Tales of the Rampant Coyote
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Ye Olde Archives. Visit the new blog at http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/ - and use the following feed: http://rampantgames.com/blog/wp-rss2.php
Monday, March 27, 2006
Polish: Attention to Detail
So I spent eleven hours today wandering about Disneyland with relatives and a close friend of the family. I am pretty exhausted now. But I had something strike me - one of the principle reasons why people come from all over the world to go to Disneyland, but not to our local amusement park. The reason that occured to me was attention to detail.
It's glaringly apparent in the decoration. The sets look like real, livable, working models of whatever they are trying to reproduce. I could swear that if you just went in a side door in the haunted mansion, the rest of the building is a fully functional. Ditto on several other features of the park. Like the balcony belonging to (apparently) a voodoo priestess in New Orleans Square. The laboratory of the wicked stepmother in Snow White's Castle. Or the nonfunctioning ticket office of the Jungle Cruise, complete with an aging copy of a vintage National Geographic sitting on the desk.
It's also apparent in the cleanliness of the park. There are places in other parks that one would expect to see a little coated with things like bird droppings and so forth - but not so Disneyland. I don't know who they have cleaning the high fence once a week or whatever to make sure there's no bird droppings there, but it seems to be getting done.
In the movie Ed Wood, Edward (played by Johnny Depp) explains that (in his opinion) the details don't matter - the audiences are just there for the story, and they will happily look past little issues. Of course, Ed Wood's movies prove that his philosophy on moviemaking were not exactly aligned with reality.
Bringing it all to videogames - I once solicited the Indiegamer forums with a question about applying polish to games. There's a high correlation between the level of polish in a game and the number of sales it achieves in a mature / saturated genre, so polish is pretty important. I was looking for some kind of a checklist of items that people might follow in making sure their games are "polished." I never got such a beast. Polish is one of those things where "You know it when you see it." Usually. But I think it has a lot in common with Attention to Detail. In fact, it may have everything in common.
The trick is knowing where to place the detail. There are restrictions imposed by budget and other resources - and the limitations of the medium - that may prevent us from doing everything. We just can't blow 125,000 polygons on the model of a car that takes into consideration every nuance and curve apparent to the naked eye. So there's two pretty tough skills involved: One to recognize a problem (being able to pay attention to the details and note deficiencies), and another to actually correct this problem.
Edit (follow-up now that I'm more awake):
I think a big part of the original success of Star Wars (now subtitled, "A New Hope"), was this attention to detail. A lot of it went into making the universe of the movie look "lived in" and practical. It was visually stunning in 1978 (and the original still holds up pretty well today). Even though dialog has never been George Lucas's strong point, there were details and references there that made viewers believe that there really was an entire universe and history that these people lived in.
But even so, I have read about areas where they skimped on the details. In the set-up shot for the battle of Yavin, I have heard that the trailing X-Wings and Y-Wings were quickly thrown together with spare parts that barely resembled the higher-quality models. Did anybody notice? Not me. Even knowing what to look for, on my videocassette of the original edition. I also understand that there was only ONE full-scale model of an X-Wing and Y-Wing for use in the hanger scenes. What did they do? They re-positioned the two set pieces, so they were both present behind everyone who was speaking, and darkening the hanger so to present the illusion that the hanger was vast and completely filled with fighters.
So it's not just extreme attention to detail. It's knowing WHERE to apply those details, lacking infinite time, budget, and talent. Is adding millions of dollars to a game budget to give characters realistic, flowing hair (the reason cited by Mr. Brown of Electronic Arts a year ago why the big-budget studios were going to bury the indies) really the answer? Is being paralyzed into replicating only known, existing game types because the details could be too tricky the answer? I don't think so.
That's where games-as-art comes in. It's a tightrope walk, and the producers & designers who succeed are the ones who master it.
Labels: Game Design
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:58 PM (Permalink)
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Thanks Dustin.
Thinking about your brief post made me think about the flip-side of the issue a little bit. The big-budget studios are largely nailing the polish factor really well. But there's a point where a game feels like nothing BUT polish. That's a problem. Players are getting bored.
I wonder if there's such a focus on attention to detail (and a VAST number of details) that it's causing some of the ruts we feel stuck in with the retail gaming industry.
Thinking about your brief post made me think about the flip-side of the issue a little bit. The big-budget studios are largely nailing the polish factor really well. But there's a point where a game feels like nothing BUT polish. That's a problem. Players are getting bored.
I wonder if there's such a focus on attention to detail (and a VAST number of details) that it's causing some of the ruts we feel stuck in with the retail gaming industry.
The only problem I see with your follow up about Star Wars is that as a movie we are shown were to look. In a game we normally get to explore, what happens when we see that there is only one X-Wing and Y-Wing? How do you stop us from moving past the scene outline without pulling some invisible unexplainable barrier?
How do you keep the gamer looking where you want them to? I guess thats the real question. I mean if you could control their perception we would not be in the situation we seem to be in these days, correct?
How do you keep the gamer looking where you want them to? I guess thats the real question. I mean if you could control their perception we would not be in the situation we seem to be in these days, correct?
I love "the little things." Always have. There's a painting by Jan Van Eyck titled "The Wedding of Giovanni Andolfini" and it's a nice portrait, a little heavy on the symbolism, but nice. Then the little details start to sink in. The best detail is that there's this little polished metal sphere, a decoration, on the back wall, and reflected in that sphere is the entire painting as seen from the back done in miniature, complete with spherical distortion, as if it were ray-traced and texture mapped onto the sphere. Van Eyck didn't need to do that. It was a commissioned painting and he was going to get his money either way. But that little detail is why van Eyck is still talked about, 500 years or whatever after that wedding took place.
It's not just the visual details, of course. A real soundtrack can do wonders for a game. A snazzy Website can help. Even something as simple as well-written, carefully edited README file included with the game can give the audience subtle clues that you take this product seriously. When I see spelling errors in a README file, I start to wonder if the programmers made syntax errors in their code, too.
An old college buddy of mine was working on his first indie game last year, and he hit upon the idea of having me write limericks for each level, so the player would have something amusing to read while waiting for the maps to load. I'm not sure why he settled on limericks, but the general idea is sound: be respectful of the player's time. If the player is idly drumming his or her fingers on the mousepad while watching a progress bar crawl across the screen, that's bad.
None of the reviews of this game have commented yey-or-ney on the limericks, but I don't think that's the point. Getting the details right is often an exercise in subtlety. The backlight on my iPod doesn't turn off when I take my hand off the controls– it fades away. You'll never see that fade mentioned in a Macworld review, but it's one of the little details that makes people love their little iPods past all logic.
You gotta have the fundamentals: George Lucas may have a tin ear for dialog, but he is an expert storyteller and a decent cinematographer. Van Eyck knew how to draw and paint. Apple knows how to design circuit boards. Details alone won't carry the day. But details can help a good product become a great one.
It's not just the visual details, of course. A real soundtrack can do wonders for a game. A snazzy Website can help. Even something as simple as well-written, carefully edited README file included with the game can give the audience subtle clues that you take this product seriously. When I see spelling errors in a README file, I start to wonder if the programmers made syntax errors in their code, too.
An old college buddy of mine was working on his first indie game last year, and he hit upon the idea of having me write limericks for each level, so the player would have something amusing to read while waiting for the maps to load. I'm not sure why he settled on limericks, but the general idea is sound: be respectful of the player's time. If the player is idly drumming his or her fingers on the mousepad while watching a progress bar crawl across the screen, that's bad.
None of the reviews of this game have commented yey-or-ney on the limericks, but I don't think that's the point. Getting the details right is often an exercise in subtlety. The backlight on my iPod doesn't turn off when I take my hand off the controls– it fades away. You'll never see that fade mentioned in a Macworld review, but it's one of the little details that makes people love their little iPods past all logic.
You gotta have the fundamentals: George Lucas may have a tin ear for dialog, but he is an expert storyteller and a decent cinematographer. Van Eyck knew how to draw and paint. Apple knows how to design circuit boards. Details alone won't carry the day. But details can help a good product become a great one.
Mavlock -
It depends. I mean, we already do stuff with level-of-detail in 3D games - but that takes more work, not less.
But here's the example: You have X amount of resources to make a game. Let's say X is 300. It takes 10 units to complete a level, and another 10 units to polish it to make it about 25% better. (I'm leaving out a ton of other jobs besides level-design that go into making a game, of course). So what do you do?
Do you whip out 30 levels for your game so you can brag about yout 30 levels on the package or your website? Or do you create 15 levels that are 25% better polished? Or 7 levels that are 57% better? Or just one REALLY INCREDIBLE POLISHED, practically perfect level? One that will have people who bother to really pay attention to your detail clamoring for years about the incredible beauty of your game, all the while the rest of the world is complaining about how they finished the entire game in under 15 minutes?
The latter answer is most likely unacceptable, and the first chooses quantity over quality and becomes nothing more than game "filler." But how do you strike a balance between the two? Or do you just do what much of the retail game industry has been doing, and refuse to choose and simply increase your budget?
I agree with Artie 100%. Just because the new basketball games are capable of showing realistic sweat dripping down the players' faces does NOT make them superior to what we were playing 6 years ago. You have to have the fundamentals down. The detailing of sweat isn't worth squat otherwise.
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It depends. I mean, we already do stuff with level-of-detail in 3D games - but that takes more work, not less.
But here's the example: You have X amount of resources to make a game. Let's say X is 300. It takes 10 units to complete a level, and another 10 units to polish it to make it about 25% better. (I'm leaving out a ton of other jobs besides level-design that go into making a game, of course). So what do you do?
Do you whip out 30 levels for your game so you can brag about yout 30 levels on the package or your website? Or do you create 15 levels that are 25% better polished? Or 7 levels that are 57% better? Or just one REALLY INCREDIBLE POLISHED, practically perfect level? One that will have people who bother to really pay attention to your detail clamoring for years about the incredible beauty of your game, all the while the rest of the world is complaining about how they finished the entire game in under 15 minutes?
The latter answer is most likely unacceptable, and the first chooses quantity over quality and becomes nothing more than game "filler." But how do you strike a balance between the two? Or do you just do what much of the retail game industry has been doing, and refuse to choose and simply increase your budget?
I agree with Artie 100%. Just because the new basketball games are capable of showing realistic sweat dripping down the players' faces does NOT make them superior to what we were playing 6 years ago. You have to have the fundamentals down. The detailing of sweat isn't worth squat otherwise.
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