Speaking:

Chris DeLeon

[Slide notes added after the fact, to approximate what was said that day; these were not my notes before/for the talk]

Hi, I’m Chris DeLeon. For those of you that are unfamiliar with my work, I prefer to do many small things, rather than
fewer large things. Accordingly, 5 minutes struck me as an awful long time to spend on one point, so I’ll be jumping around
a little.
 Guided by
limits of
technology

Clunky
Stop-Motion

No Motion
Blur

AMAZING
In Empire Strikes Back, when ILM wanted to animate AT-ATs, they didn’t have good enough CG to do it by computer.
Instead, they used stop-motion. One issue inherent in stop-motion is the lack of motion blur - since each frame is posed
and photographed still - which means it can have a very poor look when it comes to dinosaurs, people, etc. It turns out that
for giant mechanical walkers, the hyperreal stuttering effect is AMAZING, since it makes them look even more robotic and
terrifying. No one would have thought to disable motion-blur were it an option, and no one set out specifically to achieve
that effect, but it happened because of the limitations they worked in.
 Perfectly
animated

Straight from
someone’s
imagination

FFFFUUUUUUU!

Compare that to modern CG, where we’re able to transplant an animated character more or less completely from our
imagination onto the screen. The magic is lost, because as a product of human imagination, anyone could have thought of
it - compare that to the AT-ATs, where part of the creativity didn’t come from the human mind, but from factors outside of
our ideas.
 Something about
platform studies
(thanks Prof. Bogost)

This of course connects somewhat into platform studies, and the idea that Yar’s Revenge was co-designed by Howard Scott
Warshaw and what-an-Atari-2600-can-do. That was constrained by technology, but constraints of other types can likewise
force us to be clever and resourceful, making the most of whatever we discover is possible. Those constraints may be lack
of time, lack of people, lack of money... things that most indies can relate to.
 Kyle
got it
TL;DR

Game
Jam
Kyle Pulver’s talk right before this one pretty well nailed the importance of Game Jams - lower investment, rapid
development, easier to surprise ourselves and take chances on new ideas.
 Except...

Game Jam
outside of
Game Jams!
But I also want to emphasize the importance of game jamming outside of game jams - any weekend, any night, any time
or place, acting on your idea when the inspiration strikes.
 Events that only happen a few times every
year and involve the work of others aiming to
grow their portfolios is still a reasonably high
investment...

Which is cool, and can lead to awesome work.

But full freedom means working alone from the

moment the idea strikes until it goes online.

Game Jams are great, but the investment is still high enough that we won’t go crazy.

Go crazy.

If your goal is to do well what we know how to do, and to do it faster, game jams are great. If your aim is to rethink what
we do, and how we do it, working on our own is the way to go.
 As soon as other people get involved, we're
drawn in by assumption based on roles,
references, limits of communication, etc.

“OK, so it’s going

to be like Mario,
except...”

When we start to divide work, the structures and roles we divide into bring with it massive assumptions about what we’re
trying to do and how we’re trying to do it. “I’ll be the level designer” introduces the assumption that the game is one that
will have levels - but there are many great games out there that do not have levels or level design.

Even without role definition - say it’s just two creative people working together to crank out a game - we wind up
communicating complex ideas through the filter of what we can relate to in past/existing work, like “Ok it’s like Mario,
except...” or “It’s like that mechanic from Zoop...” and suddenly we’re back in the industry echo chamber, doing our part to
add to clone making, derivative work, and the solidification of genres.

Again, if your goal is to do something that we know can be done well, that’s all fine. If your goal is to discover new things
worth doing, those structural communication and identity issues can become major obstacles getting in the way of doing
that.
 Exploring More than Style
Question/rethink
purpose.

Aim to explore
rather than to
impress.

All of this is about doing your own thing, and not just to experiment with style or finding new ways to impress others, because those are things
we already know very well how to do. This is about finding new things to do, or new audiences to do them for, using our skills and tools to
explore until we surprise ourselves and others with the results, finding ways to embrace our constraints as sources of creativity beyond our
own thinking.
 WWHDTD?

When it seems like thereʼs too much going on to make sense of, I like to turn to the writings of dead people who had the opportunity to think in
less frenzied times.

What Would Henry David Thoreau Do?

Heʼs an especially suitable source of ideas in this case, since if anyone knows about how to separate themselves from what everyone else is
doing, to do and think about their own thing, in an environment of tight limitations, heʼs the one.
What follows are lines from Walden, modified to be about videogame design. My apologies to Thoreau, who may well be rolling in his grave over this:

[Pause]

Developers are not so much the keepers of fans as fans are the keepers of developers.

The videogames which people praise and regard as successful are but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

We are in great haste to construct a higher fidelity technology; but, it may be, we have nothing important to communicate that requires higher fidelity. As if
the main object were to talk elaborately, and not to talk sensibly.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called improvements of videogame technology, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the
elevation of videogame design.

No videogame ever stood the lower in my estimation for having low fidelity graphics, yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety commonly to have
fashionable visuals, or at least high definition and 3D graphics, than to have sound meaning.

I desire that there may be as many different videogames in the world as possible; but I would have each developer be very careful to find out and pursue
his or her own way, and not a competitor's or a friend's or a professor's instead.

Videogame's capacities have never been measured. So little has been tried.

Our development time is frittered away by detail.

The mass of videogames are developed in quiet desperation.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

 Thank you.

-Chris DeLeon

Thank you.

[Not mentioned in the talk, but you can find more of my writing at
http://www.HobbyGameDev.com
or more about my projects at
http://ChrisDeLeon.com ]