During week 1 of the Game Development module, we were tasked to consider and audit our existing skillset and ultimately decide where more attention needs to be paid to become more of a jack of all trades or a ‘T-shaped’ person, rather than just being an expert in one (Yip, 2018), and in turn, more attractive to collaborators and/ or employers. This is particularly important as the goal for this module is to individually ideate and develop a single-player digital game prototype. The core specialisms that are being assessed are: Game design, level design, narrative design, programming, sound design, art direction, and animation.
To do this, we drew up a bar chart, commonly used to realise and establish ‘square shaped teams’ (Heuer, 2012), in which we demonstrated our current skill levels in each of the specialisms mentioned, of course being mindful that it is better to assume that we are lower on the spectrum than initially thought (Dunning, 2014). What this enables us to do, is immediately form a plan of action and decide where to focus more of our attention so that we can communicate and work with other specialists, or work in other specialisms ourselves more fluently.
Again, this has to be taken with a grain of salt.
I made a point of including two shades of orange to represent different stages of my professional development. It would be unreasonable of me to neglect transferable skills from other mediums (such as film) of which I have acquired over the years, however, I also feel it is important to separate them because, as transferable as they are, the way in which they are implemented and/ or respected within game development practice can either be very similar or vary drastically. The dark orange signifies (as far as I am currently aware) my ability within each game development specialism.
Game Design
At first, I found Game Design to be quite vague as I feel that Narrative Design and Level Design can fall under the same umbrella at times, particularly from the ideation stage. Honestly, I feel that it is difficult for me to be more than 2 on the scale as I am still trying to understand what it means to be a game designer. Despite this, I have worked on several prototypes, and each had/ has core elements of game design behind them, including a theme, hooks, and a core gameplay loop. Overall, I would like to explore and employ more game design theories in this module but also focus more of my time on QA testing so that I am more confident in resolving bugs and issues on my own in future.
Narrative Design
Fortunately for me, writing is a skill that carries over very nicely as a lot of the processes remain the same, or very similar at least. It’s obvious that there’s much to learn for me in relation to game development specific aspects like interactive narrative, fully understanding the difference between narrative design and game writing, and delving more deeply into how level and narrative design interweave.
Level Design
This specialism has been the one I have practiced most since starting my journey as a game developer and even though I feel confident within Unity using ProBuilder, PolyBrush and the UV Editor I still feel there is still so much more to learn, and at some point, I would like to make the transition to the Unreal Engine so that I am more flexible for collaborators and employers.
Art Direction
As a film director, you tend to have a vision (of course) and with that, you have to come up with a colour palette, aesthetic influences, etc. But more so than this, you have to oversee the entire creative decision process (mainly in pre-production) and work directly with all departments, including art. However, I am fairly new to how art direction applies in game development and so I don't claim to be an expert in it despite some similarities existing between the two mediums. Once upon a time, I did do quite a bit of concept art and odd sketches, but I need to become more practiced in this again, although this isn't a priority for me right now.
Programming
This is between zero and one to be fair, but I am more of a ‘seeing the glass half-full’ kind of guy and so here we are. As I was working alone in the previous module, I had no choice but to learn how to read and write C# scripts to get my game working (somewhat). Most scripts I wrote were related to character controllers and getting animations to work. Am I any good? Not really. But at least it does not terrify me anymore! I felt very proud taking the first step and I know now that this is one area where I will be focusing a lot more of my energy on.
Animation
I am still very much a novice in this also and have only had several instances during my time on this course where I have had to animate. For the most part it has been extremely simple animations such as doors opening, lifts operating, etc. As I mentioned briefly in the programming section, In the last module I had to figure out how to incorporate existing animations for a character and trigger them, at the same time, I got away with having to rig the player avatar as I used an asset pack so this is something I would like to examine more closely.
Sound Design
Sound is something that I have had plenty of practice in as I originated from a music background as a vocalist and musician before going on to sound mix (including recording dialogue, ambience and foley) for films. This being said, I have not had the chance to figure out how this would be implemented and managed within a game engine (and industry as a whole really), so I would like to experiment with this in this module.
Technical Skills Audit
Next, we were tasked with completing a self-assessing skills audit in which we determined whether we are confident or not ‘yet’ in certain scenarios. We also included links that helped/ will help us realise these feats. In the last module until the last quarter, “instead of the power of ‘yet’ I was gripped was gripped by the ‘tyranny of now.’” (Stanford Alumni, 2014) My core intelligence was tested, and I felt completely overwhelmed with the workload and my capabilities. I eventually came to the realisation that I just had to be patient and do what I knew I could achieve at that given moment. My biggest weakness is that I am a perfectionist and sometimes I do not settle for anything less, but for the sake of my mental wellbeing and quite frankly getting the work done, I had to develop a “growth mindset” and realise that I am not going to be perfect (if there is such a thing) in game development for now and that I must bide my time and take things one step at a time.
1. I can take mouse, keyboard, touch screen or gamepad inputs and use them to control objects in a game engine of my choice.
CONFIDENT
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2. I can set up physics components (such as colliders and rigid bodies) in my game engine and trigger an event to happen when two game objects collide.
CONFIDENT
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3. I can use code to spawn new objects while the game is running (eg create bullets).
NOT YET
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4. I can set up an animation in my chosen game engine and control it with code and / or with a state machine.
CONFIDENT
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5. I can use level design tools to block-out a level in my chosen game engine.
CONFIDENT
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6. I can use my game engine’s pathfinding system (if it has one) to create enemies and NPCs that chase or follow the player.
NOT YET
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7. I can code basic game logic (eg comparing two numbers) to create win and lose conditions.
NOT YET
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8. I can configure particle systems to create different visual effects (eg fire, snow).
NOT YET
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9. I can use appropriate software to create appealing character sprites or models.
NOT YET
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10. I can use appropriate software to create atmospheric environment sprites or models.
CONFIDENT
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11. I can create character animations, such as walking and jumping, and bring them into my game engine.
NOT YET (Only implemented character animations, but not created them)
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12. I can use appropriate software to design clear user-interfaces.
NOT YET
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13. I can find / record / edit, sound effects and music.
CONFIDENT
Bibliography
Dunning, D., 2014. Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect> [Accessed 28 January 2022].
Heuer, S., 2012. Building Square-Shaped Teams With T-Shaped People. [online] Agile Sean. Available at: <https://agilesean.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/building-square-shaped-teams-with-t-shaped-people/> [Accessed 29 January 2022].
Stanford Alumni, 2014. Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ> [Accessed 28 January 2022].
Yip, J., 2018. Why T-shaped people?. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://jchyip.medium.com/why-t-shaped-people-e8706198e437> [Accessed 29 January 2022].