hello. thank you again for agreeing to have this discussion with me. i would like to start off by asking— what is your job in the game industry?
My name is Oluwatosin, I am a game developer in the mac extended reality, I have been a game developer for about 3 years. Currently I am an AR/VR instructor. I have done a number of things with games but recently I’ve moved into AR/VR because it leverages a lot of game technology. I am currently a co-founder at Africa Comicade, it is a platform for African creators of games, film animation comic and music industry. Through Africa Comicade I have been able to reach out to a lot of creatives in the African space, particularly in the game development space. Last year we held our first humathon which was a two week event where we had speakers from inside and outside Africa to speak on the gaming industry and the creative industry at large. We had speakers from women in games, the creator of angry birds also. So these people just came to share their knowledge about game development and the creative space generally just to help Africans and the African creative see that there is opportunity there we just need access to more resources to get things started. You’re looking more at world building correct? Creating specific worlds in games?
yes
We had some sessions that really touched on that. So for world building some things I’ve learnt generally because that’s not my strong suit (I do more of programming). With the way game development is structured you have the development tag the design side, you have people doing the level design, the concept art, the whole world building like you said. For us that are on the programming side, these people don’t get to see the art part. I would really say for world building there are quite a number of things that are considered; you have to consider the people who you are creating the games for, and how much they can relate to it. There was one of the sessions during africa comicade whereby the speaker said they were working on a particular game and the world they were building they could not use some of the elements they had in their game, they could not use to for a particular release so they had different elements in their worked for different parts where they were releasing their game to. For example, there are some words you can use in some countries and showcase them in your game that you can’t use in other countries, so you have to take all these things into consideration when building your world so you don’t step on anybody’s toes or create something the would later turn out to become very very bad and give you a bad reputation. So you have to consider your target market. ‘Is everything in our game conforming to the culture of this particular group of people we are pushing it to?’ if yes hen you can go on, if no try to revamp and make compromise to ensure that yes, it fits with that particular audience. So that’s why you see games like GTA have an age rating. The world there is not for young ones because there are so many things that are quite violent so you have to consider so many things when you’re building. But this is the work of, there’s a special team at the game development studio that works on culture diversity and inclusion for games basically. You have so many teams working on just one game. For example when Ubisoft was sharing their success story they tried taking a picture of the team that worked on it I think it was the team in Toronto I’m not sure, when they were taking the picture they couldn’t take everybody on the team because they were so much and they still have other studios across. So there are so many people involved but just a little section work on world building. What other questions would you like to ask so I can know where to dive?
feel free, it’s supposed to be a very relaxed session. Another one of my questions is how important is world building and what role does it play? what purpose does it serve to the player?
I would start by saying one of the things that keeps people going back to some games is the elements they can relate to in that particular game, that’s how important world building is. For example the recent Spiderman game that was released, there was this tweet where i saw a person snapping a picture outside his home and he could see it in the game because the game, the world, was set in New York so he could see his own home inside the game and this created a whole new immersive experience for the person. So the person is like ‘i can really play where I live inside the game’. So world building is really important in creating a high level of immersion in a game. The more you can relate to the world you are playing in, the more immersed you feel inside it, so it creates a high level of immersion. And world building is so important that if you have a concept of a particular game you are trying to push wrong you might have a very negative acceptance from the market you are targeting. Let’s say for example, imagine you are setting a game like assassin’s creed I like a cyberpunk world, do you play games?
yes i play some games, but i’m familiar with assassin’s creed
Are you familiar with cyberpunk?
yeah
So imagine replacing the normal assassin’s creed world with something like cyberpunk. That doesn’t connect with the user. I’m trying to live the old lives of people and you’re taking me into the future, like cyberpunk, it doesn’t really connect. that shows the importance pf world building, you have to get it right and show that it follows he concept and the story too. That’s where the design people have a whole lot of work to do because world building is just more than you just creating the environment, it is ensuring that the character fits into the environment as well. Its ensuring that the elements in your world is something the user can relate to and can interact with as well. The game play isn’t just one way but the user has quite a number of options to close from, so world building has to be really really interactive. And it’s so important again because without the world being interactive enough here’s no way you can play out the story of the game because its through the world you’re interacting with that you can really grasp the story behind any game, so the world building is really important in any game you are trying to build no matter how small.
thank you. another question i have, and i know you said you are not necessarily part of the concept team, the design team, the art team in creating the world building. but as a developer what is your involvement in that process? in the grand scheme of the world building process what step are you at? or i guess what stage are you involved in?
The way a game development pipeline is scheduled, it’s scheduled into three major parts where you have pre-production, production and post-production. And in pre-production that’s where you have the design people mostly working whereby you’re trying to get the concept art, you’re trying to understand the world. At that point in time the programmers are not yet fully functioning during pre-production because that’s where you determine the story behind a character the type of world the character lives in. That’s totally up to the design team, that’s totally up to the people who are in charge of ensuring that this story we’re writing, this world we’re building fits into the culture of the people we are trying to push it to. all that is done in pre-production, like your concept art. You want your characters to look like this, you want your characters backgrounds to look like this…everything is in pre-production. When you start moving into production that means you have the idea of how the world is going to be. You have prototypes of how the world is going to look like. Then the programmers start coming in to make those worlds. so where the programmers come in is ensuring this world is replicated exactly the way the designers want. The behavioral patterns of the characters and elements inside your world is properly done. That’s where the heavy programming comes in. When your working on NPCs (Non Player Characters), when you’re working on procedural generation of your worlds because creating the world in a 3D space can be very very large and you have to create it at levels. But in pre-production it’s mostly the design team trying to ensure that they have the perfect picture of what they want to push out in the game. And then in production the engineering team, the developers work on bringing that particular world to life. Then in post-production everyone is working together trying to continue building.
thank you. another question i have is, in terms of world building what are your thoughts on a game where the world is already created with its own storyline and concept versus a game where you’re the one creating or the player is the one creating their woes world like minecraft or the sims?
Yeah, I fully understand what you’re trying to say. Honestly, in my own little opinion I would say it depends on the type of story you’re trying to tell. That would determine if you want the world to be user generated or you want it to be already there. For example, if you’re trying to tell a story of past lives, there’s really now ay to say the user should create the world by themselves because it is there already. It is for you to go through that experience, it is not for you to create that experience. When you’re creating an experience. for example, the sims— you know you can create your own world there, you have full control of what you’re doing, it’s not like you’re stepping into someones character. This time around you are in your own character. That way you can create your own world, same with Minecraft, but it all depends on the storytelling. From my own point of view I would say it depends on the story you’re trying to tell.
is there one you prefer over the other both as a developer and as a player?
Honestly, I have not really played user-generated games like that. I don’t play Minecraft yet. some of the students i teach play Minecraft and Roblox a lot. As a player right now I would say the ones that are built already, not user-generated. But as a developer, I would say user generated. Why? because as a developer you are limited to what you know. You are limited to how far you can see but with more people creating stuff with the basis you’ve given them already, it opens up a whole new world of excitement for me. What i didn’t think of, the user playing would think of it and do it. So that creates a whole new level of excitement and interactivity basically. So as a developer I would say creating a user-generated world, but as a player honestly I just want to play what you give me, I just want to live someone else’s story. So yeah, that’s basically it.
so as a player, i guess you want to experience that escape. you don’t want to have to be involved in making you just want to enjoy the ride i guess.
I just want to play games to have fun because that’s what i do for work.
can i ask how did you get into the gaming industry?
I used to play games a lot growing up. I used to be like ‘how do these people do all these things? How do they bring all these things together and these things are working?’ So i was always like, whenever I get the chance I’ll try my best to do something when it comes to building games. But at that time in my life, when I was much younger (when i was in high school) i used to feel like building games was rocket science. so living in Nigeria we didn’t really have what it takes to build games. We had to travel outside the continent to build games and stuff. When I was in university I studied computer engineering. For my first internship I was opportune to hear about a game development bootcamp where they were teaching people how to build games and stuff. I interned there and funny enough I was introduced to construct 2 and I picked it up so fastened it was from there I started building games.
can i ask how long you’ve been in the industry?
Since 2017
so like 4 years?
Yeah like 3-4 years
those are all the questions i had. thank you again for taking the time to meet and talk with me.