While not exactly about playing games (this is more for the making of games) the launch of Unity 3, the third iteration of the free-to-use game engine, has me excited. Of all the game-making tools out there, Unity is the one I’ve spent the most time with, and it was actually responsible for the RPS game, RockPaperShotgunity, which we cobbled together last year. Also, I totally made some big spheres move about making booming noises. I am The Creator. People who know stuff are more excited about the unified editor, the post-processing and shader improvements, the occlusion culling, deferred rendering, and other tech stuff. Full What’s New list here, although some of that is for the paid-for Pro version, which I think is limited to a month demo, something like that.

Never made a game before? Spong In A Posty! Although that’s probably a bit out of date for Unity 3. Maybe it’s time to do another one.

Seeing as how you’re reading this website at this specific time of day, I have to imagine you have — at one point or another — imagined what it’d be like to create a game from scratch; we’ve all been there. Markus Persson, the gentleman best known for Minecraft, can help with that.

You see, he created a game for the down-and-dirty design competition Ludum Dare 18 — and he streamed the entire creation process live. Genius! I was there for part of the “show,” so I feel okay in saying that this time-lapse video of the dev cycle is vastly more enjoyable to watch.

The finished game, Metagun, can be played here.

Timelapse of a game programmer [Reddit via Gawker.TV]

As part of the QuakeCon festivities, id’s John Carmack revealed something that should excite the modding community: source code. Authors can now access source code for both Splash Damage’s multiplayer-focused Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and 2001′s series reboot, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, through id’s FTP, which we’ve linked below.

Both games’ sources are made available through the GNU General Public License agreement, which states that the code is available for both free and commercial use, so long as the individual using the code credits id Software and doesn’t try to claim it as their own. If you want to tinker with either game, check out the convenient Big Download link below. Happy modding!

The new lecture, highly rated by GDC attendees, is part of a free update published at the GDC Vault website, and features video technology that allows users to simultaneously view a presenter’s slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.

The well-received ‘Indie Gamemaker Rant’ is now available for free video streaming, and was described by its creators at the time as: “A series of exquisite [five-minute] rants by notable indie game creators. Experience different points of view on indieness, art, beauty, and the future presented by an all star cast of international friends.”

As a detailed Destructoid write-up on the hour-long set of microlectures described, presenters on a host of fascinating topics included Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, pictured), Jonatan Soderstrom (aka Cactus), Anna Anthropy (aka Auntie Pixelante), Jarrad Woods (Captain Forever), Offworld editor [and now IGF Chairman] Brandon Boyer, Randy Smith (Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor), Nathan Vella (Critter Crunch), Craig D. Adams (Superbrothers), Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy), Robin Hunicke (thatgamecompany), Ryan O’Donnell (Co-Op/Area 5 Media) and Babsi Lippe (Papermint).

Of additional significance to those interested in independent and alternative views on games is the already available free video of the ‘Artgame Sessions’ GDC 2010 lecture — including several smaller talks on Far Cry 2, Braid, Mark Essen’s games (Flywrench), and Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle’s Judith.

In addition to these lectures, GDC Vault’s free videos section includes GDC 2010 lectures from Zynga, Ernest Adams, and NCsoft, plus highly rated lectures featuring 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel and Bungie’s Brian Sharp, as well as a number of other top talks.

The free recordings available are a fraction of the content currently being flowed into the GDC Vault, which has added several new features with this latest content upgrade. It’s now easier to navigate through the Free section of the site, with video, audio and slides more obviously split up while browsing and searching. In addition, site searches will bring up both free content and Vault Subscriber-only content in the same results page.

Full GDC Vault access, including synchronized video recordings for over 200 of GDC 2010′s sessions and hundreds of historical video and audio recordings, is available to GDC 2010 All-Access Pass holders, as well as All-Access Pass holders for other GDC events during the year.

In addition, development studios and schools who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available by contacting Suzanne Cunningham or viewing an online demonstration. Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are being considered for a 2011 launch.

A few months back, I mentioned Game Seeds, the card game created by Utrecht School of the Arts, Monobanda and Metagama to help game designers brainstorm both character design and entire games, by playfully combining their specific mechanics.

The post quite happily got far more attention than I would’ve imagined, and (especially after I’d posted that Monobanda had sent me an early deck of the cards) I was a bit deluged with people wondering how they might also get their hands on the Seeds. So I’m happy to report, then, that as of today the decks are now available for worldwide purchase at €10 a deck.

The team have also put together the ridiculously adorable video above to explain how the system works, and have created a new official Game Seeds site for more information on the project. Let us know if and when you create anything with it!

Game Seeds [Monobanda]

Searching the web for the “definition of a game” will unearth many different explanations, each described by someone who sees games in a disparate context. The more diverse definitions you read, the more it becomes clear that “game” is one of those words that’s overloaded with meaning. If you consider that we derive what a game is from our own personal perception of play, it’s not surprising that there are as many definitions as there are individuals.

The flexibility of the term becomes a problem if you want to analyse an existing game, or create a new one. In order to design a game, it’s essential to understand the building blocks at your disposal. We can model a game in an infinite number of ways, all different, and all valid. But to be useful, a model must be complete, whilst remaining simple. It needs to be elegant.

While at this year’s PAX East I attended a panel presented by the creators of the GeekNights podcast, Brandon DeCoster and Scott Rubin. It was called “Beyond Candyland”, and sought to explore the theory behind the best German-style board games. They identified “Decision” as the distinguishing factor between games rooted in “Randomness”, like Monopoly or Trouble, and games of skill, like Puerto Rico or Dominion.

Both Randomness and Decision can determine who will win a game, as an event of either will alter the probability space of the game yet to be played. The difference is, you have complete control over the decisions you make, and can take gratification from your performance if you’re victorious through Decision. This is why we favour games that are more heavily weighted towards Decision over Randomness.

As well as Randomness and Decision, the GeekNights duo completed their model of a board game with “Psychology”. Psychology consists of the elements of a game that can not mathematically change the outcome, but augment the rules, like story. A player could choose to completely ignore the Psychology in a game, as it does not alter the probabilistic outcome of the decisions they can make. Poker is an example of a game that is almost pure Psychology. The cards you are dealt are determined through Randomness, and the probability of your hand winning against an arbitrary number of hidden hands is a solved problem. In theory you should only bet on hands with a probability of winning of more than half, so the Decision is made for you. Poker would be a pretty boring game if everybody followed this strategy, simply becoming a game of the luck of the draw. The fun of Poker is in reading and bluffing your opponents, trying to beat the odds. It is a game of accruing or falsifying information outside of the rules of play, which is achieved by reading and influencing human Psychology.

Randomness, Decision and Psychology comprise an elegant model to describe board games, but it needs a bit of work to be able to be applied generally to all games. Brandon and Scott observed that if you add Physiology as a fourth component, we are able to extend the model to include sports. They proposed that when a game rewards dexterity, strength, speed or stamina, it becomes a sport, and that perhaps videogames can be considered sports. I would draw a semantic line between videogames and sports, but agree that both are categories of games that can be classified by this simple, four-axis model.

The model is intuitively complete. All human faculties are addressed, any rule system can be specified, and we can describe all environments in which a game can be played. We now have an elegant model for the entire universe of games. Every game can be constructed from four components, and four components only: Randomness, Decision, Psychology and Physiology. This is an incredibly powerful observation, as it gives us a vocabulary we can use to accurately describe a game and compare it with any other game.

I’ve dubbed this model “The Quad”, and find it particularly useful when dissecting videogames. It’s a common crutch to say that you like a game because it’s fun. However, fun only describes what you feel when your body produces the chemicals to reward achievement. In order to understand how this state of elation is induced, The Quad can be used to identify which aspects of a game lead to you having fun. You can then look for these components in other games, or aim to recreate them in your own.

To summarise, the four elements of The Quad are:

Psychology
The aspects of a game that do not form a part of the rules, and so do not directly influence the outcome. They can have an indirect effect however, if the the player chooses to let them prejudice their decisions. These aspects can include story, character, and environmental themes.

Decision
The rules of a game whose execution are governed by player decision. The probability space of the remaining game is tangibly altered by the branches of its decision tree the player chooses to navigate. That is, the chance of a player winning or losing a game perceptibly changes with their choices.

Randomness
These are the parts of a game’s decision tree that are traversed randomly, without player input. The probability of one decision occurring over another is either specified when the game is created, or is seeded by a dynamic source during play.

Physiology
This describes the portion of a game whose outcome is influenced by the player’s physical ability. The chances of winning or losing are impacted by a player’s dexterity, strength, speed or stamina.

Let’s consider the practical application of this model to a game that a large number of contemporary titles are based on: Quake. Quake’s core gameplay requires the player to position and orientate a 3D camera, and fire a variety of projectiles along that camera’s line of sight. The targets given to the player in the game comprise of either other players or enemy controlled AI. We can break down the sequence of events in a typical piece of play to see which aspects of The Quad Quake is built from.

First, the player must decide where to position their camera to best target their opposition. This decision will be affected by the player’s memory of the map, and the dynamic information that’s being fed to them through the display and speakers. Once a decision has been made, the player must execute the correct sequence of inputs to move the camera, and release their projectile. Their success will be determined by the appropriateness of their original decision, and the speed and accuracy of their execution. The same measure of success is applied to the player’s opponents, and the winner is calculated in a straight comparison.

Decisions made in Quake can dramatically alter the result of an encounter, but do not trump a player’s superior dexterity. Good decisions alone can not overcome an opponent’s dominance of Physiology. This is mainly because the various guns in Quake require more than one hit to kill an opponent. Although making the superior tactical choice allows you to position yourself to fire the first shot in an exchange, as soon as you do so, your location is revealed, and your initial advantage gives way to who can land the most subsequent hits. Quick reactions and the accurate execution of prescribed firing patterns will dictate the result from the opening salvo. It’s interesting to note that this equation is turned on its head in other games of the genre, like Counter-Strike, where the increased power of the weapons makes landing the first hit more influential.

As well as Decision and Physiology, we must consider the other two elements of The Quad: Randomness and Psychology.

Randomness governs very little in Quake. There may be a slight variation in the spread and damage of a weapon’s effect, but the importance of this in a battle is superseded by Decision and Physiology. The only significantly random aspect of the game is in competitive multiplayer, where the opposition’s skill level is unknown until the time of play. Although this can be frustrating if faced with an inappropriately superior foe, the continually changing experience of these varying encounters results in longevity.

id Software employed sparse Psychology in Quake, as it had done in the Doom series that went before it. Without any notable storyline, context is given through the visualisation of your camera as a gun, and by presenting identifiably hostile targets to aim at. The lack of Psychology did not diminish Quake’s popularity, but provided an opportunity for other developers to evolve the genre by bulking out this aspect in their games.

By combining all of these observations together, we can conclude that Physiology is the primary influence in Quake, followed closely by Decision. Randomness and Psychology are both present, but are proportionally diminutive.

In order to visualise our analysis we can weight each of these elements subjectively. This allows us to draw a waffle chart, whose shape represents the genre of a game. We’re able to compare this type of diagram to those for other games to determine their similarity.

Other first person shooters would have a very similar chart. As mentioned above, most extensions of the genre concentrate on creating unique Psychology to set themselves apart. These variations have done very well commercially, but for me the most valid successors to Quake innovate through their Decision mechanics. Good examples of this include Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead. Counter-Strike rewards strategy over dexterity, diminishing the power of a talented run and gunner, and Left 4 Dead dramatically changes your foe, presenting multitudes of weaker targets who can overrun an isolated player. The difference in the balance of Counter-Strike’s Decision and Physiology to Quake’s can be seen when comparing their respective charts.

There are videogames that have a very different shape when mapped with The Quad in this way. To illustrate the visual difference between genres, I’ve created a waffle chart for Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero’s gameplay can be described as requiring a prescribed sequence of buttons to be pushed in time with a piece of music. With minimal Decision to be made, except for discerning when to use Star Power, and no Randomness to speak of, the game would seem to be almost pure Physiology. The twist in Guitar Hero is that it offers the player extremely compelling Psychology, casting them as rock stars. From the licensed music providing the beat, to the heavily stylised visuals and plastic guitar controller, the game works very hard to abstract away from its simple gameplay. Few would argue that the combined experience is not successful. By drawing a chart of Guitar Hero, we can see that it looks considerably different to one of a first person shooter.

Although these “genre maps” are able to quickly portray the proportional influence of each part of The Quad in a game, the perceived success of each aspect is not apparent. However, this information can be conveyed by weighting each area with a score. For instance, Gears of War 2 is a highly acclaimed first person shooter in the same genre as Quake. Below is a chart constructed in the same way as we have seen above.

Notice the Decision, Physiology and Randomness lobes (blue, green and yellow) are balanced similarly when compared to Quake’s or Counter Strike’s. Yet the scale of these elements has been considerably reduced by the notable increase in weight of Psychology. This is due to the effort afforded to the visualisation, characterisation and depth of the world in Gears of War 2 far outstripping that made in either Quake or Counter Strike.

Working with this chart, we can then scale it by an additional “success” factor, or “score”. If we glance at the Metacritic review average for Gears of War 2, it provides a rough scale factor of 93%. Applying this to each of the four elements in the chart results in the below diagram.

Now imagine that instead of using a total score to scale all of the elements, each is assessed and scaled individually. Using the vocabulary of The Quad, these charts can be used to accurately describe a game’s genre at a glance, as well as giving the analyst a method of independently rating the success of each its aspects. The granularity of the information portrayed is not suitable for delivering in-depth analysis, but it’s a considerable improvement over rating a game with a single overall score.

The Quad provides a unified terminology for what we’ve already been communicating in our discussions about videogames. We lose nothing by using the terms Psychology, Decision, Randomness and Physiology in our analysis, as it doesn’t change the subjective nature of it. The benefit is a common language from which we can build and share ideas. To illustrate this I’ve created my own Gears of War 2 review chart, representing my personal reaction to the game.

As you can probably tell, I didn’t really enjoy my time on Sera. My preference is to play something innovative, and Gears of War 2 certainly was not that. These are some of the notes I made when deciding the scale factors to apply to each element:

Psychology
I enjoyed the artwork and visual effects, but found the story hokey, and the stereotypical characters bland.

Decision
I was disappointed with the variety of tactics that I had to apply during the game. Each arena had obviously optimal locations from which to fire obviously preferred weapons. The set pieces could be approached in a similar manner throughout, with no incentive to change tactics. Ultimately, the majority of the depth of Decision in Gears of War 2 had already been explored in the original game.

Randomness
The online matchmaking was competent at grouping me with similarly skilled opponents, but was not as good as Halo 3’s implementation.

Physiology
The controls gave me a wide range of options to manoeuvre in-game, including an excellent cover mechanic. My own movements were accurately translated to my avatar’s movements, and the reward for being more dexterous than my opponents was satisfying. I enjoyed the conflict between having to watch the arena in front of me, and switching my attention to the reload gauge positioned at the edge of the GUI.

My bias towards games that introduce interesting and varied Decision makes my chart significantly different to the Metacritic chart. We could interpret this as the average contributor to Metacritic finding a game’s Psychology more important than I do, and having a reduced requirement for depth of Decision. Of course, they may have simply enjoyed what was in the game more than I did; it’s difficult to tell from just a headline number.

I hope I’ve shown that if we start using The Quad to describe videogames and display our analysis with more transparency, then the quality of our communication will be improved. We all have an interest in understanding why we like or dislike a game. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll spend less money on games that we won’t like, and spend more of our precious time with the ones that we will.

Vocabulary begets understanding, understanding begets discourse, and discourse begets progress.

Jeffrey Sheen is the founder of London-based Stargazy Studios. His newly-formed indie one-man band is currently developing Huscarls, X-COM and Final Fight’s illegitimate love child. Combining A-Team style welding and a design nous built up over decades of play, Stargazy Studio’s mission is to create new, genre-bending games for an audience hungry for innovation.
www.StargazyStudios.com
Stargazy Studios on Twitter

You’ve already seen an extensive breakdown of the concept art behind Double Fine‘s nü-cult-classic Brutal Legend right here on Boing Boing, but above, interface designer Joe ‘codeloss‘ Kowalski goes awesomely in-depth on work he put into the menu and title screen systems — a system brilliantly aping the wonderful yesteryear of gatefold sleeves and ballpoint-pen scrawled notebooks.

If you’re still a stranger to its foreboding metal world, see our Games To Get page for links to newly discounted copies of the game, or visit Double Fine’s own shop for autographed copies & ephemera.

You should know, before you read this interview, that I braved a natural disaster to bring it to you. More specifically, on my way to San Francisco from Baltimore, my layover flight was delayed because of a tornado in Denver, Colorado. According to the alarms and buzzers being set off in the airport, the tornado was headed directly toward the Denver International Airport.

I was convinced I’d miss the Killzone 3 event, which was set to take place later that evening. Less than an hour later, despite the apocalypse-level hype, we were all clear to take off. Seriously.

Guerilla Games’ Herman Hulst, game director on Killzone 3, started off his presentation by addressing my situation. “Which one of you guys had to deal with a tornado to get here?” I raised my hand as everyone turned and started. “Awesome. That’s great. Thanks for coming out,” he added.

So, when I finally got a chance to sit down with Hulst one-on-one, we did talk about tornadoes. But we also chatted about Killzone 3, 3D gaming, PlayStation Move, the science fiction of the Killzone universe, and more. Check it out after the jump.

So the time between Killzone 1 and Killzone 2 seemed pretty long. It was about four, maybe five years? And then when you revealed Killzone 2, it seemed like forever before it came out. Now you’re showing us Killzone 3, and it’s out next year; two years seems a bit quick.

So you know, Killzone 3 will be coming out in 2011, so you’re right in saying it’s a much shorter development cycle. And wow, there was a lot of pressure on getting Killzone 2 out on time, after we released that initial concept video at E3 in 2005. This time around, the pressure is essentially bigger, because we’re creating a much bigger game than Killzone 2 was and we’re doing it in a much smaller development cycle.

The reason we can do it is not only because we work very hard, but I think we’ve got a much more experienced development team right now; we can build on a very solid foundation. We’ve got a lot of great systems we’re bringing forward. There’s nothing really in Killzone 3 that’s straight from Killzone 2, everything’s been improved.

You saw the demo today, those are actually Killzone 2 characters in there. We actually have already replaced them, just not in the demo we showed you today. But it’s a great head start, and it doesn’t really take away from the experience. They look great, but they’re going to look a hell of a lot better once the final content’s in there. So having that solid foundation, the team in place, the development process streamlined at the end, you know we really have hired, recruited up, trained up, we can move a lot faster.

You actually mentioned before, debunking the myth that Naughty Dog was developing some or part of Killzone 3. Where did that start?

I have no idea. I talked to [Naughty Dog co-president] Evan Wells yesterday about it, he had no idea either. I think it originated somewhere in Scandinavia where some guy made some predictions about Killzone 3…

It’s not true. We talk to Naughty Dog a lot about the general development process, mostly about concepts and ideas for technology. And each team has their own technology groups; each team develops their own engine. There are some worldwide studios, some tools that we share; it’s a two way thing, but stating that one team is developing the engine for the other is way too big of a story. It’s more of a conceptual thing back and forth.

You did mention that God of War III and Naughty Dog influenced the design or direction of Killzone 3. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

Yeah, I don’t want to say — and I didn’t say — that they influenced or set the direction for the game. What I do think is that for various reasons these games are very inspirational. I talk scale, I talk about how we set up these huge variety of different settings and some of them on a massive scale. The level today, is ten times bigger [than stuff from Killzone 2]. Talk about scale, God of War III — a boss on top of a boss is kind of a boss to the third degree. Wow, is that a lot of scale.

So whilst you’re developing you see something like that and think “We’d better step it up, we’ve got to floor it!” So that’s a game-changer. And in Uncharted 2, you know, character driven story-development, man…that was a step up from what we’ve seen before. I think to me that was the notion that there really isn’t anything that you can drop the ball on. It used to be you could do great gameplay with kind of a sucky storyline and you’ll get away with it. After Uncharted 2, I think everything’s got to be up to par, up to snuff. In those different senses, I think that those two games and those two teams are always increasing that bar, and in that sense they have influence. And vice versa, we get the same feedback from those guys. That’s what’s really great about some of these worldwide studios right now, since…

Looking at where the story is headed, the direction your taking players with the worlds and such, Killzone is starting to get a much more “sci-fi” feel, whereas I’d say that the earlier titles felt more “military.” Is that intentional?

Yeah, it’s really a conscious decision. We call it more “hard sci-fi.” The the enemies are a little bit more mechanical, more robotic, they’re bigger, they’re scarier. We’re doing that just because we can; it’s cool. We have this realism, then this twist, stuff you can’t do in real life, but it’s still grounded in reality, so you can make sure you can associate yourself with the experience with what you know.

I love the characters, particularly the iconic Helghast. You seem to be working towards a pretty rich over-arching narrative. You’re really building a world. When can we expect a Killzone movie?

Killzone: The Movie? Nothing to announce. The question has come up a number of times, but again, nothing to announce.

So this whole 3D thing, I’ll admit I’m not entirely sold on it. Don’t get me wrong, I think the 3D as implemented in what you’re showing on Killzone 3 is impressive, for sure. But I also hear from other gamers, and I’m sure you have to, that they’re not really interested in or sold on the idea. Why were you so for getting 3D into Killzone 3?

No, I appreciate that feeling. You know, we’re trying to raise the bar, and that’s what we love to do. We love taking the hardware and getting the maximum out of it. The PS3, something like 3D comes by, we jump on it. We love it. We think it’s going to enhance the experience. I fully buy that, you know, it’s the early adopters who are going to have the [3D-enabled] TV.

As we go forward, you will see that televisions — and you will be upgrading your TV at some point — it’s very likely that you’ll purchase a TV that’s 3D-enabled. Just like I’m sure if you recently bought a TV, it was HD-enabled. So, organically, people will go through that phase. At the same time, we’re making sure that the people who don’t have a 3D television get the full experience, the bread and butter of Killzone. It’s still playable and viewable in HD televisions. So that’s still the full experience.

So as a gamer, and a developer, are you sold on the idea in terms of the future?

Yes. I think it’s a game-changer for a franchise that has always strived to create a full sense of immersion in every single way. You know, very realistic animations, great concept design, a world that’s believable, that could have been built in reality. You know, us putting our guys — our playable characters — on the frontline of the experience, in 3D the frontline of the experience is now real. It’s virtually real. You see yourself, and there’s stuff happening behind you and in front of you, so you’re almost literally right in the middle of it. And I think it’s a real game-changer in that we’re continually strengthening that sense of immersion.

So no Move?

Move?

PlayStation Move.

Yeah, Move is great. We’ve been toying around with SOCOM, and I can’t really talk about… we get a lot of questions about co-op and Move. But we’re really only talking about what we have here today. It’s obviously something to keep an eye on.

You know, working with Sony 3D televisions and pushing forward with the 3D technology, it seems it would make sense for you also to support Move.

It would make sense that you would ask that question! [laughs]

—

Full details and hands-on with Killzone 3 can be found here.

Like movies, the design of games can often be reduced to a set of “building blocks”, various elements that you can combine to form the final product. It’s an abstract concept, but one that’s perfectly illustrated in this…card game.

Put together by Liselore Goedhart, “Game Seeds” is part of the Utrecht School of the Arts’ attempts to help budding game designers “bring new characters and game ideas to life”.

They’re just as useful for gamers themselves, however, breaking down the various components and styles that go into making the games we’re playing. Remember, knowing is half the battle!

Game Seeds card game. [Lizzy Wanders, via Boing Boing]

Regardless of whether or not you’ve played any of Sid Meier’s games, or whether or not you find yourself curious as to how he became a gaming luminary, or whether or not you’ve got 24 minutes to kill — you’ve got to watch Motherboard’s latest documentary. Its focus is on the history of Meier’s game development career, as well as his participation in the 7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest held at his Alma Mater, the University of Michigan.

More importantly, this short film contains all the requisite components of a gripping piece of cinema: hardship, confrontation, self-improvement, triumph, and the imbuing of a lingering desire to go back and play all of the Civilization games again. Seriously, go check it out.