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DeveloperDevelopmentSession 1

Chris DeLeonSept. 8, 2006

www.chrisdeleon.com

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I love video games.

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Introduction

• 18 years playing games

Beat 300+ commercial titles

• 10 years making games

Finished 40+ games• GCS founder & former manager

Involved in 15+ GCS projects

• Past 2 summers with Electronic Arts

Medal of Honor Airborne team

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Why I’m up here

I’m graduating in May.

I want you to know everything I do.

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Topics this semester

1. Console History Paradigm

2. Effective Project Management in GCS

3. Engineer vs. Designer vs. Producer

4. Feature Complexity and Interrelations5. IP Universe Construction and Analysis

6. Fighting for a Spot in the Industry7. Classical Game Design Study

8. Summary of Recommended Reading

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Today’s Topic

1. Console History Paradigm

2. Effective Project Management in GCS

3. Engineer vs. Designer vs. Producer

4. Feature Complexity and Interrelations5. IP Universe Construction and Analysis

6. Fighting for a Spot in the Industry7. Classical Game Design Study

8. Summary of Recommended Reading

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Problem #1

The first game(s) you make will be bad.

It’s ok. Get it out of your system.

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Problem #2Having no project is better than

Having a failed projectAn unfinished project is not a game.

But it does waste a ton of people’s hard work.

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Problem #3

“Finishing a game” is its own skillLike programming, modeling, composing, managing…

It takes time, work, and experience to master it.

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The solution (kinda)

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Console History Paradigm

Demonstrate and achieve

• Atari complexity, before

• NES complexity, before

• SNES/Genesis complexity, before• N64/Playstation complexity, before

• Xbox/PS2/NGC complexity

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Console History Paradigm

Demonstrate and achieve

• Atari complexity, before

• NES complexity, before

• SNES/Genesis complexity, before• N64/Playstation complexity, before

• Xbox/PS2/NGC complexityNote: nothing says you MUST take on 

more complexity if you don’t want to! 

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Why?

• Earlier projects have less stable teams

• Prove work ethic, leadership, andcommunication before thinking “talent”

• Chance to focus on making a game FUN• If the game doesn’t turn out awesome,

less time and work went into it

• The finishing experience is equallyvaluable regardless of project scale

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I’m serious.

It’ll make your next games better.

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Whatever you’re thinking…

…is probably more complicated

than you’re thinking.

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Think Simpler

How can it require less complicated assets?

How can it be finished in less time?

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The trick You’ll have modern APIs, programming languages,

and hardware

Virtually all games before Playstation were programmed

entirely in assembly (incl. SNES & Arcade!)

The N64 clock speed is < 100 MHz

The SNES runs at 3 MHz with 1 MB of RAM

The Atari 2600 had 4KB game size, 128 bytes of RAM

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Meaning

You should be able to do

alone in 6 days

what took ateam of engineers 6 months

in 1977.

But “can” isn’t the same as “did.” Try it.

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Any Questions?