Text and pictures: Niina Virtanen
This article is about a workshop that was in English and the game industry operates mostly in English, therefore this post is in English as well.
At the beginning of June a group of excited folk gathered in restaurant Telakka in Tampere. Game developers, actors and other creative industry professionals came together for the first time to the Character Design Across Games and Performing Arts Workshop. The idea came from Tampere Game Hub, Tampere Freelance Actors and Film Tampere when the three organizations realized that there is a lot these professionals could learn from each other, but almost no collaboration is currently done.
Photo: Joni Lappalainen hosting the event.
This kind of workshop was clearly something the audience wanted as well, as the event attracted almost 60 attendees with very little marketing. The afternoon was kicked off by a case study of Alma presented by Rory Warwick from Dreamloop Games. Alma is a shared-IP project by Dreamloop Games and Making Movies, where Dreamloop is developing a game and Making Movies producing a movie of the same script and concept by Ilja Rautsi. However, the film and game are not direct copies of each other but expand the world of Alma as individual products. Rory showed the audience how several actors and voice actors were captured for the game demo using motion-capture techniques and then combined to make the old and young versions of Alma.
After the mini masterclass the day was hosted by Joni Lappalainen from Dreamloop Games and Tampere Game Hub. He divided the participants in six smaller groups and gave us three tasks to work on:
1. Build a character scene for a game without exposition
2. Create a silent character for a game
3. Come up with an idea for FMV (full-motion video) game, including setting, narrative and gameplay
Myself coming from the background of filmmaking and not much gaming, the idea of creating a character itself seemed fairly simple. I love thinking about the inner worlds of a character, background story, emotional needs, and story arch. It was the concept of gameplay and incorporating the player in the equation that left me puzzled. How do I communicate anything about the character to the player with very little exposition or dialogue? What should the character do in order for the player to understand how they should progress through the game?
It was fascinating to work in a group with game developers and actors whose ways of working and thinking differs so greatly. Where the developers started discussing the game mechanics and the characters’ goals, the actors thought about movements and the inner driving forces of the character. After each task, some groups presented their ideas to the audience, with some even playing or acting out the planned scenes.
Photo: One team introducing their game idea
The final task of the workshop concentrated on FMV’s, full-motion video games. These games could almost be considered a hybrid of games and films. While they are games, they typically consist of cinematic live action scenes or sequences with high production value, and playing them can feel like watching a movie in which you, as the player, decide what happens next. Considering the enormous amount of games in the world, there are still relatively few FMV games, meaning there is plenty of room in the market for more of them. FMV’s are a genre where filmmakers and game developers should – and most likely will – collaborate a lot more in the future.
Photo: Another team acting out their game concept.
Creating a full concept for an FMV game was such a fascinating exercise we could have easily brainstormed for days, but I was happy with what our group managed to develop in about 20 minutes. Imagine the TV series The Office meets Severance in a game where you must identify aliens from hiding among your dull, grey office colleagues. Have you noticed that Karen from HR actually never actually drinks from the water cooler but is always standing next to it? Maybe it’s time to find out why. What would your character do to find out Karen’s secret?