So one of the major things that I wanted to focus on when I started designing games, was exploring what video games could become as an artistic medium. I know I'm definitely not the first one to bring up this issue and I think I can assume that most, if not all, of the indie developer community already considers it an art. That being said, there are a large portion of people out there who either don't agree with us, or simply don't care. And to be honest, I'm fine with that. As opposed to trying to convince them, I'll spend my time doing what I do best, and that's making games. You can't convince someone who isn't listening anyway, so to me, the only solution to this problem is time.
So now that we're off that topic, let's start dissecting what actually makes video games different from any other artistic medium. Obviously one of the first things that comes to mind is the fact that video games are played. Video games take input, which can't be said of any other medium. Books must be read, movies must be watched, music must be heard, etc. As the only medium which can accept user input, this is the only medium where the story can be affected by the user (I'm not counting Choose Your Own Adventure Books).
Now many games have caught on to this already and realized that this allows for multiple scenarios within the same story. There are quite a few notable series of games that have already played with the concept of alternate storylines, and personally I don't have much interest in currently exploring that method of storytelling myself. So let's explore how else user input could add to the medium in an artistic sense.
Mass Effect is an excellent example of a game series where the storyline changes based on input from the user.
A result of the story being affected by the user, is that the story now relies on the user for certain storyline events. They are given somewhat a sense of responsibility over the storyline, as opposed to just 'soaking it in' like you would expect from other mediums. This sense of responsibility opens a whole new realm of possibility, not only in just storytelling methods, but also in the emotions felt by the player of the game. Let's take Pikmin for example.
In Pikmin, the player must raise and protect their pikmin in order to progress. The player is given the responsibility of raising them and protecting them, but if they screw up it will cost the lives of their pikmin. While pikmin can be considered fairly expendable, the player does feel a sense of disappointment for letting them die. While some players may actually feel a sense of loss due to actual attachment to their cute little creatures, others may just feel disappointed because they know it will require them to harvest more pikmin.
While the actual emotion felt is dependant on the player, the sense of loss exists for all players. This emotion could not exist without input from the player, as they were to blame for something going wrong in the story at all. Since units in Pikmin don't have much in the way of unique personalities, let's further explore this concept using Fire Emblem. While I've never actually played a game in the series, I know that once you lose one of your allies in the game, they don't come back. This is a harsher version of it, but it is still the same sense of loss being felt by the player.
Now notice how this specific emotion cannot be pulled from the user without input. This is an example of a feeling which is not possible to reproduce in any other medium. Yes, one could argue that they would feel loss by having a favorite character die in something like a movie or a book. While this is true, the scale of the feeling is incomparable. This is due to the fact that in games, the player feels direct responsibility, whereas in other mediums the player is following a set script.
This brings me to my main point, one of the fundamentals of what makes games different from other artistic mediums: the idea that games allow us to explore the ability of 'I did this' or 'We did this' instead of 'They did this'. When watching a movie, you can only see things get achieved by the characters on the screen. You have no personal sense of achievement, but you still enjoy seeing your favorite characters achieving their goals because you like them.
'I did this'
'He did this'
With games, we instead get this sense of 'I did this' or 'We did this', for solo and team based games respectively. Because we are given the ability to give input and affect the outcome as players, we also leave ourselves open to express a wider variety of feelings throughout our experience, such as the standard sense of achievement that most people feel when playing games. The examples I gave earlier of Pikmin and Fire Emblem showcase the inverse of this, a sense of 'I didn't do this', which in this case culminates in a sense of loss for the player. By playing around with how we use these mechanics, we are likely to uncover other ways in which to express emotion through the player, but that's all in due time.
So we've identified one attribute that makes game unique as an artistic medium, but that's definitely just scratching the surface. I think anyone reading this can agree that it will be years before people fully explore the intricacies behind the art of game design. That being said, we've got to start somewhere don't we? I want to see this medium grow as well as mature, so I think it's important that we begin to focus on the things that make us unique and different first, so we can expand on those ideas in the future.
5 years. That's how much time has passed since I last created a level in a full-length game. And honestly, I somehow managed to forget how much I flat-out enjoyed it. Doesn't everyone have that one activity which they enjoy doing more then they probably should? Mine just happens to be level design, a fact that I've struggled to remember over the last few years.
Actually, it may not be so much that I forgot about it, but more that a series of events drove me away from it over the last few years. Up until this point, I was honestly putting off the development of the first level in our game. I don't know why, except somehow I ended up with the idea in my mind that it was going to be incredibly tedious. Having put in a fair amount of time into the creation of the level now, I would consider it anything but.
So I started thinking back to my previous games to try and remember why I had such a low interest in level design recently. I clearly remembered it being my favorite part of creating my previous games, so when did I give it the chance to rub me the wrong way? The answer became pretty obvious when I realized the last time I worked on a major project, the infamous final 10% of my largest project ever. Play-testing, cleaning up levels, fixing bugs, adding scenery, minor tweaks and improvements; all things that I considered extremely tedious at the time despite being very important. That was it, completing my previous game had made me decide to take a break; but, it wasn't just that. I didn't get to do very much level design in that last 10% either. All I could remember when I finished, was all the grinding that I had to do at the end of the game, as opposed to the fun parts I got to do throughout.
30 long levels, 7 bosses, 60 hidden bonus coins and a bonus world.
Pretty ambitious for a kid who didn't know how to write a function.
But let's backtrack a little more first because I can't fully place the blame on that last 10%. I have a very bad habit of wanting all of the art and music for a level before actually developing it (let's say for inspiration purposes). Now when I was creating fan-games with Game Maker, this wasn't a huge issue. I just hit up VG Music to get the music, and Spriters Resource to get the art. Now that only got me so far, but thanks to the help of awesome strangers on the internet, I managed to put together my assets piece by piece. Matching tilesets and backgrounds were a bit harder to come by though, and I probably wasted hours upon hours looking for good artwork for my game. This increased my development time by ridiculous amounts and to put it simply, it was tedious.
This focus of developing levels with the proper graphics first slowed my development to a crawl, unfortunately I didn't notice that until pretty much just now. And the only reason I noticed was because I found myself making the exact same mistakes and doing the exact same things all over again this time around. Initially I was trying to make this game by myself, artwork and everything. It wasn't until Jason came on board and made me realize that what I was doing wasn't necessary or smart. It was time for me to ditch my ego and, instead of trying to do it all myself, leave the art to a professional. This is easily the smartest decision I could have made as it allows me to focus on the things I actually excel at, development and level design. The best part is, I can already notice it making an improvement.
I always considered game development something that I could do on my own, but realistically it shouldn't be. I'll be able to make a better quality game by learning to properly use my team's strengths instead. A one man show is really convenient at first, until you realize how much time you're wasting by doing it.
Shout-outs to aperson98 and NecroToad from DKC Atlas. The DK Bay wouldn't have been the same without your help :)