How To Get Me To Buy Your Indie RPG
I think of myself as a "golden" customer for indie computer roleplaying games. RPGs are one of my favorite game genres. I'm an "old-school" player who values story, character, and gameplay over flashy graphics. And I'm already at least somewhat "tuned into" the alternative, "indie" games scene. (Hey, I try!) I've written articles evangelizing what is good about indie games, particularly indie RPGs, and about the benefits of buying indie.

I've been a professional game developer for the mainstream industry for a few years, an indie developer for a short but interesting time. I offer a few of the best indie games for sale on the Rampant Games website. I can't say, "I sell a lot," though hope springs eternal.

But besides making and occasionally selling indie games, I'm very importantly a customer! About half my game purchases this year have been indie games. I play them, and I talk about them.

So now that I've hopefully established some level of cred, I'm gonna rant. See, I've actually INTENDED to buy several indie RPGs lately. But I haven't. Because I got so bored and annoyed long before I completed the demo. A couple of these demos have been fairly high-profile (well, as high-profile as you get from being an indie). I imagine if I toughed it out a little while longer, I might actually get to the part where the games are actually ... uh... fun.

I shouldn't have to do that.

How Not To Do It
This is done wrong in far too many games, especially indie games, and the RPGs are among the most heinous offenders. Let me share a hypothetical example fused by several game demos I've played recently, particularly the aforementioned roleplaying games.

I start the game. I face a pretty cool title screen and menu. Thrilled and anxious for hours of fun in store for me, I click the "New Game" button.

In some cases, I'm then faced with character generation. Now, I'm kind of a power-gamer with my RPGs, so I actually LIKE making characters. But here, I'm faced with an unfamiliar rule system an unfamiliar setting, and absolutely no understanding of how my choices might affect the game. Is it okay for me to make a character that looks like a lizard? Am I going to be shunned at all human cities if I do that? What about the "basketweaving" skill... is that going to be important? Am I going to be barred from the end-game because all of the later bosses can only be defeated in epic basket-weaving contests? And chosing the "default" characters - well, they are obviously less-than-optimal, otherwise they wouldn't offer the customized character option, right? And doesn't that defeat the whole point of making your own character?

Once I know what I'm doing, I may be happy to play with the stats and numbers and even play through the whole game a couple of different times using different characters. But when I first start out, this is a daunting and frustrating experience.

Now, whether I had to create a character (or four, or six...) or not, I now move on to the real game! Here we go! I face... text. Screen after screen of explanations about the world and how to play. My eyes glaze over at about the third page in, and I worry that I'm going to be missing key information that I won't be able to figure out later. Maybe the game relinquishes control to me at some point, so I perform my first actions, and .... there's more text. Explaining what to do next. Stuff I'm probably going to forget five minutes from now.

Finally, wading through tons of explanatory material, I'm now kinda-sorta on my own (with some actually helpful hint messages appearing from time-to-time), and I'm supposed to... navigate my character's bedroom or something. Maybe talk to people. Get some clues that there may be something going on that I can't do anything about right now. Or maybe I hear of something going on that might not involve me at all.

Fifteen minutes into the game, and I exit. Maybe I remember to save my game, so I can skip the boring part and hopefully move on to something interesting. Assuming I play it again. And even if I do, it might be so long that I've forgotten all those game-halting tutorial instructions on how to play or what's going on. Which means I'll be utterly lost and probably not having a good time.

That game has lost a sale. To ME, a guy who really wanted to like the game from the get-go. I was a sympathetic, potential customer with money to burn. What went wrong?

Start With A Bang
David Siegel presented something called his "Nine Act Story Structure" theory at CGDC ten years ago, based on his analysis of the top-grossing films of all time, and how they might be applied to games. According to his theory, the story really begins at Act 2, "Something Bad Happens." After the establishing shot to ground the audience in the setting, and possibly a hint of backstory to illustrate the brewing conflict between the protagonist and antagonist, you move on immediately to the BANG! In his words, "If it doesn't happen in the first four minutes, you've started the story too soon."

There's a literary technique called, "In Medias Res." I don't speak Latin, so this term could mean, "Caeser Augustus Sucks!" as far as I know. But I'm told it means, "Into the middle of things." It's a popular and effective technique often used in literature, comic books, movies, TV shows, plays, and *GASP* videogames. It basically means you don't start at the beginning of the story, but rather somewhere in the middle, when things are really getting exciting, and let the audience catch up. While I'm not advocating always starting when the story is halfway complete, the technique is simply another way to start with a bang and get things rolling as quickly as possible.

Players are playing a game rather than reading a book or watching a movie because they want to actually ... you know... play. So why not give them what they want? Start out with a bang! Get them in, get them playing! Give them only enough hook to pique their interest and enough setting / background to get some basic grounding, and enough instructions only to get them started. It doesn't matter if they don't know what they are doing - pitch them some easy, slow balls and tell them how to hit it as they are swinging. The point is to get them interested in and actually playing the game in the first five minutes.

I've seen several games do this successfully, and they usually follow these steps:

#1 - Give an EXTREMELY brief introduction to setting and their character
Keep it short, sweet, and to-the-point. Remember Star Wars? Lucas knew what he was doing back then. He didn't explain what the Clone Wars were, or explain the entire political landscape of the Empire. He didn't need to. He just mentioned them briefly, in passing, and our imagination filled in the rest. Arguably, our own imagination was far better than his ultimate realization of them in the latter films.

The player isn't interested in your world, yet. Giving them tons of background information right off the bat is only going to make them less interested. Tell them as little as they need to know in order to get some kind of context when they start out. Maybe give them a hint as to bigger things looming on the horizon. You can fill in details later as they play.

When I say brief, I mean BRIEF. I sat through an introduction to a game last night that was so long I literally started falling asleep during the middle of it. I didn't want to skip it, because I was afraid I might miss something important. Not that I'd be likely to remember much nodding off as I was. Now, it was late and I was on cold medication - but THAT SHOULD JUST NOT HAPPEN.

#2 - Give the player an objective
Give the player some interesting task right off the bat to get them interested and keep them focus. Sticking their character(s) in mortal peril right off the bat is a good way to do this, and comes right out of the "In Media Res" handbook. Getting them embroiled in a mystery that directly involves them is a good one, as well.

#3 - Ask questions that the player might find interesting
A good RPG opens with one or more questions related to the plot, setting, and/or the player's character. This can get them interested in more information about the world and what's going on. It also helps propel them into action to find out more.

#4 - Start the action!
The player now starts DOING STUFF. Important, interesting stuff, related to #2. Wandering around something that feels like a tutorial level isn't it.

#5 - Explain As You Go
Ideally, the player should be able to advance the game with only minimal instructions and a subset of commands. The game should let them do something cool and useful with something as basic as just moving around to begin with. Hitting the player with instructions and background information every two steps is no better than giving them a data-dump before they begin to play.

As far as character creation, there are several tricks that get used to delay the binding on the detailed character customization until later in the game, when the player is more familiar with it. And there have been tricks that made character creation part of the game itself. The important part is not to stick the player with some decision he may not be happy with before he knows what he's doing.

Games That Did It Right

Aveyond
Hey, an INDIE game! No wonder it was a surprise hit into the casual market, going where few RPGs had gone before.
#1 - Intro: A priestess falls to an enemy that should no longer be around. She summons the player's avatar, a plain ol' ordinary farmgirl (yeah, right) to her aid.
#2 - Objective: Help the priestess. Find out information from her. Oh, and very shortly, the "escape from slavery" objective comes up.
#3 - Questions: Why did the priestess summon Rhen of all people to her aid? What is Rhen's father hiding? Who attacked the priestess?
#4 - Action: The princess needs help! Find the healer and bring her back!
#5 - Exposition: The player is told what they need to do as it comes up in gameplay. Ditto for learning about the world. The player only gets character customization choices as they gain levels.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate
#1 - Intro: The Guardian appears in the introductory cutscene. Mocks the player. Upon starting the game, the player finds themselves tasked to investigate the scene of a grisley murder.
#2 - Objective: Investigate a murder. Find out whodunnit and why.
#3 - Questions: Who is the guardian, and what's his connection to the Avatar (the player's character)?
#4 - Action: Investigate a murder. Find out what people know. Follow a trail of bloody footprints.
#5 - Exposition: Name? Job? Ultima VII was pretty old school, and expected you to RTFM to play. However, it also gently eased you into gameplay. And... ummm... this game technically had character advancement, but I think it was minimal.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
#1 - Intro: Monolog from the Emperor, giving (perhaps too much) exposition and hinting of darkness coming. The player appears as an unknown prisoner, getting mocked by a fellow prisoner. He / she soon finds that they are a person with a hint of potential (from the emperor's recognition), and basically the right person in the wrong place at the wrong time.
#2 - Objective: Escape. Save the Emperor if possible.
#3 - Questions: Who is trying to kill the emperor, and why?
#4 - Action: The dungeon escape
#5 - Exposition: The "tutorial level" is the prison escape sequence, and it gradually introduces the game in fun and interesting stages. Character generation is largely organic, and a class is suggested to you. You can take the defaults, or customize it if you feel like it. Designing your character's look is actually a bit of a game-halting experience, unfortunately.

Final Fantasy VII
#1 - Intro: A mysterious girl, a city that looks fairly modern but quirky, a train, some dudes jumping out of it and... guys with guns trying to kill you.
#2 - Objective: Guys with guns trying to kill you. Oh, and you are a mercenary working for some militant environmentalist group. Blow up the reactor and don't get killed.
#3 - Questions: Who are you, really? That question takes up much of the game. And who's the mysterious flower-girl. And what is Shinra really up to?
#4 - Action: Guys. Guns. That's action, in the first 30 seconds.
#5 - Exposition: The game tells you how to defeat the guys with guns as they are shooting. Again, the "tutorial" level is actually a pretty fun, full-fledged game level that is an integral part of the plot. It just happens to be laid out in such a way that it only requires a gradually increasing subset of the commands to get through as you play. Character advancement was largely automated.

So Whatcha Gonna Do About It?
All I can do is rant a little bit about how I'd like to see things. I'm a developer and have an RPG design "in the works," so you can bet I'm going to try to apply these steps to it where I can. I'm not perfect, and maybe someday I'll be reading someone else's rant about where I screwed up. But hey - ya gotta learn somehow!

Otherwise - as players - we can send feedback to developers! We can let them know what we like and don't like about their games! One of the cool things about the indie games world is that the developers tend to listen to their customers. And they implement those suggestions - not only in future titles, but also going back and updating games that have already been "done." After all, indie games tend to have shelf-lives measured in YEARS rather than weeks (like the mainstream, brick-and-mortar industry). Who wouldn't like to make a few changes to an existing title and double their sales?

And hey - if you think I'm up in the night (I'm still on cold medication, after all), feel free to tell me so. Maybe you like reading pages of instructions for ten minutes before playing! Whatever floats your boat. But personally, I think there's a better way.

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:59 AM (Permalink)