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From Web to Game Development
Pietro Polsinelli @ppolsinelli ROME 27-28 march 2015

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Get these slides:
http://bit.ly/web2games
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Notes from the diary
of a personal voyage
that is still happening.
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Ambiguity in title:
Isn’t web development a form of
game development???
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With “web” I don’t mean games
that run in the browser.
Web development as creating
sites and web based apps for
customers.
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Customer: “Turn a site into a
game”
I released a site for RAI
encouraging teenager girls to
write.
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Asks a sequence of questions.
Has challenges, points,
scoreboard.
Has winners.
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Create a web based app for
suggesting ideas for a new fiction.
Turn visitor from passive watcher
to creator.
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So its almost a game. A web
based game.
I’m already on a good start to do
game development.
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Wrong.

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Wrong.Wrong.
Wrong.

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So what is the first game you
want to make?
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http://bit.ly/agdArtInt
http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/
understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

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No narrative.
Hyper simple animations.
Hyper simple space.
And fixed camera, no audio sources …

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Game loops, physics,
animations, AI,
growing difficulty (levels),
characters.

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If not a story, a sense of purpose.
(Giving a sense of purpose
on a web site is rarely a problem.)

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As web developer,
you have no idea.

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And this is a very, very
simple game.

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The components of an opera:
story, music, scenography,
scenes, actors, secondary
characters, drama, [pro singing /
difficulty levels]
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Its actually worse.
All the secondary characters are
moved by AI.
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You may decide to generate the
scene and story each time.
And so on.
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As a web developer you have to
acquire a whole new set of
concepts to do games.
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To become what?
Depends on the budget,
depends on the team size.
From 0 to infinity and beyond.
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Lets stick to the worse case: a
small budget, so a small team.
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Crossing the chasm
• Crossing the chasm

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You will need to acquire brand
new skills along two distinct lines:
as game developer and as game
designer.
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And the line between the two
blurs the more you know about
both.
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Note:
design in the sense of usability of
UI graphic design comes after
(game) design.
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The game update
loop.

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Everything updates.

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Your methods will be called 80
times per second on the same
object ...
instead of once per request.
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The independent life of your
objects will be your saviour and
your curse.
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That is why composition is mostly
used instead of inheritance.
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“Breakpoints?
No, you don’t use breakpoints
much in Unity”
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http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/

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The structure of
space

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Even picking the most
regimented, simplified, finite
solution, it’s a mess.
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Amit Patel http://bit.ly/agdHx
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Book? Prototype.
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Game Feel

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Feel is a highly technical problem.
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Material from Game Feel book examples.

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Daniele Giardini http://www.demigiant.com/

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See http://easings.net/en#

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Soccer ball physics
http://www.soccerballworld.com/Physics.htm

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Perception is a construction, and
a game is a coherent universe
where you may set your own
laws.
Ok, but…
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Too much creativity.

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Not Just Game Feel

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Creating games today is not
restricted to building arcades.
Even if you are building “small”
games.
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You very often want / need a
form of narrative.
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80 Days: branching universe text
based, but …

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Sunless Sea: the importance of a slow ship
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237657/Postmort
em_Failbetter_Games_Sunless_Sea.php

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Relations and gossip: narrative!
(Kardashian Hollywood)

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Evolving the narrative dimension
in a game is nor obvious nor
trivial.
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Example on the sublelties of these
models.
Representing values like “moral
stance” of a character again
requires refined modeling tools –
not just a variable.
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And see the ensuing discussion
on Reddit here
http://bit.ly/nar2vars
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Game Designer as
Translator / Traitor

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Game design and modeling
practice trains you in translating
work and learning situations in
possible contexts for a game.
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Category, competition,
avatar, war, reward, levels
Vs.
Inclusive, mentor, path,
story, transformation
A language change.

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Participative Action Research

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And there is way
more …

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http://greweb.me/illuminated.js/parcycle/

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And audio, texturing, 3D
modeling, particle effects …
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So?

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We’ve seen just a
few of the several
things to learn.
So you need to be
Da Vinci?
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The Love

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You are creating the magic circle
– a world with new rules.
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With games you can dance on the line between art & the
masses.

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In games you are in a highly
creative environment.
This even if you are designing say
games for health, games for EU,
like I do.
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People that have been in the field
for a long time do these weak
attempts to present it as
“just a profession like any other”.
They don’t believe it either.
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So …
Only The Love will make you
survive this ordeal.
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Just consider in creativeness that
you don’t need to author, you
just need to let yourself be
authored.
You don’t need to be writer, just
let yourself be written.
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Little work I do in the Indie game
world puts me in contact and in
work pairs with real artists.
Some of them don’t even know
they are.
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Special thanks:
Daniele Giardini for ideas &
feedback
http://www.demigiant.com/

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My twitter stream is mostly
dedicated to game design
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu
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