Design | The Game Library

Game Jam: Hackathon

You’ve probably noticed a lack of content on the blog for this week and are missing your usual Friday content. We’ll worry not, it’ll be coming just a little later than expected. I’m going to be participating in an event on my campus called a Hackathon. It is essentially a game jam, but it offers slightly wider options on what you can produce. Any kind of software is acceptable including apps, programs, and games.

Over the course of 17 hours starting at 6pm my time we’re going to be hard at work trying to create a game and I’m going to try and document some of the experience for you all in a feature article of sorts. I might try making some more video content for the event as well. We’ll see what I have when it’s all said and done.

So in essence, that’s why our regular content will be a little later than expected this week.

Before I go to get prepped for the event I’d highly encourage you to try and start an event like this in your area or community or join one of the many online game jams that you can find across the net.

The global game jam is coming up January 20th and would be a great game jam to participate in. Events like these give budding designers experience, team-building, and the ability to network with other designers and are a great resource. Definitely, don’t miss out on them if you have the opportunity.

Game Blurb: World Design & Fallout 4’s Settlements

written by Ian Hertzberg

So, do you own a copy of Fallout 4? Chances are that you do; it sold pretty well. If so, you can use it to practice a little bit of game design and chances are you already have. Fallout 4’s settlement mode is a great tool for practicing a little bit of world design. The mode allows you to place various objects and create various structures within a set area as well as populate these area’s making them a place to live. If you’ve been using the settlement system you’ve been practicing world design without even knowing it. Neat, right!?

But how can you learn even more from Fallout 4’s settlement mode? By using it knowingly. When you’re building settlements incorporate design philosophy into your builds. A good place to start is by analyzing how Bethesda has created a lot of other areas in Fallout 4. Pay attention to the aesthetics of the design. Most of the buildings look fairly ramshackle and poorly built. This is a post-apocalyptic setting after all and the people living in the wasteland don’t have access to proper tools or equipment and have to make do with what they have. So, maybe you could try and mimic that kind of design philosophy yourself throughout your various settlement builds. For instance, if you’re building in a settlement that’s near a train yard maybe you could use train boxcars as part of your design, maybe you could turn those boxcars into shops and home for various settlers. Near a location that contains a lot of demolished cars? Then maybe try building structures out of old tires and scrap metal.

the exterior of a settlement's wall using a bus as part of the wall in fallout 4 at night — This is the exterior of a bus I used in the construction of a wall around my settlement at Red Rocket gas station.

With a design philosophy pertaining to realism, you would want to think about what objects make up the structures in your settlement, how your settlers got those items, and how practical their use would be. I, for instance, tend to build walls around my settlements using elements of resources prevelant in the surronding areas. For example, at the Red Rocket Gas Station settlement, I used buses and truck trailers to make up portions of the wall surrounding my settlement I then made the inside of these settlements double as a home as I could see my settlers using them as such. But, that’s just using a design philosophy built around realism in terms of the world you’re building in. I could think of a couple other philosophies you could use when building a settlement, such as one based around making outlandish and unique structures, or another design philosophy based solely on how much utility and function structures provide your settlers.

This is the same bus from my game, but from inside the wall.

I tend to like the idea of designing with realism in mind because of the limitations and challenges it puts on building things and I think it is a great exercise in world design. If you’ve played a lot of previous Bethesda Softworks styles you’ll notice that they have a ton of really believable areas in their world because they do think about the overall environment and the world their building in, but that is an article for a future date.

And this is the inside of the bus converted into a living quarters. — And this is the inside of the bus converted into living-quarters.

P.S. One more tip for Fallout 4’s settlement mode before I go. Try not to overuse a particular asset if you can. Too much of one asset repeated over and over tends to break the overall vibe of realism and doesn’t have nearly as much aesthetic appeal as something that uses variety. If you’re looking for tips on building Fallout 4 settlements in general, I highly recommend checking out the youtube channel: No Respawns. He does a great job at creating some believable and innovative settlements.

So go out and give building a settlement using a design philosophy a try also if you like the kind of content I’m putting out feel free to leave a comment below.

Play Study: Looking Closer at Games

Written by Ian Hertzberg

Playing games makes you a better game developer. Common sense, right? Of course, it does! Having experience with a medium as a consumer is important and will help you to better understand it. The same goes for a lot of other mediums. Musicians ,for example, are large consumers of music and much like game developers got into music because of their love for it.

Now, I’m not saying you should play a whole lot of video games and call that your education, that’s ludicrous. What you should do is play games and study them. Look closely at the game and it’s mechanics, then think about it as if you were a designer. What does this mechanic evoke in the player? Is it fun? Rewarding? Why? Is it intuitive? Do would the designer in this instance want it to be intuitive? You could probably think of 100’s of questions about game design if you tried.

Let’s think of a couple examples questions using popular games to help get you in the right mindset. You can provide answers in the comments if you like. We’d love to hear what you think.

1) How does the Dark Souls series create a feeling and atmosphere of dread?

2) What is (in your opinion) the most core part of a game like Skyrim’s design?

3) What makes Minecraft so appealing to multiple audiences?

4) What in your opinion is the best, opening or start, of a game you’ve played? What made it the best?

4.5) Have you ever played through a game tutorial you thought was good or well done? Why did you think so?

Another good practice to get into is to take notes on games you play. Not to hint at any upcoming articles, but I personally have a good chunk of notes on the most recent Uncharted game, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. I looked for things like the game mechanics, how did they work, how did they make me feel, did they help or hinder the narrative, and then being a writer I have a ton of notes about the narrative structure itself.

So, if you’re interested in game design or are hoping to become a designer I would highly recommend thinking critically about the games you’ve played and taking notes on the games you play in the future. Journal your experiences and reflect on them. It’ll not only make you a better designer, but also a better critical thinker.

Want to talk more about studying games? Well, you’re in luck! Play Study will be a reoccurring segment on The Game Library that will look into more fine points of analyzing game through the lens of design. I also have another similar column in the works called Case Study which will feature a breakdown of my or another member of the Game Libraries notes on a particular game.

So stay tuned for those in the coming weeks.

Until then play and think about: games.