In this video of the popular Microtalks session at GDC 2019, a series of expert speakers get 20 slides apiece (each of which is displayed for 16 seconds before auto-advancing) to help them share a piece of game design wisdom — in 5 minutes 20 seconds or less!

It’s always a fun, fast-paced learning experience, and each of the GDC 2019 Microtalks presenters (including Douglas Wilson, Katherine Isbister, Jennifer Scheurle, Lauren Scott, Nicky Case, Matthew S. Burns, Mohini Freya Dutta, Ryan Smith, and Marcus Montgomery) shared a unique bit of insight alongside session MC Richard LeMarchand.

It’s well worth watching (or rewatching), and now you can with ease because the GDC 2019 Microtalks are now free to watch via the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.

In a crowded sea of games this year, developer Ben Esposito launched Donut County, a quirky, personal game filled with hand-crafted puzzles where players control a hole in the ground that sucks up a fictional Southern California county.

Esposito spent six years of his life making this wonderful game, and he learned a lot along the way. We sat down with Esposito on the Gamasutra Twitch channel and picked his brain — here’s what he had to say.

Edited for length and clarity.

I knew I wanted the game to be about erasure because it’s a game where you play as a hole in the ground, and you erase all the things that are in a place.

Because I knew early on — you play as a hole in the ground but the hole’s not a character, the hole is just a concept right? So the real character of the game is the stuff you put into it, so the stuff has to be really important. Then literally what’s happening in every single level is you’re erasing someone’s home, essentially.

 

“I can tell this story from the perspective of an idiot tech gentrifier person.”

I wanted to keep the game pretty human scale because I think your connection to those objects and the way you expect them to behave… I knew it was a game about erasure, but i didn’t know what the real story was.

So coming back around to “ok, well, how do I do a story about erasure that I can build off of my personal experience?” I know my personal experience is moving to LA to work on video games and seeing neighborhoods change as a result of a bunch of tech workers moving into a specific area. So an area like Venice Beach, which was like totally taken over by Facebook, Google, and etc., boxing the existing residents out and raising the rent and, you know, stuff like that.

I was kind of aware I was part of this process, and seeing this neighborhood change I was like, “Oh cool, I love LA and this is something that is just happening around me, and it’s something that I’m kind of complicit in. I can tell this story from the perspective of an idiot tech gentrifier person.” And that’s where the raccoon BK came from; he’s like a cartoon version of my character type, so to speak.

I ended up with more adventure game-style puzzles than strictly systemic puzzles.

There is a version of this game where it’s a puzzle game and it’s got way more systemic rules and you treat it more like a Sokoban or something where it’s like, “Okay, I have these types of objects and I have to get this over here, and these are my constraints around it.”

But I think in terms of getting you to be immersed in the logic, the silly logic of Donut County, the puzzles need to have their own consistency that you learn over time. The way the game is silly and the way the game has really stupid rules, I thought that was the most fun way to explore the puzzles — to introduce you to new concepts that told you a little bit about the feel of the world.

The style was informed by the type of illustration stuff that I’m familiar with and in terms of the silhouettes and broad shapes, informed all the characters and things like that.

But it’s also efficient, because I knew that if I was going to model almost everything in the entire game, I needed a process that scales. Although stuff is modeled in Maya, because that’s what I was familiar with, people are doing really similar work in Blender, and you could do it in anything.

Ben Esposito

My rule was no textures, so everything has to be built with flat colors. The meshes are cut up, just so. So if you see the rocks with those dark red streaks along them, that’s actually just cut into the mesh, that’s not a texture. And that was my approach to everything: if I want that vector quality of this game to scale to any resolution, I have to build it into every single mesh, and so I had a rule of like no more than four colors per object, unless it’s like a really large object.

So I built this in Unity, and if you’re familiar with Unity, i mean a lot of game engines work with the same type of material system, but the way i did this was I modeled most of them in black and white just using four different materials. I would kind of have a light one, a dark one, a middle one, and an accent. Then I would bring them into the engine, and since they were made with separate materials which are each their own asset, I would color the scenes in Unity. I’d have the thing open and then I’d just be tweaking the individual colors one by one until I had the right feel for the scene. So that was my process.

Unfortunately, each material is a draw call so it’s not that efficient. I could have gone in and like baked them all into textures or vertex colors after the fact, but the shaders are simple, it’s just showing a color, so I think it was fine. It could be optimized further, but I just liked the convenience of being able to tune in the actual engine.

The Unfinished Swan [on which Esposito was a level designer] is a short game that is very experimental and has novel mechanics that we tried to use in interesting ways, up until the point where we felt like we’d explored them and then we move on to the next concept.

So I think my process for working on this game [Donut County] was probably informed by the type of work we were doing on that game because I was coming from a place of “ok, I want to explore a novel mechanic and I want to tell a story.” That puts a lot of constraints on what you can do. That’s usually the reason why you end up with something that’s like pretty short and tight.

A donut without a hole is called a NUT.

Also, The Unfinished Swan was a really interesting game we tried to make really accessible to non-gamers, but there was a limit for how much we could do that because it was a first-person control scheme…We were thinking we were making something very, very accessible to gamers that maybe don’t even play FPSes, but it still had a limit to how accessible it really could be because a lot of people aren’t able to both move and look independently on each stick, because it’s a lot to ask for.

So the controls [for Donut County] were kind of a reaction to that and [the question], “ok how can I take it a step further and build a game where it doesn’t rely on any gaming knowledge in order to get started playing?” So that’s why there’s only a tap or a click or one-button and a movement, and that’s it — and you almost never need the tap anyways except to advance the dialogue.

So I built it with that constraint because I wanted to push the accessibility even further — so my grandpa can play the game! He’s 91 and he was like, “wow I was really impressed that I got 30 minutes into it.” You know his approval isn’t always easy to get, so that was a big deal.

Probably the biggest reason I went with a publisher [Annapurna Interactive], the most important reason to me, was that I knew that with my limited amount of time and energy remaining to work on the game, I wouldn’t be able to make a splash in the way that I think the game needed to succeed.

I could have put it on Steam by myself, and then hope that it goes viral and people tweet about it and stuff. I had a feeling that people would dig it, but I didn’t think that that [earlier] version of the game — [the one] that was a bit smaller and that was only on one platform and that was not marketed to any significant extent — I think the game had more potential than that.

 

“If me from the past showed me this game I’d be like, ‘dude, you don’t even know how much time this is going to take for you to finish. You think you have it figured out but you haven’t even started.'”

And so working with a publisher was really, really nice for that reason. They brought it to a bunch of conventions, they also helped negotiate deals with console, they had a relationship with the App Store. So those kinds of soft connections and them taking care of that stuff for me helped really expand the impact of the game.

I think that was really, really worth it, and also just having someone else to put some external pressure on the process in terms of like, “hey, why don’t we launch on this date, stop noodling on things.” That stuff was extremely, extremely valuable. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have have known when it was ok to stop working on the game. It helped for a lot of reasons like that.

So much time passes when you make a game. In my case, the 2013 me who started working on this game full-time is a different person than I am now. I don’t think that I’m going to stop growing and changing, so this was a really good idea for me to make when I was however old I was in 2013. It was exactly what I should’ve been doing then, and it was exactly what I wanted to do then, and it’s different now.

I can look back on it and say “I can’t recommend anyone else do this,” but I wouldn’t have done it any differently — I had to learn that stuff for myself. The reason I just can’t suggest it is because it might not have turned out good. There’s a chance that things might not have worked out the way they did. I don’t even think I would give myself the advice to keep going.

If me from the past showed me this game I’d be like, “dude, you don’t even know how much time this is going to take for you to finish. You think you have it figured out but you haven’t even started.” So I think [the game’s development] is a representation of me in the sense of this is me growing up, this is me over six years working on a project, improving my skills, but also changing my sensibilities and my approach to design.

You can kind of see the game changes near the end. Some of that is a reaction to the work I was doing at the beginning and the way the industry has been changing, stuff like that. I feel like it’s me but it’s not like I wrote it all down on paper and I stuck to that and I adhered to that. It’s more that this is what I was able to produce and it represents me at all those different points of my life.

For more game developer interviews, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

Unity have just released a new resource for game developers, the FPS Microgame.  It consists of two parts, a project available for download on the Asset Store and a set of courses available on the Unity Learn platform.  The project is structured around teaching game development buy modding an existing game.

The courses are structured around extending the game in the following manner:

• Add new power-ups and enemies – add loot items (such as a jet pack) and new weapons (like a sniper rifle), make weaponized projectiles (like chocolate chip cookies), create custom enemies, and boost your player’s lifespan with health (or cookie) packs.
• Design your own levels – reconfigure the battle arena, build new levels with easy-to-use snap-in assets, set constraints for enemies’ movements, and customize the game’s look with props and level art.
• Mod the look – change the sky, create your own title screen and menus, and give your game a unique splash of color.
• Test, tune, and optimize – adjust hit points and damage, modify player mechanics like speed and jump strength, optimize your game’s performance, and create a WebGL build to share your game online

More details are available on the Unity blog.  You can learn more about the template and see it in action in the video below.

GameDev News Unity

By Andrew Smith 29 Oct 2019

Anyone who has joined an online game knows chat can be a fun, engaging, and useful tool in teaming up, but it can also be an intimidating, cumbersome mechanism to utilize when there are many things on screen vying for your attention. Sometimes you want to turn chat off, mute certain players, or it may be too difficult to read what others are typing in a busy game. The simple concept of making in-game chat more customizable can dramatically improve your game experience. That’s exactly what a Microsoft Garage intern team set out to do for their winter 2018 Garage internship project in Vancouver: they built features to make Minecraft accessible to more audiences, like the autism community.

“We focused on features that would help people with autism especially, but anybody who plays the game in the future would also benefit.” Michaela Olsakova was a Software Engineer intern during her Garage internship. Stemming from the initial project pitch by the project sponsors, the Minecraft Education team, the philosophy of inclusive design was at the core of the project idea. “Even though we designed for one customer profile, there are multiple other customers who would find value.”

The interns handed their project off to their sponsors on the Minecraft Education team last year and the features were added to Minecraft: Education Edition. Now the team is ready to release the project’s chat-features to the Bedrock version of Minecraft as a suite of chat settings allowing players to customize font, line spacing, font size, and chat colors for all chat and player mentions. These new additions complement existing accessibility features like speech-to-text chat, making Minecraft an even more collaborative and socially connective environment with over 112 million players per month across all versions of the platform.

Arnaud Paré-Vogt, Henry Li, Joy Zhang, Michaela Olsakova, Rose Hirigoyen, Riad Gahlouz, Charmaine Lee

“At the beginning of our internship, we attended a conference on inclusive design, it was always at the center of everything we did.” Riad Gahlouz was a Software Engineer intern. He explained how the idea of accessibility for the autism community resonated deeply with him. “I have a few family friends that are on the autism spectrum. I’ve always been inclined to help them achieve stuff, things that may seem simple for others but can be difficult for them.” That, coupled with a childhood dream to work on Minecraft, sealed the deal for Riad when it came time for the Garage intern team to give their input about which projects to work on. “When I saw the pitch from the Minecraft Education sponsors, I thought this is the perfect match. I got Arnaud interested in the project and then everyone else kind of followed.”

Arnaud Pare-Vogt was a Software Engineer intern on the project. He shared a simple but important message that guided their approach to accessibility. “Having accessibility features doesn’t have to impact the difficulty of the game.” While working on the project, Arnaud and team encountered the misconception that making games more accessible meant making them easier. The interns demonstrated that simply was not true and that these features are independent from what makes a game difficult. “Designing a game for inclusivity and accessibility doesn’t mean you have to make it easy.”

Rose Hirigoyen was a Software Engineer and quality co-champion along with Riad on the project. “This project taught us to really learn about the customer first – in our case it was meeting and talking with people of varying abilities, understanding how it feels for them when they’re gaming, what challenges they face, and what we can do to help not just in Minecraft but in general, to have a deeper understanding of their experience.”

Rose explained how sensory overload, when a person might experience sounds, visual signals, or colors that can be extremely overwhelming, can dramatically affect their ability to play. “Usually the chat was one big, white wall of text. When you see that, it can be hard to read, hard to make out the different people that are speaking. We wanted to give options like making the text bigger, and adding spacing and color, so when you’re playing with friends it will be easier to communicate with them.” Not only text, but colors, objects, shapes, and patterns are all potential culprits.

As part of making Minecraft more accessible and enjoyable, people like Melissa Boone, a Research Manager at Xbox, explores how to design better game experiences. Melissa was one of three social and behavioral scientists who provided customer research guidance to the interns. She has been closely involved with the Minecraft team for several years, watching people playing games and talking with players to uncover what they love as well as what can be improved.

“Minecraft is one of those teams that’s super progressive and inclusive, with one of the most diverse game audiences out there. We want to continue that tradition.”

“Everyone was excited for the opportunity to bring more accessibility into the game.” Melissa guided the interns on how to conduct user research studies, including how to recruit people for the study, having the right kind of audience to participate, determining what questions to ask, and how to have productive conversations. “Because there is a large existing community of Minecraft players with autism, it made a lot of sense to focus the project efforts there and meet the players where they are.” User research was a key component that informed what features should be built. “It was pretty cool to have the opportunity to teach the interns the research process so they could conduct actual studies themselves, analyze the results and uncover insights. It’s a skill they can use in other contexts no matter what they’re working on.”

Stéphane Morichere-Matte is Principal Program Manager for The Garage and runs the Vancouver Garage Internship. Over the years, a customer-focused approach remains an important pillar for each project, and as a result, he has cultivated relationships with diverse groups and communities all over Canada. “Our interns were very fortunate to be hosted by the Pacific Family Autism Network, where we got to work with the community to find out how to make games more inclusive. The game enhancements are not very difficult to do, but it can make such a positive impact.”

Communication can be difficult for people on the autism spectrum, which is why the interns decided to focus on developing chat features. “While visiting the Pacific Family Autism Network, we witnessed a lot of people who bonded over these games,” Program Manager intern Charmaine Lee explained. “People are making meaningful connections through gaming, so it’s very rewarding when they have a game experience that fits their needs.”

Another thriving Minecraft community of players of all ages is found on Autcraft, a whitelisted Minecraft Java Edition server. Teachers also have been using Minecraft to support special education classes and engage students in custom lesson plans with Minecraft: Education Edition.

Henry Li, the Designer intern on the project, recounted how it was his first internship experience and one that he won’t soon forget. “I worked with these really talented interns, my peers, on one of the biggest IP’s in the world. It was an honor to work on such a hugely impactful project.” The practice of embracing new ideas and continually learning was something he acquired along the journey. “A lot of the growth mindset I absorbed from everyone around me. Each day you get to learn something new and there’s plenty of things to do. In those four months I learned so much. Once you have a growth mindset, your life will be different.” The interns pushed each other’s limits and accelerated productivity, helping each other grow, learn from failure, and celebrate the moments of success. “Even though the pressure you have is from your peers – everyone has dependencies and ownership of the project, we get to decide what to do and what to work on – it’s having that great teamwork that helps foster growth.”

Echoing this sentiment was Michaela. “Somehow we all got really lucky and had the most amazing team to work on this. You succeed together and fail together. I think that’s rare. I’ll never forget it.”

Each day, gaming is becoming more accessible to people from all walks of life. The Xbox Adaptive Controller, games like Ear Hockey, and game-dev tools like Responsive Spatial Audio for Immersive Gaming, are only a few of the ways Microsoft is practicing thoughtful, human-centric design for technology that connects people. The interns can now add Minecraft accessible chat-features to the expanding list, with high hopes that everyone can benefit from easier to read, customizable chat, tailored by you, to enhance your Minecraft experience.

Fedora 31 Workstation is the latest release of our free, leading-edge operating system. You can download it from the official website here right now. There are several new and noteworthy changes in Fedora 31 Workstation. Read more details below.

Fedora 30 Workstation includes the latest release of GNOME Desktop Environment for users of all types. GNOME 3.34 in Fedora 31 Workstation includes many updates and improvements, including:

Refreshed Background Chooser

Choosing your desktop background in Fedora Workstation is now easier. The newly redesigned background chooser allows you to quickly and easily see and change both your desktop and lock screen backgrounds

Custom Application Folders

Fedora 31 Workstation now allows you to easily create application folders in the Overview. Keep your application listing clutter free and well organized with this new feature:

Do you want the full details of everything in GNOME 3.34? Visit the release notes for even more details.

The more popular a Nintendo product gets, the more bizarre the third-party accessories become – remember the Wii days? It’s perhaps to be expected, then, that the Switch Lite is the latest machine to get in on the weird accessory shenanigans.

That’s right, available to pre-order now from Amazon Japan with international shipping is this Nintendo Switch Lite neck strap. With a stretchy silicon grip section to wrap around your console, and a strap to wrap around your own head, you’ll be able to keep your console on your person with minimal effort.

If the pictures are to be believed, it can help to support the console while you play or droop around your neck like a super-expensive ID card. It’s certainly an interesting way to carry your console, and while we couldn’t face the idea of letting it dangle around like that, perhaps this sounds like the perfect accessory for you.

If it does, you can go ahead and pick up a Grey, Turquoise or Yellow option from Amazon for 1,100 yen before tax and shipping (approx. £8 / $10).

What do you think? Will you be getting one? Let us know with a comment below.

One of the many games featured in August’s Nindies Showcase presentation, EarthNight, has just scored a solid release date on Nintendo Switch. You’ll be able to get your hands on it from 3rd December.

In case you can’t quite remember what it’s all about, let us give you a quick recap. The game is a hand-drawn action-platformer set during a dragon apocalypse – mankind is living in exile on space colonies orbiting the planet. The game’s star duo – a sword-wielding freelance photographer and a young student blessed with ethereal superpowers – take it upon themselves to reclaim their home by skydiving through Earth’s atmosphere and striking back against the monsters below.

Here’s a little more info taken from the press release:

“The two heroes approach their dragon-slaying mission with drastically different tactics. Stanley’s powerful legs allow him to make both high jumps and long leaps, while Sydney favours agility by making use of an air dash and double jump ability. Both heroes wield their bespoke skills to overcome hostile environments and push towards the vulnerable heads of their scaled serpentine foes.

“Each EarthNight level features procedurally-generated dragons with multiple exits and secrets rewarding exploration. Slaying dragons grants Sydney and Stanley rewards like dragon eggs and other mysterious objects that unlock powerful upgrades. With the right tools, the duo can topple even the toughest opponents while moving through stages at breakneck speeds.”

“EarthNight represents seven years of hard work from a collective of talented artists and the final product is something we’re immensely proud to share with everyone,” says Rich Siegel, founder of Cleaversoft. “We hope that Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam players are as excited to hurtle back to Earth and slay dragons as we are to watch them.”

The game will be available for $14.99 / €13.99 / £12.59 / $21.00 AUD when it launches in December.

Do you like the look of it? Will you be adding it to your collection? Tell us below.