Development of the game, Paper Cakes

Interview about the game, Paper Cakes

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/paper-cakes-gdc-2010-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]RfZ4NJG4Jp4[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the IGF Competition at GDC and the Student Showcase. With me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Interviewee: Just about the game?

Interviewer: Yeah sure.

Interviewee: Paper Cakes is a game which we developed as a collaboration project between the Utrecht and USC. It was designed for the Wacom. The premise of the game is your doodle. It’s a little doodle drawn guy. It’s a virtual piece of paper, and all Doodle wants is cake. And you bring him to the cake by folding your virtual piece of paper, thus manipulating the environment in the world to create new platforms and bring him to the other side of the paper to get him to the location of the cake. And the core mechanic is just folding the level and using that to your advantage.

Interviewer: What inspired the game?

Interviewee: [?] has touch features and touch gestures, and one of them is a scrolling gesture that you do with two fingers. But, it felt like folding paper. So, that actually gave us the idea of actually using that as the mechanic. That sparked our animation and we brain stormed and the paper cakes came out of that.

Interviewer: Once you had the mechanic down, what was the next step? Did you start prototyping? What were some of the issues that you ran into because this is a different type of game? It has puzzle aspects for sure. Obviously, it’s different.

Interviewee: Well, since it’s on a virtual piece of paper the first step would be to actually try on a real piece of paper, and our computer paper prototype was actually a literal piece of paper prototype. We just drew level on a piece of paper and tested it out in real life. We didn’t have a design document or anything. We just had an example of how the game would work through testing it in real life. So, it’s actually an actual real paper prototype. So, that was the main part of our design process.

Interviewer: When you did the paper prototyping, who did you run it by? Who did you test it on?

Interviewee: Everybody we could find, from 10-year-olds to our moms, everybody we could find because we wanted to design a game that’s accessible to everybody we can think of and everybody who likes to play games or does not want or like to play games yet or something and try and get them interested in this simple game. So, we basically tested it on everyone.

Interviewer: And what was the response? What did you find out that you needed to change and how did it go?

Interviewee: The first few versions of our game didn’t have as much visual feedback as it has now. And one of the most important things we added in was coffee stains and ink spots to just have landmarks for people to recognize. Mainly, visual feedback that tells little bits of information without you actually having to tell them in text. So, it’s mainly the visual feedback that was missing, and we added that in and that really helped the game.

Interviewer: I mean, it helped the game in what sense, to make it more clear because the coffee stains I could see as kind of communicating that it’s paper. But what kind of visual feedback could you use to communicate, either solve the puzzle more easily or to go about playing the game?

Interviewee: Well, the coffee stains actually do two things. That’s one, proving it’s paper. It’s telling you this is a piece of paper. But also, you see it while you’re playing the game. And when you’re folding and making it level, you fold one side of the paper to the other side and you see the stain. So, it’s like, hey I’ve seen it before. And so, you recognize where that is.

Interviewer: Oh, I see what you’re saying, for the rotating and moving it around.

Interviewee: Yeah. Exactly.

Interviewer: How long did it take from initial idea to tweaking the paper prototype to actually now getting something up and running on that?

Interviewee: The entire project, process of this game took three months. That’s including the extensive testing, use testing and feedback and working that out and then use testing it again, the design process. So, that’s three months in total.

Interviewer: When you actually had it on computer, what was the response, and aside from the visual feedback issues, is there anything else that you had to change? Was there anything else you had to change to make it more accessible?

Interviewee: Well, one thing was flow of the game and the flow of the introduction of the game mechanics. We first had a really awkward introduction of introducing the mechanics, and we chose to change that to the method we have now as in dividing the mechanics in four worlds. We didn’t have that at first.

Interviewer: What did you have at first because you mentioned it was awkward?

Interviewee: We first just had a big screen with little numbers, and the numbers stood for numbers, and it would just go in a linear fashion from one to 42. It wasn’t really clear when what was introduced and stuff like that. It just got too complicated too quickly.

So what we did is we saw that in the feedback, and we saw that during user testing. But we were thinking, how can we solve this problem? How can we make it more accessible, and that’s what we chose for the format we have as in four distinctive worlds as it were, each introducing its own mechanic focusing on that mechanic. So, the flow of the game is completely spread out. So, you can play the level at whatever temper you want. That’s basically how we did it.

Interviewer: And so, you have the game done. When did you decide to submit it to this contest? And what did you decide afterwards?

Interviewee: We decided to submit it about two weeks into development. We were pretty far, and we thought, hey we’ve got still two weeks left. We can make this. We can make that deadline the 15th of November, and we worked really hard to make that deadline, to get the Beta version in there and enter it into the competition. Halfway through, we decided this is a really good game and we believe in this. We believe in the concept, so we just were going to enter it and worked towards that.

Interviewer: You said this was a collaboration between another university. How did you coordinate that? What was the exact other university?

Interviewee: We’re from Utrecht School of the Arts which is based in Utrecht in the Netherlands in Europe. It was a school assignment to work together with three students from our school and with three students from University of Southern California in Anaheim.

Interviewer: I wasn’t sure. I thought you said USC at first, but I wasn’t sure because I know you guys are really far apart. What did you have to coordinate?

Interviewee: We divided the work load, and we communicated through Skype every Monday and lots of communication through e-mail, and we used Google sites as a forum for bug tracking and stuff like that. and to make sure that everybody has up-to-date files and stuff like that.

Interviewer: Were you guys, say, in charge of the coding, and they were in charge of art or something , or how did you break it down?

Interviewee: Well, we had a bit more fun than they had. So, we decided that all the lead artists, the lead programmer and the lead designer would be based in the Netherlands and coordinate from there. Basically, always the central point was the Netherlands, and the students in the Netherlands. I was the lead for the level design, so we coordinated it that way. That made it possible to collaborate.

Interviewer: Was this between two different classes, or was this outside of class?

Interviewee: This was part of our curriculum, and these USC students, we had one undergraduate and two graduate students. For them, it was a bit mixed, but for us we are all final year master students, so we’re in the same class.

Interviewer: So, you guys have this game done. You know, it’s innovative. What’s the next step? What are you guys planning on doing? Are you going to pursue this game more, or are you focusing on other games?

Interviewee: With this game, we’ll have to see where it goes after the GDC. We haven’t planned anything with specifically this game yet. I think we’re just going to continue our graduation process individually. So, we’re not doing anything with the game specifically as of yet, but that may change in the course of the GDC.

Interviewer: What other game design spaces are you looking into to do more innovative work? Are you going to focus on this type of thing where you use the tablet type, use the table as inspiration for your game design ideas, or are you looking at other places for game designs?

Interviewee: I’m looking all over the place, actually. Since my bachelor course actually are based on a theatre perspective, so I’m used to looking at everything I can find to try and innovate in the world of interactive media. So, I actually look at every kind of media I can find so I’m not specifically keeping myself bound to anything.

Interviewer: Since you have that background in theatre, do you look at story telling in games? Is that something you’re going to explore, or are you more focused on the core mechanics?

Interviewee: Well, depending on the project, the course doesn’t need to focus a bit more on story telling, a bit more on the narrative side of games. But also the interactivity and the player experience. I always try to combine in the best possible way to make sure that the complete experience of the game developed at that time is a complete experience.

Interviewer: What suggestions do you have for other student game developers who want to make their own game?

Interviewee: Just try to think outside the box. Try to let go of everything you know about games, every classical clich