Introduction

Take our human urge to animate, add Moore's Law, mix in video games, and we get a drive for incredibly high fidelity game characters, opened Electronic Arts' Glenn Entis at the Game Design Expo's Industry Day on January 13, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Over 500 attendees were present for the beginning of the Expo. In addition to an Industry Day full of sessions from industry professionals at EA, BioWare, Radical, Backbone, Gamelab, Hothead, Gas Powered Games, Beyond Virtual, and Next Level Games, a follow-up Open House gave attendees an opportunity to try out example classes from Expo organizer Vancouver Film School (VFS). Due to the overwhelming response in registration and a sold out event, VFS has set up another Open House for February 25, 2007, which will feature sample classes including Level Design, Interface Design, and Game Art.

"Games Grow Up"

Relating to both game design and art, the first day kicked off with Entis' presentation, "Games Grow Up: Emotionally Believable Interactive Characters." Entis, currently responsible for leading EA's worldwide community of over 3000 talented artists and engineers and previously the CEO of DreamWorks Interactive, emphasized the importance of characters that have fidelity but also emotional presence or believability on screen. The challenge in the rapidly increasing quality of game art, he explained, is overcoming the "Uncanny Valley." "The more realistic a character becomes, the more expectations for strongly emotional characters," said Entis. He argued against the necessity of photo realism in entertainment media, but offered suggestions for achieving characters that do not fall on the wrong side of the "zombie line."

Players must believe the way in which characters look, move, think and feel, behave, and play. In terms of appearance, Entis pointed out: "You know you're there when people stop talking about it." Movement, however, has more strides to take. Footplanting is an essential piece of character animation design and characters that are built differently must move differently. While UCAP offers a process to capture performances, these performances may fight against the very strength of animation-the illusion of life. Entis recommended Disney Animation's book on The Illusion of Life to all artists interested in character design.

The "think and feel" of characters relates to second to second artificial intelligence, relying on features such as natural animation in eyes as well as the ability to track objects incorporating perceived emotional responses. "Characters should be emotionally aware of their environment," added Entis. Behavior, minute to minute artificial intelligence, requires a consistent responsive personality, coherent responses, appropriate pacing, and memory. However, even if all of these areas are successful in fidelity, designers must consider how the characters feel in the player's hands. In this case, the "zombie line" becomes the "just pretty graphics" line.

When adding any features, a constant challenge should be posed: "Does this make the game more fun?"

"Designing for Meaningful Play"

"Fun," a debated term, can be guided by game rules. Eric Zimmerman, whose company Gamelab has released titles such as Diner Dash, argued for game design as a critical practice in his talk "Designing for Meaningful Play." Zimmerman brought to the forefront essential questions, including: What are games and how do they produce meaningful experiences? How do games relate to culture? He reminded attendees to go back to the design of games on and off the computer, as the role of a game designer is to structure the player's experience by creating rules. "These simple structures that we create can engage players," said Zimmerman.

Rules, as Zimmerman explained, are seen as fixed and rigid, whereas play is flexible. However, rules turn into play, whether it is competitive, social, or strategic. Play, then, occurs within structures but also transforms these structures. Designers should look at games as systems of meaning and activities where the action influences the outcome. Meaningful play comes from the player's interactivity with the game system as well as awards in both the short term and long term.

Eric Zimmerman signing Rules of Play.

Zimmerman outlined the "anatomy of a choice" in games as follows:

• The state of the game is represented
• The choices available are represented
• The player makes the choice
• The choice affects the game system
• The result of the choice is represented by the game as a new game state

If a game's interactivity falters, then it is often these areas designers should troubleshoot to solve the problems. Common problems include: the player feels the decisions are arbitrary, the player doesn't know what to do next, the player is losing and doesn't know why. Interaction itself is why they're there, feels Zimmerman. "If you're not providing them with maximum meaning in the moment to moment or in the long term, then why should they be there?" he asked.

Games are structures which we play with, and structures can change. "But only if we remember to play," Zimmerman concluded.