v0.4 — Justin Kim — Oct. 19th, 2021
- Specified participant ownership of projects under Projects (needs review by Grace and Kao).
- Edited schedule.
- Linked P00 proposal.
v0.3 — Justin Kim — Oct. 15th, 2021
- Changed title to Game Studio Proposal
- Changed Deliverables to Projects
- Added more game inspirations under Projects
- Added projected project schedule under Scope
- Added success criteria under Mission
v0.2 — Justin Kim — Oct. 14th, 2021
- Shortened version of v0.1
v0.1 — Justin Kim — Oct. 10th, 2021
- First draft.
Needs origin story from Grace- Needs to be shortened.
The DIA Design Guild’s Game Studio is a creative space for DIA apprentices and mentors to learn and practice game making.
Many beginners want to make games but don’t know how to start. And when they do start they usually become burned out by the sheer number of options and the knowledge needed to make a single working prototype.
This studio initiative aims to get participants designing and developing games ASAP.
The Game Studio’s goals include, but aren’t limited to:
- maintaining a safe, inviting space for creative self-expression,
- helping teach the basics of independent game making,
- and providing a collaborative community-spirit.
Success for this initiative includes:
- Apprentices independently making and managing their own game projects.
- Apprentices learning additional skills for generalist game making.
- Apprentices helping with others’ learning and asking for help themselves.
This studio works on a game jam-esque schedule with an indie attitude in mind to swiftly release game demos.
- Goal: Prove we can finish games.
- Metric: Finish at least 1 prototype.
- Length: 1 month.
- Team size: 1-2 members on each game.
We start by seeing what works and what doesn’t. Projects will be predetermined and guided by Justin to save time. As time goes on apprentices are expected to practice making their own proposals and project plans.
The scope of this level includes cloning existing game designs to learn the fundamentals and creating our own take on them.
Along the way we’ll research what genres/styles of games people are interested in. While this studio is all-inclusive of different games, tracking what members like helps inform future project proposals.
Games should be:
- lo-fi,
- simple/small-scope,
- and made quickly
to prevent burnout and encourage rapid iteration. As creating games can be a complex and intensive process, final deliverables are MVP prototypes. This way we focus on key outcomes such as:
- encouraging alternative fidelities to current market standards
- and exploring unusual and innovative designs.
DIA’s Game Studio has a plethora of well-established studios at various scopes to draw inspiration from:
- https://sokpop.co/
- SUKEBAN GAMES OFFICIAL WEBFRONT – Aim for the top!
- Vlambeer
- Yacht Club Games: Home
- WayForward
- Dotemu: Home
- Inti Creates - Official English Website
- Project 00 (P00):
- Team: Justin
- Time: ~3 days
- Goal: Demonstrate Justin isn’t all hot-air and can guide others in making games.
- Project 01 (P01):
- Team: Aaron, Justin
- Time: TBD (ETC: 1 week)
- Goal: Try out the game making process with 2 people.
Per the name, studio culture is present by default. The studio’s a collaborative place emphasizing working together to create fun games and solve difficult solutions. It’s interdisciplinary in that we choose to work together to learn and create better.
Game making. We do game making, not just game design or development. Collaborating with a holistic, interdisciplinary approach leads to true ownership of the games we work on.
For the game. Everything we do’s for the good of the game. Always. Since we’re a UX-focused guild, factors such as players/users, interaction, and experience call to us as higher powers.
Experimenting. We have fun making games, which means we gladly experiment. We welcome all types of games: games as tools, audio-only games, TTRPG, etc.
Constraints. Constraints are our bread and butter. We approach game making with a DIY mentality, a focus on rapid prototyping and iteration, and limited-scopes.
Getting it done. Finish the project goals first and refine later. But don’t needlessly sacrifice quality for the sake of efficiency.
Communal self-learning. We focus on learning for our own needs and ask for help when we need it.
No burnout. Working hard is fine but we make sure to protect our mental health in the process. HealthyGamerGG and How to ADHD are two helpful resources.
Game studio projects see team members take shared authorship of the project. In most cases decisions are discussed with the entire team and there’s one lead who makes the final decision.
Ideal teams include self-starting apprentices and mentors who have skills outside of UX Design. A small team means multiple disciplines may be required to finish a project.
This initiative aims to help both apprentices and mentors who wish to begin learning game making in a safe, supportive, and low-stakes environment.
- Mentors can be involved in projects and take a behind-the-scenes approach by offering guidance and advice when asked.
- Apprentices will take control of their own learning while helping one another succeed.
Expectations for project roles vary depending on the project. For the most part, teams can expect one of two approaches:
- Specialization. The traditional model of game making where one person is dedicated to fulfilling one discipline. Ex: One person does coding, another handles music, etc.
- Generalist. This method sees everyone taking on multiple hats to finish modular tasks. Ex: The team may converge to finalize what the core mechanics are. Then they diverge to individually finish a level.
Studio projects are structured similarly to game jams, where participants create a game from scratch as fast as possible in a limited amount of time. If a concept proves feasible some games are improved in a new jam. These constraints align with the studio’s focus on rapid and iterative game making.
Project cadences are flexible at the moment, with a currently estimated 1-2 projects/jams per month. For now we’re exploring what cadences best match the studio with its current membership and resources.
Scope: 1 week broken up into phases for planning and execution. Preferred processes are retrofitted if necessary.
- Planning. Team decides MVP requirements and individual expectations.
- Execution. Team builds MVP and finalizes necessary assets.
- Organization. Team structure finalized before starting project development.
- Specialized vs Generalist.
- Tools. Determined before joining a project as part of the project proposal.
- Focus. What aspect of production is the focus of the project?
- Is it a heavy-graphics game? Music game? Narrative game? Etc.
- Self-reflection. What have we learned from making this game?
- Can be in the form of post-project debriefs or self-reflection blog posts.
Github. Git provides certain advantages including a repository for storing and sharing game code, version control and comparison, and tracking issues.
Airtable. Its ability to sort and filter information by views make it a great tool for analyzing themes in brainstorming sessions, common findings from research, etc.
A swiss army knife. While general solutions are great for most cases, sometimes specialized tools can speed up the process and make life a little easier.
Figma. A popular and accessible prototyping tool that comes in handy for user testing. We’ll try it out before deciding to move forward with it or not.
Below are some popular game making tools:
General tools
Specialized tools
For the most part team members can expect to use Pico-8 for a number of reasons, namely efficiency and a low-barrier of entry. But one reason to use other tools is to target their respective audiences.
Eventually apprentices can take on a shared curriculum of game projects that teach fundamental skills of game making. For ease and efficiency, this studio focuses on 2D skill sets to make life easier.
The Game Studio is inclusive of both game making and non-game making outputs. Basically, studio members are welcome to work on games and anything game-related.
Game Studio projects are encouraged to be open-source in the spirit of sharing knowledge with others. That said, studio members can consult choosealicense.com to see which license works best for them.
However DIA Design Guild does enforce some restrictions:
- Non-profit games: MIT License?
- For-profit games: No license?
Gradually members will contribute to a studio toolbox that includes resources such as color palettes, fonts, and software design patterns for members to freely use in their games. Outside resources are fine, as long as we have full rights and permissions to use them and at least one member has personally used them in a project.
A game proposal template will be made soon but for now it should include the following elements:
- Premise
- Core mechanics and high-level game loop
- Team and organization
- Preferred tools
- Project timeline and goals
The following games are made in GB Studio, Inform, Pico-8, Bitsy, Twine, Ren’Py, RPG Maker, and Unity.
- Celeste
- The House of the Living
- Digital: A Love Story
- VA-11 HALL-A Prototype
- Momo Bomber
- Queers in love at the end of the world
Reminder: Everyone is learning along the way. Things won’t be perfect. That’s why we practice and learn.
DIA Design Guild’s Game Studio is a creative space for game making and game-adjacent projects where apprentices learn to collaborate and execute concepts from scratch.
The studio’s scope starts at single projects within constraints commonly found in game jams and reflects an experimental, indie attitude towards game making.
Teams are organized based on specialized or generalist roles and follow a basic flow of planning and then execution.
Most importantly each team member is expected to take ownership of the projects they work on as part of an involved learning effort.