Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008 - 22

other games do not find social organization an important
feature. When running from a horde of zombies it never
occurs to me some of them may have had disadvantaged
childhoods or have recently overdrawn their checking
accounts.
Matching the appearance of the game to the engine running the game is trickier than it appears. Tom
Meigs explains the crux and crisis point is frame rate-
the speed at which a single frame can be redrawn to the
screen following another frame; kind of like flip book
animation. A "chugging" frame rate is too slow to provide
adequate game-play performance or satisfaction (Meigs
2003). Certain textures, effects or colors may require
more render time and memory to continuously redraw
the frame. Many game designers point out that no game
ever survives its prototyping phase the way it was originally conceived, and there are often nasty surprises.
One game has attracted repeated praise for its melding of technology rate and visual design. Naked Sky Entertainment's RoboBlitz is an award winning physics-based
game for Xbox Live Arcade that packages data as 'procedural content.' According to NakedSky CEO Tian Mu,
"Instead of packaging up the content itself, we package
up instructions on how to create the content. It gives
the player lots of freedom."(Mitchell 2006) (An excellent demo video of this game is available at GamerSyde:
http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_3284_en.html) RoboBlitz's environment is machine oriented and geometric, as is the robot technician main character. One game
designer comments "if your game's art direction fits with
the current state of the art in procedural generation, the
benefits can be huge. The best example of course being
RoboBlitz. If the game had used a natural, organic setting
the procedural content would have looked horrible. But
the system they used worked great for the artificial/metallic/robotic elements in the game" (Roberts 2008).

Holly Poe Durbin is an award winning costume
designer creating costumes for theater, opera, film and
television, and themed entertainment. Her work has been
seen on London's West End, Broadway, Off-Broadway,
in Japan, the U.K., Germany, Israel, and Spain as well as
many regional theaters such as the Old Globe Theater,
Mark Taper Forum, Geffen Playhouse, Santa Fe Stages,
the Huntington Theater, the Cincinnati Playhouse, the
Repertory Theater of St. Louis and the Missouri Repertory.
She is the head of costume design studies for the
University of California, Irvine.

DESIGN FOR DIFFERENT MEDIA
As I wrote the three parts of this series, it quickly became apparent the actual design techniques employed in each media
are tome-filling subjects in themselves. One result of living in
the "information age" is that staggering amounts of raw information are readily available on each topic. In fact, sometimes
we possess too much detailed information and not enough of
an overview to process or analyze that information. This series
did not attempt to quantify those details, but rather to explore
the framework designers employ to match the right details to
specific end results.

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Marcy Froelich, Costume Designer, has worked
in theater, dance, opera, film, TV, documentaries,
animation, theme parks, commercials, beauty pageants,
and industrials. She designed the national tour of
Camelot with Michael York, the Miss America Pageant,
the independent film, Unbowed, multiple musicals for
Sacramento Music Circus. She was the assistant costume
designer for American Beauty, Road to Perdition, the
Emmy nominated Geppetto, and the original Broadway
production of Phantom of the Opera.

It is sometimes said that theater is the "Latin" of
entertainment language, and that all contemporary
forms of entertainment derive from the basic principles honed over thousands of years before a live
audience, much as stand up comedy is the origin of
television writing. For this reason, I looked across all

Judy Gailen, Set Designer, most recently designed sets
for the premiers of Samurai 7.0: Under Construction for
Beau Jest Moving Theater in Boston. She has designed
for numerous regional theaters, including the La Jolla
Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Long Wharf

media for glimpses of what has changed, and what has
not changed. What have changed are the actual story
delivery systems. What has not changed is the human
psyche. That is why the same storytelling mechanics still
resonate after several millennia. As I wrote this series,
I had the incredible luxury of speaking in depth with
a dozen professional designers and directors and-in
casual conversation or email exchanges-with many,
many more. My conversations eventually spanned
three continents- a testament to our global entertainment culture. Designers, whether overtly aware of it or
not, are extremely accomplished storytellers. It is their
statements that allowed me to categorize the thousands
of notes I kept into the quantifiable areas of Intent, Immersion and Interaction.
Many of the designers, directors and artists I spoke
with do cross platforms to work in theater, themed entertainment, gaming, film or television. However, I wonder if the increasingly specialized technical requirements
of newer entertainment forms will force storytellers into
specializations. Or, will all the forms eventually merge, as
some predict-into an interactive halodeck-style performance? If they do, it may be safe to say we will still want to
be completely absorbed by our stories. v

2008

theatre

design

technology

http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_3284_en.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2008