As someone living in the UK, UGG feels like the UK. It's all instantly recognisable. Staggering that you captured it so well. The model village could be Beaconscott. Things like weird shaped roads that don't make sense. The tension between two gardeners is also brilliant! I played it with my son (11) and we loved it. I now play it with my daughter (4), who just likes to troll people over and over. It's truly wonderful, well done to all.
What an insightful and interesting presentation. I particularly enjoy the point regarding "mundane familiarity" helping to ground the game, because so many things I did while playing felt like "emergent gameplay" because the basic rules of reality were already baked into my brain. It felt so natural it didn't occur to me that it was designed.
When I played the game, I thought, "Hmm, the level design kinda reminds me of Dark Souls..." And then I thught, "Oh shut up, not everything has to be dark souls." Funny to see that confirmed.
We made a goose, we made a person, and some stuff that person cared about. Then we worked to come up with systems that would make it fun to steal that stuff.
Building from reference instead of forcing the template onto Greybox gives this a very inherent sense of the location. Getting the country British feel just right really works for the game; it gives the village a fussy and just-so feeling that makes causing chaos all the more fun, gives a sense of relative safety to your troublemaking so you're worried at most of being driven off and not bitten by dogs or something, and settles it in a place that's reasonably well-off so that you don't feel bad about causing them trouble like you would in a poorer setting. Making this goose feel like it really is the worst thing that's happened in this village gives your chaos a sense of power, and also a sense of reassurance.
Edgar Wright films (specifically the Cornetto trilogy) are the perfect resource for this kind of research. Shaun of the Dead is the city, Hot Fuzz is the quintessential village / small town (filmed in Wells, Somerset), and World's End is a typical greenbelt, suburban town gentrified literally to within an inch of its life (filmed in Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth Garden City). His films have an incredible sense of space, and the kinds of details that you can only get from British locations filmed by a British director
Even though my interests are more in books than video games, I have found this talk helpful. I see I'm not the only one who picks up fiction inspiration from Google Maps! In my case, I was tired of seeing fiction book series that took place only in a country's most well-known city (e.g. London, NYC, Tokyo, or Sydney) if the author wanted the story to take place in a country other than where they lived, so with most of my fiction book ideas, I often try and scout for lesser-known areas of a country to inspire the fictional world of a book idea I would work on. In my case, I had already come up with the idea of virtual location scouting using Google Maps after basically reading social media posts from people I follow visiting or talking about certain locations I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. As such, upon finding a specific location I want to draw inspiration from, I would run a Web search for photos and videos tagged with or mentioning that location, as Google Maps Street View and user-contributed photos can only go so far. However, this talk gave me more ideas for how I could go about doing it, also considering how, while I'm normally more of a book person and so work on fiction books as side projects, I do also work on a video game idea as a different side project Another thing I do is create Google Maps lists of locations, including 'Areas for art inspiration' lists for locations I discover while browsing, and lists of locations to inspire parts of different fiction ideas I have, so I can browse those through the Maps app or Web interface instead of opening my project notes first.
That's a lot of Gs in the title... Goose Game's Geolocation Greyboxes Also hell yeah, land acknowledgements in a GDC! 💙 It's already a usual thing for local events where I am, so I'm very happy to hear it elsewhere.
As someone living in the UK, UGG feels like the UK. It's all instantly recognisable. Staggering that you captured it so well. The model village could be Beaconscott. Things like weird shaped roads that don't make sense. The tension between two gardeners is also brilliant! I played it with my son (11) and we loved it. I now play it with my daughter (4), who just likes to troll people over and over. It's truly wonderful, well done to all.
You nailed the aesthetic. So much so, that I always assumed House House were a British dev team.
What an insightful and interesting presentation. I particularly enjoy the point regarding "mundane familiarity" helping to ground the game, because so many things I did while playing felt like "emergent gameplay" because the basic rules of reality were already baked into my brain. It felt so natural it didn't occur to me that it was designed.
When I played the game, I thought, "Hmm, the level design kinda reminds me of Dark Souls..." And then I thught, "Oh shut up, not everything has to be dark souls."
Funny to see that confirmed.
I thought the same thing haha, pretty sure I even joked about UGG being the Dark Souls of something or other
We made a goose, we made a person, and some stuff that person cared about. Then we worked to come up with systems that would make it fun to steal that stuff.
As someone who 3d models real spaces for a living you showing your references and final product is great, you did an outstanding job!
Building from reference instead of forcing the template onto Greybox gives this a very inherent sense of the location. Getting the country British feel just right really works for the game; it gives the village a fussy and just-so feeling that makes causing chaos all the more fun, gives a sense of relative safety to your troublemaking so you're worried at most of being driven off and not bitten by dogs or something, and settles it in a place that's reasonably well-off so that you don't feel bad about causing them trouble like you would in a poorer setting. Making this goose feel like it really is the worst thing that's happened in this village gives your chaos a sense of power, and also a sense of reassurance.
Edgar Wright films (specifically the Cornetto trilogy) are the perfect resource for this kind of research. Shaun of the Dead is the city, Hot Fuzz is the quintessential village / small town (filmed in Wells, Somerset), and World's End is a typical greenbelt, suburban town gentrified literally to within an inch of its life (filmed in Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth Garden City). His films have an incredible sense of space, and the kinds of details that you can only get from British locations filmed by a British director
Couldn't agree more, I wager the UGG finale was somewhat inspired by the Hot Fuzz finale set in the miniature of the town.
This was a lot of fun, thanks for sharing your workflow
Even though my interests are more in books than video games, I have found this talk helpful. I see I'm not the only one who picks up fiction inspiration from Google Maps!
In my case, I was tired of seeing fiction book series that took place only in a country's most well-known city (e.g. London, NYC, Tokyo, or Sydney) if the author wanted the story to take place in a country other than where they lived, so with most of my fiction book ideas, I often try and scout for lesser-known areas of a country to inspire the fictional world of a book idea I would work on.
In my case, I had already come up with the idea of virtual location scouting using Google Maps after basically reading social media posts from people I follow visiting or talking about certain locations I wouldn't have otherwise heard of. As such, upon finding a specific location I want to draw inspiration from, I would run a Web search for photos and videos tagged with or mentioning that location, as Google Maps Street View and user-contributed photos can only go so far.
However, this talk gave me more ideas for how I could go about doing it, also considering how, while I'm normally more of a book person and so work on fiction books as side projects, I do also work on a video game idea as a different side project
Another thing I do is create Google Maps lists of locations, including 'Areas for art inspiration' lists for locations I discover while browsing, and lists of locations to inspire parts of different fiction ideas I have, so I can browse those through the Maps app or Web interface instead of opening my project notes first.
ya nailed it, Jake. I thought you were british till I looked up the studio...
strong starting statement
Based as FUCK intro let's go
this was such a fascinating talk!
Class act for the introduction 👍
That's a lot of Gs in the title...
Goose Game's Geolocation Greyboxes
Also hell yeah, land acknowledgements in a GDC! 💙 It's already a usual thing for local events where I am, so I'm very happy to hear it elsewhere.
Fantastic presentation and very interesting learning about your development process
Thank you Jake for acknowledging the land you're on. 💖 amazing talk, too!
As someone who lives in England, I thought the developers were based in the UK because of the village design
"this will always be aboriginal land" based jake
Я гусь на GDC ворвусь
I gotta be honest - I thought Untitled Goose Game took place in e.g. a Swiss village. I guess we just see what we're familiar with, haha.
Acts like a revolutionary. Where’s the Che Guevara shirt?