Recently, I had the opportunity to attend Gamescom Asia 2022. I was lucky to have been working with an amazing company and I had been fortunate to attend the conference as their delegate alongside a few other of my colleague. This post is for me to just share a few things that I have learned from the conference, just in general the things that I believe the Game Development landscape can benefit from. I won’t be covering every single talks, only those that left a huge impression for me.
The Art of Visual Storytelling in Real-Time Cinematics
Cinematic Directing in Real-Time Worlds
Presented by Sarah Delahanty from Blizzard Entertainment
The first talk in the conference and it already caught my attention. Sarah talks mostly on her experience as a real-time director. She started even further back before her experiences in Blizzard Entertainment, all the way when she was still working outside the game industry.
One of the key points to take from her presentation is how much passion and fun can carry you into the creative industry. She would mention how much fun it was to create a cutscene. At one point she needed to mobilise the entire studio in order to capture a raid scene and that experience had been fun. I believe that this sort of mentality can be applied to development in general. At times I too feel the need to induce some memes and easter eggs as I write scripts for my games. And it does help you go through tough times.
In a technical standpoint, Sarah mentioned (in general) the “pipeline” of how she does real-time directing. She highlighted that all animations inside those in-game cutscenes already existed within the game be it via emotes or attacking animations, whatsoever. The technique lies in listing out the resources available to her, and making the most creative product out of it.
The most important of all was her emphasis on understanding the nature of Visual Storytelling. This was a point that I could relate the most with and I was truly glad that she pointed it out. She would mention that at the end of the day, the most important thing is to know what the playerbase can enjoy. It is important to make your story—and what you are trying to show to the players in these cutscenes—matter to them. After all, those cutscenes would not matter if the players just press the ESC button.
Sifu’s Well-Thought Combat System
Hard to Learn, Harder to Master: Composing Sifu’s Convoluted Yet Satisfying Combat System
Presented by Théo Caselli from Sloclap
Sometimes you just wonder what exactly was the appeal of Hardcore games like Dark Souls and of the sort. Trying and dying over and over again seemed like a waste of time, and certainly not a satisfying thing to experience. But is it? Sifu was proud to have adopted this Hardcore game mentality. And through this talk, Théo gave some insight on why Hardcore Games, and in particular his game—Sifu, became very appealing to players today.
Théo began right away with the mentality of Hard to Learn, Hard to Master. He acknowledged how hard it is to garner audience from such a game with many developer today opt for the idea of being Easy to Learn, Hard to Master. This was true, considering how much genres tried to simplify their controls in order to lower their entry level. Fighting Games being one of the most prominent example (see Granblue Versus and Riot Game’s Project L).
How to draw audience? Théo’s main point includes knowing your target audience and to stay true with the heart of the game. Here he elaborated that he wanted Sifu to be played by people who loves Martial Arts and Hardcore Gamers. That way he already had a specific set of mechanic he wanted to develop which later he would explain. He also wanted to highlight the Kung Fu aspect of Sifu, and that it was the heart of the game. And within Kung Fu, he wanted to highlight the concept of constantly learning and improving which he later on adopted as a basis of his game mechanic.
Cinematography. I believe that the reason why Kung Fu movies became so popular was its Cinematography and Choreography. Sifu definitely took these two aspects into the game to stay true to its theme (and target audience). Théo highlighted how important it is to keep the Players immersed through fluid animation and camera angles to highlight the theme of the game.
Hard but fair. The mechanic of the game can be difficult, but it needs to be fair. By fair, it means that there needs to always be options for your player to explore. Create learning opportunities for the player through a digestible attack patterns. Attack patterns can be hard, but the player still need to be able to learn it no matter what. Lastly, to create a situation with short-term goals to induce perseverance. Set up levels with the idea of how do we push the player to keep trying?
Penetrating the Market with A Zoo
Let’s Build a Zoo – Postmortem
Presented by James Barnard from Springloaded
I am sure that a lot of us wanted to create games, sell it and make a lot of money. The truth is majority of games are not exactly successful. James presented to us the harsh reality of the Game industry, and throughout he would leave some advice to make the most out of your failures.
Finding your audience is very important. There has to be an audience otherwise the game won’t launch. And when you feel that such is the case, James said that it was never too late to change course and not to be afraid doing so. The worst thing a developer can do is to release the game when they already know that they would fail. Unreleased games is not useless. The assets can be used for other games, the codes can be applied to other games and the experience can be adopted for other games.
In the Games industry, James also highlighted the importance to make the game fast and to let the games make themselves. He would suggested ideas on having a Long Term Tech Plan, building the game from an existing pipeline and to have a shared codebase. Considering the constantly evolving landscape of the industry, I believe that there are some truth to his point. Especially if your main goal is to make profit.
Narrative is The Blood That Brings Life To Games
Narrative Forward: A Tale of Departments and Diplomacy
Presented by Simon Mackenzie from Certain Affinity
Among all the talks in the conference, this is my favorite. There are a lot of points that Simon brought up that I personally can relate to. Throughout the talk, I felt that there are so much things that can be applied and learn from his idea of narrative.
Simon would start with a statement that echoed with resonance in me. Mechanic can be the heart of the game, but narrative is the blood that brings life into the game. Then he went on to explain why exactly he meant it in such a way.
In the Game industry (and most definitely in other industries as well) people of different background came together. From artists, designers and to the programmers. They are diverse, each with their own specific set of skills and methods to see how their game shape up. It is most definitely inevitable for these group of people to butt-head when it comes to approaching certain topic within the game. But the one thing that can be shared among these people… is Narrative. People from different backgrounds can chip in narrative ideas and that generally unites everyone.
With Narrative, everyone working on the game can feel included. They can become much more passionate in its creation because there are some things that they can relate to. And it can encroach to a lot of different aspect of the game—Simon called this the beats.
Action Beats is the core loop of the game. What can the player do in the game that it remains within the overall narrative and theme the game has built. This helps designers and programmers as a limiter to understand what they can do and what they should not cross as they develop the game.
Campaign Beats is a sense of purpose. What is the driving force for the player to play and complete your game? This helps with level design, how to pace the game and determine the progression. To help determine what the player can do in a particular stage of the game.
World Beats is the setting of the game. Where is your game being held? What is the theme of the game and how does the setting affect the options allowed for the player? How does the player’s action affect the universe you have built? This generally helps the designer and artists to build a game that appeals to the players. And for the designer to understand how certain mechanic can affect the overall game.
Story Beats is the emotional aspect of the game. How does the player affect the people of your world? How do we, as developers, connect with the players? This honestly helps the designers, artists and programmers alike. It gave us an opportunity to better connect with our player base. Honestly, it is the entire reason why I put so much emphasis in telling a good story. Because it helps me connect with people who I have never met before.
A Collection of Worlds Built By A Collection of Creators
Architects of the Metaverse: The Keys to Creation on Roblox
Presented by Duncan Campbell from Roblox
Roblox, yea I have definitely heard of it. My friend’s 8 years old cousin couldn’t stop talking about it. Roblox to me, before this talk, was a children’s game. I could not believe how much this perception changed within a day.
This talk by Duncan was more of a pitch. It was a pitch of the idea that Roblox is more than a children’s game. It is rather a hub for creators to build their worlds. If you know me long enough, perhaps you would know how much I emphasise on the importance of World-Building. And Roblox allows creator to visualise and generate the worlds that have been resting idly inside their head easily. I find that incredibly amazing.
What was more amazing is the fact that you can travel between these worlds that many other creators have built within a centralised hub (dubbed the metaverse). To be able to move around worlds, visit new places and ideas was just a mesmerising concept. It reminded me of Planeswalkers in Magic the Gathering and Ready Player One written by Ernest Cline. And frankly, with enough support and technological development, Roblox could very well be our very own Oasis.
As such, these are the talks that I can relate the most throughout the conference. This log entry is just generally how I understand the content that they have put up and by no means the exact replica of what the speakers were trying to convey. All in all, Gamescom Asia 2022 had been an interesting experience.
Joshua Dharmawan 
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