Maximo: Ghost to Glory Storyboards - Part 1

Back in 1999-2000, I was working as a game designer on Capcom's game Maximo: Ghosts to Glory. The game had already been in production awhile (It might have been as long as two years as the game was "restarted" when it was "moved" from the N64 to the PS2) but the framework of the story and the game's main characters were in place by the time I arrived.

One of my first jobs on the game was to help get the story into shape. I have an education in screenwriting and had been storyboarding since I was 15, so I was eager to help tell the story of Maximo - a king who is betrayed by his magical advisor and (seemingly) Queen and comes back from the dead to avenge himself. 

The character designs for Maximo, Sophia, King Achille and the Demon Monster (seen at the end of the game) had already been created by Capcom Studio 8's director David Siller and drawn by famed Fatmitsu cover artist Susumu Matsushita - which is why you will see photo-copied images of Matsushita's drawings used in some of these storyboards. 

If you've ever wondered why the lips in the cinematics don't match the English dialogue, it's because the characters were animated by a Japanese team. The characters in the cinematics are all speaking Japanese! The game's budget prohibited us from going back to re-animate the characters speaking English!

On to the storyboards!

1. The opening of the game. Maximo bursts in and gets killed. One of the things left out of the final cinematic was the "knowing look" between Achilles and Sophia. I wanted to indicate that something was already up between these two and that the audience wouldn't catch it unless they played through the game and then watched it again. Also note, that Achilles shoves Sophia. The Japanese animators turned it into the "pimp slap" in the final game.

2. Having been blasted by Achille, Maximo ends up in the underworld, where he meets the Grim Reaper. Grim offers him a deal to help him take down Achille.

I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at the storyboards for Maximo: Ghosts to Glory. I'll be posting more soon and you can watch the final Cutscenes Here!

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee game play storyboards

This semester, I teach a new class: Storyboarding! 

I've been storyboarding video games since the 90's but I haven't really publicly shared any my artwork. These are storyboards that I drew for game play for the Playstation One classic game Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

At the time, I was working for Alexandria Studios as an artist, but along the way, I realized that game design was much more interesting and more suited to my talents. Thanks to design director Bill Anderson, he took me under his wing and started showing me "the ropes" of game design. 

In exchange, I would draw level design maps and storyboard game play. It was around this time that Alexandria partnered up with a new company called Oddworld Inhabitants - they were a group of special effects artists from Los Angeles (we were near San Luis Obispo). The company was only three people at the time - President Sherry McKenna, Creative lead Loren Lanning and concept artist Steve Olds. Many of the games characters had been designed but very little game play or level designs were made.

Bill was brought on to design the game but soon he realized he needed some help, so I was brought onboard to storyboard game play. I remember playing lots of games that were similar to the game we were making - games like Black Thorne and Out of This World. Back then our game was called "Soulstorm" - you can see it's logo on my storyboard pages.

These storyboards were created to determine the pacing of the game play and the relationship of the encounters to the level design - which I created in a more traditional map form such as these:

These storyboards resemble those used in animated films and for video game cutscenes but since the majority of the Oddworld team came from an animation background, they were much more familiar with this format. In retrospect, doing these served me well when it came to illustrating game play concepts on my future games.

I remember doing more of these game play storyboards, but these appear to be the only ones I could find to scan.

In this storyboard, Abe encounters a dangerous rock:

In this partial storyboard, Abe swims:

In this storyboard, Abe tries to free some friends: 

Abe encounters some Sligs and deadly spikey balls:

  

 

 

I hope you enjoyed looking at my contribution to this classic game!

The "Best" Board Games of All Time?

 

 

 

I recently read this listicle on the Better House and Garden Magazine website: a magazine that has a pretty big readership*.

https://www.bhg.com/party/best-board-games-of-all-time

I'll spare you the read:

The Game of Life, Clue, Candyland, Monopoly, Scrabble, Battleship, Risk, Stratego, Axis and Allies, Chess, Backgammon, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Blokus, Agricola, Connect Four, Twister, Operation, Don't Break the Ice, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Boggle, Mouse Trap, Jenga, Mastermind, Qwirkle, Uno, Cranium, Dominos, Chutes and Ladders, Carcassonne, Traffic Jam, Trouble, Ticket to Ride, Sorry!, Yahtzee, Pictionary, Apples to Apples, Scattergories, Catchphrase, Taboo, Speak Out, Password, Mad Gab, Trivial Pursuit, Catan, Dominion, Cribbage, Cards against Humanity, and Azul

My first emotion when I finished reading this list was frustration.

Frustration that so many "hum-drum" games are still getting attention after all of this time. Traffic Jam, Mouse Trap and Hungry Hungry Hippos barely qualify as games - they're more like puzzles or toys. And does any one really need to be reminded about the existence of Chess, Checkers or Backgammon? This list read like the shelf at my local Goodwill.

To the list creator's credit, they did add some "newish" games like CAH, Qwirkle, Azul, and Dominion, but even most of those are over 12 years old! Hardly the new hotness.

It's not to say that (most) of these games don't deserve to be on the "best of all time" list (although I would hotly argue against CAH) but is this really the best games of all time? Surely there are games more interesting and exciting that deserve to bump a few of these off this list?

...OR is this list a challenge to us game designers who are trying to make a mark? I think we game designers can learn from this list because, like it our not, it shows us our competition.

Let's look at some common factors about all of these games:

1. Almost half of the games are over 50 years old.

Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Chinese Checkers, Sorry!, Monopoly, Twister, Dominos, Risk, Stratego, Candyland, Clue, The Game of Life, Mastermind, Password, Battleship, Operation, Don't Break the Ice, Mouse Trap, Chutes and Ladders, Trouble, Yahtzee, And Cribbage - with several (Uno, Mad Gab, and Hungry Hungry Hippos) creeping up on 50.

The "problem" with these games is that they are institutions. Games that have become part of the social consciousness although the consciousness of this list is very Euro/Western-centric list - where is Mahjong, Go, or Parcheesi?

These are games whose imagery is burned in our collective brains. If you were to go outside right now (OK, use social media instead) and if you asked people to "name a board game" 75% (if not more) of the people asked would answer one of games on the above list**.

These are games that are considered "evergreen" games. Games that have sold for decades. I guarantee if you were to go to Hasbro and ask which would you rather publish, Clue or my new game? You know who is going to win out. In a way, those successful games keep our new games off the shelves.

This is a "problem" for us game designers. Unlike video games, board games never really age or go out of fashion. Their graphics don't look dated (mostly) and their hardware doesn't fail over time.

"Every game is our competition" someone once said***. This makes it really tough (and frankly, stupid) to say "I am going to design the next (fill-in-the-blank-game-from-the-above list)" because those games are so cemented in humanity's collective brains that they aren't going to get unseated any time soon. And we shouldn't even try.

At the 2019 Tabletop Network Conference, Martin Wallace advised game designers to "not grow your tree in the shadow of a bigger tree" - which I think is a great metaphor... but it also makes our job that much harder.

Being original is HARD. (and some would say, it's impossible to be original any more - you can only be "novel" or "unique".) 

 

Look at the "youngest" games on the list - Dominion, Qwirkle (both 2008), Cards Against Humanity (2009), and Azul (2017). It's not unfair to say these games are "just" revised or rethemed versions of Magic the Gathering, Dominoes, Apples to Apples and Majhong. Is this a strategy to success? Simplify an already simple game or even just "make it prettier"?

 

2. Most (98%) of these games are for "all-ages".

Which really means that they are relatively easy to learn how to play (Agricola and Dominion being the list's exceptions). 

 

The hobbyist board game community often looks down on "easy to learn" and "simple" as a negative - as a game that isn't extremely complicated isn't worth our time. There's even a derogatory name for these type of simple games - "filler games" - as in these games just "fill the time" between bigger, more worthwhile games. We, as game makers, need to get over ourselves if we want to make games that stand the test of time like those games above and embrace (if not celebrate) simplicity.

 

3. None of these games are "genre" games.

None of these games are about the following genres: Fantasy, Science-Fiction, Superheroes, Westerns, Dungeons, Dragons, Cthulhu or Zombies. 

 

Five of these games are about warfare (and that's because the list-maker had a category called "strategy games"), two are about farming, one is about murder, one is about finance, and one is about traffic***.

 

Most of these games are abstract - meaning there is no story, no characters, no setting for these games. They are "first person" games where the player is "just" the player.

 

This observation says to me: "if you want your game to be successful, it needs to be relatable." It either needs to be about something that happens in real-life (like farming or traffic or murder) or that it exist in that abstract place where games seem to live - the realm of mechanisms over theme. 

 

Now, this one is a bitter pill for me to swallow. Despite being the creator of Pantone the Game, I'm a "theme first" kind of guy. Does this mean if I want to compete with the "big-boys" I need to think more abstractly?

 

4. These games are tactile.

While tactility is an important part of game design, these games are "not just card" games. Life, Monopoly and Traffic Jam have little cars. Candyland has gingerbread pawns. Scrabble, Dominoes, Qwirkle and Azul use chunky tiles. Chinese Checkers use marbles. Sorry uses cones. Pegs and Pawns. Meeples and Tokens. Some of them use "unusual" interface tools such as tweezers, hammers, modelling clay and even your own body parts. In fact, only 12 of the games on the list use cards at all.

 

These games are also "toyetic" - or have a toy-like quality to them. Mouse Trap is not much of a game, but it is one heck of a toy. There are two types of game makers out there. The "inventors" who make games for the mass-market companies: Hasbro, Mattel, Griffen, Wonderforge and the "game designers" who make games for everyone else. Whose games do you see more of on the shelf at your local big-box store?

 

5. Most of these games are for many players.

I think it's fair to say that most of these games are considered "kids" games or "party" games, but they are also for 4 or more players. 

 

There are some exceptions (Chess, Backgammon, Connect Four, Mastermind, Stratego) but as all games are social, the games on this list exploit the social aspect that board gaming caters to so well. 

 

See how many players it takes before your game "breaks" - either takes too long for players between turns or there isn't enough physical space around the board or enough cards to go around. The more players the better! (Pro-tip, you can break players into teams to maximize player count - that's how Pantone the Game plays 2-20 players!)

 

These games also encourage interaction amongst players, there no "multiplayer solitaire" or "parallel play" happening in these games. Keeping a player engaged in the game at all times should be a standard goal for any game designer... but I admit, sometimes I forget to think about it. (This is why I write this stuff down, dear reader)

 

So what is a game designer to do?

If we want to be competitive, take a long look at the competition... and then try to find your own spot to "plant your tree" - away from the air and water-sucking games on this list.

Design a game about a relatable activity for a group of people, that has a tactile element and is easy to learn. Then maybe next year we'll see your game***** on this list!

 

Footnotes:

* According to the interwebs, Better Homes and Gardens has a readership of somewhere between 7.6 and 30 million readers (!!!) - It's the third largest paid magazine circulation in the United States. That's a list worth getting on!

 

** As I was writing this blog post, I ran my own poll on social media. Granted, many of my friends are "gamers" who play and know about all types of board games, but even still, 75% of them listed a game from that list above as the game they think of when I say "Name a board game". Booyah! Right on the nose with my original estimation!

 

*** It might have been Rob Daviau who said this. I forget.

 

**** A game about traffic? Does this finally mean vindication for Randall Hoyt?

 

***** For the record, I would have replaced a few of the games on that list with Quiddler, Pandemic and Codenames.