Puzzleology

The Gong Show

August 8, 2008 at 1:03 am | Posted in General | 2 Comments
Tags: Contest, Creativity, EA, Gameplay, Games, Gong Show

Each year EA holds a contest for its interns called “The Gong Show.” It’s a fun opportunity for all the engineer, artist, producer, marketing, and designer interns to take their brilliant game ideas, bypass the management, and pitch them directly to the CCO and his team. We get the chance to have a huge impact in the company and live out our game designer fantasies, and in return they claim ownership of some really amazing ideas.

I can’t really go into the details, but suffice to say there were truly AMAZING ideas presented. Being surrounded with so much creativity gives me a false sense of accomplishment, like I can “learn” to be imaginative as the creative juices seep into my mind through osmosis. Since entering college I have actually found a gaping hole in my thought processes. Remember the cardboard box fantasies you had as a child? The Power Rangers role-play that you partook in with your elementary school friends? I miss being able to spontaneously imagine things.

In middle school and high school, I exercised that part of my brain thoroughly through Odyssey of the Mind. But that’s all gone in college. Instead, I have become a practitioner of practicality and a lazy thinker. One of the most appealing things about the game industry to me, then, is the aura of creativity that surrounds you. Games are the epitome of fantasy and fantastical ideas. In that sense, the jobs in the video game industry are fantastic jobs.

In any case, in the Gong Show, each team presents a five minute pitch for a game idea, followed by a short QA session. On the judging panel are the CCO, the CTO, the Creative Director, and an Executive Producer. The challenge this year was to create a game concept for the PlayStation Network under a budget of $200,000 which tacked one or more of the following gameplay R&D problems:

-Dynamic User Experience Management
-Objective Based Camera Systems
-Open Source Game Design

I’m not sure if I can describe the game ideas (they might be EA owned IP now…), but I would like to discuss the gameplay problems in more depth, as along the way I found that they were actually very tricky not only to solve but also to simply understand.

First, Dynamic User Experience Management, a convoluted phrase for a concept that is actually really simple. We want to make a game that knows how to make itself more fun. For example, a simple answer to this challenge might be increasing the difficulty level of the game when the user seems to be going through each level without ease (measured either through attempts or time spent). From what I’ve heard, NFL 08 employs some adaptive AI to challenge the player and make the game feel more realistic–if the player consistently runs the puck down the left side of the rink, the AI will learn and shift the defense toward that side. However, as is any open ended problem, there are many more facets to this idea. Not all players necessarily want a challenging game. Some may want to just relax and expend very little brain power playing. While this might be indicative of a completely different audience, wouldn’t a successful innovative game try to break the lines between hardcore and casual gaming? Ideally, a game could suit the needs of both audiences. How, then, can the game distinguish between the two audiences, or even a spectrum of audiences, and adjust accordingly?

Second, Objective Based Camera Angles. I still don’t even understand this one fully, but I think the best way to understand this one is through example. Echochrome, which was a highly successful release for the PSN, is a puzzle game that involves changing the camera angle to go from one end of the stage to the other and complete your objective. In other words, how can we make better use of the camera to provide a more interactive, exciting gaming experience? One of the Gong Show ideas hit this one right on the head, and I actually thought it was the best out of all of the pitches. It was kind of a mix of Echochrome and Portal. One idea I had thought of while nervously awaiting our team’s presentation was a co-op flight combat game, where one player pilots and the other player sits in the back facing the opposite direction and mans the guns, like the snow speeders at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. This means that the second player has no control over the camera, and has to coordinate with the first player to get in the proper firing position, while the first player still has to navigate around obstacles and avoid enemy fire. What are your thoughts? How can games make better use of the camera?

Finally, Open Source Game Design. With the explosion of Web 2.0 sites out there and an increased exposure to the open source community and user generated content, it’s only natural that video games move in the same direction. Games such as Spore have already leveraged the idea of user generated content to create a truly unique and expansive universe. But, how can let the player “own” more of the game’s design? A proposal to release level design to the open source community borders on outsourcing the entire game, but has the potential to generate more creative and more fun ideas. After all, who better knows what they wants in a game than the players themselves? Is it feasable for a big company like EA to create a game entirely through public involvement, or should such a concept be left up to the open source community?

While these are very open gameplay problems that will probably take years to solve, I still enjoyed thinking about them and hearing the other team’s answers. I’d be interested to hear yours as well.

N.B. “The Gong Show” is so titled because after five minutes, the team gets gonged off the stage with a large gong, and the show is concluded with a gong. Oh, and I’m happy to say that my team won! Personally, I felt the previously mentioned team had the best idea, but I think ours caters to a broader audience. As an added plus, the CCO told us that he would forward our presentation to the head of EA Casual and see if they wanted to make the game!