Cassandra Sammartano's GDC Experience Report

Post date: Mar 17, 2017 4:27:40 PM

GDC Findings, Day 1 (Wed)

Wednesday was my first day at GDC! Not only is was my first time attending, but it was also my first time in California. To get the most out of this experience, I attended two talks, a mixer, and a party.

My first talk was for Game for Children.I came half way through, but it was still insightful none the less. The main topic floating around the panel was gearing the game towards the 12yr old sweet spot. At this age the child is becoming more independent from their parents. They look for more approval from their friends. They are also extremely capable of using the technology; not only on a basic level, but can achieve and execute complex tasks using technology in games. One of the professionals in the round table suggested to always gear the concepts towards a more mature level if you're on the fence about how complex to make it. 12yr olds don't want to be talked down to like children. They can understand and complete tasks better than usually perceived. At the same time, a tween may not understand the complexity of the narrative at hand in the current game, but can appreciate the gameplay none the less. Also, by gearing games at that target age, the game lends itself to a broader range of audiences. The little sibling and the teenage sibling can also enjoy this type of game. Games for this age are imaginative and fun, yet can include complex gameplay such as roleplaying.

The 12yr old mark is also a great target for brand engagement. They are getting an allowance which give them their first taste of financial freedom. If the game is an off product from a show, the brand will most likely have merchandise, which the child will be able to purchase.

Another topic at this panel was the topic of accessibility for disabled children. One way to go about this is to make the game multi platform. This way, if the user is more able to use an ipad over a keyboard, it enables access to the title easier.

For games towards toddlers, it creates another topic of approachability. Besides the age gap between teen and toddler, the UI is changed as well. Rapid prototyping and playtesting should be the number one focus for this market. Children at this age can only handle one core game mechanic at a time and do it well. So, by giving the child visual and auditory clues to interact with the interface, this helps the child understand and learn how to play the game. Spoken commands and mechanics are too complicated at that age. The screen should only help the child with mechanics if the child is fumbling with the screen for a certain amount of time. Then, there is a time out where the game provides a visual directional cue for the child. Another way to help the child interact with the game is having a character on screen, such as Elmo to give reward and visual encouragement.

The last topic at this round table panel was the question of parental involvement through games. Culturally, America is accepting of educational games for children of all ages. Germany, for instance, is not so accepting. The games should show significant value for the child's cognitive ability with the technology as well as usability for parent/child gameplay. Other cultures may view educational games as redundant, and takes away from children's imagination.

My second panel was bringing Epic Characters to Life with Substance and UE4, featuring Paragon's character pipeline.

The main take away from this panel is that the materials used must be tilable and have custom nodes for edits such as color. In Epic's Paragon library, there are roughly 400 materials that are borrowed and interchanged for every champion. Each character has around 20 b/w masks each for roughness, grunge, and details per material. Each material has their own layer in Substance Painter. There are champion specific materials as well. The biggest challenge for the artist team is color, roughness, specular, scratch mask, grime, and skin texture (Skin is too complicated for this time frame and therefore not touched in this panel specifically). Their team stresses to work simple and get complex out and work nondestructive. The character model may change within release (every 2 weeks!) so its best to not get too invested in details until it's completely green-lit.

The first custom featured is an Ivy (Soul Caliber) type fighter fused with a ice mage. She uses various metals on her skins, but has a character specific ice material made for her. This material, like the rest of the library, is transferred seamlessly into UE4 and applied in various ways. The ice texture uses a UV panner to get that extra life and readability in game.

The second character featured is Crush. He's a retired military robot unit who is now used in street fighting. The team showed his complicated process. They first apply a basic metallic material (Sand cast Material) on his surface. This stage is to let the artist experiment and explore possibilities. The first metal has minimal wear. Then they applied the more specific variation metals such as the difference in rivets and joint metals. Then a base material (old paint). After, a paint layer (base graffiti texture material) is applied on top. This base paint material on his normal character model is bubbled and chipped in certain areas. To apply this look the team uses a mask and then puts it into UE4 from substance to determine how damaged and bubbled up the old paint looks. The mask is based on a linear gradient, from white to bubbly ripped look to the right. After the base paint material and the texture material, a scratch layer is applied from a mask. Then a grunge filter from a mask. Scratch and grunge maps come after the base materials since they are external/environmental damages applied. Height maps are heavily used to show the depth for the believably in these materials. Jumping back into the pipeline, after those layers are applied, the character's power thrusts in his hands/ back are addressed. The artists applied rust by his thermal power boosts. And finally the character gets an emissive on the power thrusts/boosts to show the power inside of him. It's an equally the most challenging and fascinating character for the team to tackle at the time.

And finally the last topic given was their snow material for their seasonal skins. The snow is a tillable procedural mask. The snow offset mask is first made in substance painter and then has a snow filter with mask generator applied. So, in UE4 the team can tweak how much snow is layered on the character and where it is applied (through heavy crevice buildup or in a dusty powder layer). It was truly mind blowing for me. Especially since they expressed to stay simple the entire panel.

Alumni mixer: I networked with some fabulous alumni and touched based with my current peers.

Epic Party: Met the lead Designer and the Producer of a mobile game I play. It was awesome. Also lost my voice for the entire three days because of it.

GDC Day 2 (Thursday)

The first talk I attended was the Children Games P2, Mobile

This panel was specifically geared towards mobile development and marketing for children’s games. The first topic was about the future of AR/VR for children’s games. There’s a game aliable in semi prototype stage called SpaceHawk (or Space Hog?), which links technology with physical playtime. The child puts a phone in the plastic toy ship. The parent or sibling puts a paper target somewhere in the house. The child uses the ship to “sail” around the house until he or she finds the target and plays a mini game with it. The ship interacts through the phone to open separate compartments for interactive playtime when an objective is complete. Another example is toys with room/space awareness that are up coming. Also, AI voice interacting/conversational toys are being developed. Currently AR/VR is still too new for full integration for kid games, but the technology is moving towards that. In my personal opinion the last two examples kind of freak me out. I would rather my future child in their developing stages to interact with people as much as possible instead of getting invested in human-esque interaction with an android. It doesn’t and shouldn’t replace bonding time with family. That said I can see this technology being use in therapy for special needs and trauma coping children. This would help develop their social skills and identify emotions/pattern behaviors on top of human interaction being received.

Educational games with conversational AIs are a direction that is being pursued. For instance, Google translate could be applied through Alexa, to bring basic foreign language conversational practice. Other mobile language games are being produced. Sega and Wiz World produced English learning titles for Asian countries. These games are enabling the children to be more globally aware. The epicenter of those games seems to be in the Boston area in the US.

As for mobile games in general tablet to phone and phone to tablet integration were discussed. The room was a split between which platforms to be produced first, but it really depended on the game itself. Optimization is extremely important for this market. Simple is easier. Getting a simple idea to a simple platform is way easier than converting a monster IP into a smaller platform. Consumers tablet usage is 75% landscape mode orientation. Phone usage is 75% portrait mode. Keeping that in mind will dictate the overall layout of the app. Something else to be aware of is how much do you want the child to be exposed to at a time vs how much can they actually handle? Giving simple and little information as necessary at a time is ideal. Let the visual and sound cues do the majority of the work.

The panel also discusses in game analytics. These are the tools and metrics to success. It’s recommended to have a hired specialist instead of using an online client. Some are sketchy and will save your data for their own keeping!

Monetization for these apps is crucial. We all want to get paid for our work, right? Some options thrown around are in app purchases such as special items/characters/skins/playtime. Another is advertising. And lastly an initial charge for the app itself. The room seemed to have a combination of both ads and in app purchases if there wasn’t an initial charge. An ad engagement technique is to reward the player for watching the ad with in game items that enables the player to be engaged or not in the ads. The most popular ad kid services are Super Awesome and Project Wonderful,… It was also noted that this is a great market to get into since there isn’t much competition. The best technique for companies with more than one IP in my opinion is to make several demo or free titles to bring in the parents. Then, also have paid games that are more robust titles. The parent will be more likely to purchase the games after the child is involved with the free/demo titles. This also builds branding. After the parent purchases the game, in app purchases can be brought into the mix as well.

Great game design in general should be easy to pick up, and hard to master. Generally, scaling the play difficulty should be scaled to the older audience so not only the child will enjoy it, but the parent/older sibling as well. This has been echoed from the first panel the day before. Don’t treat tweens as children; they’ll drop the game like a hot potato. That said, it’s nearly impossible to make a children specific game that’s broad enough to capture the attention and hearts of a 2-14yr old.

The second panel was an impromptu talk given by the Facebook booth. It’s Facebook Ads in Messenger Games.

The games are made in Unity and can be downloaded at developers.facebook.com. for dissecting. The ads are integrated from user specific profiles off of facebook and echoed into the game several times. They’re trying to incorporate the ads seamlessly in the background of the ad so that when the Game Over screen appears, the player is more likely to click on the ad. Personally I feel that the way they go about it is extremely jarring and distracting. I wouldn’t want to play a game that had the same ad on every billboard, and item in the game. It’s right in your face. At that point I’m playing a marketing tool instead of a game. But, I got a free beanie out of it.

After the talks I got my portfolio reviewed twice. I got some really nice advice. Both reviewers said that my drawing skills are much stronger than my 3D.

· Biome is good! Nice casing and overall mood. Can nit pick about small technical issues, but overall is nice.

· Boss: More medium details in the skin folds, attention to the seams in the shorts. Anatomy off in the biceps. Tell more story

· Boots need more attention to PBR. Redo the smaller material layers for base material. Grunge/scratch filter maps apply afterwards. Watch more substance tutorials.

· LP back room put title of exercise on top left for indication.

GDC Findings, Day 3 (Friday)

Friday was my final day at GDC. I took most of the day to explore the city. There was only one panel I had both interest and clearance for that day. Also, my flight was leaving early Sat morning, so I could not experience as much as the other days. 

Panel LP modeling indie style 3:30pm Friday

LowPoly is the minimum required geometry as possible to get a large idea across. It’s low fidelity art which goes against the high AAA titles. Some benefits of LP geo include: higher efficiency with smaller amount of team members on the project or even solo work, faster/smoother computing time, faster work times, saves $ for artist freelance contracts and working time, the ability to reach a larger audience including those who do not have the latest technology, and the enticing stylistic approach for mostly indie titles.

The recommended workflow for LP modeling is LP to high. Higher geometry with reduction is also acceptable. HP to decimated mesh is a nightmare to work with because of it’s inefficacy for character rigging and UV (stay away!!!)

The artist should be thinking in LP to unify the game’s overall voice. This way he or she can determine whether to use dispersement procedures to populate the world with much smaller LP assets, or to populate the world with less assets, ie pockets of higher fidelity assets. Because there is a lack of geometry in the game, artists can use tricks to make the assets and textures read easier such as utilizing particles and panning UV textures for movement ( kind of like Sega Genesis look).

When working in LP, artist decides how low to make the geometry. Silhouette is the most important aspect in this which is widely known for 3D artists in general. The goal is to make each asset read as the idea of the object, rather than an absolute representation of the object itself. For instance, a sphere with 32 divisions at a distance isn’t too different from a sphere of 16 divisions from a small distance. But, a sphere with 8 will have noticeable edges but still be able to get the general idea across while saving polygons. It’s the understood object, rather than the HP render. At the same time the model shouldn’t be underselling itself where the model is ambiguous. When working with LP modeling it’s also crucial to have materials and lighting in mind. This will dictate how the asset will react and be perceived in the world. Generally LP cell shaded or unlit materials work best on LP styled games. Set color palettes are also a great way to save on textures and keep a consistent look in the game. LP saves computing time and makes it easier on the procedural asset generator. Detail in LP modeled assets aren’t the end goal in this approach.

Side note: When rigging LP assets, make sure to add edge loops on major joints so that the model moves correctly.