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Chris Swain - co-founder and director of the EA Game Innovation Lab, Chris Swain is a game designer, entrepreneur, and co-author of the textbook Game Design Workshop, who teaches courses on game design, interactive design, and the business of interactive media. Prior to USC, Swain was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. He was also a co-founder of the technology start-up Spiderdance, Inc. He served on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Emmy’s) from 2000-2004. He started his career at the pioneering interactive firm Synapse Technologies.
MASTER METRICS: THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE ART OF GAME DESIGN
With the dramatic increase in game complexity, production costs, and team size in recent years, teams and team leaders are more than ever in need of valuable and repeatable development processes, tools, and metrics to create, define, manage, and measure the vast number of play elements that make up a hit game title. Until now, many of the development processes used by some of the best game developers have been either held private or thought of as an unknowable soft science behind the “creative process.” We believe these processes can in fact be defined and learned, and that there are patterns and approaches to game development that dramatically increase the chances of a game’s success.
Under the auspices of the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Interactive Media Division, we have interviewed some of the top Game Designers across industry and academia to share their techniques on how they define and measure that elusive thing called “play” and how others can benefit from their approaches and tools to make better games. We have compiled our findings into ten metrics-based techniques. These techniques include:
1) EXPERIENCE DESIGN: Using Scientific Method in Game Design (source Michael John and others)
2) FEATURE DESIGN: Learn from Metacritic but Don’t Be a Slave to Metacritic (source: EA and others)
3) IDEATION: Morphological Analysis is Analytical Creativity in Action (source: Thinkertoys, Dr. Fritz Zwicky)
4) LEVEL DESIGN: Use “Heat Maps” to Track and Quantify User Experiences (source: Microsoft User Research Group)
5) LEVEL DESIGN: Craft a Balanced Mix of Activities Using “Time Spent”Reports (source: BioWare, Corp.)
6) CONTROL DESIGN: Simplify Controls Through Measured Complexity Models (source: Activision Central Design)
7) LEVEL DESIGN: Track Engagement with Bio-sensors to Quantify User Experience (source: Emsense, Inc.)
8) MECHANICS DESIGN: Quantify Types of Emotion Evoked – Offer Three or More (source: XEODesign)
9) NARRATIVE DESIGN: Measurement of Game and Film Openings Unlocks Secrets (source: Dan Arey)
10) EXPERIENCE DESIGN: Integrate Playcentric Design Throughout Development (source: Tracy Fullerton and Chris Swain)
Via the process of interviewing many thought leaders in the game design community – both in industry and academia – we find that metrics-based game design is a phenomenon that is growing in sophistication and influence. Nearly all of this activity is happening behind closed doors and the best practices are generally not shared with the rest of the community. Our intent is to illustrate these best practices to help others in the community to make better play experiences. We feel this type of cross-pollenization is vital for the whole industry to grow and mature, and to reduce the wasteful process of reinventing of the wheel, as top developers share and raise the state-of-the-art for everyone.
TAKEAWAY
Audience members will receive and be instructed on ten valuable and repeatable techniques and tools as used by top game designers to develop their games, covering a wide variety of development stages, from concept inception to final play test. Each process and approach will be defined with examples to shown how they were applied to the game they were used on, and how they can be used for future development. Audience members should at the end of this talk be able to use and share these techniques and practices with their own teams, games, and companies to help them in their own development pipeline.
INTENDED AUDIENCE
This talk is designed for game designers and researchers at all levels of ability and experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CHRIS SWAIN
Chris is an Assistant Professor at the USC School of Cinema and the Co-Director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at USC. He has been a professional game designer for 15 years. He designed over 150 interactive products in industry before coming to academia.
His research projects in the EA Game Innovation Lab at USC include:
• The Redistricting Game – a game designed to educate US voters about the issues of congressional redistricting. The project strives to engage and empower citizens to get involved in their own governance – http://www.redistricting.org . Funding is by the USC Annenberg Center for Communications.
• Immune Attack – realtime strategy game that teaches immunology. It’s set in the human blood stream. Collaborators are USC’s GamePipe Laboratory, Brown University, and Federation of American Scientists. Funding is by the National Science Foundation - http://www.fas.org/immuneattack/
• ELECT Bi-Lat – simulation game that teaches bi-lateral negotiation and cultural sensitivity to US military officers in Iraq. Collaborators are USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies. Funding is by the US Army.
• ELECT urbanSIM – simulation game that teaches urban battlefield management to US military commanders in Iraq. Collaborators are USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies. Funding is by the US Army.
• America’s New New Deal – a game that examines America’s shift from a New Deal economy to an ownership economy. Based on data from prize winning LA Times reporter Peter Gossellin. Collaborators are the LA Times. Funding is by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Chris is co-author of the book Game Design Workshop. He specializes in original play mechanics and new kinds of interactivity.
Previously, Chris was a founder of game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s mass audience interactive television games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ among others.
Prior to Spiderdance, Chris was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. As Executive Producer he created over 150 games and interactive products for clients that include Disney, Sony, Microsoft, America Online, Warner Brothers, BBC, PBS, Children’s Television Workshop, Discovery Channel, and Activision among many others. Notable projects include:
• Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune
• MSN’s NetWits - the first mass audience online gameshow
• PBS’s Frank Lloyd Wright: Poetry of Structure - which is the convergence companion to the Ken Burns’ documentary.
His work has received numerous industry honors including best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, ID Magazine’s Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, multiple gold Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, The Digital Coast Innovation award, IBC’s Nombre D’Or, and Time Magazine’s Best of the Web. |
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 The design of games
 The business side of games
 The research on games
 The art of games
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