Game Design – Nicolas Barriere

After nearly a year and a half of development, I can finally talk about this: Gangstar Vegas is now announced!

The project as been in development shortly after the Gangstar Rio launched in November 2011. It’s been a long time coming. Since that time, we worked with an entire different tool set and a significantly updated engine  that’s allowed us to create content and iterate a lot faster than in the past. We also strived with this game to make sure that the single player campaign is much more tight and better paced than in the past. A lot of people play the Gangstar games on their phone and tablets for large environments and a madcap storyline and I definitely think we’ve delivered on this.

In the past week over on Twitter, the main cast of characters as been progressively unveiled with portraits. First, Jason Malone, our protagonist.

Vera, an destitute crime boss holed up in Fremont.

Karen, Vera’s accountant, caretaker and personal hitwoman.

E-Man, an external associate of Vera’s known for his ability to concoct and sell just about anything. He will very probably be the standout amongst our cast, in my opinion.

The game is almost done and I cannot wait until it is out into the wild. Being involved from the start in this game, I am eagerly anticipating feedback from outsiders. It is terrifying in the best sense of the word.

I’m incredibly happy to announce that Gangstar Rio: City of Saints is now out for both iPhone and iPad. Android version will be released soon.

I worked as a level Designer, helping produce content, fine tune gameplay and helping out with anything throughout production. It was a lot fun and hark work. This will be officially my first game to be released while working at Gameloft Montréal! The first of many more to come, hopefully.

I’m so incredibly happy to announce that ENDI Tank Battle, one of my projects I helped create over at ENDI over the summer, is finally released for the Apple AppStore as a free app. The game is available in both iTouch/iPhone and iPad versions. You can play a free version here!

Enjoy this trailer! If you have any feedback on the game, please post it here. I’d love to see some opinions.

I have learned a lot these past few months about being a game designer. My time at the National Institute of Digital Entertainment (ENDI) in Quebec City was an excellent way to put into practice all the academic knowledge I had acquired so far. I managed to help released 3 video game projects in the span of one summer and I am honestly amazed at how fun and incredible they turned out.

During my time at ENDI, I had the aid Jean-François Dessureault, senior game designer at Frima Studios. He taught and guided me through some of my initial errors and helped shape a lot of my current methods in applied game design and theory. I owe him a lot for my early success.

A few weeks ago while working, I listened to a great IGDA Wisconsin meeting showcasing talks from Raven Software and previous chapter president Manveer Heir. He presented five important lessons he had learned from his first 5 years in the gaming industry.

Having recently spent exactly 5 months developing my first games, I thought it couldn’t hurt to try and talk about my personal experiences. Here are some things I’ve learned about game design and development.

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The Sandbox level in ENDI Tank Battle is the first map experienced by the player. It is primarily the most iconic out of all the levels, having been spawned almost immediately during the first moments of production and having gone through several iterations to get to its current state. It embodies a lot of the ideas about childhood and exaggerated imagination the team and I wanted to include from the onset of the project.

I wanted to share the design ideas to better demonstrate the process behind the map and different areas encompassing it.

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D.N.A / A.D.N is an experimental game created in 36 hours for the Bivouac Urbain 2010 Game Jam. Inspired by the song “Dan Dan” by electronic group “Misteur Vallaire”, the player controls an avatar and must learn to evolve correctly by absorbing various combination of shapes, while always accelerating and avoiding gates that slow the player’s current speed. The game presents a very soothing atmosphere that opens the way for a relaxed play style.

This was a good opportunity and my teammates to try out a more artistic and emotive approach to creating games. Bivouac Urbain was the perfect place to experiment so we jumped on the opportunity. The game we ended up creating is unchanged from our initial concept. Many aspects of gameplay therefore came out frustrating at best. The game was built in 36 hours with a team of 5: 2 programmers, 2 artists and me as designer.

The game currently is not online. Thank you for understanding and enjoy some screenshots.

Flubs was my first project as game designer. It is definitely an important step for me, on a personal, emotional and professional level. I wanted to take the opportunity to write about one my first experiences at helping build a proper video game. You can play the game online by following this link.

I was selected as game designer by the National Institute of Digital Entertainment (ENDI) based on my previous experiences in multimedia, graphic/web design and 3D production. The way ENDI builds their teams for the development of their game projects is by recruiting graduate students from various fields (art, coding, design, etc) and combining everyone’s expertise on a single project.

Excitement and anxiousness begin to describe my state of mind back in April 2010 earlier this year. I knew I possessed good knowledge and culture of games, a solid grasp of core game design concepts and good communicative skills that would help me accomplish all tasks and challenges. Still, I worried a bit. Designers are often required to have a certain amount of leadership skills, which was something I previously had little familiarity with.

For the next few months, I would be spending around 20 to 30 hours per week working and tinkering on various aspects of the project such as establishing our pitch and initial concept, describing the game systems and mechanics and ultimately helping coordinate the direction our team took. At the same time, I was also splitting my workload by simultaneously developing an iPhone project at ENDI.

It was both hard work and a terrific learning experience. Luckily, our team bonded really quickly. With everyone’s help and support we managed to shape Flubs into a solid game.

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I am extremely happy to reveal the very first game I’ve had the pleasure of working on: Flubs! Flubs is a casual puzzle-action Flash game about construction and destruction. I was game designer on this project and it was a tremendous learning experience. You can play it here.

I am extremely happy to announce that I will be attending the National Institute of Digital Entertainment (ENDI) in Quebec City as game designer during their Spring/Summer 2010 semester. I’ll be in charge of the design and developments for video game two projects. I will be mentored by Frima Studio during my passage at ENDI. This is an exciting opportunity and I am overjoyed to be able to work with dedicated and passionate companies to produce outstanding work.