In this year's highly anticipated game design keynote, The Sims
creator and designer extraordinaire Will Wright offered insight into
the research process followed in creating Maxis' upcoming title Spore.
It was a highly entertaining session, where Wright hopped from subjects
like astrobiology, Drake's equation on the probability of life in outer
space, the Russian space program, Maxis' recruiting policies and the
design of coal-mining cranes.
From
a session structure standpoint, Wright decided to follow two parallel
trains of thought, one (the “official” one) dealing with game design
research methods, while the other (the one he actually wished he had
talked about) focused on astrobiology research. This made the speech
quite humorous, as Wright swapped subjects every few slides, advancing
his two parallel lines until they fused in the conclusion. Obviously,
the real goal was to discuss research methods, while using the
astrobiology excuse to delve into the actual research done for Spore, and offer examples.
Wright
began by discussing how and when research should be done: even before
preproduction begins and, in his case, relying heavily on books about
the game's subject. That's how he got into astrobiology, discovering
the timeline of the universe, from a Big Bang some fourteen billion
years ago, to the appearance of life on Earth around four billion years
ago, and possibly on other planets as well. For Spore, this
initial research led to simulation prototypes, which were just simple
apps showing some of the underlying science principles visually. Wright
showed as an example, a galaxy simulation software, where he could
actually “plant” seeds of life and advance time to see how life forms
expanded through space with time. Interestingly, he commented, many
science prototypes needed to be built in order for some of these to
become interesting in terms of gameplay. Only these were then refined
to experiment with control and gameplay mechanics for the game.
Obviously, this frequently led to more research, so the basic
research-science prototype-gameplay prototype loop was closed.
By
using these techniques, Wright could examine the different astrobiology
theories and decide which ones would be used in the game, from Stanley
Miller's pre-biotic soup from the fifties to more modern theories like
panspermia (the pollination of life in space by means of spores
traveling, both unintentionally and intentionally).
Wright
explained how, at the end of the day, research should be useful in four
areas: innovation, risk, fun and deep messages. Innovation was
characterized as a clear sales driver, helping differentiate new games
from simple clones on store shelves. In this respect, it helps widen
the signal to noise ratio, where the signal would be the novel proposal
versus the background noise of planar clones. In Spore,
innovation drives procedural game content, making the player capable of
creating new, unique creatures and universes. Innovation is also used
to encourage player creativity, by allowing them to share their data.
Finally, it also drives the need for an unbound game world within the
game.
Spore
The
second area where innovation can become useful is risk. Wright stated
that risks can actually come from technology, design, production,
marketing and even political (intra-company, that is) sources. In his
current project, they identified sources of risk early on, to ensure
the right steps were taken to control them, and overcome them in the
end. For example, one of the main sources of risk with procedural
content is the need for procedural animation techniques. These were
tackled by Chris Hecker and Ken Perlin, pioneers in this area for over
a decade. Similarly, measures were taken to assess the risk in editor
usability for the game, the design scope of the product, the content
production pipeline and the ways to use pollinated content (that is,
user-generated data).
It
was interesting how Wright explained that previous user editors
actually produced a hyperbolic curve of quality vs. quantity: lots of
poor quality content, and a smaller and smaller ratio of higher-value
content. One of his goals with Spore's editor and pollination
mechanisms was to increase this proportion, to ensure more people could
create great stuff using the game's toolset.
In
the end, Wright reflected on how games can be used to convey deep
messages, to tell users something, and even maybe make them learn along
the way. This was probably the best part of the talk, when Wright
stressed how his game can actually become a vehicle for information
sharing and education. In the case of Spore, his goal was to
let players know that life in the universe is diverse, and comes in all
sizes and colors. A second theme for the game would be that anyone,
given the right tools, can be creative. Third, he wanted his audience
to learn, by playing Spore, that the universe is not flat as we
often see it portrayed in science books: it is a complex,
three-dimensional space where planets, galaxies and solar systems can
be aligned and oriented in a variety of ways. And last, but not least,
he wanted his audience to get a real feeling of the size of a galaxy.
We often forget that a regular spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way is
“just” one hundred billion stars, each one maybe with its planets.
In
the end, Will Wright's GDC 2006 keynote was surprising in terms of
theme, but not in terms of the value of the information presented.
Instead of a lecture on future game design methods we got a one-hour
session on how to do proper research for next-gen games from one of our
industry's brightest stars, and an insider's look at the research
process for Spore. While no actual media from the game was
shown (except for character sketches and some simple science demos),
attendees were left with the clear impression that Will Wright's
next-game may very well be the “Sim-everything” he wants it to be.
