The Realities of Game Development (Jarory de Jesus)

Full transcript

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Today we are joined by Jerry, a game developer. Jer, welcome to the podcast. >> Hello. Thank you for having me. To start, could you share about yourself and what do you guys do? >> Sure. Yeah. Um, I'm a game developer of nine years. I've worked on large titles like Jedi Survivor, Sorrowos, Madden, Marvel, and then I decided to branch out on my own. So, now we make our own games. Uh, we're making two games. a blackjack inspired Bolatro inspired game called Where the Chips Fall and then we're working on a hip-hop JRPG called Concrete Rose. >> And what made you go into the gaming industry? >> Kind of an accident, honestly. I built a game when I was learning to code and really like doing that. So, I just decided that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. >> Okay.

And when you first started moving into the game development area, what was the biggest surprise about how games are actually made versus how you imagined it from the outside? How long it takes to make a game and how much time you spend doing the exact same thing over and over again just to get that five minutes of gameplay to feel good. We spend a lot of time just polishing the same thing over and over and over again. Like when I was done with Star Wars, I didn't want to touch the game. I was so sick of it after playing it for so many times. >> So you were a gamer before? >> Absolutely. I've always been a gamer my whole life. >> Okay. So a lot of people think that narrative design is just about writing the dialogue. How do you explain the difference? >> So the way I explain it is a dialogue is the story being told.

Narrative design is how you tell that story. So, it's the audio logs, the the environmental storytelling, the level design, the highlevel beats, everything that goes into the momentto moment writing of how that story is being told. >> And when you actually are a narrative designer, what do you actually own when you're building for player choice and systems? >> Sure. Yeah. A lot of times you own the systems you're developing. So, like on Jedi, I did a lot of the boss VO logic. A VO stands for voice over, by the way. So, anytime you're in a fight and a boss says something to you, I did a lot of the logic for that and I was responsible for those beats and that logic. I also did a lot of levels. So, in the beginning of Jedi on Coruscant, all the VO and all the the walk and talk at the beginning, all that was my work. And what do you think is the hardest about making narrative feel seamless in a complex game?

>> Man, that's a question. There's so much that's difficult. Like, people expect a real grounded experience in a game like Jedi or even Sorrowos, which is coming out later this year. They want these transitions to go smoothly. They don't want bugs. They want a perfected experience. And so even the smallest line of code that is doing the wrong thing can break that entire immersion. And there's so many moving parts that it's hard to track down the exact origin of a bug. So when we're polishing, everything could be working perfectly. Someone somewhere on the other side of the, you know, team makes a change that they thought had nothing to do with what I was working on, but it completely breaks everything I'm doing. and like that that just cycle of tracking and and fixing is really rough at the end. >> And how does AI come into play when it comes to game development?

>> So AI is an interesting topic because games have been using AI for a long time, but really game AI is behavior trees, which is not a true AI. It's a a link system of logic effectively that tells it what to do at any given moment. the AI that we know today uh is kind of makes more work for us than it saves a lot of times, especially on the creative end. Uh I think there are uses for AI. Like if someone could make an AI tool that could wrap UVs, you would make every artist in the world happy. As a narrative designer, personally, I don't like mapping voice lines to dialogue. That process takes forever. So having someone who could do that or like an AI tool that could just read the line of text and then scan the audio file and map them together, that would save me a lot of trouble. But those tools don't really exist, right?

The they're they're more in the creative spaces where we end up doing a lot more work over the AI anyway. So a lot of times it's best not to use it. Maybe meeting note-taking and production work could uh could be supplemented by AI, but in the actual create creative uses of it, I find that AI isn't there yet. >> That's interesting. It's from my experience at least the only field that I've been told that isn't really impacted by AI. Now, >> we're still impacted and I want like we're still impacted because a lot of companies and CEOs and like high level executives think that it can do more than it can, but when you actually use it, it doesn't deliver on its promises. That's kind of the issue. So, like people are being laid off because of it, but they're not actually making up the work or saving money as a consequence. And when you work on these huge worlds like Star Wars or Marvel, what constraints show up that people don't realize?

Well, the IP holder, they're ironclad with their IP. We had ideas that we wanted to do in the game for both Marvel and and Star Wars, and they were like, "You can't do that." And we were like, "Why not?" And they won't tell us why. They'll be like, "You can't do that." and then like six months later a new Marvel or Star Wars thing would come out that did exactly what we wanted to do and then we find out why we couldn't do that, right? It's because this movie or this TV show or this other game was going to do the exact same thing, so they didn't want to double up on that. So stuff like that happens all the time. >> You've also talked about building a hip-hop RPG as a passion project. What are you trying to express through that project? And what do you think games can learn from hip-hop culture and storytelling? >> I did a talk on this at GDC years ago and at DevCom as well.

Hip-hop is artists tell stories in a very tight space and they do a very concise job of telling those stories and I think game writers can learn a lot from their techniques, particularly the how they structure their language. There's a hierarchy to the types of words they use where certain actionoriented verbs get privileged over more descriptive terms and I think games writers can learn a lot from that. Um, as far as what I want to express with this game, it's it's a it's a lot of different moving parts for me. Uh, but the most important part is the idea of resistance and revolution and when it's appropriate to utilize different techniques, whether it's peaceful or radical approaches to how you navigate that space. I don't think there's one right answer or a one-sizefitit all. And I think there's a lot of nuance in that conversation that I'm trying to express with this game.

>> What's the future of the industry? I think in the short term we're going to see a lot more layoffs and a lot more project delays, but I think in that span you'll see a spin up of a lot of smaller studios like the the indie and double A level. And I think those games are the ones that are going to propagate forward because the big blockbuster hits GTA 6s and those big titles are slowly becoming too expensive and too timeconuming to develop. They're untenable and I think going forward you're not going to see as many of those big games. You're going to see a lot more Expedition 33s. That's probably the best way to >> From your perspective, if there are any aspiring designers that are trying to build a good sustainable career, what do you wish more studios did better for creators? >> I really wish they did a better job of training you before throwing you into the fire. Whenever you come onto a project, everything's on fire and you got to go straight for it. It's very little room to learn and grow unless you're learning by experience effectively.

There's not a lot of room to like raise people up. You just got to like figure it out or sink. And I wish there was a lot more space to train juniors and give them the ability to thrive more easily. >> And is there any piece of advice that you would give? >> Yeah, this is like the most fun industry in the world to work in. I can't imagine doing anything else. And so, if you really want to do this, go for it. But it is going to be a hard journey. And it's one of those things where like you get what you put into it. This is not for the faint of heart. If you're only going to halfass it, it's not going to work out for you. But if you really want to do this and you put everything into it and you keep going and don't let it beat you up, you will come out on the other side and have a great time. >> Great. I love that advice. I think it applies to almost any industry >> maybe.

Yeah. >> Like life in general. For people listening who want to follow your work or see your projects, where should they go? >> Sure. You can follow Kokitome, which is C O Qu UI TOA. You can follow us on Blue Sky, LinkedIn, Facebook, or go to our website, join our mailing list. You can also follow me personally at Jari Jr. A Wr. I'm also available by my first name on LinkedIn, but like make sure you know me before or like have some mutuals with me. Don't don't just randomly message me on LinkedIn. That's more professional. But Blue Sky, I'm happy to connect with anyone, chat with anyone. That's more of a social platform for me. Yeah, that's really it. >> Great. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Take it easy.