DICE Summit 2012 officially kicked off this evening, and after AIAS president Martin Rae took the stage and mentioned people calling out sick with "Sky Flu" (a reference to skipping work to play Skyrim), he introduced Bethesda Softworks' Todd Howard, who - in his 18th year at Bethesda - gave a compelling talk on "Why We Create, Why We Play."
The keynote ultimately assessed what's at the very heart of game design, and how to ensure a title will resonate with players and ultimately sell more copies as a result. Howard began by noting that a game design plan is ultimately not as important as the culture at a game studio. The culture is what enables teams to overcome any difficulties in the game development process.
Howard proceeded to outline "three big rules." One of those is to first define the game by the experience. The team sets the tone by picking imagery and logos or influences of what they want the game experience to feel like. The idea is to be who you want and to do what you want, and that ultimately hasn't changed since The Elder Scrolls 1: Arena, on through Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and now Skyrim.
A second rule is to keep it simple. "We can do anything, we just can't do everything," he remarked. Howard said the team had to prioritize and pick its battles.
The number one rule, Howard said, is that great games are played, not made. Bethesda plays its own games everyday to ensure that the experience is right and that the game is fun and rewarding. That way, they can also find and admit mistakes, which Howard said is essential.
The ultimate goal in design is to shorten the time to where you can actually play the game, because this is "opportunity time" where you can truly refine the experience you're aiming to create. With Skyrim, Bethesda even went so far as to experiment for a week with a Game Jam, where the team was allowed to create any features they wanted. Howard let his team run wild, and in a special video, he showed all sorts of interesting things, like kill cams on magic and ranged weapons, mounted horse and dragon combat, Kinect voice commands for dragon shouts, the abiity to adopt a child or to build your own home, the chance to become a vampire lord and much more. Howard teased that some of this could find its way into future DLC but it's not been decided yet.
Howard then moved on to the part of his keynote that really stands out for designers. He summarized what is essentially the top challenge in games development: building the player experience ramp and getting people to keep playing your game.
There are basically four steps that players go through: first they learn the game, then they're just playing and having fun, then they're challenged but are given tools to win, and then surprises are thrown at them. It's at this point, that the player experiences the design loop and has to learn again, and around and around it goes. Howard said that the industry has gotten better at creating this satisfying loop, especially from companies like Blizzard and Valve.
The part where it can fall apart, though, is in the challenge. A lack of challenge can lead to boredom and a player simply stopping, whereas too much challenge can be frustrating and lead to a player ceasing a game altogether. You have to find this sweet spot, and if you do, you'll bring about pride in a player.
And it's pride, he said, that truly is the key emotion in all of this. Games, unlike other entertainment, can give you a great sense of accomplishment, even in simple puzzle titles like Peggle. What Bethesda does so well, said Howard, is the studio gives players the chance to direct the experience and control that design loop mentioned above. The game is suddenly much harder to put down, because YOU are in control and you gain a sense of pride from the whole experience. People tell their own stories about what they did in Skyrim.
Bethesda has taken it one step further as well by enabling mods for the PC version of Skyrim through the Steam workshop. Howard noted that on the PC, the average play time has been 75 hours. He said he'd like to be able to bring this modding functionality to the consoles one day.
Howard closed by stating that it's a golden age of gaming (something Martin Rae remarked upon earlier), and speaking to the developers in the audience he told them to "make yourself proud, and make the gamer proud he bought your game."
