Environmental Storytelling: Creating Immersive 3D Worlds Using Lessons Learned from the Theme Park Industry

Post date: Feb 18, 2010 2:53:18 PM

By Don Carson

For the past 15 years I have worked as a designer for many theme park, computer gaming, and software companies. In every project I undertake, I am faced with the same challenge, "How do I draw my audience into my imagined world and make them want to stay?" Whether it's a 100 million dollar Disney ride, a 3D shooter, or a kid's entertainment title, it is my objective to tell a story through the experience of traveling through a real, or imagined physical space. Unlike a linear movie, my audience will have choices along their journey. They will have to make decisions based on their relationship to the virtual world I have created, as well as their everyday knowledge of the physical world. Most important of all, their experience is going to be a "spatial" one.

If I have an all encompassing desire for any computer game I play or themed attraction I visit, it is this:

Take me to a place that:

- Lets me go somewhere I could never go.
- Lets me be someone I could never be.
- Lets me do things I could never do!

The Evolution of 3D Gaming

Within the past decade we have been witness to the evolution of the 3D gaming universe. In games such as Wolfenstien,Doom, and now Quake 3 Arena, we can visit and explore worlds on our computer screens that are increasingly dramatic and realistic. The notion of walking through theatrical environments like those found in Cyan's Myst and Riven, real time, are not that far fetched. Yet, despite our staggering leaps in technology, the game play remains relatively unchanged. We may be transported into ever engrossing and elaborate theatrically lighted cathedrals, but the fact is, we are still simply killing each other. Please understand, I have nothing against 3D shooters. I have spent countless hours with a rocket launcher in my hands and know the glories of a low Ping rate. This doesn't change the fact that on many occasions I have been blown to bits because I dared hesitate to admire a beautiful piece of virtual architecture.

Despite these technological miracles, the audience that experiences these worlds are relatively small. Bloodshed and mayhem rein supreme, with many a computer savvy cyber gladiator having to wrestle a 3D accelerator card into the guts of their increasingly obsolete PC. But, times are changing, and it seems that we are on the brink of an untapped market potential. With more PC's coming onto the market with 3D accelerators built in, it is quite possible that your everyday Joe will have the power to visit increasingly realistic worlds from their desktop.

Theme Parks and the Virtual World

Prior to the mid-1990's, my experience and interest in the computer gaming world was marginal. Not until the release of games like Myst and Doom did I fully see a potential bridge between the theme park world I was working in and the world of the computer on my desktop. As my professional computer experience has grown, so has my belief that the two worlds are not that far apart. True, their audience demographics may be slightly different, but in many ways they face the same challenge: How to bring people into their created worlds and keep them immersed and entertained. Now with the growing popularity of multiplayer and internet games, computer environments are treading on a realm, until now, reserved for the physical world. Many thousands of people are connecting and participating in these virtual worlds with total strangers for one reason.... namely, the allure of the "shared" experience. A chance to make a human connection in these new worlds and to be able to say, "HEY! Did you see THAT!?"

Because of this, there is a lot of knowledge that should be shared between these two seemingly different industries. Amusement parks have been entertaining people for over a 150 years. In the past 50 years theme parks like Disneyland, have taken the art of spatially entertaining people to new heights. No longer are rides simply a short lived thrill, now guests are fully immersed in stories, where they play the main character. Over the years these designers have developed tricks and trade secrets that (from experience) they know will work.

Environmental Storytelling

One of the trade secrets behind the design of entertaining themed environments is that the story element is infused into the physical space a guest walks or rides through. In many respects, it is the physical space that does much of the work of conveying the story the designers are trying to tell. Color, lighting and even the texture of a place can fill an audience with excitement or dread.

Much of this is done by manipulating an audience's expectations, which they have based on their own experiences of the physical world. Armed only with their own knowledge of the world, and those visions collected from movies and books, the audience is ripe to be dropped into your adventure. The trick is to play on those memories and expectations to heighten the thrill of venturing into your created universe.

Quake 3 Arena demonstrates the increasingly dramatic and realistic nature of 3D technology

One of the trade secrets behind the design of entertaining themed environments is that the story element is infused into the physical space a guest walks or rides through.

The Importance of Story

The first secret is "story." When I say story I am not talking about a linear "once upon a time" type story. I am talking about an all encompassing notion, a "big picture" idea of the world that is being creating. A set of rules that will guide, the design and the project team to a common goal. It is this first step that will insure the created world will be seamless. If you are creating a game or attraction based on, let's say "pirates", you'll need to play your audiences expectation like a violin. You want to pamper them by fulfilling every possible expectation of what it must be like to be a pirate. Every texture you use, every sound you play, every turn in the road should reinforce the concept of "pirates!" If you successfully establish a strong enough "story" early on in your design process, you will have little trouble keeping your team focused. If you break any of the rules, more often than not your team will argue, "we can't put that in there, that's not at all 'piratey'!"

Most important of all is once you have created this story, or the rules by which your imagined universe exists, you do not break them! These rules can be broad, but if they are broken your visitors will feel cheated. They will be slapped in the face with the contradiction and never again allow themselves to be as lost in your world as they may have been at the onset.

"Where Am I?"

In the telling of your "story," the next most important task is to answer your audiences first question.... "Where am I?" No matter how well designed your environments are, if your audience can not answer this question in the first 15 seconds, you are already lost. This can be as simple as "Oh, I am in a dark warehouse." or "Ah, I am in the hold of a ship." Wherever it is, your first job is to present your audience with the opportunity to answer this question for themselves.

Your next question to answer is "What is my relationship to this place?" No matter how gorgeous your medieval castle, or abandoned space station might be, if they can't figure out what their role is in this place, you have missed out on a marvelous opportunity to pull your audience deeper into your world. This need not be done with lengthy CD liner notes or costly Intro AVIs. Clues can be left throughout your environment. Although you may not know who you are, you should be able to begin to have a notion based on your initial location. Valve's Half Life does an award winning job of playing with the player's desire for self identity, but only lets them come to a conclusion through their experience of the physical space and random encounters with peripheral game characters.

Self discovery can be even more enjoyable than having the story spelled out for you in the opening credits. There are lots of ways designers can place story elements throughout their environments to lead their audience to conclusions designed into the games plot.

Storytelling Through Cause and Effect

One of the most successful methods for pulling your audience into your story environment is through the use of "cause and effect" vignettes. These are staged areas that lead the game player to come to their own conclusions about a previous event or to suggest a potential danger just up ahead. Some examples of "cause and effect" elements include, doors that have been broken open, traces of a recent explosion, a crashed vehicle, a piano dropped from a great height, charred remains of a fire... etc. These "cause and effect" bits of storytelling can help the game player better understand where they are and what they might expect to experience further on. Putting in an element just because it is "cool" misses a vital opportunity to use that element to help further your story along.

"Cause and effect" elements can also depict the passage of time. A game character may return to a place that they had become familiar with earlier in the game, only to find it completely altered. This may be due to a cataclysmic event, or the disappearance of elements remembered from a previous visit. "Cause and effect" elements could also be triggered directly by the actions of the game player. The best examples are found in games like Half Life and Duke Nukem 3D. In the case of Duke Nukem, the game player reaks havoc on his environment, blasting toilets, setting fire to palm trees, and making Swiss cheese of many architectural elements. After a lengthy Deathmatch, there is not doubt as to what has transpired in Duke's futuristic Los Angeles.

Another example of "cause and effect" is the use of what I call "Following Saknussemm." Derived from the story Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. In Verne's story the main characters follow a trail of symbols scratched into subterranean walls by their adventuring predecessor, a sixteenth century Icelandic scientist, Arne Saknussemm. In this way, the game player is pulled through the story by following "bread crumbs" left behind by a fictitious proceeding game character. Whether you create notes scattered throughout your environments, or have the game player follow the destructive path of some dangerous creature, "cause and effect" elements will only heighten the drama of the story you are trying to tell!

The Power of Designing the Familiar

Another powerful trick is to use the familiar in your designs. If your goal is to create an environment that is totally alien, it pays to periodically give your audience something familiar to anchor them themselves to. All too often, game designers will create a level built entirely of pulsating walls of intestine like material. Although the concept of such a place may sound "cool," it does more to alienate the game player than draw them in. If you can periodically give them some reference point... such as, "Oh, I am in a spaceship" or "Hey, this must be the engine room" you will be doing them a great favor. Even something like "Wow! These look like alien toilets!?!" will bring your audience back to relating to the environment, and even lend a little humor.

Remember, This is a Theatre!

On several occasions I have had a chance to walk through the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction in Disneyland, CA. During my first visit, I took a breather in the "Auction Scene." As I leaned back against one of the Caribbean stucco buildings I was shocked to discover they were entirely made of painted stretched canvas! All through my childhood I had just assumed that the buildings were solid, and even today it is hard to remember they are only clever theatrical magic. It is important to remember that the virtual world is no different than a theatre stage or a film set. Although we don't use canvas and paint, we can learn much from the tried and true tricks handed down to us by 2000 years of theatre. Texture maps are our canvas sets and how we choose to use them will make or destroy the story we are trying to convey. Texture maps are not wallpaper, but our tool to trick the eye. Even though dynamic lighting is one of the many luxuries of the new 3D technology, don't let lighting dictate how an environment appears to your audience. If your texture has architectural details that are carving into, or stick out of the two dimensional surface, it pays to paint in the necessary shadows to help heighten the illusion of depth an drama. The more you can achieve in your texture maps the fewer polygons you will waste on frivolous details.

The design mantra "Less Is More" applies. Refrain from cluttering your spaces with complicated, busy, or loudly patterned textures. Visual complexity is a luxury that should be used lightly. Pick and choose where you place your accenting textures, and down play simpler patterns. Use your details as architectural arrows that help lead your audience from one space to another. One trick is to save your most decorative elements for areas you wish to draw your audience to. Rather than cluttering an unimportant corridor with gorgeous ornamentation, simply save one detailed element for the end of the hallway and let it draw your audience, like a dangling carrot, into the next space.

Another pitfall to be weary of is the overly illuminated environment. After a map builder has painstakingly finished a level, it is understandable that he/she should want to show off every nook and cranny. Unfortunately, too many lights flooding an environment washes out and flattens the illusion of depth. Just like a flash photo removes all sense of mood or drama, so does a map that's lighted like a Walmart. Don't be afraid to loose large areas of your map in shadow. Of course it is important that you do not hide vital game elements in the gloom, but use your lights to draw attention to only those things that are most important to your story!

It is easy to see that lighting can create marvelous dramatic effects, but the same can be true of the placement of props and objects. A large room with a single shaft of light illuminating a solitary prop is more effective than a room filled with detailed elements. If you have an important "cause and effect" prop you wish to highlight, compose all other textures and props in the space as merely supporting players to the important Story element. Be careful not to confuse the game player with too many choices at any given time. Though it is you who has orchestrated the environment, when it is done right, the game player has the illusion that they are in complete control of their character's destiny.

Using Contrasting Elements to Your Advantage

If you have ever visited a medieval cathedral or even a large old church, there is a reason the vast interior is so awe inspiring. What you may not realize when you enter, is that the architects of these places have forced you to enter the church through a small confined space, before revealing the monumental interior of the main church. This in done quite on purpose, and it is the contrasting effect of having been confined in a small space that makes the adjacent room all the more dramatic.

Contrast is another tool in the environmental designer's bag of tricks. Whenever possible, create variety in your spaces. Force your audience to wander through a cool lighted space before dropping them into a hot one. Give them the experience of disorder before you deliver them into a place of order. And above all, give them asymmetry whenever possible. The world we live in is far from geometrically perfect, and spaces where every chair, desk, and potted plant is lined up in a grid only helps emphasize how fake your world really is! This is the same with your architectural interiors. Many architectural monuments can be perfectly symmetrical, but in our lives little else is. If you must create a long expanse of repeating pillars, or some such element, make one unique among the rest. Nudge it out slightly, or knock the thing right over, it will only add life to an otherwise mathematically perfect, but boring, environment.

The Paradox of Designing Environments for "Gamers"

One challenge to designing successful environments in the computer is working in and around the expectations of your main client.... mainly "gamers." I had an experience of art directing an Indiana Jones type game for a gaming company. After painstaking work on making the environments as realistic as possible, I walked into the lead programmers office to witness my carefully rendered torch flames flickering at an unrealistic lightening pace. When I complained, the Programmer proudly argued that he had done it for "the gamers." To be specific, he wished to show off the remarkable frame rate of the game, and felt that "gamers" would appreciate the visual effect of a high frame rate over the realism of my environments.

Needless to say, there is a fine line between fulfilling the desires of creating a beautiful game, and creating a game that people will want to play. No matter how stunning your environments might be, if it's no fun, no one will buy it! The same is true of the layout of a particular space. Designing environments that optimize the enjoyment of firing rockets, may not be one that tells a slowly evolving story. This does not mean that we should be left with spaces that are no more than strategically placed platforms, no matter how ornate the decor. It is within these challenges that a team can lean back on a strong Story. If you are creating arenas for gladiators to blast each other to bits, play up the gladiator arena aspect of the game rather than guild it in unrelated ornate textures. Above all, make the game playable, but use your knowledge and Story to support the enjoyment of your game rather than confusing it.

I have also had the experience of working with team leaders who can only articulate their desires as "Make it more 'edgy' or "It's not awesome yet, I will tell you when it is." Sadly, I do not have foolproof advice to combat such statements, it's a part of this industry. I do however know that if you can establish a strong story, one that your whole team can agree on, arguments are usually relegated to small details rather than gutting and overhauling the look of the game 3 months before it ships!

The Advantages of Computer Environments over Theme Parks

There are several things that virtual environments can give you that theme parks can not. Foremost is the expensive limitation of building in the physical world. theme park designs need to take into consideration the necessity to push as many people an hour as they can through their various attractions. One attraction alone can cost a 100 million dollars to build, and takes millions more per year to just keep it clean and running. Theme Park experiences run from 30 seconds to 15 minutes in duration and could never rival the 40 hours spent wandering the islands of Myst. Theme parks must always be aware of safety, so my Lara Croft back flips off 10 story cliffs are out of the question.

As a theme park designer, I have had to battle hard and fast to add more expensive themed light fixtures to a particular attraction, while in my computer environments I can just cut and paste. In the computer I am only limited by the number of polygons my machine can crunch and how willing I am to slow my progress down in favor of a room full of themed lamps. I am also reassured that as technology and computer processors get faster, my environments will be even richer and more detailed.

One area the computer has yet to master, is the physical experience of sitting next to your friend, parent, or loved one, and truly "living" through your adventure together. Sure, we can holler over our cubical at Johnson in accounting as we nail him with a rail gun, or wander through EverQuest with players in Japan, Austrailia, and Moscow, but we still can't sit close to our loved ones and friends and experience our adventure together. Goodness knows, one day we will!

Missed Opportunities

For the time being, the ability to create virtual worlds is relatively new to us. I have no doubt that in the years to come we will continue to blaze new trails deep into this entertainment medium. Although we break new technological ground with every year that passes, I still find that I am left wanting. I long for the day we break away from rambling labyrinths for their own sake, whether they are dungeon passages, back street alleys, or miles of sewer pipes. I look forward to visiting virtual places that tell me more about where I am and what I am supposed to do. I want to use my wits and knowledge to get myself out of tight spots, and never again have to twitch my way through timed puzzles that force me to repeat my actions over and over to simply reach another level of the game.

With the growing popularity of multiplayer games and the promise of higher band widths, I relish the day I can meet friends and explore these worlds together. Places where our success isn't measured only in frags, and our rewards aren't merely based on how many fire beetles we have killed. I look forward to the day when the act of exploration actually builds relationships between it's players. I want my character to be tested. I want to be given the choice of sacrificing myself for a higher cause, or sacrifice others for my own petty rewards. I want to be given choices that test my relationship with other players. Force us to work together for a common goal, pull us apart, then bring us together, and make us pool our mental and emotional resources to get through this adventure in one piece.

In closing, I want to say that I relish the years to come. I can't wait to see what virtual worlds you will have created for us to explore. Push that envelope and bravely challenge the "way it has always been done before." Use your environments to draw us in deep, and build on the strength of a good Story, making it the back bone of your project. You have the power. You are the storytellers. Now......

- Take us somewhere we could never go.
- Let us be someone we could never be.
- Let us do things we could never do.

Sub-Intuitive Elements in Design

Years ago, while studying Commercial Illustration in San Francisco, I had an instructor who discussed the use of "Arrows and Pathways" in illustration. Up to that point the concept was completely unknown to me. He used the works of N.C. Wyeth, specifically his paintings for Treasure Island, to demonstrate how, through the use of perspective, value, and color, the artist could force the viewer to look where he wanted him/her to look. Not only did N.C. Wyeth have draftsmanship and his ability to wield a brush in his favor, but he used an underlying structure that would draw his audience helplessly to the conclusion that he desired them to reach! In his example, my instructor used Wyeth's painting of Blind Pew (Figure 1).

In the painting the blind pirate is standing in the road just beyond the Admiral Benbow Inn where he has delivered the fateful "Black Spot" to Captain Billy Bones. In the story, Blind Pew is struck down by a carriage on the road outside the Inn. Wyeth's painting successfully captures the moment, immediately before Pew is hit by that same carriage. Although the carriage does not appear in the painting, you can sense the tension in the air. Your eye is drawn to the face of Pew and despite his murderous reputation you have sympathy for the man as he cries out in the night.

Looking at the illustration, it appears to break many of the rules of design. Pew's face is one of the smallest elements in the painting, so it's size does not draw your attention. It is not the brightest, or darkest element in the painting, so it is not contrast that makes you look into his face. Even the overall muted quality of the painting proves he has not used saturated color to draw you in. Deeper in the design of the painting lies the secret. If you look at the elements that surround the figure of Blind Pew, you notice that every line of perspective, every crack in the road, and every pitch in the roof of the inn points toward the face of Pew. Notice how the line of his cane stretches up through his arm, and points to his face. Even his tricorn hat, blown to the ground, acts as a giant arrow pointing to his head. Like a spiraling drain, your eye, no matter how much it may wander will be inevitably sucked right back to the one place the artist demands you to look.

Our class looked at other examples of Wyeth's work as well as pieces from other famous "Golden Age" illustrators. In every case, these artists grabbed you by the collar and dragged your attention to those elements that were most important to the telling of their story. Without knowing, the viewers have handed over their will to the artist's design, and allowed him to take them on a pre-orchestrated journey.

At that very moment my mind was completely blown apart. It was as though I had been introduced to color for the very first time. No longer was design a matter of creating pretty pictures. Now I understood it to be a marvelous tool, a slight of hand, a jujitsu trick, the power to draw an audience deep into my design, to work my will and bring my internal vision to an audience and let them live inside of it for awhile.

Although I might sound a little like the BBC's Sister Wendy discussing the finer points of art, that is not my goal. I wish to set the stage for a conversation about the very same concepts and techniques which are available to the designers of physical spaces, both real and virtual. Like the Arrows and Pathways in Wyeth's paintings, the world around us is filled with equally engaging tricks and traps that can help a designer draw his audience deep into the story he wishes to tell!

Architectural Archetypes

Outside my Oregon studio is a gently rolling grass covered hill. Where the lawn meanders to the sidewalk of an adjoining street there are two tall trees, approximately eight feet apart, and leaning slightly away from each other. From time to time people will walk up the hill to reach our house from the back. When they do, they are confronted by these two trees. Although there is an expanse of several hundred feet to either side of the trees, many have admitted that they had a compulsion to walk between them. Others have said that they would purposely avoid walking through them. Either way, they were faced with a choice, and had to act upon deep emotional responses to the natural "threshold" created by the two trees. In many ways, they had to give into feelings that defied their common sense and make a decision based on a more primal part of themselves.

Like the example of the paintings, our every day world is filled with physical "archetypes" which force us to respond in predictable ways. These archetypes are powerful tools that can be used to draw your audience to experience certain "feelings" about the space you have designed, and weave them through the story you are trying to tell.

Imagine you have a pair of columns side by side, like our two trees, and have placed them in an open field. It is easy to predict that any passing hikers would find the sight of the two columns intriguing and potentially walk over to them. In the process of examining them, they might even walk around them several times. Now, Imagine that you add a lintel bridging the two columns, making an archway. Now the sight becomes more intriguing, and worthy of further investigation. Add a threshold stone to the base of the archway and you have created an irresistible mystery. With the addition of the threshold, you have created a door, and I defy any passersby to continue on without passing through it.... and once passing through, somehow feeling as though they have left one place behind and entered a new place all together. This occurs with the knowledge that they have not left or entered anywhere. They are still in the same field as before. If a passing person were to have the will power to avoid walking through the threshold, they might forever wonder what might have happened if they had.

This is powerful stuff. More than just a doorway, we have stumbled over a root relationship we all have with the physical world. We may feel in control of how we interact with our environment, but in truth we can be easily lead to a conclusion by having our primal understanding of the physical world played with. Now add a sign over the top of that threshold that reads "Entrance to Hell, " or simply "Forgiveness, " etc. and watch the needle go off the chart! You have discovered how even the simplest architectural element can be used as a vehicle to reinforce your story! You have added the first arrow pointing to your inevitable conclusion!

One of the problems facing most game and theme park designers is how to coax your audience through your story and still give them the feeling they are on a unique journey. A quest that is theirs alone, and one worth retelling once the adventure is over.

One of the methods is to create the "Illusion of Complexity." I am sure you have had the experience of visiting someone's house for dinner and at some point in the evening having to ask, "Where's the bathroom?" Even after being told where to go you still find yourself getting lost. You might even think, "For goodness sake, this is a two bedroom house, how on earth could I not find the bathroom?" Even though you are in a small house, your lack of familiarity creates a mystery in an unlikely place. For the first time visitor to your environment, you have this lack of familiarity to your advantage. In the beginning, there is no need to create mind-bending labyrinths to lose your visitors in. The fact that they are unfamiliar with the space will be mystery enough.

When Disneyland opened in 1955, it was the first themed environment of its kind. Being the first meant that its designers learned as they went and, in hindsight, realized that they made the streets and byways just a little too intimate for the park's summer crowds. In subsequent parks, like the Magic Kingdom in Florida, they fixed these problems, but in doing so, lost a lot of the charm that the original park still possesses. It was Walt's desire that each guest create his or her ownexperience. It was his wish that the park consist of high and low roads, or alternative routes to any and all of its various "lands."

The buildings in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction at Disneyland, despite appearing solid are entirely made of painted stretched canvas and example of clever theatrical magic

In theme parks, Tomb Raiderstyle backflips off of ten story cliffs are out of the question

Figure 1.

Wyeth's "Blind Pew."

An undeniable mystery.

The trees outside Don Carson's studio.

Half Life is an excellent example of cause and effect elements triggered by actions of the game player.

By adding varied pathways to the same destination, you allow your audience to create their own journey.

If your desired goal is Fantasyland, you have up to five different ways to get there. You can take the alpha/photo opportunity path, up Main Street, across the draw bridge and through the castle gate. You could enter through Frontierland or Tomorrowland, or you could sneak through either side of the castle by way of two narrow paths. On one of these paths you will stumble upon Snow White's interactive wishing well. Multiply this "multiple paths" concept to each and every land, and you can see what a web Disneyland actually is. At the end of the day, each visitor will create his or her own linear visit to the park, one that is completely different from any other guest's day. Even within a group of visitors, each member may have an experience unique to them. An experience they can share, but that is still distinctively theirs.

The goal (in this case, Fantasyland) has remained the same; what are unique is the paths offered on the road toward that goal! As in the attached diagram, a "one pathway" experience can be broken up into many, giving choices to the visitor of your created environments. If you then vary the width and length of these alternative paths, maybe even adding a distracting element in the middle of one of them, you have then empowered your visitor to create their own experience.

New Orleans Square

If you have had the opportunity to visit Disneyland's New Orleans Square, you have experienced a shining example of the "Illusion of Complexity." It was the desire of the Imagineers designing this land to capture the feel of wandering the meandering streets of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Figure 3.

New Orleans Square

Figure 4.

A beautiful stairway to nowhere.

Faced with a limited amount of space, they needed to create the illusion that the park guests could explore aimlessly, with every turn revealing something new. By viewing the diagram of New Orleans Square (Fig. 3), you can see that the land's layout is really quite simple. Notice that there are no right angles anywhere in the layout, and that if you were to wander through the land you would be looping in a figure eight pattern. Within the layout are also several in-cut patios, courts, and grand southern stairways (Fig. 4), which lead nowhere. As a guest visiting the land, you are constantly confronted with seemingly new things to look at, when in fact, it's just the same stuff over and over again, seen from different angles. Consequently, the bathrooms are just as hard to find as they were in your friend's house.

Multiple Jiminy Crickets

There is one paradox that is unique to the art of environmental storytelling alone. This happens when you try to pepper your environment with reoccurring, story-driven characters.

When we go to see a movie or have an evening at the theatre, we instinctively know to suspend our disbelief before we sit down. We leave a lot of what we know about the real world at the door and allow ourselves to be completely transported by the events on the stage and screen. If the stage curtain closes and we are told upon its reopening that 10 years have passed, we happily buy into the notion. If the screen fades to black and a morning scene magically turns into a night scene, we don't even think twice about it. Unfortunately this is not true of physical places.

For some perplexing reason, when we eliminate the presence of the proscenium separating the audience from the story, the audience transforms from willing participants into shrewd skeptics. In the case of a theme park attraction, if we desire to use a reoccurring character throughout the linear length of our ride, the audience will not easily buy into it. One example is Disneyland's Fantasyland attraction,"Pinocchio's Daring Journey". We, as guests, get into a ride vehicle and are conveyed through the beginning of the story. We witness Pinocchio captured by the evil Stromboli, and then are launched into a blacklit, hairpin turning journey to escape all the various nasties who wish to capture us as well. Throughout the attraction, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio's friend and conscience, pops up to steer us towards the "straight and narrow" path. As the story unfolds, Jiminy appears a half a dozen times, finally arriving to congratulate us at the ride's conclusion. Unlike the filmed version of this story, where such events would be common place, the spatial nature of this story and our linear movement through it leaves us disillusioned. We are not left with the feeling of having been guided by a single Jiminy Cricket, but by multiple copies, sprinkled throughout the ride! There is something about our having experienced the story spatially that refuses to allow us to believe that these events are "real."

The 3D computer gaming world must wrestle with this same phenomenon in every new project. Unless the passage of time is indicated with a cinematic cut-scene, it is quite a challenge to make your audience believe the events that are happening around them are "real." Just as we instinctively know when there is the slightest flaw in the animation of a human character, we are equally judgmental when it comes to the passage of linear time within an environment. Although we never think about a stage actor disappearing backstage to paste on a beard and age make-up before reappearing on stage, we do make such judgments about spatial events. If a character reappears too quickly, or in too many places, our carefully crafted illusion is shattered. The audience knows when "something is not right", even if they are unable to articulate it.

When we watch a play or movie, we sit back and allow the story's events to flow over us, but when the events are happening to us, we are quick to judge! We might ask ourselves, "Hey, why did it get dark all of sudden?" or "Wasn't that guy upstairs just a minute ago?" There are strict rules to our own real world environment, and we take these rules with us when we enter 3D computer generated ones!

Another challenge to overcome in the computer generated world is that of the "triggered actor". When we play enough of the games out there, we come to expect certain limitations within the medium. In many games, "actor" characters are placed within a map to interject important story elements, advice, or warnings. These actors are usually triggered into action by something we have done, or by our proximity to their location. Like in the 3D Shooters of the past, our progression is determined by our unleashing beasts from a cage, battling them, then moving through that cage onto the next until we reach an exit. The seasoned gamer knows to look for these tricks, and the act of looking can pop the illusion you are trying to create. Although this is the easiest and most effective method for introducing characters, it is worth your time and effort to try to hide what you are doing with some digital sleight-of-hand.

There is always the potential for you to rise above these limitations. You can create new rules at the onset of your game. You can tell your audience that gravity does not exist, or that time travel is possible, or that everything in this world is upside-down. You can create worlds as wacky as Dr. Seuss, and have your audience completely give themselves over to it, but you better establish the new rules early, or you will arouse their skepticism (and nobody wants that).

Please Ignore That Man Behind the Curtain

Another unfair advantage stage and screen have over computer environments is their ability to transport an audience with little or no visual content. In the play "Our Town," by Thornton Wilder, the audience is given an empty stage with several metal folding chairs and a ladder as the only set pieces. What's worse is that they are told that these meager props represent an entire midwestern town, with all its buildings, trees, and landscape. Amazingly, the audience unanimously agrees to this, and happily projects onto these items whatever the director desires them to see and experience. The ladder magically becomes a tree, a rooftop, and a church steeple, all in the audience's own imagination!

Now, computer games have had their years of metal folding chairs and ladders too. We have played tennis with only a handful of pixels, and shot down asteroids in only 8 colors, but today's audience has become a bit pickier, and savvy to the tools of our trade. The gamer who anticipates triggered AI actors is also aware of badly tiled textures, obviously placed platforms, and 128 x 128 pixel crates for pushing around. After exploring an environment for awhile, the player is pulled away from the immersive qualities of your world and starts to view it as just so many cubes, doorways, and ledges. They may be inside the most amazing Aztec ruin, hung with vines and theatrically placed shafts of light, but having solved the puzzles before this one, they ignore the finery and hunt solely for the telltale signs of the puzzle designer. They know that game designers like to work within set parameters, such as 128, 256, 512, and that their character may be limited to jumps of a set distance. Rather than using their wits to navigate your Aztec temple, they are using their knowledge and experience of its limitations to solve your puzzle. One could argue that this is enough, and is part of the gaming experience, but if you have the opportunity to pull your audience into your story, rather than allowing them to sink to what they have learned from other computer games, I say go for it!

Tomb Raider does a fantastic job of creating impressive vistas with very few polygons, although sometimes the telltale hand of the puzzle designer is still visible. On the other hand, Quake 3 Arena will periodically sacrifice architecture for pure game play functionality.

Environmental Storytelling's Bag of Tricks

Gentle Reminders.

One of many environmental storytelling tricks, used by writers of everything from novels and movie scripts to self-help books and political speeches is, during the course of your story:

Tell them where they're going,

Tell them where they are, and

Tell them where they've been.

At times you might think that you are repeating yourself, but it never hurts to gently remind your audience why they are there, and where they are going. This can be done with a cut scene, interaction with an in-game character, or by having the game player stumble on something that reminds them of why they took on your adventure in the first place. This little bit of nudging does not have to take up very much of the game players' time, but strategically placed reminders throughout your game will keep them on the right track and make them less apt to lose interest in where they are going.

Speaking of where they are going... it doesn't hurt to give them a clear idea of their destination (if there is one). In the case of the Blizzard's Diablo, it is right on the box! From the moment you pick the game up off the shelf, you know who you are after, and having defeated him, you have the sense of having accomplished something. I have heard of another game which had a goal of reaching the illusive and climactic "Pleasuredome." Now the "Pleasuredome" had little to do with the actual game and once you got there, there wasn't much to look at. That was almost beside the point, considering the prestige achieved among your friends by boasting you had actually been there!

Forced Perspective...... Use It!

In the computer world, size is relative. As long as the poly count remains the same, it doesn't always matter how big you make your buildings. Just because you can create "real world" scaled environments, doesn't always mean you should. Disneyland's Main Street USA is famous for its 5/8th scale buildings. They didn't design these small sized buildings to save money. They used the scale change to create charm and contrast the size of Sleeping Beauty's Castle at the far end of the street. How you design the scale of an environment can tell you a lot about the people who exist there. If the buildings are small, their inhabitants might seem vulnerable, compared to a bigger structure in the distance. To reinforce the relationship between an oppressive ruler to his subjects, you could scale down the size of the buildings of the village in contrast to the gigantic scale of their ruler's nearby mansion.

Something to keep in mind while you are designing is, in the case of a first person perspective, your own scale is sometimes hard to determine without some familiar object sitting next to it which the viewer can relate to . While visiting the giant rocks of Oak Creek Canyon on the road to Sedona Arizona, I sat and sketched a rock formation just beyond the parking lot where we were sitting. As I sat, a woman walked past me heading towards the same rock. While I sketched I watched as the woman got smaller, and smaller, and smaller until I realized that the rock I was sketching was the size of the Chrysler Building, and the woman was the size of a pebble at its base. Another incident happened while watching a friend playEverQuest. While watching, I pointed out a spider not far from him. I said, "Hey, there's something you can bash!" My friend informed me that he would be doing no such thing, and as he approached the beast I realized that it was the size of a small two bedroom house and two game characters were valiantly waging war with it! Without the presence of the two figures, like the woman standing by the rock, I would have never been able to relate to either the rock or the spider's actual size in space!

Frame It

Although you are working in a 3D environment, it is sometimes helpful to utilize some of the same tricks that 2D artists and filmmakers use. If you are approaching an architectural element that is important to your story, you don't necessarily need to reveal it all at once. In fact, it can be much more dramatic if you only give your audience small glimpses of it at first. Guide your audience to small windows or gaps that will allow them to see only a fraction of the overall environment. Carefully crop these views so that the window frames this larger subject, in a way that alludes to the majesty of the whole, without giving it away. This is a powerful tool to allow your guest to start anticipating what lies ahead, without giving it away entirely. In the beginning of the movie "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," our hero Charlie stands outside the closed gates of Wonka's mysterious factory. Like Charlie, we are given an opportunity to begin to wonder about what lies just beyond the iron bars. Although we never again get a good look at the whole exterior of the factory, we almost don't need it, because our imaginations have filled in the blanks for us.

Walk in the Gamer's Shoes

When we think of art students, we often imagine a stereotypical young bohemian crouched in the hallways of the Louvre, madly copying the works of the great masters. The reason they do is because there is no better teacher than the artists that have come before themselves. Once they have studied the masters' technique, composition, use of light, and understanding of the human figure, they can then move on to create a unique style of their own. To ignore this phase of learning is to cheat oneself of the hard earned lessons of years past.

The same is true of the virtual world. The last 5 years have been filled with opportunities to observe what has worked and what has not. Many things about the creation of computer generated worlds has improved. There may be some elegant solutions we once learned, but have now somehow forgotten. We all remember past favorites that had some wonderful element or item that we wish we could take into some of the games we play today. Why did they die out? Becoming a designer of 3D worlds means walking the virtual streets of games both past and present. Turn off those Bots and really explore. Wedge yourself behind crates, scour the dark corners, and examine how the textures are applied. Be critical, but not so much so that you are blind to a level's brilliant moments. If your 3D game will be competing in the market with a similar game, find out all you can about it. Read their articles and play their demos! The kiss of death comes when you stubbornly hold onto the false belief that your game will be so much better that you don't need to look at your competition. New ground is being broken weekly, and to deny the potential learning from your peers is to cheat yourself of innovations that could only help your product in the end. The more time you spend studying the work of master level builders, even if they work for your competition, the better a designer you will be!

Lastly, get up from your computer and examine the real world around you. Watch how the light changes during the course of a day. Examine the tactile difference between surfaces. Notice how you "know" whether an object will be soft or hard before you even touch it. What makes a place feel hot, or cold? How are your emotions triggered by where you are? What is it about certain vistas that leave us speechless? Watch how movie directors light their sets. Notice how stage actors draw you into the drama. Look for the hidden methods painters and photographers use to sway your attention to those elements that are most important to the story they are trying to tell you.

Become a master of observation in the physical world and then bring that knowledge back into your work as a creator of the virtual. Combine this knowledge with your experience and your vision for what is possible and you will create spaces that will compel, delight, terrify, and set our imaginations on fire!

THE LESSONS

Translating Concrete into Polygons

While working on theme park projects, I constantly bumped my head on the inevitable ceiling of our project's budget, and the limits of the physical world. Walt Disney once complained that all of the money that had been raised for the construction of Disneyland was being spent on necessities that would never be seen by the public. The infrastructure of any construction project, namely the plumbing, wiring, sewage, and other facility necessities, although invisible, is the price you must pay if you intend to make your dream a physical reality. As a project gets closer and closer to completion, a designer's ability to change or add anything is constrained by the decisions made much earlier in the production cycle.

While working on the construction site of any project, you frequently come upon details that, once seen full scale and within the context of the physical space, might have been better if only a few slight alterations could have been agreed upon. During the early design phase of your project, changes of this sort are a necessary part of the evolution of any design.

In construction, however, even small changes become monumental tasks, which constantly threaten to impact the budget and schedule of your project. Moving a light fixture from one wall to another is no problem, when it is in pencil or within a CAD document. In the real world, moving that same fixture can mean hours of lost time as new conduit is pulled, holes are drilled, circuits rerouted, and previous holes patched. The reality of most construction sites is coming to terms with past decisions you have made, and learning to love them (or at least pretending that you do).

Another facet to the reality of watching your designs born into concrete is to realize that what works on paper doesn't necessarily always translate to plywood and lathe. As various vendors arrive with their many bits and pieces, you are confronted with the unpleasant truth that not everything "fits" as you had designed. Doors are slightly too big, window proportions are not as elegant as you had imagined, and shortcuts you had made in the number of stair steps leading to an elevated area are becoming a dangerous trip hazard. As each problem arises you are put on the spot to rethink your design on the fly, or compromise your initial vision for the sake of usability. As these compromises mount, and as you get ever closer to your project's deadline, you find yourself waxing dreamily on the potential of a non-physical environment to design within. The mind reels at the prospect of moving polygons rather then concrete in your virtual construction site, to be able to relocate digital light fixtures with a simple cut & paste, without costly overtime from a union electrician.

Under these circumstances the possibilities of designing environments for virtual worlds seems to be the perfect answer for a designer frustrated by the limits of expensive building materials and the reality of dealing with things like, well… gravity.

Awakening from the Dream

I entered my new position as the designer of a digital world with all the glee of a child promised that Christmas would be coming every day. No longer would I be shackled by the frustrating realities of design limited by physical constraints. Finally I would be able to make design decisions up to and beyond the eleventh hour. Virtual world design was going to be sweet, where your building materials are always pliable and where whim rather than unions dictate alterations.

This dream was unfortunately short-lived. It took several weeks, but I eventually came to understand that although the limits were different, the limits did exist. While on the physical construction site, a designer is limited to the constraints of finances and time, the virtual designer's limits are just as tangible.

While gravity is no longer a problem worth consideration, you are, however the slave of another constraint… the limits of your target CPU. Even though computers seem to be growing more powerful every other week, the reality is that computers can only crunch so many numbers at a time. With the addition of a 3D accelerator card installed in your computer, you boost that ability quite a bit, but the fact remains that your rich 3D world can only have the amount of geometry in it that your computer can "think" about at any given time.

In the simplest terms, this means that anything you "see" from within your 3D world is generated because your computer is doing the math necessary to display it for you. This frequently includes not only what is visible, but also what might exist just out of sight, behind you, or just over the hill from where you are standing. Radiating from your standing position, in very direction, your CPU is crunching away an insane amount of information in preparation that the player's free will mightcause you to move or look in any direction. Like those invisible sewage pipes and the electrical conduit, your CPU budget is being drained by buildings, trees, and people you can't even see from where you are standing. Not only that, but if you are building an online environment, your budget is also constrained by anyone whoMIGHT show up. The punishment for not paying close attention to these budgetary limits is that once exceeded, your audience's experience begins to suffer. Your CPU can only "see" so many polygons at a time, and if there is more geometry then it can compute, then your framerate begins to drop, things start to disappear, and worst of all, other people cease to exist.

The Price of Everything Else

In the physical world, we don't think twice about the existence of things like sunlight, water, or wildlife, as these are purely the perks of the real world. In the digital world however, the mere existence of these elements means that they need to have been fabricated and rendered by your computer. Like the mounting cost of geometry on your CPU brainpower, light, weather effects, and the AI of animated fauna can cause a huge hit on your computer's limited budget. Even an empty room constructed with a meager number of polygons can cause your framerate to plummet if it includes only a few animated light fixtures. Gone is the dream of Cut & Paste light fixtures, when the addition of such an effect might necessitate you moving every bit of furniture out of the room to accommodate it.

Learning to "Love" Your Limits

My first encounter with designing for a multiplayer online world was the challenge of learning to come to terms with these limitations, and finding clever ways to design in spite of them. Most single-player, or even limited multi-player games, needs to accommodate the possibility of a dozen or so additional characters or avatars that might appear in any given environment. This leaves a budget that allows their designers the luxury to build detail-rich spaces, which takes advantage of the effects today's powerful 3D cards can deliver. Furthermore, most game companies can depend on an audience that is routinely willing to upgrade their systems to meet the demands of cutting-edge titles. In our case, our product needed to potentially accommodate the arrival of 50 to 100 avatars in an environment, and was marketed to a demographic of computer owners that have never even heard of a 3D card. With a budget of 1500 or more polygons per avatar, and the potential of hundreds congregating in any given space, this left the environmental designers a budget of no more then 10,000 polys per any given virtual location.

Reeling under these limitations, we worked to become the living definition of "less is more". Equally hard hit was our texture budget, which insisted that since our member avatars could show up wearing countless numbers of diverse clothing textures, our building textures would need to be just as minimal as our structures. Under these constraints, we developed a graphic style which chose visual consistency over complexity, and immersion through suggested context rather then spelling out every detail. Although our efforts were applauded, this choice made visiting each annual E3 Conference a painful pilgrimage of what is possible for every 3D game but ours.

One comforting realization came when exploring the 3D worlds of other companies attempting similar online multi-player environments. Whether you are visiting the streets of Toontown.com or the planets of Star Wars Galaxies, you begin to see that each game has come up with solutions based on similar limits. Whether they chose to allow their trees to render only when you are right on top of them, or they limited vertical movement because their props are flat textured "billboards", each design team did their very best to immerse their audiences despite how little they have to build with.

Engineers Are From Mars, Artists Are From Venus

"Creative people aren't technical; technical people aren't creative. They always need each other, and they're always on opposite sides of the room."

--Director, Robert Rodriguez

There were other surprises that I encountered along my way down this particular rabbit hole. I have spent my career priding myself on an ability to work with many diverse disciplines. Whether collaborating with architects, structural engineers, or industrial fabricators, we all came to our work from a common knowledge, namely an understanding of the limits we all faced while designing and building for the physical world. In the software world, however, there are a unique breed of contributors, a group of creators that dictate these laws and hold an alchemist-like control over what is and is not possible in your unique virtual universe. Our company's Software Engineers were some of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Many were alumni from places like Stanford and MIT, brilliant at math, and even some accomplished musicians. It was these people that told us when and if we would ever be able to implement water in our product, or an intuitive method for controlling the location of our virtual sun. However, despite our mutual desire to collaborate and our common goal of making the best product we could, we struggled desperately to understand each other.

In scenes that rival a 1970's sitcom, we would sit in conference rooms, equal numbers of "creatives" to engineers, and desperately attempt to speak the same language. After hours of such shenanigans, we would eventually find ourselves shouting in sentences as simple, we thought, as a Dick and Jane reader, to the utter blank stares of our intended audience.

"The… terrain… texture… is…. moving", we would say.

"What… do… you… mean… by… moving?", they would ask.

"MOVING! YOU KNOW…. MOVING UNDER THE AVATAR'S FEET!" we would reply.

"WHEN YOU SAY MOVING, DO YOU MEAN SHIMMYING?" they would inquire.

"I GUESS? IT IS MOVING UNDER THE AVATAR'S FEET!?!", we would calmly return.

"Oh, Shimmying, that's normal, is that a problem?"

… and so it would go.

Ironically, these encounters had little to do with intelligence or professional qualifications and were merely the fact that our brains are wired to process information differently. Neither side was wrong, but neither side could ever completely grasp the argument being made by the other. While we fought for ambient butterflies, they would argue against such a hit to the product's framerate. If we returned with the argument that butterflies are "pretty" and our members would "like them", they would demand proof that such an investment of engineering time could only be justified by proof that more members would be attracted through the introduction of "pretty" butterflies to the product. All I can say is that butterflies always lost.

An additional twist to the mix came in the form of the business interests in the success of the product. While the artists and engineers hashed out their diverse lists of deliverables, the financial backers and people appointed to turn a profit were equally unconvinced that "pretty butterflies" would get anyone any closer to a bonus check. In the end, it became undeniably clear that the success of any project is based on the unique blend of these three disciplines. Although diverse in opinion and perspective, it is safe to say that one of the biggest challenges for any company, software or otherwise, is to find a common language that all of your employees can use to communicate with each other.

Your Art is Only as Good as the Tools You Give Your Artists

This is a cry I have heard from many artists working on computer games. In the mad flurry to get a game engine functional, the creation of intuitive artist tools is something that frequently ends up on the back burner. The computer game industry is filled with horror stories of art paths that create so many hoops an artist needs to jump through that there is no hope of an artist experiencing anything close to a creative workflow. Under these circumstances, the artistic abilities of your artists are hobbled by the difficulty of creating that art. Probably the most devastating blow comes when artist tools are so un-enjoyable to work with that they discourage experimentation. If your artists are unwilling to play with the tools they are given, then there is no chance that any visual innovation is possible for your product.

The good news is that traditional computer games know that making their products "look cool" is a necessary part of the potential success of their game. With a better understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished, as well as traveling down a well-established art path, artists are free to push and innovate freely. Unfortunately, our company wished to distance themselves from computer games, and in doing so ran the risk of designing without taking heed of those lessons already learned by an established industry.

Using the Archetypes of the Physical World

My years designing physical world environments proved to me the importance of using real world archetypes throughout my designs. We are physical world creatures, and we relate and interact with our environment based on our past experiences in the physical world. Thresholds, descending staircases, and tunnels, can trigger responses in your guests based on their unique expectations of what might be through or at the end of this particular piece of architecture. The same is true of virtual world layout. Our product's engine was unable to allow us to create connecting roads or pathways on our terrain. The unfortunate result was we were unable to inform our members as to what was just over the hill or down the road from where they were at any time. With no roads or pathways, members could arrive at any location from any possible angle, including from the air. No environment had a "front" because there was no easy way to suggest they arrive from any specific direction. Without this important navigational network, our design would consist of "islands" of content floating in a sea of rolling hills and desert plains.

Another challenge we faced was born out of the necessity of presenting our newest members to our world in an aesthetically pleasing and safe way. With the potential of hundreds of new members logging into our product every hour, we could not sustain just one "first arrival" location for them to initially teleport into. We needed to create several locations that we could guarantee would represent a good first visit experience while not populating our landscape with cloned versions of the same place. Our first attempt was to design 'Villages' that, although stylistically unique, were built on the same design principles as every other Village. This would allow new members to have unique experiences and yet encounter similar activities, shops, and game amenities as any other Village, no matter the theme. Our goal was to answer the inevitable question of "Where am I?", with environments that were unique to their setting, but reassured them that they would have more then enough opportunities to explore, shop, play games, and meet other people. Over the course of several betas, and eventual launching of the product, we tried many alternative methods for introducing our new members to our product. The unfortunate outcome was a landscape dotted with successful, and less successful, environments that were either bustling hubs or empty ghost towns, simply based on how our members related to them during their first visits.

In the end, we discovered that our members tended to return and hang out in those virtual places where they had experienced a pleasant encounter with others. In many cases this was during their very first visit, so many of our arrival environments became active meeting places where members returned time and again. Usually this was to meet friends, find new friends, or help introduce new members to some of the fun experiences they could have within our product. We also found that no matter how elaborately designed an environment was, if it was removed from this "first visit" list, it was soon devoid of members.

A World Without a "Backstage"

Another choice we made as a company was to create a virtual world that allowed our members complete access to every aspect of our environments. Give your members a jetpack, and you open every square inch of your world for them to explore. Although complete freewill in an online environment is liberating for its members, it creates quite a few challenges for its designers. When there are really no "backstage" places to hide the infrastructure of your pretend world, you need to be clever about how you introduce your audience to an environment when they can approach it from any angle.

I remember as a kid riding the Skyway Ride from Disneyland's Fantasyland to Tomorrowland. Even at a young age, I was surprised to see that from the air Disney's fantasy kingdom was filled with tar-papered rooftops and air-conditioning ducts. Yet another necessary evil of the physical world is that Peter Pan's London just isn't that much fun if it is as hot and muggy as the queue you just left outside. The same appears to be true of most 3D game environments. Through the use of cut scenes, transitions, linier level designs, and limited vertical access, their virtual environments are only as deep as they allow you to experience them. In our case, we wanted every place to be accessible from everywhere. This meant that although our little virtual Disneyland would include architectural icons like castles and mountains, our guests could arrive from any direction they desired, including from the sky. There was no backstage and no surface that would not be scrutinized by our guests. Although we designed our environments to have an optimal "Kodak Moment" front façade, we had no guarantee that many people would approach it from that side.

This inspired us to take a "chess piece" approach to designing some of our environments. By creating strong architectural elements that could stand-alone or be grouped, we were able to create unique environments by rearranging similar pieces. This led us to designing spaces that were more piazza than structure. Encircling environments allowed members to either be inside or outside of them, and were less focused on having a specific entrance façade. Another trick we used was thematic icons that allowed an environment to be visible from a distance, but did not insist that there was only one way to access that environment when you approached it.

Technology is Not Transparent

From the very first day of brainstorming our virtual world, we held ourselves to the goal of truly making the technology that ran our environments as transparent as possible. We wanted our members to connect with each other without being reminded that behind the scenes were servers, bandwidths, or bugs. We later learned that this lofty goal was a much harder task then any of us had first imagined. The reality of most online worlds is the technology that supports it can frequently remind your members exactly what its limits are. Despite our desire to have our world be entirely free of bugs which might distract you from your connecting with others, there was just no avoiding the unexpected and unwanted technical difficulties of running such a complicated web of new technologies. Basing our world on the physical, and allowing real world metaphors to guide our member's, works just as long as the difficulties they encounter are recognizably based on real world events. We all understand when a sudden thunderstorm arises, but we are less well equipped to deal with a friend's head slowly spinning clockwise from the middle of their chest, or our house disappearing and reappearing every thirty seconds. Having your world freeze, your clothes disappear, or your legs separate from your body are the stuff of nightmares and can easily pop the bubble of your fragile suspended disbelief.

It wasn't long before we realized that the vocabulary we used internally to describe these phenomena was also being used by our Members to describe their experience. Lag, framerate, physics correcting, and other words were becoming the best description of what it was like to be in the world we had created. Finding a balance between the limits of our technology and our aspiration for the experience we wanted to convey was always a challenge. No matter how immersive our world was, we needed to come to terms with the reality that our members may never be completely free of the occasional anomaly that might pull them momentarily out of their virtual experience.

Designing to Communicate to a Non-Technical Savvy Audience

I think, as game designers, we sometimes take for granted our customers are much more familiar with the sometimes abstract way in which our computers function. A gamers hands will automatically move to the W,A,S, and D keys when loading a 3D shooter for the first time, but not so the novice. This attitude unfortunately leaves out a large potential audience. This demographic, although they love their new computer, is still struggling with things as abstract as email and where attachments go when you download them. Designing for a technically un-savvy audience quickly reminds us how esoteric some of our traditional methods for navigating a virtual world can be. This also includes how a game is downloaded, where it lives on your hard drive, and how to open it. Each of these can become a scary barrier to the uninitiated, and might be the last thing they see just before they drag your product into their desktop recycling bin. This doesn't mean the challenge isn't worth the effort. In an industry that sits comfortably in the wallets of teen boys and college-aged men, we are missing a larger and potentially more lucrative audience. The computer and the Internet are wildly fascinating bits of technology and there are people with credit cards out there who would happily move beyond just email and online poker, if you could assure them they will not look foolish for attempting to use this new technology.

It has long been my belief that anyone will investigate infinite tomes of dry information if they see a goal they wish to achieve at the end of their effort. The opposite is also true; in that if you don't understand how a technology will directly enhance your life, you won't even click a hyperlink to find out more about it. Equally disheartening is finding out that your CPU muscle is just not going to measure up to the needs of this new computerized experience. These are not impossible hurdles for game designers to overcome, but it will come with some sacrifices. Creating a game that is intuitive to use "out of the box", and will run on a computer just purchased at Costco means constantly thinking about who your audience is and whether it will run on their lower end computer.

Make It and They Will Buy It

If there is any chief lesson we learned while building our virtual world, it is that the desire to own things is not purely a physical world pursuit. If you give your members things to purchase, they will, and beyond any rational expectation. From the beginning we had hoped that the purchasing of virtual merchandise would be a nice component to the interactive world we were designing. We created a modest catalog of items that included clothing, vehicles, and homes, and created some very basic tools to allow members to create items for sale as well. The truth is, our internal art team couldn't compete with the shear volume that a fan base of member-developers could produce, so this seemed a nice arrangement. Although our member tools were hard to use and acquired some knowledge of 3D modeling, our members persevered and produced an unprecedented amount of merchandise. It is true that you give away some of your aesthetic control over the product, but in trade, you establish loyal members/creators that build community through the objects they create. In the case of our product, those items created by our members were purchasable by others within the game and that profit could be turned back into real world cash or used to purchase other virtual objects. However, all of this success did not come without some sacrifices.

Watching Your World Evolve in the Hands of Your Audience

Probably the hardest thing to come to terms with while designing an aesthetically holistic virtual world was handing the keys and future of its design to its members. There is a reason why Disneyland does not allow Anaheim to spill into its themed lands. The question is -- where is the line drawn between consistent quality and unchecked member self-expression? One man's paradise could easily be another's eyesore. Various online games have tackled this challenge in their own way. While Linden Lab's Second Life is founded on the virtues of 100% member created content, games like Toontown Online allow you to purchase only Disney designed items, and Star Wars Galaxies allows you to create objects from only pre-approved assets. There are arguments against and in favor of each extreme, and it is up to their creators to decide which choice best fits the overall goals of their individual world. Probably the hardest for our project was communicating how these member-created environments might affect a member's overall experience of the product. While, as designers, we kept in mind the careful balance of polys and their effect on framerate, it became harder to articulate that a member's choice to display 200 objects on their virtual front lawn was actually hindering their computer's ability to display them, and was not a "bug" we could fix.

Another realization we made was that anyone running for city government discovers as soon as they are elected. Whether it is human nature or not, we are predisposed to distrust the motives of anyone placed in a seat of authority. Even though our deepest heartfelt desire was to fulfill the wishes and dreams of our members, our motivations were often questioned as potentially evil. As a society we have been trained to distrust "the man", whether government or corporate, and once we opened our service, our virtual community loudly questioned every choice we made, or failed to make. Where this affected me personally was when it concerned the dropping of personal objects throughout the landscape. While there was an outcry from individuals who complained that their neighbors were dumping the equivalent of a WalMart's worth of objects on their front lawn (causing their framerate to grind to a halt), there was an even louder group fighting for the "right" to place objects anywhere they liked. Ironically this argument worked its way deep into the halls of our company, where loud discussions were had as to where self-expression ended and enjoyment of the product began. This also included behavior in the form of "griefing" (purposely disrupting another person's fun for your own enjoyment). It seemed, almost organically, some areas of our product attracted griefing members more than others. Although our members agreed that griefing was an abhorrent activity, there was still a loud minority that argued griefers needed their own communities and to remove them would represent proof that all we were interested in was profit and not the health of our virtual society. Needless to say, there were no easy answers, and pure dedication to the product wasn't always enough to please everyone.

Just Because We Can… Should We?

I think we have come to a point in our history that will be defined by how we use the visual technologies we have at our disposal. As computers become more powerful, there is nothing we cannot visualize on our screens. The question arises, when is it too much? Can we still tell the story with less? Do games need to push our computer processors to be successful? Is it possible to create immersive online environments that transport not just gamers but everyone to yet unimagined new places?

It is easy to imagine that our desktop computers will soon be able to give us 40 hour long experiences that will rival anything we can see in the movie theatres. The realism, the storytelling, and the immersive interaction are something that is unparalleled in the entertainment industry, and is something we should always strive to improve upon. Unfortunately, the more we push that envelope, the more demands we make on our audience to purchase the state of the art hardware required to run it, especially when it comes to PC gaming. These demands limit this audience to a select demographic that can afford to upgrade their machines often and tend to have an insatiable appetite for ever more realistic recreations of Vietnam and WWII battlefields. The question is, just because we can produce this realism, and we do have a market that will consume it, should we stop just there? As game magazines are increasingly filled with what looks like the repackaging of the same game, I can't help but believe we are cheating ourselves out of many other opportunities to create truly diverse universes for our audiences to explore. When the expectations and the necessitates of huge profits cause games like Sam & Max 2 to be shut down in favor of "Counter-Strike with stormtroopers", we have to ask ourselves -- is it worth it? Are the only options for this technology to create increasingly realistic arenas for bloodshed?

All of this experience designing a virtual world did have the effect of illuminating the potential for a product to truly do more with less. If anything smothered our effort, it was our high expectations of return on our investment. Still, there remains the potential to transport a non-game savvy audience into a believable 3D environment for the purpose of something as simple as connecting with each other online. Although not the success we had imagined, our intentions were pure and innovative. If there is a glimmer of hope, let it be in the fact that as our computers become more powerful, these tools will be placed in the hands of designers not shackled by demographics and blockbuster budgets. Hopefully, we will all be able to experience and share our virtual world experiences with others, and not be so worried if they have the right system, understand the nuances of game playing, or have to want to frag their fellow player. Most of all, I hope players have an opportunity to experience some of the magic we encounter every day designing virtual places, without the emotional and financial cost being too high a barrier to allow them access.

Don Carson is a freelance designer and conceptual illustrator. For many years Don worked as a Senior Show Designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, the theme park design arm of the Walt Disney Company. Some of the attractions he helped to design are Splash Mountain for Walt Disney World Florida, and Mickey's Toontown for Disneyland California. Don continues to work as a consultant for Disney from his studio, as well as for companies like the Jim Henson Co., Universal Studios, Microsoft, Zowie Intertainment, Sierra, and Coca Cola.

You can reach Don Carson at: djcarson@aol.com, or visit his online portfolio at http://home.earthlink.net/~dccreative.

[Originally published in Gamasutra here and here and here.

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