features and to concept the artistic concept of different elements. Again, making as many propositions and iterating until needed. The point here is to have the best idea of what a small part of the game will look like, what is also known as a vertical slice. Quick and dirty is the key to this phase, just be sure to NOT build over the prototype after.

Strategy (10xGDD): time to go into more detail with the design doc. This time with a zoomed, 10xGDD, describing the types of content, actions and other features required by the game. This document should include at least enough info to enable the pre-production phase. The recommended parts are: Plot, Values, Art direction, Interaction, Flow, Engagement, Role Map & UX Manual.

Pre-Production: here we build the foundations of the final game. We don’t focus on amount of content, but use placeholder assets and focus on building a strong foundation. Keep in mind modularity and fexibility though, since product requirements are always changing. The approach here should be the opposite of the prototyping phase, that is, horizontal slicing, slow and steady.

Plan (100xGDD): time to go into detail. This phase can take place parallel to the pre-production phase. The designer should define in detail all the game contents and functions. Some extensive documents will come out of this work, giving shape to the 100xGDD. The parts this document includes are: Script, Economy, Asset Plan, Tech Requirements, Progression, Analysis, Growth & UI Design.