SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/81859
Game Designer and Son Turn Logic Puzzle Into ScreenBurn Winner by Michael Trice I for Escape from Planet Zero. Th e goal was to create a casual puzzle game that included equal parts of inspiration from both Rampart and Abe's Oddworld, all wrapped around a classic logic puzzle: How do you move a bag of feed, and a chicken and a fox across a river? In the version of the puzzle Myers and Evan created, the grouts ate the amples, the amples loved the parapakos and the vicious red bobo- n 2009, Lance Myers took a break from his job as the art director at Foundation 9 to try his hand at game design. With the help of his then six-year-old son, Evan, Lance came up with the idea Lance Myers with son Evan. and Tamir Medina as artists, and engineer Chong Oak Lee. Together they worked on producing an in-house version of Escape from Planet Zero. Myers explains that developing the game as part of a team was an eye-opening experience, as he soon realized how much his initial design document invited wide interpretation. "Th ey made a playable version of my bird's eye view design docu- ment, but the game was nothing like I expected," Myers says. "As an artist, I can have in mind a portrait of a woman and I think if you paint her hair with broad strokes paint, it's going to look beautiful. Well, [like the painting] you can make this game in so many dif- ferent ways. Th e details and variables are infi - nite, so you have to get in there and play it, play it, play it. Tweak it and tweak it." After he saw the fi rst in thick, dark snatchers attacked every other creature in sight. Th e exercise took on a life of its own, and in 2010 the game won the causal gaming category of the SXSW ScreenBurn Game Design Competition. Myers not only loved the feedback he received from the competition, but also said that one of his fondest memories came when, "we got a small trophy for making it to the fi nal round and a big trophy for the winner—so I gave one to Evan and now we both have our own trophies." In 2010, the entries for the SXSW ScreenBurn Game Design Competition were well-developed concept pieces, not playable games. So the father and son team still had some work to do before producing a playable demo. Myers soon found himself hired on at Bioware as an animator for Star Wars: Th e Old Republic, and while a few big name companies approached him about developing Escape from Planet Zero, he wanted to give his new employer the fi rst shot at the game. Electronic Arts (EA), Bioware's parent company, decided the game would make an excellent experiment to test HTML5's game design capabilities. 40 SXSW ORLD / M AY – J UNE 201 1 While the game remains in development at EA, Myers is hopeful that the project will fi nish usability testing some time this summer. As one might expect of a multi-talented artist moonlighting as a designer, Myers' wife calls him a SXSW triple threat. "She insisted that I squeeze this in where I could," Myers recalls. "I prototype, Myers off ered a long list of suggestions to the team. At fi rst, he wasn't sure that the team would be willing to go through all the itera- tions he wanted to go through to make the best game possible. Yet the team worked with him throughout the process, and he emphatically extolled the team's tal- ents: "I can't sing their praises highly enough." don't know if it's that rare or not—but my bands were in the SXSW Music Festival 10 years ago. One was the PlayDoh Squad, that was the late 90s. Th en I started making animated fi lms in, I guess it was 1999. So I've had three of my animated fi lms in the SXSW Film Festival. In 2001, I had a fi lm, Th e Astronomer. In 2004 I had a fi lm called Subsidized Fate, which actually won the Special Jury Award for Animated Short. Th en in 2008, I had the fi lm Skip and Lester, Here's the Stapler, If You Need It." Lance and his family can rest assured that he's the only SXSW ScreenBurn fi nalist with that type of pedigree so far. His son Evan remains SXSW's youngest trophy holder as well. ■ Th e development team included producer Michael John, Myers