Okay, here’s the game design for the Single-Player project: Detours, the Game. Yes, I’ll definitely come up with a better name, but I do feel as though I’ve nailed down the cornerstones of the design.

I was inspired while driving home one night. I noticed a detour sign on a side street and wondered what would happen if I just blindly followed the detour sign without thinking much about my route. After a bit of tumbling around in my head I came to he basics of a game design, somewhat of a puzzle game based around detours. Here’s the basics, to be expanded on when I put together a proper design doc:

The playing field for the game is an overhead view of city streets, divided into a standard block-n-streets grid. Cars begin entering from the edges of the playing field along the streets. The cars are heading for specific exits based on their color. The cars take the most direct route according to a standard path-finding algorithm. Along the way, there are parts of the street that are damaged or otherwise blocked to passage. The cars’ path-finding does not factor these blockages so they will blindly drive straight into them. Most of these blockages will simply bring the cars to stop at the damaged road. The player must place detour signs on or before the damaged roads to properly re-direct traffic. The player loses if the cars back up so far that new cars can no longer enter the playing field.

So, that’s the basics. Of course, there are lots of other details to work out, some of which I already have and will go into in more detail with the design doc. Also coming with the design doc will be the engineering task list.

Okay, ready, set, go.

Just finished reading Chris Crawford’s excellent book, Chris Crawford on Game Desgin. I heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in any facet of game development. It’s rare to have such a serious look at the process and art of designing games.

Kudos aside, I certainly have some disagreeements with Chris. While he strongly encourages designers to move outside of established genres, and bemoans our industry’s insistence on relying on tried-and-true genres, he invaribly falls back on his strengths as a strategy game designer when presenting new game ideas. The chapter that he devotes to games he’d like to design consist primarily of variations on classic strategy gaming. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, the designs certainly sound better than most of the me-too RTS’s that have been made, but they’d still likely be cast as a Strategy/Sim/RTS by any modern game player reviewing them.

Beyond the aforementioned chapter, though, he does touch on a few interesting designs from his past, of particularly note a game titled Siboot. This game very clearly demonstrates the fundamental elements of interactive design as outlined in Chris’ other excellent tome, The Art of Interactive Design: verbs and nouns. To boil down that whole book in a few sentences (do read the book, please!): Interaction is at its most fundamental level a conversation between two parties. The conversation is broken into three steps: listen, think, speak. This of course is the canonical computational model of input-process-output. Speaking (and it’s flipside, listening) can be broken down into two essential elements: verbs and nounds, actions and the objects they act on. Siboot presents a very nice mechanism (particularly for it’s time in history) for presenting player with possible verbs and possible nouns.

To get to my point: while Chris does provide some much needed critical analysis of game design as a true, valuable pursuit, he unfortunately does not give many current games any benefit of the doubt. In fact, he dismisses the First Person Shooter genre outright while admitting he has not played any of its offerings since dabbling with Half-Life. I would consider this tantamount to dismissing comedic films that followed Chaplin’s Gold Rush as “more of the same.” While I’d be the last to regard the FPS genre as the foregront of innovative game design, it nonetheless has progressed quite a bit since its humble beginnings in Castle Wolftenstein 3-D, Doom and Quake.

Of course, what use would critical discussion be if we all agreed?

Okay, here’s the XGDX Proposal. Please don’t take the “auteur” part too seriously. I’m still trying to figure out how to best word the final title. I’ve shifted more toward “lone wolf” as opposed to “auteur,” it seems to have a (slightly) less presumptious sound to it.

A. Topic

Single-Player: Is Auteur Game Development Possible?

B. Abstract of Presentation

You can’t open an issue of Game Developer or sit in on a GDC roundtable without hearing the inevitable pounding of the drums: game development is becoming ever more complex; budgets are surpassing $10 million; teams have grown beyond the 100 people. Many see this growth as our industry’s inevitability, much alike our brethren in the film industry before us. A few, though, have peaked out from the hidden corners of weblogs and back-page editorials and asked, “Where is our independent market? Where have all of our garage developers gone?”

This presentation seeks to either prove or disprove the notion of the garage developer, or more appropriately, the auteur game developer. Given today’s technology in digital video, things such as prosumer cameras and desktop NLEs, it is possible for a single individual to author a complete film, much in the same way a novel has a single author. There’s no reason that games cannot enjoy the same advantages, particularly given the capabilities of today’s middleware and desktop content creation tools.

The race begins May 1st. The finish line is September 1st, the entry deadline for the Independent Games Festival. Four months with a staff of one working part-time. The goal is to prove definitively that a quality, professional game is possible under even the most limited conditions.

The XGDX session will serve as the official postmortem: What went right, what went wrong, what got done and what didn’t. The session will delve into what limits existed because of the minimal staff, limited production skills, and shortened development schedule. Additionally, the project will be tracked over the four months on a regularly updated website. The whole of the project will be out in the open for all to see, for better or for worse.

C. Target Audience

Anyone and everyone attending XGDX would be interested. In particular, the project will strike a chord with game designers and programmers. Being primarily a postmortem, the skill level expected would generally be beginner to advanced.

If you haven’t seen it, check out Indie Game Jam. Definitely owe these guys a lot of inspiration. Perhaps one day I’ll be invited to participate. Until then, I’ll be running my one man jam with Single-Player.

This year’s technology was a super sweet 2D physics simulator. Very fun to play with. Casey Muratori and Ryan Ellis’ hamster game was particularly fun, as was Jonathan Blow’s spiders.

Let’s dive in headfirst. First milestone: May 1. What’s due: initial game design including concept art and engineering task list.

I’ll post the XGDX proposal I submitted soon.

Well, that was certainly quick. Yesterday I submitted a session proposal for XGDX and this morning I received my “acceptance” letter. So, here’s the lowdown on Single-Player:

On May 1, I will begin work on a game. I have until September 1 to finish it. That’s the deadline for the 2005 Independent Games Festival. That’s four months to take a game from idea to gold master. Just little old me working part-time.

What’s the point? To examine the process of auteur game development. Design, programming, art and music, all produced by a single individual. How much can be accomplished? What genres can realisticly be tackled? What are the limitations and what are the advantages?

The XGDX session will be the post mortem for the project, October 9-10. Watch this space until then to be continually updated on the status of the project.

I’ll be starting a new project soon. It’s the “Single-Player Project” and I’ll hopefully be able to reveal more details over the next month. Part of the project will involve the Independent Games Festival. While I was involved as a judge last year, I plan on entering this year. The submission deadline is September 1.

In a closely related announcement, the XGDX (eXtreme Game Developer’s Expo) will be October 9 & 10. Today is the deadline for session proposals.