Author: Jackson Wong

Game Studies – Getting a Grasp on Feeling, Emotion and Affect

Game Studies

One thing that sounds like it should be something rather obvious, yet somewhat elusive to find discussion on, is how the concept of affect fits into feelings and emotion. Upon explaining affect as best I can, a response is often something along the lines of ‘So, is it like feelings or emotion?’ Upon which my answer would be ‘Yes, kind of, but not quite’. After finding this article by Eric Shouse (2005) however, distinguishing between the three has now become exponentially easier to do. Hopefully I can do the topic some justice when I explain it below, alongside an example in relation to games.

Shouse (2005) describes this distinction in that ‘feelings are personal and biographical, emotions are social, and affects are prepersonal’. Therefore, whenever a player experiences any kind of event or interaction within a game, one does not simply feel or emote in response to it, but rather goes through a myriad of layers of reactions in order to arrive at a particular response. Not to be confused with feeling or emotion, affect is not a personal feeling, but rather a transition between a variety of experiential states. Such encounters occur between two bodies – namely that of the affected (such as the player) and the affected (such as the game).

As a feeling is influenced by previous experiences, each person has their own interpretations and labels of the same events. When a player receives intensities from a game, the objective implications are simply a collection of imagery and sounds. Perhaps a flash of colour streaks across the screen in front of them; perhaps they ears receive aural cues of sword clashes. The sound of metal clashing implies danger. The player’s ears may perk up, more alert to future intensities. Their pulse may quicken in the midst of this engagement. For the player, these feelings drawn from audiovisual cues are a result of their biography so far, with additional influence by previous and individual sensations. Without the player’s feelings to interpret these intensities that are projected from the game, the affect becomes inconsequential, and is instead left behind amongst the multitude of sensations that continuously impact the body.

Emotion is the outwards expression of such feelings. Unlike feelings however, we can choose to manipulate the way we emote, whether genuinely or not. It is up to the individual to determine their emotion, and whether to truly broadcast their true internal states, or whether to alter it in order to meet social expectations. For example, the player of a horror game may unintentionally influence their emotion given the social context they are playing the game in. When experiencing the horror game alone, they may find themselves unstimulated and hence somewhat placid. When playing the same game with peers however, social expectations may influence players to exhibit similar emotions to those around them.

Therefore affect acts as the underlying component of this relationship – it is the intensity that is felt first and foremost, while feeling and emotion are driven off the qualification of these particular intensities. Feeling does not fit neatly into either intensity or qualification, but perhaps exists at some point in between.

As I obtain a better grasp on each concept of affect, the rabbit hole continues to grow and grow. Look forward to seeing the next blog post before I delve in too deep!

A Velociradish Devlog – Week 6

Velociradish Production

Week 6 for me has further involved making the numerous micro design decisions that make up the game loop, and otherwise facilitating that they get addressed. This has ranged from making simple meshes to fix gaps, rearranging the map as needed, and tweaking the HUD.

With less than one month left to go in our development, it became glaringly obvious how far behind schedule we really were, and so an evaluation of our time was in order. I made an inventory and assessment of our progress so far, logging exactly what is needs to be done in order to reach our deadlines. This has involved cutbacks to scope and features as necessary – it’s always better to address them sooner than later. I’ve gone so far as to take this chart and stick it to the wall, as we can’t afford to lose track of time with so little time remaining.

As for particles, I continued to work on the most immediate forms of feedback that are required for our game loop, in an attempt to address ways that we’d need to communicate the game’s features to the player. For example, how do you know when an enemy is about to fire at you? How do you know when your supermove is charging? How do you know when you’ve successfully negated a projectile flying at you?

There are so many things that can be overlooked, that I invested at least a week’s worth of time in learning to work Unreal’s Cascade particle system.

Left: A reticle that will appear over an enemy’s head; Right: A charging aura that will circle the player.

In less than a week, the difference in complexity and skill is already beginning to show in my particle effects. Compare the two particle effects for the same feature below – both are attempts to indicate when two bullets have collided with each other in midair. I really wanted to really emphasise the clash between the two, and give it a ‘wow’ factor that would encourage players to pull it off as often as they can. I guarantee that the difference in skill is already noticeable:

Left: My first attempt at bullets collding; Right: My second attempt, which I think looks miles more exciting than the first.

Overall I think I will be able to bring some really exciting visual effects to the project by the end of the year, especially as I gain a better grasp of Unreal’s Cascade. I also hope to study up on 2D animation principles and apply them towards creating some really interesting hand-drawn effects!

A Velociradish Devlog – Week 5

Velociradish Production

For the fifth week of our development, there have been some major developments in the game’s direction. Before we get to that, I’ve been continuing to work on these particles, including some text effects to really emphasise when the player has pulled off a really cool stunt:

Rather than implementing a font material system, I decided that adding low-res textures for the text would be the quickest, if not dirtiest method of getting something into the engine.

As you can see from the grid above, I also got a hang of the SubUV function in order to maximise texture space when we need to generate a range of words. Hopefully this would lessen the impact that loading textures would make on the game’s performance.

While I ended up with rather basic results for the game’s particle systems, I’ve felt that it’s definitely been important to at least get some kind of feedback into the game, before getting caught up in trying to polish things. Iterating on the project, especially this early into development, is the surest and safest way to progress.

Besides particles, my role as usual has also been in maintaining the team’s logistical side of work. While it may not look like much in screenshots, I also continue to work on some of the more-overlooked aspects of the game’s production, including scheduling and documentation (I could take screenshots, but they would make for some pretty boring pictures!).

In addition, I worked in ensuring that we finally decided on a direction for the game – a huge step considering we are a month into development! From here, production should only go smoother.

A Non-Critique From Not Playing The Stanley Demo

World Design

The Stanley Parable is a game that is all about expectations – the expectations of how a demo should work, how it is played, and what the player walks away with. With an emphasis on removing external challenge in the game, the goal of the game is in providing the player with space to understand themselves through their actions.

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As opposed to providing a set of binary choices that fulfil a particular goal, the game instead offers these choices and interactions through which the player can explore their own reasons for making them. In essence, the game merely facilitates the narrative of the player. It is their actions that drive the narrative, while the narrator serves to acknowledge and register your actions.

The point of this demo is to play upon the very concept of a demo itself. Because a traditional demo of the game would be jeopardised from having a portion of the game extracted without context, it is apparent that the goal of this particular demo is to recreate its self-referential humour. Thus rather than providing a preview of the content of the game, but rather an emphasis on the nature of the game.

The very nature of The Stanley Parable hinges on the design philosophy of its developers – to provide the player with a space for introspection. With the inclusion of a narrator who seemingly responds to each action of the player, this negotiation between obedience, confusion and exploration is used to create a sense of playfulness without the need for external challenge. Just as the idea of the traditional game demo is subverted, this demo serves as an example of the kind of subversion that the final game itself strives to make.

In addition, the demo is a critique on the current state of trends in the game industry, while also reinforcing its own design philosophy. For example, the narrator offers a variety of buttons to the player, promising that the game offers a multitude of potential answers for each. Regardless of the button pressed, they all return the same response. In this exercise, the player cannot continue without first pressing one of the buttons, also emphasising the superficial context in which these games offer choices, and as a means to an end. This echoes the shallow and linear tendency of a player’s choice in game.

This is accentuated elswhere, where the demo features a set of booths that are described to be able to ‘convert text into raw emotion’ for the player. When stepping inside, it simply plays a scripted sequences of projected text, voiceover and light, parodying the seemingly-formulaic methods in which games attempt to derive emotion from the player.

While not serving as a traditional game demo for The Stanley Parable, this demo succeeds in accomplishing the very essence of the game. It showcases the wit of the narrator, the game’s self-referential humour, and a clear indication of the goal of the developers. It not only plays with expectations of a game demo, but also toys with the concept of play itself.

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A Velociradish Devlog – Week 4

Velociradish Production

Now that the greyboxing of our environment is all done, it’s now time to move on and get some other utilities up and running!

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Our greyboxed environment is finally looking like a level.

Time is pressing, and so we need to get progress done on the more urgent aspects of the game such as the HUD, and better reflect our idea of being in a film performance. The important things to do in order to overhaul this HUD will involve taking aesthetic cue from film tropes. I also want to throw a clapper in there somewhere, because nothing says ‘film set’ like an old-fashioned clapper.

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The HUD is getting there, but there’s still work to be done!

Pushing even further in to the concept of film production, we’ve chosen to restructure the health system in a way that better distinguishes the game from its traditional beat-em-up roots. Instead of a health bar, the game name functions using a Coolness meter. Akin to games such as Tony Hawk’s pro skater, the goal is now to pull off as many cool stunts as possible.

While keeping an eye on as much high-level gameplay mechanics as I could, I also felt that this kind of game would need as much feedback as possible. If anything, the over-the-top nature of the game demanded as many over-the-top effects to keep up. Since I hadn’t touched Unreal’s Cascade system in a while, I needed to do some research…

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A particle effect from the 2011 iOS game Infinity Blade

… And for research I referred to the effects of Unreal Engine 4 game Infinity Blade! Once I had reverse-engineered and examined the underlying principles of these particle effects, things started to get on a roll! I started by attempting to replicate the above effect.

A particle effect in action within our scene so far, with WIP assets for the time being.

Then I just got carried away:

I was perhaps having a bit too much fun on these particle effects, adding things from stars, popup text and splashes. I wanted to make sure that the player has overkill feedback to really emphasise each punch, shot and combo.

I also made a point of asking outside sources for their opinion on our controls and overall gameplay, as nailing the second-to-second action is the most important aspect of our game. In this project, nothing should be more important for the player right now than feeling like that action hero who can effortlessly and stylishly defeat rooms full of thugs.

Game Studies – Refining the Direction of Affect

Game Studies

Upon some further digging and research into the topic of affect, it seems that I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of research. Whereas I initially had a focus on embodiment, the almost obsessive nature in which I decided to tackle the concept of affect has left it to almost swallow everything else in this thesis. At this rate, embodiment may just become the secondary topic of this research! As a result, the overall structure of this paper has definitely evolved over this past month. Here is another quick breakdown of how it is looking so far:

Firstly, I plan to an overview of the subject of affect, and how it relates to games in general. As a case study, I will also refer to affective games such as the 2001 game Rez in order to have some point of reference when trying to discuss something as abstract as affect.

In addition I will need to explain its impact on the body as a biological imprint, explaining the aforementioned concepts of intensities and qualifications – the impact and the acknowledgement

In previous attempts to explain the idea, I have found that I will need to better explain the manner in which affect distinguishes itself from emotion, and the subconscious level at which it tends to operate. In relation to games, I may also need to refer to the reciprocal nature of this constant ‘intensity manufacturing’ between the player and the game.

Secondly, I will explore and try to draw links between player embodiment and affect, determining what classifies as embodiment, and how games such as thatgamecompany’s Journey could be seen to affect the player with and without the presence of an avatar or player character.

Lastly, I thought it would be important to address games that seem to have no embodiment at first sight. In these cases, one could say that it could be more about the agency than it is about embodiment. Embodiment may be a factor in this conversation, but it may be tough to decide whether it has a causal relationship to the affective experience. I don’t plan to find a definite answer so much as just explore the topic.

Overall I am finding this to become a somewhat tough subject, due to the subjectivity and abstract nature of this topic. I definitely strived for a challenge when deciding on this topic, and it seems that I have found it!

I also feel that this challenge would be remiss without some kind of supplementary artefact. It might be worth creating something to aid in a reader’s understanding of affect, especially when it is difficult enough trying to explain affect in words! I hope to make it part visual breakdown of the essay and part demonstration of concepts. If anything, making game-like exhibits of affect will help improve my understanding of the topic at hand (not to mention my sanity)!

 

 

 

Portal – The Importance of Teaching the Player

World Design

In the unsurprisingly scientific and meticulous fashion that is characteristic of Valve, the goal of every obstacle in Portal is quite simple – to teach the player about the obstacles ahead, and reinforce them as often as possible. This is largely apparent in its incredibly methodical level design and arrangement, emphasis on reinforcing lessons, as well as control of information.

Firstly, the game makes sure to only introduce new information one feature at a time. This has proven to be especially important due to its especially abstract game mechanics, and to not overwhelm the player. Truly taking this philosophy to heart, the first obstacle challenges the player to walk through a portal in order to grasp its most basic behaviour.  After testing the player in their ability to weigh buttons with cubes, walking through portals and jumping on separate occasions, the game will then test them in combination. Furthermore, the player is not even able to progress until they demonstrate a firm grasp of these rules at a variety of skill gates during the game, ensuring that the player is never left unprepared for a puzzle.

To supplement this, these lessons are continuously reinforced to ensure that player’s don’t forget what they have learnt. This is evident when the player must accomplish a variety of puzzles before even retrieving the second, orange portal, after which they are forced to accomplish a similar design using their newfound skill.

Introducing the concept of the portal to the player…
And spelling out the relationship between the weighted cube and a button.

In addition, the codification of their levels are used to implicitly indicate key information to players. The consistent use of dark, sloped walls to contrast the sterile white of the world imply that they are no place for portals – something that is instilled time and time again. At the same time, checkered tiles become synonymous with ideal portal placement.

The placement of props also serve to exist as hints. For example, the inclusion of the radio in the very beginning of the scene demonstrates to the player that the source of music is not occurring as background music, but rather from the prop itself. This association between audio and prop is drawn upon later in another level, where the deliberate placement of a radio is used in teaching the player about the purpose of the Material Emancipation Grill.

The radio prop is introduced within the game’s first minutes…
… And is later used to draw the player’s attention to a solution.

Accompanying the puzzle design itself is the strong cohesion of the voiceover and narrative, which provides both humour and hints at times. For one of the more abstract concepts of ‘flinging’, the voiceover makes sure to constantly hint at the word  ‘momentum’, even to the point of describing the phenomenon as ‘speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out’.

The careful introduction a game’s features are incredibly important to games, and especially for those as abstract as Portal. It can’t be assumed that players will immediately have a grasp on features like portal transportation, and thus the developer needs to prepare them accordingly. Whether that is through proper pacing, consistent design or just clever writing, Portal provides a quintessential example of using seemingly-experimental methods for a seemingly-experimental game.

A Velociradish Devlog – Vertical Slice Week 3

Velociradish Production

This week was mostly working on environment props in which to populate the environment,

I’ve been modelling some reusable stall assets, with which we can tile and repeat easily and efficiently. Being able to mitigate and squeeze the most out of textures sizes is taking priority over the poly count for this project, so working on an interesting silhouette and reuse as much texture as possible is the focus.

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An early style test for market stalls. We found out it looked too ordinary from a distance…

As we added our assets into the engine, it became evident that a lot of the environment props and animation still looked far too ordinary, and thus further exaggeration was required. To push our theme further into the increasingly cartoon aesthetic, we needed to make every shape much more short, squat, and rounder. I also preferred to add some curves to the shapes, as I wanted to avoid straight lines as much as possible.

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… So some stylistic overhauling was required.

It’s been a while since I’ve attempted to create an environment, so I am finding myself a bit rusty in my practices and habits. Keeping factors in mind such as sharing UV space, as well as tiling textures is causing me to work a bit slower than I expect to, but overall it’s been great to finally have a larger role in asset creation.

Matching style is also a potential issue, as my fellow environment artist specialises in a particularly realistic style, whereas I prefer to abstract and simplify shapes and forms. Constant cross-referencing and consulting seems to be the most consistent way of solving this.

Next we’ll see the props in-engine and just about ready to go!

 

A Velociradish Devlog – Vertical Slice Week 2

Velociradish Production

This past week I have been working on trying to get the game’s planning up to scratch. I have been especially interested in coming up with workflow solutions in order to help us prioritise, as we often do have problems with meeting the necessary deadlines.

As we have more time than ever before to plan our time, I made sure to spend an entire day of scheduling, so that we make the most of every day as we possibly can. This included recording an asset list, where we listed as many assets and features that we could think of at this point in time. I also had us agree on particular deadlines and milestones that we need to meet throughout the course of the project. This kind of planning becomes increasingly important when the milestones and deadlines reach longer than two weeks, as it is incredibly easy to end up working on minutiae that doesn’t need to be worked on!

Next I also wanted to implement an actual Kanban board in the room – something physical which we can look at every day. It became increasingly apparent that a spreadsheet wasn’t cutting it, as no one was actually referring to it in order to find out what to do. The I set up colour-coded Kanban cards organised, emphasising the sprints we had already set up in Hansoft so that our deadlines and goals for the week are understood.

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My own tasks this week have included some greyboxing and planning of levels throughout the game. This also allows us better quantify the amounts of assets we would need to make, and how to tackle each of them. Identifying what can and needs to be built, as well as determining our priorities early, make the overall task seem more possible than otherwise.

The project is also looking like it will become a rather animation-heavy game, and it became rather difficult to discern the multiple states that the character is in at each point in time. As a result, for visual feedback purposes while we test the game, I made some quick, hilariously bad placeholder animations. They’re here just so that we know when the player is on the ground, attacking, or is defeated, and until our final character is rigged and ready to animate:

 

 

 

 

Game Studies – A Quick Overview of Affect Theory

Game Studies

Recently I have been starting to dig a bit into Massumi’s theory of affect, and attempting to peel back the many layers which comprise this theory. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of his ideas.

Massumi (1995) discusses that there are two such levels of image reception – a multi-layered reaction that occurs when we experience such phenomena, labelling them as intensity and qualification.

Intensity is manifested in the ‘autonomic’ reactions that occur on a pre-cognitive, anatomical level, beneath the skin and without our awareness or acknowledgement. It remains beneath consciousness, and will never be a conscious process.

Qualification reactions, however, occur as soon as the player becomes aware of these functions. Autonomic functions such as a heartbeat and breathing. As soon as the player realises their heartbeat, the expectation of its implications result in the player aligning themselves with the narrative. Acknowledgement of the already felt state then serves to re-register or amplify the feeling.

For example, when a player is navigating a horror game, and they notice their heart rate increasing, they then correlate that reaction to that of the narrative context – their heartbeat has risen, and therefore they construe it as fear.

There are several ways this can be translated into gameplay:

Firstly, and perhaps quite obviously, it can be seen that the amount of necessary text required for creating emotional reactions is quite minimal. Implicit and ambiguous signposting, and even the context of a situation alone is rather capable of eliciting emotion.

Secondly, letting the player fill the gaps in understanding a situation. This is important to affect, as these ‘autonomic’ reactions impacted emotion on a much more physiological level than purely cognitive exercises. The player does always have to be given an answer.

Massumi nicely sums it up: ‘Matter-of-factness dampens intensity’ (p. 3). In many ways, the cognitive noise that occurs when the viewer would have to interpret words alongside the images hindered the impact of the images themselves. Massumi even describes it as a ‘doubling of the sequence of images’, as voiceover and the images produce separate narratives in the mind of the viewer: images that while aiming for the same goal, can produce very different results.

That’s a quick summation of ideas that I may utilise throughout the thesis – stay tuned for next time!