Wake up, quick breakfast, unlucky bird flight patterns, and
I’m back in the lab. We started to lock down an idea for the boss and its attack
patterns, but I had a lot to do. 3 days to model, rig, texture, and animate 2
characters felt pretty daunting but I was really excited and determined to
finish. But first I needed to learn Advanced Skeleton and try to figure out hoe
to rig a tentacle (the boss had 6) This task took me most of the day and ended
with a modelled 6-armed armadillo ball that was going to face plant his enemies.
His rig I could only describe as a functioning car that was on fire. It worked,
and it animated, and nothing was that broken but it was most certainly on fire.
Unfortunately, I think my lack of rigging skills was starting to bottle neck production,
so I needed to finish the boss by tomorrow morning.
I also got to bond more with my teammates, play some melee
with passersby’s, got some german Burger King and just generally enjoy the work
environment of the games lab. Its super constructive and a truly great learning
and working environment.
Today was the start of the game jam! It was also a national
holiday so every business, food store, and campus door was locked. We only
realized this after somehow being let into the campus because ewe ended up
spending 25 minutes being locked inside the school. There were literally no
open doors. No exits. Talk about a fire hazard.
After arriving tactically late we split up into teams to
start plotting ideas. I have never participated in a game jam or even had a
game design class but with my experience in just playing games I felt somewhat
prepared. The magi theme in question was Better Together which implied either
multiplayer or a really cool Last of Us type game play but with only 3 days
available I jumped on the former. My first idea was about a Ninja that was
controlled by two people and could platform through levels. I drew a quick
doodle of a ninja and it took off. By the third round of siphoning ideas my
ninja idea was in the top 10 out of 25 potential ideas. They were all written
on the board when I realized 2 very important things for this game jam. 1.
There were very few artists in this room and 2. I just made a game that
wouldn’t use 3D. I quickly started talking to Germans to see if any of them
needed a 3D artist and luckily Bernie, one of the Germans who we first met, was
making a 3D arena game called Beat the Boss. I quickly abandoned my ninja game
and joined his team.
By then end of the voting process 6 games remained. Counter
strike wannabe, Bloob-game, Point and click adventure, Amanda’s cute otter
game, Beat the Boss, and surprisingly my ninja idea. So I got to work on a cool
game while the game product of my mind also got to be made. I really liked my
team. It was full of talented designers and coders and although I was the only
3D artist, I lucked out in finding a texture artist in the group so I wouldn’t
have to do everything. We started mapping out the idea for the boss and how it
would work to fight him. I was super excited to be working in my field on my
first game.
Thursday’s studio visit was in Worms! I’m told this is a particularly old and historical city. Dragon slaying and the Protestant reformation are the biggest motifs, as well as some historical Jewish sites. The cold weather on this day through everyone for a loop after so much sun earlier in the week.
Calypso welcomed us after a short walk from the station. They’re the company behind the Tropico series, and this office handles marketing for this neck of Europe. We were given a detailed presentation about the company’s structure, followed by a tour of the office and some Q and A. I learned that they have an office in my native New Jersey. Apparently only three people work there for minor distribution business, but I might check it out some day.
Our hosts at Calypso were very nice and provided us “Presidente” branded sodas and some food. The office seemed pretty cozy, though I knew there was no development going on there.
Our only other planned stop in Worms was a walk through the old Jewish Cemetery. Headstones pointed in different angles among tall, wild grass. Moss lined cracked surfaces and extented from graves to the stones left on top by visitors from the past.
We didn’t have much time left until our train, but I really wanted to explore the old town. I ran in circles for a while and found nothing but newer shops. It’s possible I was in the wrong area, but there wasn’t time to move very far. After taking a few pictures, I joined the rest of the group for ice cream. On the train ride back to Frankfurt, I asked Volker questions about Germany and his travels to Canada.
That night we had our goodbye dinner with our friends from Paderborn. They found a traditional German place with Schnitzel, so I could finally check it off my list. After some good food and conversation, some of us moved back to the Irish Pub and had a final drink before hitting the sack. Goodbyes would have to wait for Friday.
One of the many dragons spotted in WormsFinally some German food around here! Note the Frankfurt “green sauce”
My goal for the day was to get a free copy of Tropico 6 and I didn’t succeed.
Kalypso had a chill environment and everyone was very friendly. The presentation was long since they went over every procedure for publishing and every department, lol, they even had a chart for all employees in the office. Kalypso is a young private publisher for video games. The company has two game studios in Munich and Hamburg, developing Tropico series and some mobile games. As a fan of strategy games, I’m pretty familiar with their IPs like Tropico, Rise of Industry, Railway Empire, Shadow Tactics, etc. We got a full tour of their company and I really liked some of the offices where I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. Almost every department had a person introducing their roles and responsibilities to us, I felt welcomed. Excited for their E3 release!
The hosts indicated two interesting facts in the presentation that I feel like sharing here:
Americans show much less interest in strategy games than Europeans. The biggest gaming market in the US is action games.
Most players for time-consuming strategy games like Tropico are old people. (Betsy and Mark, are you reading??) Which makes sense because they are the people with money and time (the game is 60 bucks).
Tropico Fritz
In the afternoon, we stopped at a Jewish cemetery first. As a person who’s not that into history, I cannot speak that much about the graveyard or the culture. Then, Sam and I took off first for a little walk in the town. Due to the history and title of the town, there are dragon figures every a few blocks. Those are not like the traditional European statues, instead, they are artistic figures decorated by newspapers, plastics, etc. We met up with the group at Vannini ice cream shop where they had many unique flavors including lasagne ice cream. It got colder while we were sitting there and started to rain a bit so we decided to walk towards the train station.
We neutrally decided on a traditional schnitzel place as our last dinner with the German counterpart. The restaurant was old, traditional and cozy but the waiters didn’t really speak English. My German friend ordered a schnitzel with mushrooms for me and I also tried other’s with herb green sauce; it was mild. Schnitzel is a traditional German food that meat is pounded thinly and then deep fried. It tasted a lot like country fried steak which reminded me of Cracker Barrel for some reason.
Missing some Ketchup
The walk back home was beautiful with sun setting. We passed a bridge which was popular for couple’s to hang love locks… I was kinda sad at the bar realizing our trip has come to an end and the Germans were leaving. Hopefully I’ll see them again.
Wednesday was a pretty big day, but I’m legally obligated to not share Too many details. Our first stop was Nintendo of Europe’s Frankfurt office and we took a tram all the way there. I got a little over-excited just in the lobby of the office building. I knew they didn’t make any games here, but the idea of being in a ~real Nintendo location~ was enough to make me feel special. Our guest tags even had Mario on them!
Our hosts were very kind and bought us some coffee before we started. I got a frozen coffee and was delightfully surprised to find out that it was basically ice cream. Now I can’t say much of what happened in the middle, but we also ate lunch with our hosts in the office cafeteria. They gave us some really cool swag and then brought us up to a really cool recreational room. This room was huge and had a small exhibit of Nintendo memorabilia as well as a bunch of TVs set up with Switches and other consoles. I played some Puyo and geeked out over the display cases.
This room also has a little shop for employees. It was stocked with basically all the Nintendo products that are currently in the market, as well as some fun other stuff. I found a cute Kirby blanket that looks like it was an old prize for European Club Nintendo members. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to buy anything. However, our hosts were, and one of them was so kind as to buy it herself and let me pay her back. I was so happy I could have just floated away right then and there.
Next up was Crytek, which (naturally) is on the exact other side of the city. I was still in a blissful state from my Nintendo experience. Once again I can’t say too much, but I did get a nice look around where they develop CryEngine and all their games. The wild thing here is that they’re actually a location that hires game developers. It was weird to think that the people touring us might interested in hiring us one day.
On the tram ride back we watched the Pokemon Direct that had aired earlier in the day, all crowded around one cellphone. I think we spent around four hours in the trams alone on Wednesday. Later on we took a long walk to a ramen place, which was a nice opportunity to look at the city as the sun went down. Like the other places I’ve seen so far in Germany, there are curious statues, buildings, and fountains to be seen around every corner. Later in the night we had a smash tournament at the hotel, and I won!
Come here often?You can take a picture just like this from almost every other block
Thursday was the day we were to head to Kalypso, a studio I’ve never really heard of that’s famous for a game series I’ve never really heard of, Tropico. More specifically, Kalypso is an entirely private publisher that is actually kind of a big deal, especially due to being private. They were very nice people, and despite the small size of their space, still managed to seem important simply by handing us all Fritz-Kola with El Presidente, the main figure of Tropico, emblazoned on them, and not after the fact, either; this was a bona fide brand deal. They also had catering, which I didn’t touch, because I don’t eat lunch. Germany sure does feed itself well.
The only picture I got from the trip was the Kola. We were allowed to take pictures (except for one slide which spoiled something; we didn’t sign an NDA, but I’m not going to go any further out of courtesy) but I just didn’t.
After that, we headed to the graveyard. It was gloomy and gray, and it was actually almost cold now, in stark contrast to all the days before. It wasn’t much more than a normal graveyard, to me, but I did take some pictures of some odd and interesting graves.
The graveyard from near the entrance.
Yes, all of that is stone.
The temperature turning toward the cooler end didn’t stop us from going out to get ice cream afterward; we were told by the people of Kalypso that there was a really good ice cream place in Worms. They weren’t wrong!
The ice cream at this place had numerous odd flavors I didn’t understand because I don’t speak German. The germans told me that the flavors mimicked common candies. I hesitated trying any of them out of fear of nuts. I got Oreo and “Raffaello.”
Oreo wasn’t just vanilla with Oreo cookie chunks in it like you’d expect from usual ice cream. It was actually Oreo flavored, and the cookie chunks weren’t directly from Oreos, but rather, like Oreo cookie flavored chunks specially made for the flavor. I don’t know what they were, exactly, but they were good.
Raffaello was a very, VERY profoundly dark chocolate flavor. My mom loves dark chocolate and even she would have to do a double take, it was so dark. It was very good, just pretty startling, especially from an ice cream. If only more ice cream places were this good.
After that, we took a quick shopping break, and headed back. I bought some candy, and while I was, I spotted weed gum. I felt obligated to take a picture, because that sounds like a terrible idea. Whatever works, I suppose.
Once we’d gotten back into Frankfurt, we made our way to a schnitzel place that was a snug fit for our large group. It was a very cozy place, even though the waiters were hard to understand even for the germans and seemed both tired and vaguely disgruntled. The schnitzel was even better than it was at Salzkammer, too; it’s hard to describe its flavor, but it was a unique kind of taste that I can’t recall ever having, and it was really nice. I’m definitely going back if I ever return to Germany.
A picture from the area we were all seated at.
Germans seem to do thick fries far better than America does. Maybe I’ve just not been to the right places in America, or maybe America’s just better at thin fries.
We all paid for Volker’s meal as a token of our appreciation for herding us all to the right places, showing us a good time, and keeping any of us from missing any trains or getting lost around any corners.
To start out our Wednesday, we departed for Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Germany doesn’t handle any development, but they do handle localization, which occasionally involves some game tweaking. Regardless, it was really neat to be there.
First, we had a substantially lengthy meeting briefly going over some of Nintendo’s history and past directors, as well as their mission statements, and then going into what Nintendo of Germany specifically does.
The rooms were named after my favorite Nintendo games; Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, and Toad. True classics.
The view out of the meeting room window.
When the meeting was done, and after everyone’s questions had trickled out, we went back downstairs to the ground floor to have lunch. Since me and my family generally don’t eat lunch, I wasn’t hungry. I did, however, get a chocolate chip muffin. I also saw a magnetic pin of Mario smoking a blunt in an official Nintendo office. I can’t tell if that’s beautiful or perverse.
Notice how the wrapper has a very easy to peel rim around it, unlike what I’m used to in America.
We were then shown to what I think was the break room, but it doesn’t really matter what room it was, all that matters is that it was jam packed with neat Nintendo stuff absolutely everywhere.
There was even a gift shop on the floor that I didn’t take a picture of. Reportedly, there were hard to find Amiibos there for cheap, but we had very little time, so my general lack of interest in Amiibos kept me from realizing until it was too late. Me and Sam did, however, buy things, with the help of the woman who was giving us the tour. I got a “Kirby’s Dream Blanket” which I think I’m gonna hang like a poster, and some Legend of Zelda decals for gadgets such as phones, tablets, and laptops. There were some lame, stock image decals in the pack, but also some really nice ones.
After that, we went to visit Crytek. Like Nintendo, we had to sign an NDA, despite the fact we weren’t told anything that wasn’t publicly known in both. Crytek, however, was a little more strict and didn’t want any pictures taken of the studio, which was alright, since there wasn’t much in there that inspired me to take a pic to begin with. It’s hard to compete with Nintendo’s star power, especially when your audience consists of a decent number of Nintendo fanboys.
A lot of the presentation was similar to Nintendo, but unlike Nintendo of Germany, Crytek has developers. We didn’t see too much development going on; in fact, the offices felt particularly empty. I think we arrived at lunch break, and it was also hot today as well, so that may have been a factor.
Our hosts spent a substantial amount of time selling us CryEngine, and for good reason; they want to rival Unity and Unreal with their engine as a large side project. I’m mostly unimpressed, because all the technicality goes over my baby freshman head, and a lot of the neat things shown were repurposed components and work-arounds, which honestly doesn’t really rub me the right way. It’s no doubt a “high performance realistic 3D” game engine, and I think that’s just far too narrow a scope to rival Unity or Unreal. Not to mention they’re still working on the documentation. All that said, it’s got a lot of potential, and I’m at least interested to see if they can rise to match their goals.
With nothing left on the agenda, we headed back to Frankfurt, and after some deliberation, decided on getting ramen for dinner. I was concerned we wouldn’t have enough space for everyone and it’d be a shoddy stall restaurant, but I was more than satisfied with what we ended up at. It was a very nice restaurant, and the food I ordered—shio ramen with three gyoza as an appetizer—was great. I think a hint of spiciness in the ramen really makes it that much better, though. Oh, and I also sort of used chopsticks for the first time. I don’t think I could eat solid food with them, but they’re not bad for eating noodles.
I forgot to take a picture before eating. It looked all nice and orderly when I got it, as restaurant ramen tends to look.
At the restaurant, we decided to hold a Smash Ultimate tournament back at the hotel. I gathered my switch dock and HDMI cable (I knew they’d come in handy!) and headed to the room, and we got started. I did surprisingly well, maybe because Link’s projectiles are really hard to deal with even if the one playing him isn’t very good. I ended up getting third place, but I think that’s very respectable considering I was playing characters I’m not that great at, namely Joker. (I’m not that great at anyone, to be frank, but I’m better at some characters than others.) Sam won the tournament after losing in the very first round and clamoring up through Loser’s Bracket, and after Alex dipped out to help the games go faster and also sleep.
It also probably warrants noting I was using my usual controller, and everyone else was using joycons.
Today we took a tour of Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Europe was located on the 16th floor of the building, while Nintendo of Germany, which deals with Germany, Sweden, and other nearby countries. Their office was located on the 14th floor, and we were shown a presentation about some of the history of Nintendo, and what Nintendo of Germany does. NoG mainly handles localizing games from Japanese into German, as well as marketing, and public relations.
After the tour, we headed downstairs to the second floor to a “game-museum”-like area, where we played a couple rounds of Super Smash Bros.
Visitor’s Pass. Let’s-a-go!Some gifts we all received after the presentation.I got my very first amiibos at the shop in the same building. The shop is meant only for employees but the employee who gave the presentation was kind enough to pay for some gifts and let us reimburse her.
Later in the afternoon we took a tour of the Crytek Studio. They are a subsidiary of Ubisoft, and are the developers of games such as Far Cry, Crysis, WARFACE, Ryse: Son of Rome, The Climb, and Hunt: Showdown. We were shown a presentation of what students should expect when looking for jobs in the game design industry. After showing us where the employees work on their proprietary engine, CRYENGINE, and work on their games, one of the software engineers showed us the CRYENGINE and how to make a simple trampoline using pre-made objects from the SDK. We also got to try out one of their VR games on Oculus: The Climb.
Afterward, we had dinner at a nice ramen place called Ramen Jun. This was my first time ever having Ramen, and although it was the saltiest thing I had ever eaten in my life, it was pretty tasty.
Miso CheeseSakura martini. It was so good I ended up having two
In the morning, we took a tour of Nintendo, Germany. All of us were super excited, yet some were tired(or just me). As a star company, Nintendo is very careful about its information; we were given visitor passes, had to sign in and were only exposed to certain areas. On the 16th floor is the European headquarter of Nintendo where we weren’t allowed to go. In this building, there are no game developers(they are mainly in Japan as we were told), instead, it’s a marketing and localization team for the European market. Very nice and understandable of the organizer, we were treated to some freshly brewed coffee before the tour started. After passing 100 security doors, two PR workers gave us a presentation on the company’s history, values, and leaders. The lady was very patient with us during the question session, however, all of the questions were about marketings rather than game development. Afterward, we had lunch at their cafeteria and I dripped tomato sauce on my white shirt, rip. I think the break room was the highlight of our Nintendo trip where they display the old consoles, Nintendo figures and a bunch of other gears. It was like a Nintendo museum. There was an employee only shop where I bought 2 amiibos, 4 coasters, and a keychain with the host’s help.
Nintendo’s bathroom sign Lunch with evil tomato saucePlayed a couple rounds of SmashCute Mario and cuter PennyHow a smart was parked, thought was funny
Our second stop was Crytek. For those who doesn’t know the company, they were the original developer of FarCry(Ubisoft now owns the IP), Crisis series, RYSE son of Rome, Robinson and their newest game Hunt showdown(still in EA). For their presentation, the HR demonstrated a brief overview of the company and how to get jobs in the interview. After that, Brian gave us a live demo on CryEngine; I can tell he tried really hard to sell us the engine but… In my opinion, CryEngine has a lot of potentials and may be able to compete with Unity or Enreal in 5 years, but for now, it has a lack of functionality. I understand that they made the Engine for Crysis and it’s a side project of the company, yet I just don’t think it’s ready to be popular. For example, Brian showed us how you can add invisible wheels with spring to an empty mesh to create a trampoline without writing scripts, however, you’d have to play with the two values to make the perfect elasticity. First of all, it’s kind of weird to have wheels on random meshes even though they are invisible. Second of all, it takes a lot of time to come up with the perfect values while you don’t have a formula.
Even though the presentations were a little frustrating, I enjoyed Crytek the most out of all companies. Because it was very casual and people actually make games in the office. We got to walk around their studios and talk to people, many of them were catching deadlines for Hunt’s new patch and all QAs were working hard. The whole floor was overheated, no doubt, feeling bad for the game developers. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at all due to upcoming releases.
After the two companies, we headed to a ramen place for dinner. It was a 20 minute walk and I was hangry the entire ride. My day was very fulfilling and I was satisfied with what I saw.
In the morning, I walked pass a farmer’s market on my way to the bus stop. The Germans told me there was a farmer’s market every Wednesday and Saturday. It was like what we have in the US plus some flower shops. Besides that, there was a performance going on in the plaza as well. I didn’t stay long enough to figure what was it for, groups of girls danced. Compare to weekdays, downtown Paderborn was fairly busy. I got a mango smoothie for myself and it tasted like strawberry with a pink look.
My mango smoothie
Farmer’s market
By the end of this day, Our game was pretty much finished and all of us attended a BBQ together. The BBQ took place in a park that was 10 min away from the lab. It was a casual and relaxing place where people have picnics, smoke hookah, get a tan, etc. While the organizers were preparing BBQ for us, I tried out two beers, Becks and another beer mixed with sprite. Becks was slighter better compare to the other, but neither of them impressed me that much. It was a very engaging event for us and the Germans; we shared information on different food, movies, music and so on. Unfortunately, the park didn’t contain a bathroom which was a little inconvenient for me.
After the BBQ, I came back to the game lab and wrapped up my work.
At night, Christina dragged me out of my bed to a bar with a club. Since she had a friend work there, I got in for free. They didn’t even ID me, which was weird. In contrast to the bars we went to, this one had really loud music that people had to scream at each other. #relatable Most of the music was German EDM I feel like but they played American pop on occasion such as Uptown Funk, I love It, etc. I was quite drunk at the end.
