Pre Production

Cultural complicity
-Examine the behaviors your game encourages
-Question the explicit and implicit messages in your game
-Think about the way your game encourages interactions with others
-Imagine that your game wholly defines someone’s viewpoint for the world
-Think about the impact of the fantasies that you’re selling
-Consider who you empower through the nature of your marketing
-Every piece of media is a reflection of who and what you stand for
-Embrace complicity and responsibility

Narrative Prototype

Digital Sandbox

-Showcases controls
-Asks and answers “is this immediately enjoyable?”

Game Narrative

The player is performing actions that influence events and learns to master the
system/rules to achieve their goal.

Your prototype toolbox:

-An Idea
-A deadline: at most 3 days
-Narrative reference points: at least one game that has similarities to your idea
-A personal storytelling experience: a time when you felt engaged and
empowered as a storyteller
-A focus on the central question of game narrative

Initial Writeup

-Premise: go nuts, for about ten minutes

-Player role: is the player supposed to be a character or themselves?
-Player goals: simple and relatable. There is an experience that he wants to get
out of this
-Player conflict: what obstacles are in the way of that goal? What are the barriers?
-Player choices: big interactive choices. What is the player trying to do? Are these
choices tough? meaningful? strategic?
-Player actions: the verbs
-Resources: what in the world can the player use? a good resource gives
opportunity, information, challenge
-Game events: what changes take place?

Building the story

-Show the player their goal. In Journey it was the mountain with the light
-Give meaning to the rules
-Use characters as goals, resources and conflict
-Goals: Clementine (keep her safe)
-Resources: info/item vendors in RPGs
-Conflict: Donkey Kong
-Grow the story events around the action

Cut the story points that don’t:

-Reinforce or showcase goals

-Call the player to action
-Give the player feedback on their choices
-Provide a break/reward after heavy action
Production

Experience Based Environment Design

Identity. Figure out the function or purpose of the room.

Background/History. Is the room new or old? How much wear and tear should
there be? Is there any backstory you should support?
Support objectives and reinforce ideas.
Explain gameplay. Tutorial areas or introducing new mechanics.
What happened here? blood splatter, fire, disarray.
Uncovering mystery. Questions build and you start seeking answers. Hide clues
under the player’s nose for attentive players.
Visual Design Choices. Our choices tell the player what kind of entities we
present: impressive, grand, they spared no expense…
Say yes to the player. If the player thinks they can do it, we let them do it.
Signage. To help with navigation or to strengthen ideas within the game.
Homage/Easter Eggs
Environment Design Principles
Environment Design as Visual Storytelling: Theory and Practice

Mimesis- mimicking and copying reality

Roleplaying: Who were the characters that were involved? What resources
did they have at hand? What was their interest/fashion at the time?

Personality:

Behavioral Traces: It’s what you leave in an environment as you use it. It
could be garbage and clutter, but also a couch or a chair under a window
or next to a lamp because somebody is using them to read.

Identity Claims: reminders of who you are for yourself or other people in the
environment. Photographs on the wall or diplomas, but also the type of
artwork or objects on display.

Mood Modifiers: candles, paint colors (subdued, calming, etc)

Affordances: actions that an object allows that add to the storytelling (chairs and
sofas for comfort, car, door... but also a torture chair, wine barrels and such)

Sizes:

Materials and Structure: varies according to the function.

Characters: how size in structure affects social dynamics and appearance.

Consider normal vs oversized stairs. The last thing you want is to make the
characters look small and weak.
 Layout: a necessary part of research, it deals with architectural flow and
real-world constraints of the space.

Semiotics- signs and symbols and how we communicate

Signifiers/signified: plane of expression vs content. Types:

Symbol: cultural references, like language or traffic lights

Icon: uniqueness because of the design

Index: a link to a causal relationship between the signifier and the

signified. Smoke signifying a fire, packs of money and drugs to
convey illegal activities.

Aesthetic Language

Shape Language: intentional association between elements and

form, an understanding of the visual components of an art style or
research into specific construction types.

Density: how sparse or dense in detail

Cohesion: the amount of repetition of shapes and colors or how

limited is the color palette.

Order: simple or complex/chaotic level

Layers: evaluating aspects like order, cohesion, textures, shapes in

different features of the composition (architecture, set dressing, 2d
graphics)

Tropes: figurative language

Metonymy: referring to something that is related to a concept (white

house for US government)

Synecdoche: using a part to refer to the whole (Eiffel Tower to refer to

Paris or France)
 Metaphor: comparing two seemingly unrelated things to add shades
of meaning. For example, having circular shape metaphors to signify
wellness and straight or jagged angular shapes to signify tension
and danger

Cognition: neuroscience and psychology

Association: tie meaning to visual features like color, shapes

Spatial Metaphors: the implied meaning behind the position of elements or

the audience in relationship to the environment. Being above/below other
people, obscuring the view, sacred spaces

Peak Shift: Visual hyperbole used to represent in a more efficient,

hyper-realistic way or even caricature

Gestalt: understanding things as a whole instead of parts.

Affinity and Contrast: to signify social cohesion and bonding or to

communicate conflict.

Structure

Layout

Layout of the Form: affects the mental model of a space. Centralized,

linear, grid-like, and so on.

Layout of the Path: affects the experience of a space over time. Can
be seen as trajectory or flow.

It is advised to look at references to achieve richness and complexity

of layout of form and path.

Intensity: it’s important to vary the level of intensity in order to make a rich
experience because a consistently high level can become overwhelming
for the audience and consistently low can be boring.
Interior Design Principles
Mastering Space, Mastering Place

Order

Deals with the arrangement and position of elements in space, so as to increase

our sense of understanding within that place.

We deal with complex spaces with many elements and when placed together the
user should be able to understand where they are, which can give them a feeling
of ease. That’s powerful for us. If we don’t arrange things people can get lost and
lose their sense of orientation.

How do we deal with orientation?

-Patterns. Perceptible repetition within space. For example, patterns of color,

material, subject, etc. There’s also a hierarchy of pattern -most noticeable patterns
and less noticeable patterns.

-Identity. Creating an iconic element that people can remember and come back
to. The Eiffel Tower, for example

-Structure. It’s the pattern within those spaces. The easily memorable repetition
of elements. For example the closeness of building units and their size in a
neighborhood.

-Meaning. Something you remember about a place. For example, a wedding

taking place.

How do we define space?

We use enclosure and implied space (the suggestion of one space from another).

Walls and corners imply safety and comfort. We feel more comfortable in smaller
pockets of a space..

Methods for implying space:

-Compartmentalize literal space into smaller spots.

-Changing the patterns.
-Arranging elements within a group. Even light fixtures in the ceiling create
a perceived spatial definition.
-Use of verticality.
To increase orientation we need to create perceptible patterns.

In practice, we want to look at scenes and start to ask questions about how order
exists, how they create orientation/identity/structures…

Enrichment

Elevating the experience in a space.

Visually we like scenes where there is a lot of complexity in them. If a space is too
boring and simple you don’t necessarily want to go there. However, if the space is
too complex you also don’t want to either. The spaces that people appreciate the
most are naturalistic, where we can see perceptible patterns and repetition of
elements.

Techniques to increase approachability:

-Complexity. We like to see things that we can break down.

-Legibility. Our ability to break down a space into its component parts. A
lack of legibility means that we can’t understand what’s going on -and it
becomes less approachable. If you increase legibility in a space you can still
have significant amounts of complexity within it.
-Coherence. Our appreciation for patterns within a space. Adding these
elements makes the environment work as a whole.
-Mystery. The idea that we want to investigate spaces, that we want to
move into them. Present something that people would want to investigate
further to enrich the space..

Universal Enrichment

-Manipulation of enclosing space.

-Surface articulation. Adding patterns to surfaces to enrich them, as long as
the patterns aren’t too repetitive. It can be applied to movement as well as
spatial definition (boring-interesting-messy places).
-Spatial composition. Changing the pattern between areas. If an area gives
us a space that we can relax with, then we could feel more at ease moving
through it and around it.
-Novelty. The idea that we want something that’s going to stand out from
everything else. It needs to be kept under control though, if everything’s
memorable then nothing really is.
-Tension. As we move through a space, if it closes around us or expands
itself -either gradually or abruptly- that’s an enriching experience. We can
release that tension in different ways.
Expression

How we deal with the mood, or tone, or narrative of a space. We tell the audience
the broad ideas.

World Expression techniques

-Historical: The history of a place told through its visuals. What time period
was this place built in? and how does the place express this history?
-Cultural: The use of symbols to suggest or express a specific type of
culture. It can be subtle or heavy handed.

Inhabitant Expression techniques

-Identity: informs our relationship to that space. Techniques:
-Attitude: how friendly or unfriendly the inhabitants may be. It can
be something that they built to suggest that attitude (like a classical,
expensive setting) or something that was placed on the space (like
graffiti). It can also be a sense of their humor!
You can find who these people are, who they think they are, and
maybe who they want to be.
-Sophistication: Suggests their appreciation for taste and aesthetics.
-Self-Presentation: How much do they want you to see their
sophistication or attitude?
-Symbolism: is that broader communication of story and a universal human
experience for users.
-Ascending/Descending: when you move up through a space there’s
a suggestion of a heavenly movement. When you descend you fall,
you lose something of yourself.
-Admittance/Refusal: When you want somebody to come into a
space, you can show them that. You can open doors and lots of light
to make sure that somebody feels like they’re welcome.
Marketing
Messaging

How do you want consumers to recognise your company? What are you trying to
achieve? Figure out 1 key message and 1 key artwork. You’re selling a story.

Roadmap

● Product announcement
● First screenshots
● First trailer (most important), sells credibility
● Preview possibilities
● Release date announcement
● Release announcement (+launch trailer)

Encourage people to follow you, for example: “As development ramps up, we’ll be
releasing more screenshots of unseen areas. You won’t want to miss this, so make
sure to follow!”

How to say it

Websites. The central Hub of your online presence, it needs to be well maintained
and presented.

-You are greeted by a large and beautiful graphic of the product

-Next is the latest video or trailer
-Followed by a short explanation of the product
-More graphics and a box to subscribe to the mailing list and social links

Social Media. You can use Trello as a planning board. Use hashtags like #indiedev,
#animation, #indiedevhour, #screenshotsaturday, #ue4, #unreal

When showing off video, always directly upload it to Twitter.

Timing:

Consider what month to communicate new beats. For gaming audiences, June
(E3) and Christmas should be avoided.

Consider what day: Tuesday to Thursday preferably.

Consider what time: during business hours (9:00 - 16:00). Keep timezones in mind
(around 06:00 PST / 14:00 GMT is a good time) as well as bank holidays.

Trailer:
-You’re missing out! We don’t want you to miss a one-of-a-kind experience.
It’s even better when the product has already blown up.
-There’s way more inside! You want to stick within the comforts of
established narrative, but cram as many flashes of related material into the
margins, to leave an impression in the back of the viewer’s mind that there’s a
whole world here.
-This feels comfortable… Whether at the very beginning or a bit later, we
need to establish the genre and bring people up to speed.
-This also feels really different! Once you frame things, you’re free to stack
on top to make the viewer happily disoriented.
-This is my stuff! Think hard about your last shot. The last emotion you land
on, that’s the lasting connection folks have with your product. You want them to
leave with some big feelings.

Stand out from the crowd

-Evaluate the quantity and quality of your hooks. Ideally you want every facet of
your project to be unique and compelling in some way: art, name, story, dev team,
everything.

You will need to become adept at evaluating hooks. Find 10 or 20 products that
you think are close to yours. Watch all of them, examine their hooks and look at
their results.

-Sell it with a GIF: can you present your selling points in a GIF? Can you show that
in a span of five or six seconds? If you can’t, try instead to capture a big, exciting or
engaging moment so that people can quickly grasp what’s great about it.

-Create your posts 48 or 24 hours in advance, re-read and re-edit.

-Look at what your competitors are doing and promoting, check out some
kickstarter videos.

-Content ideas:
 The challenges you’re facing
What you’re working on.
Stories that have occurred since you last posted.

-Build a strong library of in-editor content and features, specifically tutorial videos
early on and then deeper content as your short takes shape.

-Build a strong library of out-of-editor features such as developer diaries.

-Build a library of content that will demonstrate personality.

Getting others to say it

Press packs. You can create your own and host it on your site (like the Snake Pass
team has, or the online presskit() from Rami Ismail). Make sure to cover: short
name, studio name, studio location (city), website social links, contact details,
trailer (link to a youtube version and a downloadable version), key art, screenshots
(high resolution and no logo), logo, description of the short / press release (in the
length of a tweet, two sentences, a paragraph, a page)

Contacting the press. Identify smaller sites with less traffic where an email will be
warmly appreciated, bigger sites with more traffic where they have sections
devoted to your kind of product, and specialist sites where your product makes
sense to feature. Learn about the person you’re pitching to.