Fromthe evening of September 20 to the late afternoon of September 22, it was mygreat pleasure to attend the Austin Game Conference in (where else?) Austin,Texas. The AGC was founded in 2003 and ran each year until 2012, when it wenton hiatus until its relaunch this year.
Theconference attracted 750 attendees to hear 80 speakers in five tracks and attendseveral “special events” over the course of the three days. There was also amodest-size expo with about 30 exhibitors, including Intel, IBM SoftLayer andIBM Cloud, Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Aspyr, several institutions of higherlearning, the IGDA-Dallas, and GameDev.net.
Networkingwith the very experienced and knowledgeable developers and designers, bothpresenters and attendees, was extremely easy. Many, perhaps most, of thosepresent would consider themselves “indie” producers, so there was a lot ofsharing going on. The atmosphere was much like The eLearning Guild’s DevLearn:lots of energy.
Onthe night before the conference itself opened, Intel sponsored a DemoFest-likeevent, the Game Developer Showcase (also dubbed the “Intel Buzz Workshop” aftersimilar events Intel sponsors at other conferences). Ten selected gamedevelopers presented games they are in the process of preparing for launch,using trailer videos and live demonstrations later that evening and during theconference. The Showcase was streamed live, so you can get a taste of what thiswas like by watching a video recording. (You will need to scrub to the introduction at 00:19:28; you canskip over the preliminaries to the presentations themselves at about 00:33:00. Thereis a brief period at the first presentation where the speaker’s microphone wasnot working, but be patient.)
What didI learn?
Itwas a very full two days, most of which I spent either in the VR/AR track or inthe expo. Between my reporter’s notebook and a Livescribe journal, I captured48 pages of notes, plus about 10 hours of recorded audio. This article is onlygoing to present a few of the highlights. I will try to give you enoughinformation here that if you have an instructional design challenge that youthink could be met with a game, you can just jump in and try to build that game—itwon’t cost you anything, just your time. But keep it simple for your firstattempt! As you will see, “just jump in” only applies to games. Virtual realityis another story entirely, at least for now.
Solet’s get started!
Games
Gamedevelopment, compared to eLearning development using rapid authoring tools, canbe a challenging undertaking. While it may be true, as some attending AGC toldme, that it is possible to develop a game in a couple of weeks with a team ofone or two designer/developers, that does not seem to be the experience of mostcommercially successful developers. Another key difference is that game enginesare not the same kind of software as authoring tools. You might need help withthe art and with aspects of game design, but on the other hand, the gameengines (see below) might be able to give you just what you need to get started.
Gamedevelopment
Superficially,the process of game development may resemble the process of instructionaldesign and eLearning development, but that’s only true if you are thinking ofthe breakdown of the process into stages: concept development and planning(needs assessment for IDs), pre-production (design for IDs, includingstoryboards and criterion test design), production (authoring for IDs), andpost-production (testing with representative learners, or alpha- andbeta-testing). My impression at AGC is that serious game designers are muchmore rigorous in their approach to all of these stages than typicalinstructional designers.
Gamedevelopment is, by its nature, an iterative process once you move from conceptand pre-production to production. Depending on the complexity of the design andthe scope of the game, significant numbers of people with various skill sets maybe needed. Production values, consistent with the character of the game, areimportant: Art is important, and art across game levels (if any) is important.There will be cross-platform issues affecting your choice of game engine. Theseare not insurmountable, but many eLearning pros will struggle to break free ofthe default (linear) thinking they’ve used in instructional design.
Thefinal distinguishing characteristic of game development is the game designersand developers themselves: They really, really, really love games. They love toplay games, they love to talk about games, and they love to critique games. Ihave met some similarly driven instructional designers, but they are theexceptions in my experience—the ones who lead sessions at the Guild’s LearningSolutions, DevLearn, and FocusOn Learning conferences. I didn’t meet a singlegame developer at AGC who would not be described as obsessed by the craft.Speakers repeatedly referred to game development as “art,” and that isn’thyperbole. Part of the dedication is surely due to the fact that there isserious money to be made in developing a standout game, but it really goesdeeper than that.
Aninstructional designer who is thinking about branching out into gamedevelopment should spend time with some game development folks before makingthe personal commitment. It’s a vocation, not a job. Check out the IGDA(International Game Developers Association), which has emerging and establishedchapters in many major cities worldwide, and go to some meet-ups. Localcommunity colleges and universities may offer courses that will be helpful aswell.
Gameengines
Thereare two game engines you should get to know, specifically Unreal Engine 4and Unity3D.Both facilitate production by providing templates and other resources. Both arevery powerful and capable of supporting development of 2-D, 3-D, and mobilegames. (Note: reviewers recommend Unity for 2-D and mobile games.)
Bothengines are free to download and use, but there are also royalties and feesinvolved once you publish a game, depending on income from the games developedwith them and certain other conditions. The royalty and fee arrangements changefrom time to time, so read the fine print. Currently, Unity’s licensing andsubscriptions are more complex, and the costs can be substantial. Unreal Engine4 will be free as long as the income from your game is less than $3,000 perquarter. In spite of these cost differences, Unity3D has more users than UnrealEngine 4, so if you are going to be looking for contract developers, it may beeasier to find ones with skills in Unity3D.
BothUnreal Engine 4 and Unity3D have asset stores where you can downloadcharacters, props, and effects. Unity has the larger store. On the other hand,Unreal Engine can create stunning graphics, far above what is available inUnity.
WhileUnity runs on more platforms overall, both engines support Windows and Mac OS X.Unity uses C# or JavaScript, and Unreal Engine uses C++ but also offersBlueprint visual scripting (if you have used Allen Interactions’ ZebraZapps,you will be familiar with the visual scripting concept). Unreal Engine 4’s codeis open: If you can program in C++, you can change or tweak anything.
Myadvice: Download both Unreal Engine 4 and Unity3D, and try them out. Althoughit helps to read online reviews of both engines (and be sure to read the latestreviews—feature sets and costs change) and to go to IGDA meet-ups to talk todevelopers, trying the engines out is the only way to determine which one bestfits your needs and your projects. There are differences of opinion amongdevelopers when it comes to creating multiplayer games, or games that run oniOS or Android, as to which engine does a better job or is easier to use.
Mixedand virtual reality
Thiswill be a short story. Mixed and virtual reality are not quite ready for eLearningprime time, at least not for in-house development in most organizations, but theyare getting there. Games are first adopters of the technologies, but even thisindustry is having to work at it. Game developers are very interested in “theenterprise market for VR,” so help is and will be available.
Mixedreality
Theconference keynoter was Graeme Devine, chief game wizard at Magic Leap. Thepresentation that Scott Dadich, editor in chief at Wired magazine, gave us at The eLearning Guild’s FocusOn Learning 2016Conference in Austin got a lot of us excited about virtual, augmented, andmixed reality, particularly the last item. So I was really looking forward tohearing what Devine would tell us about Magic Leap.
Devinedid not disappoint. He had a lot to say about mixed reality (MR), and he didmuch to temper our expectations for it. The first takeaway is Devine’sdefinition of mixed reality, and it summarizes the reasons to look forward toits arrival: “Mixed reality is the mixture of the real world and virtual worldsso that one understands the other. This creates experiences that cannotpossibly happen anywhere else.” Or as he said during his demonstration of anamazing MR concept application called GhostGirl, “mixed reality is like having the Tardis in your house.”
Thesecond takeaway: The word “experiences” is key to understanding the power ofwhat is coming not just in MR but in VR (augmented reality, or AR, is anotherstory). In the case of Ghost Girl, forexample, MR uses actual physical objects and your actual physical space, alongwith audio augmentation and projected images, to create an experience that istotally unlike anything you have ever been part of.
Thethird takeaway: Devine also made it clear that there are challenges fordevelopers in the field of MR. Design, particularly game design, is “incrediblydifficult,” according to Devine. It was also clear that the same designchallenges will apply to using MR in corporate applications. “You’ve got tohave faith,” Devine says. He predicts that although change is coming, MR willnot be fully realized for another 10 years. These sentiments were repeated manytimes by other presenters at the conference.
Virtualreality
VR is a real challenge to build. In a presentation of lessons learned while creatingthe game Job Simulator,Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy Labs said, “VR can’t be designed on paper—you mustiterate.” Other challenges that Schwartz identified included designing formultiple platforms and the tracking constraints imposed by each platform. Whereyou place the sensors that track the user’s movements is important, and optimumsensor placement is different for each platform. This makes distribution ofcontent something that requires thought and planning.
Inthe AR/VR keynote, Pete Moss, “VR dude and lead engineer” for the creativecontent studio at Unity Technologies, identified 2016 as “Year Zero forconsumers.” Moss pointed out that we now have hardware, VR games, VRcommunities, and even emerging VR social spaces. For developers, 2016 is theyear to survive; 2017 and beyond are the years to thrive. “These are the goodold days—we have a decade of experimentation to go,” Moss said.
Inother sessions, presenters repeated these ideas. Mike Daubert, host of a panel titled“How to Design Interactivity in VR” and chief creative officer at Austin’sPhaser Lock Interactive, said, “Right now, there is no right way and there isno wrong way. VR is the Wild West today.” Noah Falstein, chief game designer atGoogle, said, “What VR does is different, very subjective, and complex. It isnot just an incremental improvement.” Although they were talking about VR forgames, it’s clear that their comments also apply to enterprise applications ofVR.
There were a number of other sessions at AGC thataddressed topics of interest to the eLearning community, and in coming months therewill be follow-up articles and interviews in Learning Solutions Magazine to give you a fuller picture. At DevLearn 2016 Conference & Expo, November 16 – 18 in Las Vegas, you will haveyour choice of eight sessions in the Games and Gamification track and six VR/AR sessions in the Emerging Technologies track to help you get started.
