The Hacker and the Heroine

The Game
The Hacker and the Heroine is the game that I developed with the senior game design team at University of California, Santa Cruz. The premise of the game is that the Heroine is a member of an elite group of soldiers who are dispatched on a rescue mission to retrieve the Emperor from a massive complex called the Superstructure.
When the Heroine's military unit is ambushed and decimated, leaving few survivors, the government attempts to limit public knowledge of the incident to avoid panic or uprisings in the Emperor's absence. While monitoring government information channels the Hacker hears about the failed rescue mission and learns that another rescue attempt will not be attempted. Tired of the government's disregard for human life, the Hacker manages to access the Superstructure's security system in an attempt to locate any surviving soldiers and help them escape. While searching the security cameras, he finds the panicked Heroine. She has been separated from her unit and has locked herself in a small room. He attempts to help her escape, but she is determined to complete her mission and locate the Emperor. Though he hates the Emperor, the Hacker refuses to abandon the Heroine in the massive, mutant ridden Superstructure and is determined to see her out safely. Together they will learn the truth of the Emperor's rise to world domination, the secrets behind the special soldier training facility on Mars and the truth about the origins of the part human, part machine monsters that roam the halls of the Superstructure.

Game Play
The Hacker and the Heroine is a mix of the puzzle and action genres. The game uses what we called an "indirect control." The player plays from the point of view of the Hacker looking over a map of the area the Heroine is currently located in. The Hacker (player) must hack into various computer nodes in the area to open doors and take control of turrets and other defense systems in order to destroy enemies and assist the Heroine so she can progress safely through the level. We had variations of game play where the computers that had been hacked would only stay hacked for a limited amount of time, forcing the player to manage which assets in the level they were manipulating and keep them from reverting back to the Superstructure's control. The player instructs the Heroine on where they would like her to go but she has her own AI and goes where she thinks best. Depending on conversations held between the two characters, with the player choosing which statements the Hacker will make, the Heroine will grow to trust the Hacker or to question his motives. Based on how high or low the Heroine trusts the Hacker she will take the players advice on how to progress through the levels or she will go off on whichever route she chooses. If the Heroine doesn't go according to the plan the player sets out, they will have to adjust and alter their strategy to keep her alive. If the Heroine dies, the game is over. The trust level between the Hacker and the Heroine also changes the paths the game can follow. We had planned on having five endings with two or three of the endings possibly happening earlier in the game. We wanted there to be a possibility that the interactions between the characters could lead in every possible outcome, from the Hacker convincing the Heroine to leave without the Emperor to the Heroine deciding she doesn't need the Hacker's help and going on without him. Sadly, due to time constraints we only completed the game up until the first point where the game could have ended.

I thought this game had a lot of potential. Even writing about it two and a half years after working on it I still regret that we never finished it. I also regret that we only used about twelve pages of my fifty-something page script. Oh well.

And oh yes, the images are some of the concept art from the game. They were done by the member of our team, Cliff. The Hacker and the Heroine was his baby and I had a lot of fun working with him to write the script and adapt the back story that they gave me when I joined the team.

The website for the game is: http://hnh.trappedvector.com/

Even Game Design Majors Outsource

How I became the writer for a game design team at UC Santa Cruz

You mean I can play games for homework?!

As I have mentioned before, I graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in English Literature. But this is not to say that I haven't taken any classes in video game design. UC Santa Cruz does have a new video game design program that started in 2007 by Jim Whitehead. I remember standing at a bus stop on campus on the first day of Winter quarter and seeing a flier encouraging students to come to the first ever "Foundations of Interactive Game Design" class. I read the flier and got really excited because I have always had just as much interest in making games as in playing them. Then I noticed that the time slot for the course was at the exact time as my first upper division literature class that is not only required to graduate but being taught by one of the most popular and respected professors in the lit department. I was crushed that I couldn't take the Foundations of Game Design class but I knew that it would eventually be offered again.
A year later the class was on the schedule again and this time I made to enroll in it immediately. On the first day the class was bursting at the gills with students thinking to get an easy A and play games for homework. Well, we did play games for homework, but we were required to write in depth reviews on them using information learned in class regarding design elements. We were also required to create a game to present to our classmates at the end of the quarter and create concept documents and progress reports along the way. As if these weren't enough to inform me I was in the right class, there was demonstration of Portal at the end of class. I was in heaven.

Taking it a step further

As the class went on Professor Whitehead encouraged students who were doing well in the class to look into the game design major. Despite being only a few classes short of completing my literature degree I did some research into Santa Cruz's game design major and found out that all the courses were for programming. I was less interested in learning how to code. What I have a passion for is creating a new world, creating visual and interactive stories. I really loved my literature classes and the game design major's heavy emphasis on the technical aspects of development did not seem like a match to the role I wanted as a game developer. So I went to Professor Whitehead after class and told him that I was a lit major with serious interest in game design as a writer and asked him where I could go to learn more about jobs at game design companies and how to get them. He directed me to IGDA, which has been a huge source of help, and told me he would look into it for me. At the next class meeting I was talking with a friend before class started when I noticed Professor Whitehead wading through students and backpacks to come talk to me. He asked me if I was serious about writing for games and when I told him I was he told me about a group of Senior game design majors who were working on an original game for their final year long project and needed a writer. He gave me the phone number of the lead designer for the team and I set up a meeting with him the next day.

Mission Impossible: Sign me up!

I met up with Jeff outside the Engineering building and he told me a little about their project as we made our way to the game lab. The game was called The Hacker and the Heroine and was a survival horror slash puzzle slash strategy game with an emphasis on dynamic narrative. One of the problems though, was that they had a back story but no dialogue. No dialogue for a game that was supposed to shift depending on conversations held between the two main characters. The guys on the team created their own AI and game engine and created most of the artwork for the game, but none of them felt comfortable writing the script. Without a script to provide an idea for the types of levels they should be designing, they had mostly been creating random levels and objects to I will provide an in depth description of the Hacker and the Heroine in my next post but I will give a simplified description for now. The basis of the game is that the Heroine is a soldier trapped in a government facility full of mutants and monsters. The Hacker discovers the Heroine's predicament and decides to help her escape by hacking cameras, security systems, opening doorways and helping her avoid or destroy creatures in her path. How the plot is revealed and how well the Hacker and the Heroine work together is based on the level of trust established between them. As the level of trust changes the Heroine is more or less inclined to take the Hacker's (players) advice and shifts how she approaches battles.
The guys on the team asked me to write a script with multiple endings and various outcomes for all conversations with free license to do whatever I wanted with the characters and plot lines, subject to approval of course. They gave me a password for the wiki that contained all the current information on the game and the basic back story. Jeff asked if I was comfortable with what they needed from me and thought I would be able to write the script and come to weekly meetings that I should come back tomorrow with an opening scene. I told him no problem and became the latest member of the team.
The script I wrote indicated five levels, each with a different environmental feel. We met up to discuss what kinds of objects and enemies should be in each level, what the boss fights should be and coordinated to make sure that game play and script were well balanced and reflected each other to create a seamless experience. Eventually we found a student named Brandon from the music major to compose an original soundtrack that matched the tone we wanted for the game. There was another team working on a separate project which had students from the art major generating content. Brandon and I used to laugh that even though it was really exciting that UCSC had a game design major, the strictly computer focused nature of the major forced the students to outsource to other majors like literature, music and art. I fully understand the importance of the technical aspects of game development, but the creative elements are also important in the creation of a well rounded game.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

One of my all time favorite games is Bioshock. In anticipation of Bioshock 2, which sadly had its release date pushed back to an unknown date in early 2010, I'm posting a review I wrote of Bioshock from my first play through. The first part of the review was intended to be my initial reactions to the game after about an hour of play, but I got carried away and played for about three hours before I felt like I could pull myself away. The second half was written after finishing the game.

Session One
Summary:
Bioshock is a first person shooter with a bit of a twist as you control not only guns, but can also 'genetically modify' your character allowing him to shoot lightning or fire and use telekinesis to hurl objects. Bioshock starts out with the main character surviving a plane crash in 1960 somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Surprisingly (or not, hint hint) there is a strange tower which turns out to be a gateway to the underwater city called Rapture. You find out that the city is now run down and populated by insane and mutated people called Splicers, mysterious little girls called Little Sisters and their guardians Big Daddies. I love that the Big Daddies are wearing what looks like ancient nautical diving suits. Playing as Jack, you must escape from Rapture fighting hundreds of gene splicing addicted mutants and making moral decisions about the best way to deal with the Little Sisters.

Game play:
My immediate reaction to this game was one of complete excitement. I absolutely LOVE the combination of old 40's music and advertisements mixed in with the horror of the mutant Splicers and the Little Sisters and Big Daddies. The combination of wholesomeness and disturbing genetic modifications creates an atmosphere that is intensely frightening and nostalgic all at the same time. I like how the game begins in the ruins of Rapture and you must discover audio diaries left by Rapture's inhabitants during its collapse to discover what really happened. For characters you have the playable character Jack, who has no dialogue besides a single line in the opening cinematic and you never get to see his face. This lends towards a feeling of emersion as Jack's past personality is irrelevant. What really matters is how he reacts to his current predicament which is, of course, up to you. He has tattoos of chain links on his wrists and has random flashes of a picture of his family that periodically pop in to his mind accompanied by a high pitch shriek that make me jump every time. These let you know that there is something mysterious about his past and his link to rapture and really boosted my desire to know more about the history of Rapture. The narrative is delivered through radio messages with your 'friend' Atlas and your 'enemy' Andrew Ryan. The exact relationships between the people you meet in Rapture are also ambiguous and reveal themselves throughout the game play at pivotal moments. Lots of hints and allusions keep the player interested and focused on exploring and finding out more.
The game play is very smooth and easy to control. One trigger fires guns while the other fires the genetic modifications called Plasmids. There is limited jumping required but a lot of crouching and slamming things with your wrench to knock obstacles out of the way. I really enjoyed exploring the world and finding more audio diaries. I often found myself stopping to read posters and looking out windows at the 'skyline' as fish swam by. I had a hard time stopping and played for about three hours in my first sitting because I was having so much fun.

Session Two
As you get further in to the game the Little Sisters and the Big Daddies become a major factor in the game. In every level there are a certain number of the pairs wandering around and when you encounter them they will not attack you or hurt you unless you attack them first. Little Sisters carry a substance called Adam that is used as a kind of currency to purchase the genetic modifications that stand in for leveling up you character. New Plasmids and Tonics (upgrades that you don't actively use but that raise your stats) are vital if you want to be strong enough to face the enemies that get progressively harder as the game advances. Whenever I hear a Big Daddy stomping around or a Little Sister talking to her Big Daddy I immediately dispatch all Splicers in the area and hack every nearby turret so that in my battle with the Big Daddy I have every physical advantage leaning in my favor. Big Daddies are difficult to beat but you get a real sense of accomplishment when you finally succeed in bringing him down. Then you're faced with the next big problem, the dilemma of saving the Little Sister or killing her. Saving her yields less Adam but the payout in the end is much greater and you get to feel like a good person and get the special ending for your good moral behavior. If you kill the Little Sister you get instant gratification, a lot more Adam at the moment though probably less overall, and you get the greedy evil ending which I also rather enjoyed.

Design:
The 'moral' dilemma with the Little Sisters is by far the most innovative aspect of this game. The consequences of the actions you take while you play effect the outcome and the style of your game which makes the act of playing the game more fun and interesting. The nostalgic music and ambiance mixed with the horror story and the "science" and all of it taking place underneath the sea creates a mood I've never experienced anywhere else and that is probably my favorite in any game I've played..
The controls were very easy to use and did not hinder my enjoyment of the game one bit. The good control scheme made exploration and fighting smooth and fun. All of the menu screens, maps, and gauges were easy to understand and I felt like I really had a hold on how to play the game very quickly. The combination of plasmids, guns, new kinds of ammunition and manipulation of the environment allow for new styles of fighting that keep the game fun after hours of playing. I am a personal fan of lighting enemies on fire and shocking them in the water for extra damage when they attempt to put themselves out. Attaching proximity mines to exploding canisters to throw with telekinesis is another effective and satisfying combo. Another element of the game is the ability to hack security cameras and turrets so that they will attack your enemies. This game gives you a lot of options to develop your own style of play without making the player feel overwhelmed by options.
Each new area of the game is very individual with its own mood and atmosphere, but each level is without a doubt a logical environment in Rapture so it feels like you really get to explore the city and see every part of it. The moral question of the Little Sisters and the varying ideologies and ethics of the people you interact with really bring a more complex narrative to this game that the player is able to take part in. This made the game more than just mowing down enemies with cool guns, it made the game a fresh and unique take on a first person shooter.
By using the radio and the audio diaries to move the narrative instead of cut scenes the player is allowed to continue playing while the plot is being revealed. This led to a very smooth progression in the game as I was always able to keep moving and never had to stop and watch long cut scenes. Overall the mechanics, level design and creative aspects of this game are so amazing I really can't think of anything to improve on. I really love this game and promise that it is worth the money to get it.


End note:
After multiple play throughs, and I've played Bioskock about 10 times now, the debate about which moral path to take is not that difficult in the end. Save the Little Sisters or kill them, you get more Adam and additional perks for saving the Little Sisters so killing them is only really a novelty that most players will try in one play through and never use again. I still love the idea of a game where game play changes depending on the decisions the player makes, but Bioshock doesn't actually change regardless of what you do with the Little Sisters. There are absolutely no benefits to killing them. True you get more Adam at the moment, but there are so many of them lurking througout the levels that the time it takes to save two more and get the rewards for good behavior are minimal.

Hey There Folks

In preparation for Game Developers Conference Austin I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog to host some of the work I've done related to video games.
In short order I'll be posting past reviews and projects I've worked on in as well as my latest projects.