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Content Copyright 2022 Dominic Vincent D’Amico

THESIS STATEMENTS:
A Thesis Podcast About How Games Are Made

by
Dominic Vincent D’Amico

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND
JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)

August 2022

ii
Acknowledgements
Love and appreciation go out to everyone who helped make this happen, from the
game developers who made time for me and this project, to all the people who helped me do
this right. Extra love to my grandma, Patricia Tomczak.
I’d especially like to acknowledge Donald Montijo, Dilon Wallace, Todd Vocke, Jade
Chavez and the rest of the crew – family in spirit, though not in name.
Extreme gratitude to Sean Greene, Kelsey Stuart and Mary Murphy, who taught me not
only journalism, but to believe in myself.
Thanks to all the editors I’ve had, from Ryan, Whitney, Emily and Evan at the Moorpark
Reporter to Kai, Steven and Kaitlyn at USC Annenberg Media. I’d promise to stop cutting it so
close to deadlines, but we all know it’ll never happen
I’d also like to thank Joe Skrebels, Dale Driver and the rest of the IGN UK crew, as well as
Genie Chance – the kinds of journalist I aspire to be.
Finally, musical thanks to DEMONDICE, Run The Jewels, DRAMA, Justin Townes Earle,
Pallbearer, Eternal Champion, Chris Christodoulou, Denise Chaila, A Tribe Called Quest, De La
Soul, Refused, Myrkur, The Ugly Kings, Fuckin Whatever and the entire genre of punk music.

Copyright
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ or
send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements + Copyright ……..……………………………………………………………………………………………...ii
Abstract .…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. iv
Preface …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………… v
Podcast Link …….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1
Episode Transcripts ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
Episode Zero – Why Games? ............................................................................................................ 2
Episode One – Initial Ideas …………………………………………………………………………………………….… 10
Episode Two – First Steps ………….…………………………………………………………………………………….. 27
Episode Three – Considering the Audience ……………………………………………………………….…… 40
Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 53
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 56
iv
Abstract
Games are a unique form of mass media. Not only are they interactive, but they
encourage interactions and engagement. Sure, this could mean the typical toxic interactions
between teenagers in multiplayer lobbies of the latest and greatest games. But that’s boring
and depressing. The more interesting thing is by far the ideas and people who make a video
game. After all, each game is the culmination of a serious endeavor to turn a collection of ideas
and concepts into something that the average person can pick up and engage with. With that
in mind, I decided to look into how the process of making a game gets started. The podcast
“Thesis Statements” is the culmination of that work.
“Episode Zero – Why Games?” is an introductory episode that delves into the
importance of this topic and why I chose it. I called it an episode zero because it’s not strictly
necessary to the rest of the series. It’s meant as a declaration of legitimacy of sorts. Games are
often looked down upon compared to film and television, so I wanted to explore that a bit and
counterargue.
“Episode One – Initial Ideas” explores how the people who make games get their ideas.
This episode serves as the start of the series proper and introduces some of the wide array of
individuals who appear throughout the project.
“Episode Two – First Steps” delves into how developers go about turning their ideas into
something tangible.
“Episode Three – Considering the Audience” is built on the fact that games are – by
nature – interactive. It examines how developers take their audience into account, both in
terms of ensuring the intended experience for the average player and in terms of accounting
for individuals with disabilities.
v
Preface
This document is a construct. It’s a cheap replacement, meant to represent my work.
Don't get it twisted. I wrote this document in its entirety, formatted it and even checked
it twice. This complete document is my original creation. But it serves a farcical academic
system that refuses to recognize the realities of the fields it lords over.
My thesis is the audio podcast that I put my soul into reporting, recording and editing.
My thesis is the finished audio reviewed by and polished through feedback from Lisa Pecot-
Hébert, David Matorin and Gordon Bellamy. My thesis is where you can hear the passion,
emotion and experiences in the voices of the individuals I spoke to. My thesis is the audio that
people would stream through Spotify, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts or any number of other
services in the real world. To meet the accessibility needs of deaf/hard-of-hearing individuals,
I’d write the podcast up into an article that reads much more smoothly than a straight
transcription.
The scripts in this document were made just for this document. They accurately reflect
the content of my podcast, but they are not the scripts I used during production. The scripts I
used during production were color-coded, the quotes inside pockmarked by strikethroughs
and timecodes to help me – and me alone. The summary here is something that should not
exist. My podcast is itself a summary of my research and reporting, yet I had to produce a
summary of it. To summarize a summary is damned foolishness that serves no one.
To those reading this, if anyone, I appreciate you. I’m grateful you took the time to make
it through all of this. I’ve got a couple requests though. First, if you haven’t already, listen to the
actual audio. Second, do something to get the strictures of this system loosened. It kills off too
much of the creativity that I know – from experience – USC students have.
Anyways, peace.
Dominic D’Amico
1
Podcast Link
https://soundcloud.com/user-161015005/sets/thesis-statements/s-jzjZrQznh8E
2
Scripts
Episode Zero – Why Games?
T3: Intro Music Starts, then fades under (:8)
Dominic D’Amico: Hello, I'm Dominic D'Amico and welcome to “Thesis Statements,” the aptly
named podcast that I'm making as my thesis to cap off my time in USC's specialized journalism
program.
Here we're going to look into three different questions about the first steps of game
development. Namely, where do the initial ideas come from? Then, how do developers in the
various disciplines of game design start to turn those ideas into reality. And finally, how do
developers start to take their audiences into consideration?
Those questions are the meat of the coming episodes.
No doubt, those questions can stand on their own.
But first, I wanted to answer a fundamental question that I know many people have before we
get into that:
“Why games?”
There's a couple reasons why, and that's what this episode is dedicated to exploring.
So first, games tend to be looked down upon compared to other forms of media.
3
In a 2013 panel – at USC no less – acclaimed filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
criticized games as a form of storytelling.
The Verge reports Lucas as saying, "Telling a story, it’s a very complicated process. You’re
leading the audience along. You are showing them things. Giving them insights. It’s a very
complicated construct and very carefully put together. If you just let everybody go in and do
whatever they want then it’s not a story anymore. It’s simply a game."
1

Spielberg, for his part, is reported as saying gameplay takes players away from the emotional
connection of story moments and focuses them on pursuing the highest possible score
instead.
2

But some people have gone even further.
Renowned film critic Roger Ebert thoroughly trashed the medium in a 2005 column and
several times since then, and saying that the medium could never be considered art.
Ebert said, “I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship
to the stature of art… That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience I
accept, but for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have
available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.”
3

1
Bryan Bishop, “Lucas and Spielberg on storytelling in games: 'it's not going to be Shakespeare',”The Verge, June
13, 2013, https://www.theverge.com/
2
ibid
3
Ebert, “Why Did The Chicken Cross The Genders.”
4
Now those are some sharp words, especially since Spielberg and Lucas made “Indiana Jones
and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which Ebert then rated as a better film than “The
Prestige.”
4

5

6

Sidenote, contractual apologies go out to Professor Lyz Renshaw for mentioning the Indy film
that ought not be named. Its mention was unfortunate, but necessary, but it will not happen
again.
But back to business.
The second reason for making this series is that games mean a lot to me. I've played games
since I was young.
T3 “The Final Road” from “Pokémon Blue Version” plays underneath starting @
“Pokémon Blue,” then fading out towards the end. (:35)
The first game I ever played was “Pokémon Blue” and I played it on a Gameboy Color back
when I was four or five.
For those who have never played “Pokémon Blue,” it's a JRPG a Japanese role-playing game
with turn-based combat. Over the course of the game, you travel across the land, searching far
and wide for monsters to catch and form a team with.

4
Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg, executive produced by George
Lucas, (2008; Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures).
5
Ebert, “'Indiana Jones' in a universe of its own”
6
Ebert, “Now you see him...now you see him!”
5
The ultimate goal is to make it to the top of the Indigo League, defeat The Elite Four, then take
down the champion, thereby becoming the new champion yourself.
7

I must have played through that game a million times, and it's honestly one of the reasons I got
big into video games, 'cause see not only are video games a lot of fun, more importantly,
they're accessible.
See, I have asthma and when I was a kid it was really bad.
Now when your lungs are willing to stage a rebellion against the rest of your body everytime
you try to go out and play sports, sports aren't really your thing – and they definitely were not
my thing. But, with games my body didn't – and doesn't – get in the way.
Fast forward over two decades, and that's also one of the reasons I decided to become a
games journalist.
I respect the medium both as entertainment and as an art form, and that's me.
But the final reason for “Why games?” is that I'm not unique. There are a TON of people out
there who love games just like I do, people who have dedicated their careers and their free
time to the medium.
For this project, I've talked to a lot of them.

7
“Pokemon Blue Version”
6
I've talked to a lot of people who work in the various disciplines of game development.
I've talked to artists, directors, engineers, designers, all sorts of people who like me have the
greatest respect for the medium.
Now one thing I tried to do during the interview process was ask these developers what games
meant to them.
“Skylost” director Charlie Anderson said,
T2 CHARLIE ANDERSON: I consider it, like, the ultimate art form. I think of it as artistic
output. I think you can do stuff in games that you can’t do in any other form that has
the possibility of connecting emotionally, very deeply with its audience. Being able to be
in the art itself, to interact with it is – I think – an unparalleled, un-replicateable thing
that is unique to the form of games and media. To me personally, it is just, I guess, my
favorite thing. (:32)
8

Dorian Trinh, art lead and UI artist on “Bounty Heart” felt similarly.
T2 DORIAN TRINH: See, I really do feel like it’s not just a piece of entertainment. It’s like
an interactive narrative, an interactive story. It’s a way a team can express their
creativity in a way that is not just, let’s say like a TV show or a movie, where it’s a very

8
Charlie Anderson, interview conducted by author.
7
passive form of media. You’re a lot more engaged with this fictional world that you
created. Also, it’s a very good opportunity to contribute something new. (:26)
9

And “Impasto” lead producer Ria Xi was riding that same wavelength as Anderson and Trinh.
T2 RIA XI: I think a lot of times, even myself as a game maker, I associate games with
like, you know, more silly fun. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, the world
needs things that are not all that serious where you can just let yourself go for a bit. But
for me now, I saw the power of games to convey a serious message, and even as a
serious medium itself. And through interactivity and immersion, we have the ability to
really show emotion in way that could have never happened compared before to other
medium. I had more faith in the versatility of games and its power to affect the world.
(:43)
10

Jeffrey Yohalem is currently a narrative director and lead writer at Ubisoft. He's known for
writing games like “Far Cry 3,” “Immortals Fenix Rising” and “Child of Light.” For Yohalem, games
can help make real world interactions easier, although they are absolutely no substitute for
reality.
T2 JEFFREY YOHALEM: I feel like in our world interaction with other people is incredibly
challenging and not everyone is great at it. And if you're not great at it, you end up
feeling very isolated. There's a lot of stress and anxiety in social interaction for a lot of

9
Dorian Trinh, interview conducted by author
10
Ria Xi, interview conducted by author
8
people, and so I feel like a game allows you to interact to have a conversation with
other people, with the creators of that game, in a way that's safe and allows you to
experiment with the world without getting hurt. And so, you can live and experience
and live interactions with the world and learn from those interactions. Games are still
no substitute for reality. You can't live vicariously through a game in the same way.
Trying to do so is a mistake and a dead end. Games need to explore, again, aspects of
reality so that you can enhance your reality instead of… you know, they can't be a
replacement. There's no replacement for reality. (:53)
11

Yohalem makes an excellent point, as did Anderson, Trinh and Xi. Those four touch on the
same points I heard from pretty much everyone I talked with.
The potential for emotional connection, the potential for creative expression, that's what
games mean to these wonderful people.
And that's the final answer to the question “Why games?”
So, let’s take a moment to recap.
This project is dedicated to exploring the first steps in game design.

11
Jeffrey Yohalem, interview conducted by author
9
And I decided to make it about games in the first place because there are people out there
who don't see games as an artistic medium, as a fantastic storytelling tool or as something
capable of forming genuine emotional connections in the same way that books, film, television
and music do.
But despite that, I sit here as living proof of the opposite. And so do a number of other people
who have dedicated their lives and careers to video games.
I want this project to speak to and interest both groups.
I've certainly worked hard to get it there.
T3: Lead in ending music underneath ending V.O., raise volume after V.O. ends for a
period before a quick fade out to end. (:28)
So, thank you for listening to Episode Zero of “Thesis Statements.”
I'm Dominic D'Amico and hopefully you decide to check out the three main episodes of this
show.
For more quality journalism, keep an eye on USC Annenberg Media as well as USC’s specialized
journalism program.
Peace.
10
Episode One – Initial Ideas
Everyone who plays games has a game that sticks with them. Not everyone can pick a favorite.
I sure as hell can't.
But all gamers have particular moments from their gaming history that they'll never forget. I
could name a bunch, but the first one that comes to mind is the opening moments of
“Bioshock.” The downed plane, the lighthouse in the midnight seen the following descent to
Rapture are all iconic, and so is the rest of the game.
The dark, twisted, Art Deco depths of Rapture, the stark raving lunatics that stalk its streets,
and the grotesque submariner Big Daddys with their massive drill hands all have their place in
the history of the medium of video games.
But those opening moments set the stage for everything that follows after, but as a creation as
a work of art, “Bioshock” is similar. We see the awards, we see the acclaim, we see the books
written on it, and we sit at the feet of those who crafted it to learn from them. But the original
idea had to start somewhere.
T3: Cue Intro music full volume, then fade under V.O. (:16)
Hello, I'm Dominic D’Amico and welcome to “Thesis Statements.” In this most glorious first
episode, we're going to take a look at where games start. And we're going to start with that
question because it's a simple question, and the simple answer is it depends. But this is a USC
joint, which means I'm going to give you the complicated answer.
11
The reality is that the beginnings of a game depend on the outfit making it. But the first step in
developing an initial idea is to avoid two problematic mindsets.
Now, Richard Lemarchand is an experienced game designer and a professor at USC.
Lemarchand was the lead designer on the two “Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver” games as well as
the first three “Uncharted” games. He knows the process of game development well and has
even written a book on the topic called “A Playful Production Process,” which has been
published by MIT Press.
12

Now, Lemarchand described two key mindsets that can get in the way when starting a new
project.
T2 Richard Lemarchand: Starting a brand-new project is always a bit scary. That's one of
the hallmarks of starting something new, and we talk with our students a lot about two
related problems when creating something new. One is the blank sheet of paper
problem, and that's the problem that every writer or artist knows, where you're looking
at a blank sheet of paper. Where do you begin? It's like it's blank there's nowhere to
begin yet. Masterpiece syndrome is related and that's when you now have an
opportunity to maybe make a bigger project than you've made before, and you get
paralyzed by the responsibility. (:38)
13

12
“A Playful Production Process,” MIT Press
13
Richard Lemarchand, interview conducted by author
12
So, there we are. Those are the two main hurdles. One is simply the idea of starting from
nothing. The other is a fear of making something less than perfect. Ultimately though, those
issues tend to be solved by a combination of focused ideation, developmental constraints and
personal preferences.
“Bioshock,” for instance, started with a smattering of basic ideas and a general direction for the
game. Ken Levine served as a writer and the creative director on “Bioshock” and currently he's
president and creative director at Ghost Story Games.
T2 KEN LEVINE: I really start with game design elements. On “Bioshock” one, it was really
the sort of it was a combination of two things. It was one the team really wanted to a
game, sort of along the lines of “System Shock 2” and they were bugging me to do that
for a long time and I didn't want to because “System Shock 2” sold really poorly and I
was the guy at the company who not only wrote the games, but had to like go raise the
money. The only idea we had at the beginning that really sort of stuck was it was going
to be sort of similar to “System Shock 2” sort of a cross between RPG elements and
first-person shooter elements. And I had sort of the prototype concept for what the Big
Daddy and Little Sister eventually became. You know, this sort of, those sort of classes
of AIC, say “protector” class, that the sort of “helpless defended/ defender” class and
then a aggressor class.
13
T2: LEVINE (cont.): You know the Big Daddy, Little Sister and then these splicers but we
didn't have Rapture, we didn't have the Big Daddy, we didn’t have any of any of those
things. We just had them as sort of game design concepts. (:56)
14

So, there are couple important points to note there, especially relating to the blank page
problem mentioned by Lemarchand.
The first is the input of the wider team at “Bioshock” developer Irrational Games. They wanted
to make a game like “System Shock 2.” The mix of first-person shooter and role-playing game
elements helps nix the blank page problem. After all, if that's the kind of game the team is
aiming for, all the elements have to synergize in that direction.
“Turtle Town” Creative Director Michael Ford encountered something similar in putting
together the initial ideas for his game.
T2 MICHAEL FORD: So, I wanted to make a “cities on wheels” game I was into “Civ,” a lot
of city manager games and I was like what if you took that concept and put it in a
mobile setting where the city is moving around and I met up with one of my artist
friends from USC Games, Lauren Littleton. And she said, “Nobody is, nobody is going to
like big, ugly gears and stuff and plus I don't want to draw a bunch of big, crazy gears.
What if we put it on a turtle instead? Because a turtle sounds like something I'd, I'd
rather draw.” So, we, we pivoted away from kind of the, the whole industrial vibe and

14
Ken Levine, interview conducted by author
14
into the more forest critter vibe, but kind of kept that same central “city, but it moves”
concept at the heart of it. (:46)
15

And “Turtle Town” got made. Ford went on to direct the development, and Littleton served as
the art director on the project. The key thing to note though, is that collaborative effort.
Without the input of Littleton “Turtle Town” would not exist as it does today.
So that's the influence of a wider team, but Levine also mentioned a monetary component.
Levine mentioned having to go and pitch his team's idea to publishers. Now to successfully
pitch to a publisher, anyone going in has to have a clear sense of scope, a clear sense of what
they intend to accomplish over a set period of time and with a set amount of resources.
That is key. After all, building a video game is a massive endeavor. If a team’s ideas outstrip
their resources, they'll be unable to complete their project. Professor Jim Huntley knows this
well. See, Huntley runs USC's Advanced Games Projects program, which green lights a slate of
roughly 8-10 student-led games every year. Students looking to have their ideas developed as
AGPs actually have to go through a pitch process, part of which is pitching to a board of
individuals, which Huntley explained is meant to mirror how things work in the games industry.

15
Michael Ford, interview conducted by author
15
T2 JIM HUNTLEY: Sure, if you're going to go in for a green light in most companies,
depending on the scale of your project, you're going to have a large oak executive
boardroom that you're pitching and asking for a few million dollars or more from a
company. To say you have to trust me with this to get this job done and you've got to
make the case for why you think that you should get those resources. (:17)
16

And that's fair.
It's only natural for people and companies that want to put their resources behind something
that'll actually see the light of day.
These constraints, both financial and team preferential help nix the blank page problem to the
point where Ubisoft Lead Writer and Narrative Director Jeffrey Yohalem says it isn't really a
problem in games.
T2 JEFFREY YOHALEM: Because they're hugely collaborative medium, there really is no
blank page problem. There's always a set of limitations that the project gives you, and if
you think that there's a blank page, then you're missing out on what those limitations
are, and so the best thing that you can do at the very beginning is really look at and
figure out what the true limitations are.

16
Jim Huntley, interviewed by author
16
T2 JEFFREY YOHALEM (cont.): If this is a story that's going to be set under the sea
because of water technology, then that's a very substantial limitation already, and
everyone on the project has something that they want. The level design director wants
something the art director wants something, and if you don't respond to those
limitations and ignore them, you'll probably be booted off the team eventually because
you're making a game that's not the game the other people on the team are making.
(:43)
17

Yohalem makes a great point. If you're working with other people, they're going to want to
have a say in what the final product is gonna look like. Sure, you could work solo, but even
then, there are the limits of time, money and technology.
Lemarchand spoke to the existence of natural constraints as starting points as well. Going into
what would eventually become “Uncharted: Drake's Fortune” at Naughty Dog, Lemarchand
explained,
T2 RICHARD LEMARCHAND: Heading into the creation of what we didn't yet know as
“Uncharted,” what we just knew would be a new game series made by Naughty Dog,
who had previously made the “Crash Bandicoot” games, and the “Jak and Daxter”
games, and that it was going to be for the PlayStation 3, which at the time was
unreleased new Sony hardware.

17
Jeffrey Yohalem, interviewed by author.
17
T2 LEMARCHAND (cont.): Obviously, we knew that we wanted to make a storytelling
character-action game that pushed the envelope beyond what we'd done before with
the “Jak and Daxter” series. So, we had that as a as another starting point, aside from
the PlayStation 3. (:38)
18

Lemarchand also directly addressed how he and the team and Naughty Dog dealt with
Masterpiece syndrome going into “Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.”
T2 RICHARD LEMARCHAND: You can imagine that we may have had some masterpiece
syndrome heading into the creation of what we didn't yet know was “Uncharted.”
However, we did begin with some degree of confidence because Naughty Dog has
always, or at least in my time at Naughty Dog, skewed a little older, so we all had a good
amount of experience behind us and we knew something about beginning a project
and we knew that the best way to begin a project is to just get on and make stuff. (:30)
19

The key there, as Lemarchand so clearly put it, is to just get on and make stuff.
Just start generating ideas and worry about what works and what doesn't later. And there are a
few ways to go about that. In our chat, Lemarchand discussed three main ways to start
generating ideas, which he further details in his book “A Playful Production Process.”

18
Richard Lemarchand, interview conducted by author
19
Ibid.
18
These are research, blue-sky thinking, and prototyping.
So, let's dig into these, starting with research.
Now research is simple. If you have a particular direction or topic in mind, or dictated by the
natural constraints of a project, you can look for inspiration from existing sources that
happened in developing out the idea for the first “Uncharted” game. In our chat Lemarchand
recounted how, during the development of what would become “Drake's Fortune,” Director
Amy Hennig sat down with a stack of classic action-adventure films and used those as research
material to really identify and nail down the hallmarks of genre.
20

So that's research with a direction. The team at Naughty Dog knew they wanted to make a
character-driven action-adventure game so they dug that direction.
And that's all well and good, but free, undirected research can help as well.
Just looking into interesting topics can trigger an initial idea.
The 2022 game “Impasto” started that way. “Impasto” is a heavily atmospheric first-person 3D
adventure game that sends players into a world based on the life and Black Paintings of
Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

20
Richard Lemarchand, interviewed by author
19
Alex Tomkow directed the full development of the game as part of USC Games’ AGP program,
for roughly a full year starting in May 2021. The initial idea, though Tomkow traces back to a
singular encounter with one of Goya's paintings.
T2 ALEX TOMKOW: I saw his painting, one of the Black Paintings actually, which is called
“Saturn Devouring His Son,” and it's a really horrifying, beautiful painting and I saw it for
the first time, probably around two years ago and it just sort of really stuck with me.
That particular painting just really gets in your head and I think that's part of the power
of these paintings in general. But it just would not leave and so I started diving into, you
know, “Who made this, what was his deal?” and just really dived head first into just
learning as much as I could about paintings, what they mean, what people think they
mean and who Francisco Goya was and why he made these paintings. So that was how
my interest in Goya started. And obviously I'm a game designer, so my immediate
thought was like: “What would this be like as a game?” (:55)
21

So, research is clearly a useful tool for generating ideas, but there's a level of intentionality to
that. You have to decide who to go out and interview, what films to watch, what books to read.
Blue-sky thinking is much more freeform. The goal is just to come up with ideas and get them
down whether it be on paper, wax or transistor. The ideas can be sorted, dissected, analyzed
and judged for potential later, but the whole point is to create places to start from.

21
Alex Tomkow, interviewed by author
20
Of course, some will be trash. Others won't. Some won't pan out, others will.
One way to do it is just to write down ideas in a notepad as they hit throughout daily life.
That's how the 2022 game “Skylost” got started. See “Skylost” Director Charlie Anderson had
the original idea for the game walking through the Sierra Nevada Mountains on a bright blue
January day.
22

He and his girlfriend Amy were hiking up to the Franklin Lakes, and as they walked through a
valley covered in an inferno of wildflowers, something about the scenery sparked an idea for a
game in Anderson’s head.
23
He imagined an archipelago anchored in the sky and threaded with
airborne pirates.
24

Anderson tapped the idea out into his phone and went back to the hike, but he came back to
the idea later.
25
Anderson worked the concept over for a bit, eventually developing it out into a
pitch.
26

The idea must have been a good one, after all it was approved for production around May
2021 as one of USC's AGPs. Now, roughly a year later, it's a published game. You can go out
and play it right now.
And something similar happened in developing the visual look of “Bioshock” as well.

22
Charlie Anderson, interviewed by author
23
ibid
24
ibid
25
ibid
26
ibid
21
T2 KEN LEVINE: We had this notion of this underwater city and a sort of Randian
character at some point, and I think that was sort of what we were kicking around, like
what the world would be like. Well, what would the time setting would be? And we
started thinking about, you know, the time that Rand coming up. Her big successes
were like in the 30s and 40s and 50s and you know she was in New York and I grew up
near New York and my wife and I were on a trip to New York once, we went over to
Rockefeller Center, this part of New York City that is a, it's a, it's like a whole block and
it's all done in the same architecture. Now New York, normally any city has got a mix,
like a mishmash of architecture. This whole area has just this sort of Art Deco
architecture 'cause it was all created at once and I was like, “Whoa… what if like the
game looked like this, you know, it just looked very much like this?” And my wife and I
bought these you know these disposable cameras. And we just took pictures of
everything there. We took pictures of the, of the floors, and the ceilings, and the door
handles and the light fixtures and the, you know, the toilet stalls or whatever you know,
just everything. Brought it back to the team and I said, like “I think this is what our game
world looks like. (1:11)
27

It's this mentality, this “Hmm… Well, what about this?” approach that sits at the heart of blue-
sky thinking. One final example of this is the game “That's Not How It Happened.”

27
Ken Levine, interviewed by author
22
Rashomon-inspired and multi-styled it revolves around a family recollecting how their family
inn ended up burnt to the ground. Each recollection is styled based on the internal biases and
worldviews of each family member. It's a ton of fun to play, and the source of the original idea
is just as fun.
28

See as creative director Manny Menzel tells it he was watching a classic episode of the cartoon
“The Powerpuff Girls” one day. In it, the main characters recount to the mayor how they
rescued him, but each of the girls embellishes and emphasizes different things in their
retelling.
29

T3 - Excerpt from “The Powerpuff Girls” episode “The Bare Facts” (:15)
30

And to really hammer this home, each character – Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup – their
retelling has a different style of animation in this episode.
But, as Menzel was watching, he started to think about what the basic concept could look like
in a game.
31
And you see, that's the essence of blue-sky thinking. It's all about embracing
curiosity and taking note of the odd ideas that come through.
So, we've talked about research and we've talked about blue-sky thinking those are two key
places that games start, but there's one more avenue to stroll down, and that’s prototyping.
See, prototyping is about exploring and generating ideas through the work of game design.

28
Meny Menczel, interview conducted by author
29
ibid
30
Cartoon Network, “The Bare Facts,” Season 1, Episode 9, The Powerpuff Girls
31
Meny Menczel, interview conducted by author
23
As Richard Lemarchand tells it, prototypes aren't super complicated. They aren't meant to
demonstrate a final product. Prototypes are just meant to explore possible ideas for a game.
It's about making something small just to see how it works. As for how to prototype, there's no
single way to make one. You can hop into a piece of digital software like Unity and make
something that way if that's your flavor. Or you can play around with props and action figures
to see if anything sparks that way.
32
Or you can even make a physical prototype, something like
a board game, a card game, or some other sort of physical game to experiment with rules and
mechanics.
33

Lemarchand credits USC professor Tracy Fullerton for really advancing the use of physical
prototyping as well as for placing it at the heart of the game design process taught at USC.
34

And it deserves to be there. Much like research and blue-sky thinking, prototyping works.
In fact, the 2022 game “SPOOKULELE” started off that way.
So, besides being an amazing portmanteau, “SPOOKULELE” is a 2022 action-adventure RPG
that revolves around Haru and Spooky, two Reapers looking to lay a musical smack down on
some ghosts and stave off an endless night. But “SPOOKULELE” started off as a riff on a board
game.

32
Richard Lemarchand, “A Playful Production Process,” p. 21-28
33
ibid
34
Ibid, p. 24
24
See, back in their freshman year at USC, “SPOOKULELE” Lead Producer Weston Bell-Geddes
and Creative Director Sheehan Ahmed were paired together for a project.
The mission: To modify an existing board game called “Up the River” based on a given theme.
Bell-Geddes recalled,
T2 WESTON BELL-GEDDES: We were in the same class, in Game Design Workshop and
our professor put us together in a group. We had some sort of prompt that was like
make a game where it's like spooky but also, it’s a little, it's like funny and we were like
“What's funny and goofy? What about like a skeleton that plays the ukulele?” I had a
green ukulele in my apartment, so we made a board game using the box and the green
ukulele and now that green ukulele is in “SPOOKULELE,” it's what our protagonist uses
to for combat, and in that game Spooky – who’s the protagonist now – was the
antagonist, so it's completely taken a whole different form. (:35)
35

Ahmed remembers the original theme a bit differently, but agrees on the key game details.
T2 SHEEHAN AHMED: I think our theme was like four-players-versus-one-player, so it's
like a asymmetrical game, kind of like “Dead By Daylight.” So the game we made was
“SPOOKULELE.”

35
Weston Bell-Geddes, interviewed by author
25
T2 SHEEHAN AHMED (cont.): And it's funny because back then actually, Spooky – who's
like one of our protagonists – was actually the villain of the board game version, where
the one player played Spooky and he sat on top of this tower and played his spooky
ukulele in order to like set those four players back as they tried to like climb the tower
so it became the scheme of these four players are trying to climb the tower and help
each other out as they’re climbing it and Spooky is just constantly screwing them over
by playing his ukulele. (:43)
36

So, while that version of “SPOOKULELE” was a game on its own, that original iteration served as
a prototype. The version of “SPOOKULELE” you can go out and play now is radically different
from that original project.
That original version, though, served as a testing bed for ideas that Bell-Geddes and Ahmed
kept toying with, ideas that made it into the final product.
All right, so that's a lot of stuff we've gone over.
But before I call it for this episode, let's revisit that initial question: “Where do video games
start?”
The complex answer is that games start with individuals taking the time to be curious and
creative to look into odd topics, explore weird ideas or ask themselves, “Huh…What about
this?”

36
Sheehan Ahmed, interviewed by author
26
T3: Intro closing music underneath next line, then raise as V.O. for episode ends, before
a quick fade out after a reasonable couple beats.
So, thank you for listening.
I'm Dominic D'Amico and this has been episode one of “Thesis Statements” and of course for
more content like this be sure to stay tuned to USC Annenberg Media as well as USC’s
specialized journalism program.
Peace.
27
Episode Two – First Steps
DOMINIC D’AMICO: Ideas are great. Everyone got one too. Could be the next killer app, some
revolutionary product or some script they’re sure would sweep come Oscar season.
The problem is that most people never get around to turning their ideas into something
tangible. And games are no different.
All games from the must-plays to the never-mades started with ideas.
The difference between the two is that every single must-play game actually developed their
ideas into a final product.
But where do you start making something and how do you progress from there?
T3: Intro Music Starts, then fades under (:16)
Hello, I'm Dominic D’Amico and welcome to “Thesis Statements.” On this fantabulous
installment, we're going to explore how developers in the different disciplines of game design
go about making a game.
Now I say different disciplines of game design. That's because unless a team is super small,
there are usually different departments on a team that tackle different aspects of making a
game. Some of these disciplines include art, animation, sound, production, usability, and
accessibility.
28
But before we get into the process of how developers start to make something, let's establish
what they go into the process with.
The pure ideas and experimentation we talked about last episode are the first phase of the
development cycle of a game.
37

That phase is called ideation.
38
Coming out of ideation, a team should have a general idea of
where they want to go. The following phase, which is called preproduction, is about getting
everything loosely moving in the same direction. Loosely, because as “SPOOKULELE” creative
director Sheahan Ahmed explained, figuring out specifics comes through the creative process.
T2 SHEEHAN AHMED: It it's interesting because a lot of people think that, like you know,
the answer to… You’re making a game right, X, like “What is X?” And a lot of people think
you need to know the answer to that question before you start making it. And I don't
think that's actually true. I think it's, it's something you discover as you're making it.
“SPOOKULELE,” like it, it started as a board game that Weston and I made for a class
way back at the beginning of freshman year and then like developed into like this
action-RPG type game. Right? And even though like this game has been on my mind for
coming up on three years now, I think I can only confidently say that I know what
“SPOOKULELE” is within the past like… maybe at the beginning of this year, 2022. (:52)
39

37
Lemarchand, A Playful Production Process
38
ibid
39
Sheehan Ahmed, interviewed by author.
29
USC professor and experienced game designer Richard Lemarchand echoed that same
sentiment in his book “A Playful Production Process.”
Lemarchand wrote, “It's my belief that the right way to make games has a lot in common with
the way a painter makes a painting. We do preliminary sketches, we expand our original idea,
we stick our noses in books and do research, and eventually we're ready to grab a canvas and
draw sketches in charcoal. We then start to use oil paint over the sketches to create a finished
painting. Sometimes when we're halfway through the painting, it takes on a life of its own and
leads us in new directions that we hadn't anticipated.”
40

So, if a game is going to evolve through the process of its creation, how and where do
developers start?
Well, developers start by refining the ideas they have.
“Skylost” Lead Designer Parwesh Rallapalli was one of the first individuals to join the “Skylost”
team after it was approved for production as a USC Advanced Games Project, roughly around
May 2021, when Rallapalli joined, his starting points were the things that had been included in
“Skylost” director Charlie Anderson’s pitch.
So, moving into the summer, Rallapalli set about really nailing down the basic mechanics of
“Skylost.”

40
Lemarchand, A Playful Production Process, p. 72-3
30
T2 PARWESH RALLAPALLI: Over the summer, much of our time was spent just figuring
out “OK, what, what are the basic things that a player can do in in this game?” There's a
glider right now. It feels pretty sweet. It could probably be better, but it we like it
enough that I would like the glider to stay, but we don't have… Once you fall, there's not
really a way for you to get back up. So, a big focus for us pretty much until first playable
actually, 'cause this actually took a while, is “What is the method by which you can
climb?” You're in a sky world, you use a glider and it can only… you know it keeps
descending as you're moving. So, after it descends, how you actually get back up was
actually probably the biggest question we, we started off with on the design side. (:44)
41

So, for Rallapalli, it was a matter of focusing and enhancing those starting components. But this
focusing approach isn't unique to Rallapalli.
Justin Sindecuse-Hayden served as lead designer on the 2022 AGP “Charon.” He joined the
“Charon” team soon after the game was approved for production, roughly around May 2021.
The first thing Sindecuse-Hayden set himself and his designers loose on was research to nail
the feel for the game.
T2 JUSTIN SINDECUSE-HAYDEN: Designers can kind of hit the floor running right off the
bat. As soon as we know the general experience goals from the director, the game idea,
a general direction of maybe what the narrative might be.

41
Parwesh Rallapalli, interviewed by author
31
T2 SINDECUSE-HAYDEN (cont.): Mid-summer so we started with like a game macro I did
it, me with like three, maybe four other designers, where we went over, you know the
different beats, the different like player actions that we were thinking, and some like
initial reads on what we were thinking on regarding the idea. After that I assigned some
sort of research tasks. One of the things that we really took inspiration from was dark
rides at theme parks like Disneyland and stuff like that. And a dark ride at a theme park
kind of describes a ride that is on water. It's a… you, you kind of sit in a boat with a
gaggle of people and you go down this sort of like narrative adventure at a theme park.
Yeah, that's where we got a lot of inspiration from early on, and that's where I kind of
feel like we did sort of hit our experience goal. I do feel like that's something that our
game actually does hit pretty well as it does… if you, if you looked at the game and I told
you this is a future dark ride coming to a theme park only made in a video game.
People would be like, “Ah, perfect. This makes absolute sense.” (1:13)
42

That approach makes sense.
“Charon” follows the titular ferryman, as he escorts a departed spirit through the underworld in
his boat. Boats are limited to the rivers and streams they travel upon, so dark rides are a great
place to look for tips, tricks and inspiration.

42
Justin Sindecuse-Hayden, interview conducted by author
32
Also, Sindecuse Hayden is right about the dark ride influences shining through. I've played
“Charon” and I saw the influence of these rides in the final experience.
You don't have to take my word for it though, as I'm laying this podcast down on silicon,
“Charon” is available for free on itch.io.
43

But moving on, Rallapalli and Sindecuse-Hayden both led the design teams on their respective
projects. But their approach, that focusing and sharpening of ideas isn't limited to their
discipline.
Sarah Yuen served as the animation lead on “SPOOKULELE.” Yuen joined the team soon after
the project was greenlit.
T2 SARAH YUEN: I started making 2D sketches. So, I just went through like three-hit
combo, jump, run, walk for all the characters making 2D animations of how they might
look like. We like manage our entire game through Discord, so we have like separate
Discord channels for animation and design, engineering. So, I'll just like drop whatever
I've done to the animation channel and then all of the designers and our creative
director are watching that channel and they'll like give me feedback on my animation, if
it's like what their vision is, and I'll like give them another iteration based on their
feedback.

43
“Charon,” itch.io.
33
T2 SARAH YUEN (cont.): The same thing with like 3D animations, I would like first make a
very rough 3D animation and then drop it in the animation channel and then based off
their feedback, I'll go in and do the final polish. (:50)
44

Yuen’s approach shows that same focusing that Rallapalli and Sindecuse-Hayden talked about.
But there's another important point in there to note. And that's the iterative process. Yuen
didn't just full commit to whatever direction she saw fit. She was constantly seeking feedback
from her teammates and the project leads and making small changes and adjustments until
things were in a place everyone could be happy with.
It's a smart thing to do.
Probably why it's part of the process.
If something is not going to work, it can get caught before excess time and resources gets sunk
into it.
Justin Ma is an artist and co-designer at developer Subset Games – the studio behind the
excellent games “FTL: Faster Than Light” and “Into The Breach.” Responding to questions via e-
mail, Ma said “Iterating for us is usually a lot of playing a small prototype, figuring out what is
fun and then expanding on that feature. We gradually keep pushing it until we can imagine
how it would work as a full game.”
45

44
Sarah Yuen, interviewed by author
45
Justin Ma, emailed response to questions from author.
34
“This means it's very likely significantly different from our original idea. Very rarely is any idea
for a game/feature/system good from inception. It usually has to be altered and refined over
multiple iterations before it actually becomes a good idea. This period of iteration on the tiny
details is punctuated with periods of taking a step back and looking at it as a whole to figure
out if this direction will achieve the type of vision for the game as a whole that we hoped for.
With “Into The Breach,” there were multiple times we spent six months on the design before
taking a step back and realizing it doesn't serve our needs and scrap it. This type of
development can be very draining and probably only works with very small team sizes.”
46

Ma makes a great point and his caveat is noted. After all, Subset Games is one of those small
outfits.
According to Subset Games’ website, the main team is just Ma and one other person,
Programmer and Co-designer Matthew Davis.
47

But the overall process of working and sharpening existing ideas still holds across different
team sizes. That includes major AAA productions as well.
Ken Levine – currently president and creative director at Ghost Story Games – served as the
creative director on “Bioshock.”

46
ibid
47
“Contact Info,” Subset Games
35
T2 KEN LEVINE: The only idea we had at the beginning that really sort of stuck, was it
was going to be sort of similar to “System Shock 2” and I had sort of the prototype
concept for what the Big Daddy and Little Sister eventually became, you know, those
sort of those sort of classes of AI. A “protector” class, and a sort of “helpless defended,
defender” class and then a “aggressor” class. We just had them as sort of game design
concepts and um… You sort of put that in a bowl and you mix it up and then you add
something else, right? And then you sort of taste it to see how that tastes right? And
you can add something else and you see how that tastes, and then each put that in.
And suddenly, oh, and then it tastes bad. But fortunately, unlike… unlike a cookie mix or
something. You can take stuff out of the mix in games. So, you know you're adding
things, you're taking things out, you're adding things, and the flavor just keeps changing
over time and you really just want to keep going and you and you're like “Does this
make the whole thing taste better or does it make it taste worse?” (:57)
48

That's quite a bit of information there, so let's break that down. Levine started with some initial
concepts.
Sweet, nothing new. We went over that last episode.
From there though, it became a progressive process of gradually focusing and adding to initial
concepts the same way that it did with the other games we've talked about here.

48
Ken Levine, interview conducted by author.
36
A key component of this process, though, is feedback. We heard from Sarah Yuen earlier, who
talked about dropping her iterations in the team Discord channel so her teammates could
offer feedback, and we just heard Ken Levine talk about “tasting” the mix of game elements.
Honest feedback from people who know what they're talking about is incredibly important. Like
we heard earlier, projects evolve and change over these iterations. Getting good feedback can
help nix bad ideas, quick.
“SPOOKULELE” Creative Director Sheehan Ahmed explained,
T2 SHEEHAN AHMED: Really, it… Kind of what I was saying with like “you don't know
your game until you're in the thick of making it.” And back then, like… when you're
starting out with a game idea and all you really have is an idea… I think my, my friend
put it best where like it just kind of manifests as this burning fire in your chest that you
can't really find the words to describe just yet. You don’t, you don't know the specifics,
but you know… like you see, like flashes of images when you close your eyes. So, like
these are the types of things that I want this type of a game to impress upon an
audience, right? And honestly, in the beginning it's a lot of guesswork. It's a lot of taking
shots in the dark, and God knows some of my some of my initial ideas were pretty bad,
some of my team members will tell you they had to convince me off of some really bad
initial ideas. I don't know if Mitchell will ever hear this, but... (:58)
49

49
Sheehan Ahmed, interviewed by author.
37
It's like Ahmed said, credit to the Mitchells of the world who help keep things in check.
But now I want to pivot. Not physically, of course. That probably wouldn't be too good for the
sound quality on this.
Instead, I want to pivot to the production side of things.
We've talked about creative disciplines and their process, but production helps keep the
process working smoothly.
Eli Bork served as the lead producer on “Charon.” As Bork put it, his job was to help enable the
design process.
T2 ELI BORK: The job of a lead producer is to make sure that the game gets made, so
I'm not actually making levels or programming in the game, unless sometimes
something really needs to be done and then I pick it up. But a lot of what I'm doing is
keeping track of what work is being done, how fast it's being done, but also finding
things like if there are big technical glitches or bottlenecks that people are experiencing,
help them figure that stuff out. I also manage all of our communication with the
program faculty. So, we do biweekly reviews of the game when I make presentations
that we show to them and also handle most of our e-mail communication with them to
talk about the game’s problems and also manage their expectations for what we're
going to be doing. (:42)
50

50
Eli Bork, interviewed by author.
38

That's pretty simple when we break it down. The production team please support on the
project so that the spice can flow, and if a game is to be made, the spice must flow.
Alan Karbachinsky served as the lead designer on “Impasto.” Karbachinsky joined the project
almost immediately after it was approved, roughly early May 2021, but he intentionally held off
on his design role for the first couple months of production.
T2 ALAN KARBACHINSKY: I actually started, for the first… at least two-and-a-half months,
not designing. I was producing because we had no producer, we had no lead producer
and I saw that as a really huge red flag for us because we needed to first and foremost
be organized and have everything laid out on the table in terms of like procedures and
“What are our deadlines?” and “What do we need to work towards to get there?” and
“How are we making onboarding on the team a smooth, efficient process?” like “Are we
making tests for people?” and so forth. And, and I actually before Imposto had
production experience on the year before’s AGP as lead producer. So I actually spent
the first half of this summer I was essentially playing as lead producer and juggling a
majority of the responsibility in that role until we found an actual lead producer that I
kind of showed them the way and transitioned kind of all of the responsibility over to
them so that I can smoothly kind of revert back to being a lead designer. (1:15)
51

51
Alan Karbachinsky, interviewed by author.
39
That really speaks to just how important the production side of things is.
After all, like Karbachinsky mentioned, it's important to have everyone on a project aware of
dates, deadlines and procedures. It's also important to have all of that documented and
available so that anyone who joins up later in the process can do so as smoothly as possible.
Well, so we've talked about a lot.
Let's take a moment to recap and then we'll call it for this episode.
We started with the question “How do game developers start to turn ideas into games?”
The answer is that developers across disciplines work to add to and focus their starting ideas
through a gradual iterative process. This process is helped along by regular useful feedback
and tight coordination.
T3 Cue ending music under V.O. Raise volume after V.O. ends and let run for a
reasonable couple beats before a quick fade out.
And with that, thank you for listening.
I'm Dominic D’Amico and this has been episode two of “Thesis Statements.”
Of course, for more content like this, be sure to stay tuned to USC Annenberg media as well as
USC‘s specialized journalism program.
Peace.
40
Episode Three – Considering the Audience
DOMINIC D’AMICO: It might seem obvious by this point, but I'm hopelessly in love with games.
Yes, as a medium for telling stories, but also as a hobby, as a way to have fun.
Between you, me and the committee members I press ganged into listening to this, this entire
project is coming down to the wire as I record. Probably more than it should, because
shoutout to “Elden Ring” and “Destiny 2”
Now for the past two episodes of these statements we've talked to developers about coming
up with ideas and developing those ideas out. But those questions could be applied to other
mediums. In this episode I want to bring in the factor that sets games apart: Players.
Games are made to be played. They actively work to challenge their consumers and will
prevent them from moving forward should they fail to rise to the challenges set. There's a
reason that game over screens exist after all. But developers don't want their games to be
impossible to understand or beat. That would just turn players off.
So how do developers go about making sure their games hit the mark with the people who
play them?
T3: Cue Intro music full volume, then lower under V.O. until a quick fade out after a
couple beats.
41
Hello, I'm Dominic D’Amico and welcome to “Thesis Statements.”
Today we're going to take a look at how the people who make games take their players into
consideration, how developers work to ensure players are going to be able to pick up what the
team is putting down.
So first, let's define what we're talking about, because there are a few different ideas rolled up
in here. We're going to focus on two main ones: The intertwined disciplines of usability and
accessibility.
To put it simply, usability looks at how easy it is for average players to use the game as
intended. Accessibility is about making games usable by individuals with not so unique needs.
First, we're going to start with usability.
It might seem obvious, but the best way to check how easy it is for someone to play a game is
to have someone play the game. In his book, “A Playful Production Process,” USC professor and
experienced game designer Richard Lemarchand discusses a slate of different methods to test
a game.
52

There are informal methods of testing.

52
Richard Lemarchand, A Playful Production Process, p. 229-235
42
A developer can play something themselves, call it teammate over to play through, or even
bring in someone else who has design experience. That works well. It brings in a range of
expert opinions and doesn't require the setup that formal playtesting does. But there are
drawbacks. If a developer plays through something themselves, they're going to be going in
intimately familiar with how the bit of game works.
53

It's hard to go into something you've made yourself with fresh eyes on a regular basis.
I can testify. It's really hard to approach something I wrote, with fresh eyes, without taking a
step away for a while.
That's why teammates and peers are valuable.
But, those are all opinions steeped in knowledge of game design and development.
To test for the average player, developers need to get at fresh minds to get at people who have
never played the game before. The best way to do that is formal testing, which in game
development often takes inspiration from the user testing seen in the broader software
industry.
54

In formal playtests, developers watch people who have never played the game before, play the
game. Designers watch and interview participants to try and get measures of various things,

53
Ibid. p.230
54
Ibid, p. 231-2
43
including how much fun the players are having, whether players are having the intended
experience through the game, and whether any problems are getting in the way.
55

A fantastic example of this is “Halo 3.” In 2007, WIRED published an article by Clive Thompson
which examined the way game developer Bungie was testing their then-upcoming title.
56

Bungie – at the time owned by Microsoft – was approaching its playtests in an often scientific
manner.
57
They recorded playtesters’ facial expressions, button presses, and gameplay
footage.
58
They heat mapped where players died in multiplayer maps to make sure that no
starting side had an undue advantage and recorded player locations at regular intervals in
single player levels to make sure players were advancing at the desired rate.
59

This kind of testing is rigorous, but it lets developers make sure that players are getting the
experience that developers want them to have.
Another example of this is the fantabulous opening sequence of Arkane Studios’ 2017 game
“Prey.”
Now, I want to avoid spoilers, so I'll speak obliquely here.

55
Ibid, p. 231
56
Clive Thompson, “Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play” WIRED
57
ibid
58
ibid
59
ibid
44
In the opening sequence, there's a moment where something’s clearly off about the
environment around the player character. And to advance, the player needs to challenge the
reality presented to them by breaking something, resulting in a grand reveal.
Now, the brilliant documentarians at Noclip have an excellent documentary available on
YouTube which goes into great detail about the design of this level, complete with interviews
with the developers at Arkane who crafted the level.
60

A key problem with the sequence though, as Noclip explored was that there was a problem
with testing the big reveal. As Noclip’s Danny O’Dwyer phrased it,
T3 AUDIO CLIP FROM NOCLIP DOC: But for Arkane, it was important that this wasn't
something that was just shown to the player, but instead something they revealed
themselves. But this was pretty tricky. How do you tell somebody to escape if they don't
even know they're in a cage? (:15)
61

As it turns out, the solution was a lot of testing and adjusting. Arkane devs talked to Noclip
about making new hires play through the sequence, so they could test it on people who didn't
know the fundamental nature of the reveal already.
62
The devs talked about making sure
nothing in the environment could be used to trigger the reveal early and even pathing in an
alternate route that could trigger player curiosity in a different way.
63

60
“How Prey's Mind-Bending Opening Level Was Designed | Noclip,” Noclip, YouTube
61
ibid
62
ibid
63
ibid
45
Now, I hear what you're saying. You're saying “Dominic, those are AAA studios with massive
budgets and huge staffs – phrasing. How on Earth could smaller developers do that?”
Well, fair play.
Not everyone can go as hard into usability testing as Microsoft and Bungie did for “Halo 3.” But
smaller devs still test their work thoroughly.
I had the chance to sit down and chat with “Skylost” Usability Lead Hang Yang about his
process testing “Skylost” during its development.
T2 HANG YANG: So basically, we do the testing over Discord for better live streaming
quality obviously, because compared to Zoom it has better FPS. And after that we run
playtests and we also… in the meantime we also used OBS studio to record everything:
The gameplay, the camera and the audio. And after that we edit the footage a little bit,
trying to highlight what the problem is.
So, my job is try to review the whole footage, and to edit the footage and try to find the
problem, what caused this problem. For example, there’s a dragon in our game. Right?
But previously it has no shader, so it's blank white, so the player is kind of like confused
about it. The first impression to the players that this flying creature is not hostile, is
friendly, so they come near to him, and come near to the dragon and try to like ask for
a ride which is contradict to our original design, right?
46
So I edit a short clip and show the the problem, where the problem is and send it back
to Charlie – our director – and then we're going to sit down together and try to figure
out how to solve this problem. And after we have a solution, especially when we
actually implement it in the next build right, I have to test it again, to check whether this
solution actually solves the problem. (1:32)
64

All right, so let's take a moment and break that down.
Basically, Yang ran test versions of the game by players, recorded footage and analyzed it to
see what needed work, then took that to the various leads to get those things fixed.
The key bit is the frequent testing.
Justin Ma, artist and co-designer at Subset Games, said that Subset puts a great deal of work
into trying to get the player experience just right.
Responding to questions via e-mail, Ma said “Early on in development, it's mostly just us or
close friends playing nonstop to see if we're having fun. However, we're always worried about
whether or not the end user will be able to enjoy it the way we do. We put a lot of effort into
altering the mechanics and UI to make the game as easy to understand as possible.
It took ages to get Into the Breach's "perfect information" style UI to be clear to people and it
often meant limiting the gameplay to be easier to understand for players.

64
Hang Yang, interviewed by author
47
For example, the reason nearly every attack in that game only applies to orthogonal directions
is because it was really hard for people to picture how to use complex weapons without
manually aiming to see the targeting range of every attack.
We therefore heavily limited the complexity of weapons to make sure people could more able
to imagine solutions by simply looking at the game board - something that was a high priority
for us.”
65

So that's usability we've talked about. But what about accessibility?
Well, let's start off by talking about what accessibility in games actually is. The simplest
definition is that accessibility is about adding options to games that allow individuals with
disabilities to still play and enjoy the experience.
It's about accommodating individuals with not so uncommon impairments.
Take color blindness, for instance, according to the National Eye Institute, which is part of the
National Institutes of Health, 1-in-12 men are colorblind. That’s about 8%.
66

They'll have a much harder time playing a game, if that game relies on colors they can't
differentiate between.
Individuals with hearing issues might not be able to hear dialogue as clearly. And there are
issues of mobility as well.

65
Justin Ma, emailed response to questions from author
66
“Color Blindness,” National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health
48
According to The Ohio State University, over 3 million people worldwide have arm
amputations.
67

But, there are other conditions that can affect mobility as well.
According to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service: In the UK alone, roughly 70,000
individuals have muscular dystrophy, or a related condition.
68

Now, if you're missing the ability to use an arm or two, it's unlikely you're going to be able to
use a mouse and keyboard or gamepad in the same way that someone with full mobility can.
So how do devs make their games more accessible?
Well… it takes work. Massive studios like Naughty Dog can do a lot. For “The Last of Us Part II,”
Naughty Dog worked with accessibility advocates during development and ended up including
over 60 different accessibility options in the final product.
69

The efforts won widespread acclaim. IGN awarded it their most “Advancement in Accessibility”
award for 2020.
70
Reviewers at the site Can I Play That?, which focuses on reviews for disabled
individuals lauded its options for blind and deaf/hard-of-hearing gamers.
71

72

67
“Limb Loss Stats,” The Ohio State University
68
“Overview – Muscular Dystrophy,” National Health Service
69
Matthew Gallant, “60+ settings make this Naughty Dog's most accessible game yet,” PlayStation Blog
70
Steve Saylor and Courtney Craven, “Noteworthy Advancement in Accessibility for 2020,” IGN
71
Sightless Kombat, “The Last of Us 2 – Blind Accessibility Review,” Can I Play That?
72
Courtney Craven, “The Last of Us: Part 2 — Deaf/HoH Review,” Can I Play That?
49
And although Grant Stoner, who wrote the mobility review for Can I Play That? was unable to
play the game, it wasn't because Naughty Dog fell short.
In fact, Stoner wrote that he couldn't even boot up the game because he was unable to grip
the controller to navigate the PlayStation dashboard.
73

Stoner still praised Naughty Dog's efforts at inclusion. He wrote that his experience simply
shows that not all disabilities are created equal and that he would try again later using a
different controller.
74

But Naughty Dog is a Sony-owned AAA developer. Not everyone has those resources. Even still,
smaller developers can most definitely put in effort to make their games accessible.
The team behind “Charon” did. As “Charon” director Selah Wright explains it,
T2 SELAH WRIGHT: Every aspect of that was, as I feel successful as it is currently, largely
in part It's due to our usability lead, his name’s David Barrett and he's amazing. He's like
been a usability lead on AGP titles for a few years now and his job is basically ensuring
that the game is playable, not just you know for the normal run-of-the-mill gamer, but
you know it has accessibility features. That was one of the main discussions we had
during pre-production is “How can we make our game accessible with a very short
scope and no budget?”

73
Grant Stoner, “The Last of Us: Part 2 – Mobility Review,” Can I Play That?
74
ibid
50
T2 SELAH WRIGHT (cont.): So you know, we… the, the first thing we did was make sure
that we were planning on having subtitles for our game so people who maybe have…
are hard-of-hearing or would like to, you know, have a little bit more assistance with
understanding what the narrative is have that option. We also have some adjustable
controls. You know, you can invert rowing if it doesn't feel right, you can, you know,
adjust settings, adjust volume. We just wanted to make sure we could implement as
many features as we could that could make our game more accessible for people who
need it to be. (1:07)
75

There's a couple of important things to note from Wright’s statement there. The first thing is
that their team had someone specifically dedicated to lead efforts in both usability and
accessibility.
Second, they took an honest look at what they could do with the time and resources they had.
The fields weren't afterthoughts, they were part of the process.
The “Charon” team had roughly one year development, plus a team of college students on
college student schedules.
So, they put in what work they could.

75
Selah Wright, interviewed by author.
51
There are subtitles for all dialogue, sized pretty big, colored white on a black background,
tagged with speaker names and the subtitles are baked in. There's no having to navigate a
menu to turn them on.
76

And that's good.
It's not perfect, but it's better than some massive studios can manage.
The accessibility-focused site Can I Play That? dinged the 2018 game “Red Dead Redemption 2”
for not even being able to do that consistently.
77
And that was a massive title from Rockstar
Games, also known as “The People Who Make ‘Grand Theft Auto.’”
So, let's recap. The question we started this episode with was basically: “How do developers
take their audiences into consideration?”
There are a lot of ways, but here we focused on two key avenues.
First developers test a lot in order to make sure that players can easily pick up and understand
what's going on in the game.
Another part of it is planning and including things to help individuals who need not so unique
accommodations.

76
“Charon,” itch.io
77
“
52
T3 ENDING MUSIC: Cue under last lines of V.O., then fade up quickly and hold for a
good few beats before a quick fade out. (:19)
And with that, thank you for listening.
I'm Dominic D’Amico and this has been episode three of “Thesis Statements.”
For more content like this, be sure to stay tuned to USC Annenberg Media, as well as USC's
specialized journalism program.

Peace

53
Summary
I’m not the biggest fan of people. Explaining why would get more personal than I’m
willing to. That said, I’m hopelessly in love with the creative ideas people come up with. Books,
films, television, paintings, sculptures or whatever else, I just love to see where ideas came
from and how they get expressed in a creative project. But when it comes to consuming media
myself, I do have a favorite.
Above all else, games are closest to my heart. The interactivity of a game, the open-
ended nature of the experience is so much more fun. In coming up with the idea for this thesis
project, I combined my love for games and the love for ideas. I decided to look at the first steps
in making a game. Knowing this would be a massive topic, I decided to make a four-episode
podcast series and focus down each episode.
Three episodes would focus on facets of the larger topic, while an extra episode would
justify the series’ existence. The extra episode became “Episode Zero – Why Games?” and it
serves two purposes. First, it serves to preempt criticism from individuals who look down on
games as a medium. But second, it serves as a statement of purpose to anyone interested in
my own idea. The three main episodes then look at the first steps of making a game in
different ways. The first episode focuses on the initial ideas that spark the development
process, the second focuses on how ideas start to get turned into something tangible, while
the third focuses on how developers start to consider their players.
54
To chat about game development, I had to interview game developers. Luckily, USC has
one of the best games programs in the country. The faculty all have an immense amount of
professional experience and the students in the program actively learn through the practice of
the craft – they learn to make games by actually making games. I didn’t want to limit myself to
developers at USC though, so I also sent out interview requests to professionals in the games
industry. I got a slew of responses that turned into a large slate of interviews. These interviews,
along with background research, got me the answers to the key questions at the heart of my
thesis.
“Episode One – Initial Ideas” focuses on how developers come up with ideas. This
episode explores the challenges that game designers face when trying to start a new project
and some of the ways to get past that.
“Episode Two – First Steps” focuses on the first steps of the development process. Part
of this is the creative side of things – how developers start working their initial ideas into the
beginnings of a game. But equally important is the production side of development, which
keeps everything organized and on track – so as to not waste time or resources.
“Episode Three – Considering the Audience” is all about the audience for a game. This
episode looks at how developers go about making sure that their game can be played by both
average and not-so-average geeks off the street. Part of this involves formalized user testing
where developers check if their game is giving people the intended experience. Another
important part is accessibility. Accessibility is about making sure that individuals with not-so-
55
unique needs can access a game. It’s about accounting for the colorblind, the hard-of-hearing,
the mobility-impaired, the people who just need a reasonable accommodation to participate.
Each of these episodes is built on the interviews I conducted with a wide slate of game
developers. There are snippets of conversations I had with individuals like Richard Lemarchand
and Ken Levine – individuals who have worked on some of the biggest, most influential games
of all time. There are also bits of chat I had with developers like Selah Wright, Sheehan Ahmed
and Charlie Anderson – published developers at the start of their careers. Without these
amazing individuals and their expertise, there would be no “Thesis Statements.”

56
Bibliography
“A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (And Everyone).” MIT Press. Accessed June
29, 2022. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/playful-production-process
Bishop, Bryan. “Lucas and Spielberg on storytelling in games: 'it's not going to be
Shakespeare.'” The Verge, June 13, 2013.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/13/4427444/lucas-spielberg-storytelling-in-games-
its-not-going-to-be-shakespeare-usc
Cartoon Network. “The Bare Facts.” Season 1, Episode 9. The Powerpuff Girls. Hulu. Cartoon.
Accessed June 29, 2022.
“Charon.” itch.io. accessed June 29, 2022. https://selahwright.itch.io/charon
“Color Blindness.” National Eye Institute. National Institutes of Health. Accessed June 29, 2022.
https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-
blindness
“Contact Info.” Subset Games. Accessed June 29, 2022. https://subsetgames.com/contact.html
Craven, Courtney. “The Last of Us: Part 2 — Deaf/HoH Review.” Can I Play That?. Last modified
June 12, 2020. Accessed June 29, 2022. https://caniplaythat.com/2020/06/12/the-last-
of-us-2-deaf-hoh-review/
Ebert, Roger. “'Indiana Jones' in a universe of its own.” rogerebert.com. Published May 18, 2008.
Accessed June 28, 2022. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/indiana-jones-and-the-
kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull-2008
——— “Now you see him...now you see him!” rogerebert.com. Published September 6, 2007.
Accessed June 28, 2022. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-prestige-2007
57
——— “Why did the chicken cross the genders?” rogerebert.com. Published November 27.
2005. Accessed June 28, 2022. https://www.rogerebert.com/answer-man/why-did-the-
chicken-cross-the-genders
Gallant, Matthew. “60+ settings make this Naughty Dog's most accessible game yet.”
PlayStation Blog. Last modified June 9, 2020. Accessed June 29, 2022.
https://blog.playstation.com/2020/06/09/the-last-of-us-part-ii-accessibility-features-
detailed/
Lemarchand, Richard. A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (And Everyone).
Camebridge, MA: MIT Press. 2021.
“Limb Loss Stats.” Group 10. The Ohio State University. Accessed June 29, 2022.
https://u.osu.edu/fitness4all/loss-limb-stats/
“How Prey's Mind-Bending Opening Level Was Designed | Noclip.” Noclip. YouTube. Accessed
June 29, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLExoItBLVc
“Overview – Muscular Dystrophy.” National Health Service. Accessed June 30, 2022.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/muscular-dystrophy/
Pokémon Blue Version. Developed by Game Freak. 1998; Kyoto, Japan: Nintendo. Game Boy
Cartridge
“Deaf Game Review – Red Dead Redemption 2.” Can I Play That?. Last modified February 19,
2019. Accessed June 30, 2022. https://caniplaythat.com/2019/02/19/deaf-game-review-
red-dead-redemption-2/
Saylor, Steve and Courtney Craven. “Noteworthy Advancement in Accessibility for 2020.” IGN.
Last modified December 21, 2020. Accessed June 29, 2022.
https://www.ign.com/articles/best-accessible-games-2020
58
Sightless Kombat. “The Last of Us 2 – Blind Accessibility Review.” Can I Play That?. Last modified
June 18, 2020. Accessed June 30, 2022. https://caniplaythat.com/2020/06/18/the-last-
of-us-2-review-blind-accessibility/
Stoner, Grant. “The Last of Us: Part 2 – Mobility Review.” Can I Play That?. Last modified June 22,
2020. Accessed June 30, 2022. https://caniplaythat.com/2020/06/22/the-last-of-us-part-
2-mobility-review/

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Games are a unique form of mass media. Not only are they interactive, but they encourage interactions and engagement. Sure, this could mean the typical toxic interactions between teenagers in multiplayer lobbies of the latest and greatest games. But that’s boring and depressing. The more interesting thing is by far the ideas and people who make a video game. After all, each game is the culmination of a serious endeavor to turn a collection of ideas and concepts into something that the average person can pick up and engage with. With that in mind, I decided to look into how the process of making a game gets started. The podcast “Thesis Statements” is the culmination of that work.
“Episode Zero – Why Games?” is an introductory episode that delves into the importance of this topic and why I chose it. I called it an episode zero because it’s not strictly necessary to the rest of the series. It’s meant as a declaration of legitimacy of sorts. Games are often looked down upon compared to film and television, so I wanted to explore that a bit and counterargue.
“Episode One – Initial Ideas” explores how the people who make games get their ideas. This episode serves as the start of the series proper and introduces some of the wide array of individuals who appear throughout the project.
“Episode Two – First Steps” delves into how developers go about turning their ideas into something tangible.
“Episode Three – Considering the Audience” is built on the fact that games are – by nature – interactive. It examines how developers take their audience into account, both in terms of ensuring the intended experience for the average player and in terms of accounting for individuals with disabilities.

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Asset Metadata

Creator D'Amico, Dominic Vincent (author)

Core Title Thesis statements - a thesis podcast about how games are made.

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/27/2022

Defense Date 07/26/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag game design,game development,OAI-PMH Harvest,USC games

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Pecot-Hébert, Lisa (committee chair), Bellamy, Gordon (committee member), Matorin, David (committee member)

Creator Email ddamico@usc.edu,dominicdamico51@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111375197

Unique identifier UC111375197

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Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights D'Amico, Dominic Vincent

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Source 20220728-usctheses-batch-962 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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