Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
As a matter of fact, these skills that I mentioned were what got me out of “QA hell” and into my
first design assignment as assistant game designer for The Mask on [Super Nintendo Entertainment
System] SNES. I was walking past an artist’s office and I heard him cussing up a storm. I asked him
what was wrong. He told me that he was having a hard time with an animation of a character that
was throwing a kick. I asked him if I could look at it. So he showed it to me. It was a character that
was throwing a jump spin hook kick. He told me that it needed to be faster and it did not look
powerful. So I told him to eliminate a couple frames at the point where the character is about to
make contact, extend his hips more so his body will look more elongated, and tuck or bend in the
nonkicking foot to give the illusion of height. He didn’t believe me since he thought I was a lowly tester.
So I demonstrated the technique for him in his office and showed him the points I was referring to. I
left him alone so he could digest all that I was tossing at him and thought to myself, “He won’t listen
to me. I’m just a lowly tester in his eyes.” Not too much later he comes to grab me to go to his office.
He showed me what he corrected and asked if this was along the lines of what I was explaining to
him. Wow! He took my advice. The artist showed the other artists what changes he made and they
all liked it. The artist was nice enough to tell the rest of the team that I helped him out with it. Not
much later, other artists were coming in to ask me for advice.
I remember when I was first picked up as a regular performer at The Comedy Store, which was
like a comedy college, and I would just hang out just to listen to stories that the comedians would talk
about. I was like a sponge and would just take everything in. Comedians like Sam Kinison, Arsenio
Hall, Damon Wayans, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, etc. And what I got from listening to them was
that all you need do is experience life personally and first hand, no matter what you do in life. This
way you can recall your experiences first hand, and it resonates much clearer and stronger when you
express it. If you are going to create a world or environment for your game, how are you going to
make it truly effective if you haven’t really experienced life yourself?
TM: What general “method of attack” would you suggest when building up a game design?
JK: I ask myself the following questions: What do I want the player to experience? How is the player
going to experience these emotions? How do all these experiences fit into a single game? What makes this
game different than the rest of the games that are out there? What elements will totally immerse the player
into your game environment? What will keep your player coming back for more? Are you creating a subculture
with this game? What are the rewards for each level or victory? Are the rewards worthy of the journey the
player has to go through, or are they a letdown? I like to go at my designing process this way, by asking
these questions, because you build the game around the emotions you want the players to experience. I
feel this is a more organic approach.
TM: You’ve done plenty of work in the fighting genre (no surprise), what are some primary design
considerations for fight games? How do you bring your expansive fight knowledge to gaming?
JK: I bring a certain understanding of techniques that a normal person would not know about. I
have seen, read about, and studied many different systems that are out there throughout my 30 years
in the martial arts. After a while, you have developed a mind that sees things that you know will look
effective on the screen. To others who do not know martial arts, it is simply a way to kick someone’s
ass. There’s much more to it than that.
TM: What do you like most and least in the next-generation (modern) fight games you’ve seen?
JK: Unfortunately, they are all the same. It seems as if everyone is extracting from the same Jackie
Chan and Yuen Woo Ping films. Graphics are nicer and much smoother than from the 8- and 16-bit