 The Canadian video game industry is worth $3 billion a year, but how do you make a game changer? Grab some snacks and dim the lights. It's time for Science Alive. Where with Sean Tudor, he is an assistant curator here at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Now Sean, we're playing video games. If you were to create a video game, where would you start? I'd start with the story. Okay. I'm a big story guy. I'd start what did I want to do in this game? Why am I playing this game? And what makes me want to continue playing this game? So what are some examples of video games that have amazing stories? The Mass Effect Trilogy by Bioware out of Edmonton, that's an amazing story. The Last of Us, that's a pretty big modern story. Right. Historic stories. Right. Super Mario Bros. has a story. No. Yeah, Super Mario Bros. has a story. You don't just rescue the princess. What's the story in Super Mario Bros.? You rescue the princess because only she can turn the Mushroom Kingdom people back into totes. Of course. That's why you rescue. That's historical reference right there. There you go. Do people want stories in their video games? Some people do. Some people don't. That's why you still get games without stories. You get those casual games. You get Farmville. You get games that are just there to engage you in the moment. A lot of app games now don't necessarily have the high complex stories in them. They may be derived from games with high complex stories, but they don't have those complex stories. So from the story, you look at things like graphics. How do game developers start with a blank sheet of paper or a blank computer screen and create these graphics? So a story, much like any literary story, a game story can start to set the tone. It can give you an environment. It can give you... Is it middle-aged? Is it futuristic? Is it hyper fantastical? What art style am I going to choose? Am I going to choose handcraft, like games like Yoshi's Woolly World that Nintendo just put out? Or papercraft? Or am I going to choose cell shaded, like beautiful Joe? Or am I going to choose hyper realistic, like crisis? Or the story sometimes sets the tone for what graphic style you're going to choose. And they will use motion sensors or motion detection as a part of this too? Yeah, if you're doing a hyper realistic game, not even some non hyper realistic games, cartoony games, will use motion tracking and motion tracking suits. It's a passive motion tracking little dots cover your skin tight suit. And they have to keep track of three dots on you at all times so they can triangulate what your motion is going to be. I guess you use that for the sports games too. Yeah, the sports games, that's where it came about. It came about originally in human kinetics, and then it transferred to movie and video games. So the big games that we can think of that are Canadian produced are NHL and the FIFA games. Now gameplay, I guess sooner or later you have to decide what happens when you push A and what happens when you push B. Yeah, that's part of gameplay. That's the user interface side of the gameplay. But what about the gameplay of is it a platformer? Is it an adventure style game? Is it a puzzle based game? What type of gameplay mechanic are you going to use that's fundamental? Not necessarily which buttons you're going to use, but how is the game going to play? A Zelda game, for example, is an adventure puzzler, right? Right. Like the core mechanic, yes, you're off on an adventure someplace, but the big thing is there are puzzles to complete your dungeons. Yes, there are battles, but it's puzzles. So is it a first person shooter game? Right. That is a game mechanic. Okay. So that's what I mean by gameplay. And then sound is a huge part of all this. Yeah, if I took out my Game Boy right here, and I was playing Tetris on it, and it started playing Flight of the Bumblebees instead of the Tetris type A music. Well, a custom theme song. They wrote a theme song. Exactly. So audio has, it sets, it's part of that story and the gameplay, it sets the tone for the experience that you're going to have. And when somebody messes with that, it changes the experience you're going to get as a player. So modern example would be Ubisoft's Child of Light game. There are some criticisms of the gameplay aspect, but the audio aspect is really good. They got Carle Pirat, which is a local French-Canadian artist, do all the piano work, and it's an artistic game. And then on the underneath, they still have a fully artist doing the actual sound. Sure. Well, and Halo has an orchestra. Yeah. Halo, the Final Fantasy by Square Enix. They have an orchestra. There's there's orchestral tourings. If you go on YouTube, are we on YouTube now? If you continue on YouTube, you can do video game Glee Clubs. And Glee Clubs will sing video game music. This is how iconic the music comes into our psyche. And you've put together an exhibit called Game Changer, so people can actually come and try these games. Yeah. So we're going to invite people to come in, try the exhibit. It opens in Sudbury in October of 2016, and then it opens in Ottawa in the fall of 2017 with the reopening of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Very cool. Sean Tudor is an assistant curator here at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.