Aldorlea Games’ Book of Legends – now on Steam and half-off

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 16, 2014

Long-time indie RPG developer Aldorlea Games has released – through a publisher (!) the game “Book of Legends” on Steam. It’s half-off until Friday, so if you are interested, I’d recommend snagging it soon.

The Book of Legends on Steam

Indinera Falls seems to suffer from a similar problem as I do – not knowing when to quit when it comes to packing RPGs full of stuff. The game is a stand-alone adventure advertising:

• Up to 60 hours of gameplay
• 125 different spells
• 100 different enemies
• The ability to split the party
• 30 playable characters

And so on. So if you like the “16-bit JRPG” style (not that this is 16-bit or from Japan), check it out, and let us know what you think. I haven’t played it yet, myself, but I’ve played many of Aldorlea’s games and enjoyed them in the past.

Congrats to Aldorlea! While they went through a publisher on this one, it’s their first game on Steam!

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Interesting Decisions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 14, 2014

This game design quote comes from Bruce Shelly, a designer of Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, and Age of Empires fame, from the way-back machine of 2001… and, as it is the season, it’s from GDC.

“Presenting the player with interesting and well-paced decisions is the rocket science of game design. Players have fun when they are interested in the decisions they are making, when they are kept absorbed by the pacing of the required decisions, and when they feel a sense of reward and accomplishment as good decisions are made. When the required decisions are too often trivial or random, fun sags. You risk boring the player and driving him/her out of the game. The Age of Empires games demonstrated that our customers consider automating trivial activities (queues, waypoints) a positive improvement.

“Good pacing can heighten interest in decision making. Real-time games have an inherent advantage vs. turn-based games because the continual ticking of the game clock adds a sense of desperation. If the player has many reasonable decisions to deal with but time to make only a few, everything being considered becomes much more interesting.

“When considering a new feature for a game, apply the interesting decision test. Is this new element or twist going to add an interesting decision to what the player is doing? If the answer is not a strong ‘yes,’ leave it out.”

Notice that he said “inherent advantage,” not “inherent superiority.”

He’s definitely channeling Sid Meier here (naturally), but while it is a fundamentally simple concept in theory, it can be very challenging to implement in practice.

Filed Under: Design, Quote of the Week - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Why Indie Is Important…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 13, 2014

I’m not going to offer much commentary here, and it’s a big article. From my perspective, this is a story about exactly why there is such a thing as “indie” – bypassing the gatekeepers, the publishers and manufacturers, as much as possible. Because, simply put, if your business is beholden to another that doesn’t have a need to keep your best interest in mind, then that’s one more great big thing that can go wrong even if everything else is perfect. Game studios face enough trouble as it is. If you liked Defense Grid and are looking forward to Defense Grid 2, the glimpse inside the sausage factory might also be interesting to you:

When a Successful Game is a Failure

I think Russ Pitts nails it when he says, “And the most extraordinary thing about this story is that it’s not extraordinary at all. This story could be about almost any game you’ve ever played and several hundred you never will. It is a glimpse into the fickle world of business and politics that simmers underneath the buzz and excitement of making video games. It is the dark, very human and ultimately political underbelly of the business of making fun… This is game development.”

Sadly, yes. And the ugliest parts are from the traditional areas of game development – the part that indies have tried to bypass as much as possible. Things are a lot better than they used to be, from what I hear, just because everybody understands there is another viable route.

Another amusing excerpt (and this is, I think, far more common on the indie side of the fence (but maybe it’s just ‘cuz I’ve gotten lucky… or just been naive…): “Dengler and Pobst did what might seem like lunacy to business people, but for each of them, it just came naturally: They were honest with each other. Pobst outlined the deal he wanted to see and what he needed to make it happen. Dengler did the same. They agreed on almost everything. To say this never happens would be to dramatically understate the corrosive environment of traditional video game funding.”

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Something Old, Something New: New RPGs That Revisit Old Territory

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 12, 2014

My family happened to be in the neighborhood of Brigham Young University campus (where we met, actually) a few weeks ago, and we decided to show my daughter the school. I hadn’t visited the ol’ alma mater in over a decade, and wasn’t quite prepared for all the changes. I mean, it had changed a lot between my freshman year and when I graduated, so I knew a lot would be different.

One of the school mottoes was, “The world is our campus.” As students, we used to joke that the motto was really, “The campus is our world.” Especially as a freshman with not much money, I didn’t get out much. It’s the third largest private university in the United States, and has plenty to do. The school had heavily discounted movies, a game room, lots of activities going on all the time, and what remains the largest library I’ve ever visited (and it’s only gotten bigger). For many years, the campus and its environs were home.

If you’ve ever gone back to your old hometown or school after several years’ absence, you know what it’s like. It’s a somewhat unsettling but not unpleasant sensation. I think the brain goes into a mode where it is trying to reconcile the patterns it recognizes with the new data. It’s exciting, but also a little sad, as you realize the world you once knew no longer exists. But for me, it’s really kinda cool to see what they’ve done to the place – to revisit a flood of old memories and to explore new things.  We even took advantage of an awesome opportunity to visit the art museum that was still under construction when we left many years ago.

The nice thing about computer worlds is that unlike the real world, within the limits of media degradation and emulation, they never fade or go away. I replayed Ultima III a couple of years ago, and except for the differences between having played it on a Commodore 64 in the old days, and playing it in DOSBox now, it was the same world and the same game. Popping in these old games for another visit is a nice antidote for nostalgia, as well. It’s often good to revisit the old classics and remember that even in their era, they didn’t quite walk on water. There is always plenty of room for improvement.

Some of the indie games (and not-so-indie games) coming out these days do provide something of that juxtaposition. The Legend of Grimrock was perhaps one of the biggest in my mind. I’d gone back and re-played a little bit of the first Eye of the Beholder game a few months before it was released. In some ways – and this is my concern about the sequel – it deviated too little from its predecessors (Eye of the Beholder series, Dungeon Master series). After a while, the lever / timing / pressure plate puzzles got to be a little wearying. I’ve been there, done that, and while I was pleased to see the experience delivered to a new generation of gamers, the new neighborhood started to feel a little like a weak (but much prettier) imitation of the old. I don’t want to come down too hard on the game – I really did love it (to a point) and it was a fantastic job by the developers. But in some ways, it felt like the only thing really “new” added to the mix was the graphics. Hopefully, the upcoming sequel will really broaden the RPG experience of the original.

I have not played it nearly as much as I would like, but Might & Magic X Legacy is a non-indie game that really wants to be a return to the old neighborhood to see what its like a few years later. It’s great to get back to that style of gameplay (although, for me, it’s … hardly old), although I think whatever nostalgia it is supposed to hold is a little lost on me. I was a latecomer to the Might & Magic series, as I didn’t play much of them in the old days, and then really began to play them (mainly 6 and 7) only a couple of years ago. It has that old-school feel in the combat and mapping (with the 4-way movement restriction) that definitely triggers the “old” habits I developed playing these games in the 80s and 90s. But again,  my gaming habits these days haven’t allowed too much nostalgic dust to settle on the old skills. I’m the kind of guy who might play World of Xeen after a session of Legacy.  With the limited character selection and other elements, the game doesn’t feel like much of a “throwback” to the old classics.

As I still maintain the claim that Ultima 7 was my favorite RPG, it’s exciting to games like Instant Kingdom’s Driftmoon and Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin that are strongly influenced by that classic. I haven’t played Original Sin yet (I’m resisting the siren’s song of my early access…), but I have high hopes. Both games seem to be influenced in very different ways, and while neither really tries to emulate the experience of Ultima 7, they do carry pieces of it with them. Another title with a strong Ultima influence (mixed with Legend of Zelda), if you can handle the weird voxel-y graphics, is Kitty Lambda’s The Real Texas.

Subterranea is a title now knee-deep in a Kickstarter campaign that claims to draw some serious inspiration from old “gold box” D&D titles from SSI, particularly Pool of Radiance. It’s still way too early to tell, but I hope this one succeeds.

Another game in the “genuine sequel” category is inXile’s Wasteland 2, the long-awaited sequel to the late-80s classic.  I’ve also only played a little of this one, now resisting the early access until things are more complete (partly because the last time I played, it kept crashing on me when I left the first area). While I don’t have an excuse now, I never played the original Wasteland, but fans of the Fallout series – also spiritually descended from Wasteland – may find themselves in some familiar territory in the sequel. Some of the original developers of the Fallout series and the original Wasteland are on the team, so it’s got an awesome start.

Fallout fans will also find themselves in a familiar play-style, if a completely unfamiliar world, in Iron Tower’s upcoming (kinda, soon, maybe?) Age of Decadence. A public beta is available now, and this is a really ambitiously-scoped indie RPG. I’ve played an early version, and it is definitely shooting for the moon. I don’t know if they’ll get there or not, but what they’ve accomplished even in early versions will make old-school PC RPG gamers smile. If you value having genuine choice in a game and lots of different approaches to dealing with “quests” (including avoiding combat altogether, much of the time…), then this is something to watch.

In the “spiritual sequel” category, it’s hard to get much closer in spirit than having original developers working on a new “inspired” franchise. Two Kickstarter-funded success stories coming in the not-as-near-as-I’d-like future include Torment: Tides of Numenera – also by inXile – and Pillars of Eternity by RPG veterans Obsidian Entertainment. Torment is the spiritual sequel of the cult classic and critically acclaimed Planescape: Torment, with several of the original developers (including co-authors of the original pen-and-paper Planescape setting) on the team making it happen. They have really gone all-out to define what they feel made Planescape: Torment so special, and to recapture it with this game. Their plans, as for Wasteland I believe, is to turn this into a franchise. It’s heavy on the weird-and-funky vibe, and I have high hopes.

Now, Planescape: Torment was something of a weirdo in the five D&D-licensed games that used Bioware’s Infinity Engine games. Pillars of Eternity is an attempt to emulate the experience of the all five, primarily the Baldur’s Gate series. Once again, we have some original team members of the era involved in the project, emphasizing spectacular 2D graphics. One of the nice bits about this title is that the game system is inspired by tabletop RPG systems. It’s really nice to see them get back to their roots a little more.  The emphasis here will be more on exploration and quest-solving. For those who do not demand the actual D&D game system or the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, it promises a strong return to familiar territory with an all-new game.

And finally, you’ve got the original creator of the Ultima series himself, Richard “Lord British” Garriott, working on a spiritual sequel to the Ultima series and highly successful Ultima Online. Entitled Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, it makes a lot of exciting promises to fans of the older games, and they’ve brought on Origin veteran Starr Long to assist in the development. They have definitely been working the Ultima nostalgia factor, and I hope it succeeds. I’ve not participated in the early alphas, and even though I was a backer, I’m a little bit skeptical of this one. The multiplayer aspect is what makes me worried. It’s got the potential for great awesomeness and for great suckage. But even though it’s been a long time since what I consider “the last great Ultima,” I’m willing to give Garriott the benefit of the doubt. I want to see how it turns out, and maybe – just maybe – it’ll be awesome beyond my wildest dreams, and as close to a true return to the world of Ultima as we’re likely to see (as the holder of the license doesn’t seem capable of pulling it off right). Here’s hoping.

Anyway – if you were a PC RPG fan from the old days, there are a lot of RPGs out there now or coming soon that draw significant influence from particular classics, that may give you a solid nostalgic feel of beloved classics, but mix in a lot of fresh new stuff to keep things interesting.  And really – I’m just touching the surface, mentioning those that I can think of that have cited (or shown) a strong influence from particular classic RPGs. There’s plenty more where those came from.

 

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Retro - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Are the New-Gen Consoles Stumbling?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 11, 2014

I wasn’t sure what to make of things when, right after the launch of a new generation of consoles, EA and Disney Interactive started laying off game developers and claiming that they were enhancing their “focus on mobile.” I mean, hello? In my experience, the first couple of years after a console’s launch is the time to really cash in. Historically, that’s seemed to be the case.

And then there’s this little piece on Tech Crunch:

The Console Market Is In Crisis

I dunno how much I believe this or really want to read into it. I do take exception to the claim that this is the first time consoles have been outclassed by PCs. I think that the last time that they were NOT outclassed by high-end PCs was the around the time the Playstation 1 was released, circa 1995. And in regards to the “long tail” not sustaining itself as well, the last generation of hardware was also the longest, by my understanding – was that factored in?

If we assume that it is correct – or make a different assumption, that people just aren’t buying games for the consoles in similar launch quantities, regardless of how many consoles are actually out there in people’s homes – then there’s a lot to think about. In truth, there have been suggestions for the last few years that the console market is drying out, but it was easy to dismiss these data points and rumors on the assumption that everything would be back to hardware once the next generation of hardware hit. But now…?

I think more than comparison to the PC, the big issue is the comparison to the last generation of hardware. Historically, each hardware generation offered immediate, striking improvements over its predecessor. But each massive leap in technology offered slightly less of an incremental improvement in the overall gameplay experience of the previous one. The jump to 3D helped maintain the progression a little longer, but the law of diminishing returns wasn’t repealed. With the last two generations (Xbox 360 / PS 3 / Wii, and Xbone / PS4 / Wii-U), there has been a greater emphasis on things like online connectivity (awesome, but again catching up to where the PC had been for years), and new control gimmicks. From a raw gaming perspective, the jump to more memory and more triangles per frame with even cooler shaders doesn’t really add that much more to the experience.

But having the biggest bucket in the world doesn’t gain you anything if developers can’t fill it. That’s the flip side, and why some major publishers may not be entering a new golden age of prosperity. The costs of developing software to truly take advantage of the power of these machines has faster than the market, keeping pace with the technology rather than the end-user experience. As also suggested by the article, my suspicion is that while developers are finding ways of getting more bang for the buck, they are reaching the conclusion that they can’t keep up. Maybe not “throwing in the towel” as the article suggests, but not raising budgets as they have in days past.

Of course, today is the big release of a game (Titanfall) that Microsoft seems to be pinning hopes on being a console-seller. Sometimes all it takes is the “killer app” to make all the difference. So… I’d be more worried if I was working at a big AAA game studio right now, but I’m not ready to count the consoles out just yet.

Filed Under: Biz, General, Mainstream Games - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Brains!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 10, 2014

Here is a little-known fact about Frayed Knights 1: The Skull of S’makh-Daon: The more intelligent enemies are actually smarter with how they attack. Not by much – in fact, it’s so subtle it’s probably unnoticeable unless you were to really find comparable enemies and do a comparison.

If you don’t mind peeking behind the curtain – on every move, the AI takes into consideration a handful of (semi-randomly selected) potential actions, gives them a weight based on circumstances, and then chooses the most heavily weighted action (with an additional, small, random amount added to the weight). As the enemy’s Brains score goes up, they take more options into consideration – increasing the chance that the “best” option will get added to the pool of actions being considered.

At one point, I had the enemies pretty regularly choosing the “best” action all the time… and it was rough. I don’t think I subjected any of the testers to that kind of punishment. The AI would play a lot like the player does – ganging up on one party member at a time, and so forth – only with the added bonus that the AI need never hold anything in reserve for a future fight. There was no conserving endurance or items. While this helped me optimize how some actions are weighted, and it was certainly challenging, it was too brutal. The game is a lot more fun with some “artificial stupidity.”

Besides not even considering some actions at random, I changed the weights to make things more interesting. For example, attacking an unwounded character is given a heavier weight (and higher likelihood) than moderately injured one. This is because it makes for a more tense, dramatic fight, and because “spreading the damage around” gives the player a better chance of surviving the first round or so and responding to attrition.

I love working on AI (most of the time), but Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath presents some interesting challenges for me as a designer and programmer. The biggest change is that parties are now controlled by a group, rather than just individuals taking their turn. This means at some level, I need a “mastermind” that plans out the activations of the party members. How smart should this “mastermind” be? What should their approach be? Should the personality of the enemy “player” controlling the enemies change based on the composition of the enemy party?

In nature, packs of predators do use intelligent tactics.  Not the kinds of things that would translate really well into Frayed Knights, but things like position, distraction, flanking, surprise… even “unintelligent” animals master these tactics as a matter of survival. So it’s not like I should necessarily dumb down the “master AI” because the group is predominantly low-intelligence monsters.

One of the ideas I’m also fiddling around with is making enemy intelligence something of a factor for difficulty level. Rather than simply making enemies more powerful, players looking for a greater challenge can deal with enemies that really know how to go after the pain.

I’m pretty confident I’ll have it tuned and working pretty nicely in the end. But as I’m in the middle of it right now, you get to hear some of the thoughts I’ve had and choices I’ve been making lately.

Oh, and just a reminder – please vote to Greenlight Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon on Steam.

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Dev Quote of the Week: Swen Vincke on Pigeonholing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 7, 2014

While I am going to provide a (sizable) excerpt here, this is really, really a case where I’d want to say, “Read the whole thing” – Swen Vincke: “Educating Players.”

The problem here is that previewers and players will make assumptions about how a game is played based upon how it looks. They will absolutely miss the “meat” of the game because they are trying to play a fundamentally different game.

“It reminded me strongly of something another journalist had told me. During a demo, I think at the German magazine Gamestar, I was told that we’d probably have to re-educate players because they’re not used to this type of gameplay anymore, conditioned as they seem to be by all the streamlining games go through nowadays.”

And a little later…

“For the first time in long I also started wondering if I’m too old for this business. It’s not unusual for me to see guys around me get all excited about games I personally consider to be too shallow. I think Ralph Koster in a theory of fun said that fun = learning and maybe I’m not having fun with these games anymore because I’ve mastered the patterns they’re based around, patterns which still feel new to those with less gaming experience. I guess that may be the price you pay for playing too much, but on the other hand, I still do want my fun too and I do feel underserved.

“A revealing moment for me was when I shocked our young PR manager. On our flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis I went through his entire collection of iPad games, spending at max 15 minutes on each of them. I gave my biased opinion on each of them, judging right there and then what was interesting, what was boring etc… He commented that I had an interesting style of playing

“I realized then that I was doing the exact same thing those previewers were doing and together with them probably every gamer out there. We are offered so much entertainment content these days and sadly a lot of it isn’t very good. To survive we’ve adopted a strategy of judging rapidly at the risk of missing out on something.  We know that the alternative, to spend time on each and every offering of entertainment industry has, is bound to disillusion us.”

I’ve been wondering a bit about this myself. It seems like back in the old days – when I was lucky to be able to afford a new game every month or two – I’d eagerly focus on a single game and really explore its depths.  Nowadays, supply has greatly outpaced my personal demand, and I have a massive backlog of games to play. So I tend to “graze” – play a few minutes of a game, and move on to another one. If I really like it, I might go back to it. It’s how I used to play games in the arcade days – it seemed like such a waste to put all my quarters or tokens into just one or two machines.

But for certain kinds of games – the ones I like the most, actually – that just doesn’t work. I love the games I can really sink my teeth into, but you can’t know if it’s actually going to be worth doing it until you invest the time and effort to do just that. I’m sure I am just as guilty as pigeonholing and dismissing some games as anybody else, and I wonder how much I’m out on because I do that.

Again – read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Quote of the Week - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Clogging the Crap-Filters

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 6, 2014

Long ago, I called myself an “indie evangelist.” I could see the awesome indie games coming out that nobody had ever heard of, and thought, “Wow! Look at what these indies are doing! If only people were to pay attention, and actually try these games and make them profitable, we could have more of these unique, innovative, clever little games!”

I guess I was naive. Okay, not totally. It’s a given that when you open the flood gates, you are going to be increasing the crap-to-gem ratio.  But you also get more gems. That much hasn’t changed.

What I perhaps didn’t anticipate was how a little bit of money would change things. Especially a little bit of money from a game made in just three days. Just like the mainstream world, the big money-makers just get cloned to hell and back by a bunch of paycheck-seeking, passionless, low-talent hacks. I mean, okay, it’s one thing to be a low-talent hack. Many of us suffer under this disadvantage. But at least try and be creative about it!

Instead, we have this fun little note, reported by Polygon –

Report: 60 Flappy Bird Clones Hit iTunes App Store Every Day

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. We have an army of indies trying to cash in on the success of one cheap and dirty little game that got lucky. Many are not even departing from the bird-and-pipes theme. This is what we’ve become. The golden age of indie is built upon a dung heap.

I guess that makes indie games pretty much the same as everything else out there.

When the walls come down (the barriers to entry), filters are needed. Lots of filters. I still don’t quite see that for indie games. Maybe it’s because the supply has so exceeded demand that people can’t keep up.  Just trying to do a fair evaluation of indie PC RPGs would consume some serious time and effort on the part of several people. At this rate, it could be more than a full-time job just evaluate Flappy Bird clones. Sixty a day! At five minutes of evaluation per game (assuming they are all as tiny and easy to get the gist of as the original), plus ten minutes to write up the evaluation and post it to a site… that’d be 15 hours of work every day just to keep up with the new clones.

While I appreciate the individual player evaluations, there’s still something to be said for specific, clear, informed voices. We do get some of that… there are some “niche” gaming sites with reviewers with several well-written reviews (a track record), informed opinions, and decently voiced views on games that can really help with purchase decisions. One person whom you trust is worth ten anonymous reviews who give near-minimum or near-maximum scores and barely readable two-sentence reviews.

But they can’t keep up. No doubt there are a lot of worthy entries that get clogged up in the mess. And I’m not just talking about the gems either – I’m talking about the games that may be flawed but interesting, perhaps unpolished but having a few really cool creative ideas.

Kinda like making indie games – if you aren’t just cashing in on what’s popular, then it really has to be a labor of love. There’s not a whole long of reward to be found on the average. Even taking some kind of niche like indie PC RPGs – it’s hard enough just to keep track of what’s getting released, let alone provide a fully-played, thoroughly evaluated reviews. If only. It’s like we need a small army of CRPG Addicts focused on modern indie releases.

I wish I had an answer.

Filed Under: General, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

Indies, Integrity, Reputation, and Crowdfunding

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 5, 2014

I’ve warned about Kickstarter before. I’m hesitant to throw any support behind crowdfunding campaigns here unless I know the creators, either personally or by reputation. And reputation is an interesting thing. It usually originates in personal character, but it also makes good business sense. A good reputation is something that’s very hard to build up, and easy to destroy.  I expect some of these folks would rather lose their house than ruin their reputation… the house is a lot easier to rebuild or replace.

Anyway, I’ve heard the failure rate of Kickstarter projects is somewhere around 50%. That’s bad. Although for game projects, a good portion of that is “late” projects, rather than actual failures. As a gamer (and game developer), I know all about lateness. It’s a scary problem, to be sure – late often means higher costs. But it’s common enough, and I’m somewhat familiar with the warning signs that a project really is in trouble. So far, I haven’t had any of the funded projects I’ve backed look like its seriously in trouble. Knock on wood.

I’m not talking about actual, deliberate scams on Kickstarter (and those do exist). I’m talking people who may not be reliable or who do not know what they are getting into. There’s managing the project. There’s managing the budget – especially with physical rewards. Even the final amount received from the pledges can be a surprise. It’s not like that lump sum that appears on the KS site is magically deposited into one’s account. Between taxes, Kickstarter’s cut, Amazon’s cut, and failed pledges, the final pool of money can be significantly less.

If someone happens to be very bad with money in the first place, problems can get compounded. Some folks – the ones with a good reputation and the character to back it up – will do everything they can to make good on their promises, at least as far as they can. The recent little saga with Double Fine is an example of that. Their reach didn’t quite exceed their grasp, but they did have to get creative with their fulfillment. I have no problem with that, really. Crap happens. People make mistakes. People can have moments of weakness or foolishness. It’s how life works.

I was aghast when I read about one particular narcissistic douchebag who decided to post a video of himself burning books that he owed backers and turn it into a protest rather than face up to his own mistakes and the personal embarrassment it would cause. In a final update to backers, he blames rich people, capitalism, his backers themselves, religion, his own sexual identity (?), classism, racism, and society as a whole for his actions. He might spare a little blame for himself – his past self, he explains. He finishes up by the announcement that he is seeking people who will subsidize his lifestyle with no thought of any kind of return or reward for him.

Honor. Honesty. Integrity.  Professionalism. Personal responsibility. Respect for others. Self-respect. These are the kinds of things I value. These are the sensibilities that were offended by his actions. But, he explains in his final rant, “If you have negative feelings about the actions I am taking, that is part of what I am protesting against. I am protesting the values you use to determine how you feel about and interact with the world.”

If anything, my values have been more solidly reinforced. I would not want to live in a society of people with this pathetic individual’s attitude. I don’t think many people would live very long at all in such a world.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend any more talking about this epic failure of humanity and Crowdfunding. There’ll be another scam-artist or foolishly optimistic individual tomorrow. Just be careful out there. If you want mode details, you can read  this commentary. Or read the guy’s final “Screw You” Kickstarter Update.

Know who you are getting involved with when you back someone. Although – to be fair – if I’d gotten this guy’s first book, I would have probably assumed he was a “safe bet” on the second.

Fortunately – at least in my own experience – this is noteworthy in that it is an aberration. The majority of my experience in my little subset of the “indie community” has been good to fantastic. Yeah, you can have problems with outsourcing content sometimes – but the other game dev types may not always be perfect at hitting schedules (I know I am not!), but they do have the integrity to follow through and make good on promises.

I had an experience once – and I am going to keep this deliberately vague (and please don’t speculate in the comments) that really struck things home for me, and serves as a huge counterpoint to the story above. Several years ago, someone who was involved in the indie world promised me a sum of money, but due to circumstances outside of his control, couldn’t deliver. He promised to make it up to me somehow, and I kind of dismissed it. It’s not like I didn’t believe his intentions, but I wasn’t holding my breath.  Crap happens. I chalked it up to a loss.

Years later, my wife and I were personally struggling with some unforeseen expenses. Crap happens, as usual. It wasn’t disastrous, but it wasn’t pretty. We were pretty much at the nadir of this crap, with the attendant stress that comes with it, when I get a letter in the mail from this guy. It includes a check for the full amount from so many years ago. My wife and I were literally in tears.

I contacted him, and thanked him. He’d been saving up for years to make good on his promise. I will never know what kind of personal sacrifice he had to make to do this. I did get a little bit of history of how things went bad initially.

I will say that I would unhesitating in recommending this guy if he were to run a Kickstarter or involved in some kind of business. I can’t necessarily vouch for his talents as a programmer or his skill in running a business. But I can vouch for his integrity, honor, and sense of responsibility. I won’t necessarily go into details, but I would say, “Give this guy a chance.” Every time.

If a society was full of people like that, that would be a place I really would like to live.

We can’t make guarantees that some previously stable guy will never go off the reservation. And it’s hard to know what people will be like when pressure exceeds their tolerance.  And crap always happens. I know I’ve personally taken some issue with how much more willing people are to buy into a promise than to buy a finished product. That still bugs me.

But, as developer Craig Stern told me about his upcoming Telepath Tactics game, “There is just absolutely no way Telepath Tactics would be getting made to its current standard of quality without the funding that that site allowed me to receive. Not a chance.” There’s a place for it. There are people that are safer bets. The folks with the proven track record, who have earned a reputation the hard way – that’s where I see crowdfunding as an amazing development. It allows things to happen. Cool, awesome things like Wasteland 2, Broken Age, and The Banner Saga, all the way down to the small projects like Telepath Tactics.

Maybe we just need a better “reputation system” in the real world. 🙂

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Feel Like Making a Roguelike / Roguelike-like? Procedural Death Jam!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 4, 2014

The Procedural Death Jam is upon us, starting this weekend…

That’s part of Lars Doucet’s proposed name for Roguelikes (and the increasingly dissimilar “Roguelike-likes”), “Procedural Death Labyrinths.” The emphasis is on procedural level generation and permadeath. The game jam goes on for seven days.

I’ll tell ya, if I wasn’t so behind on Frayed Knights 2, I’d be all over this one. It’s still hard to resist the urge, but I’m going to have to wait for the next one, assuming there is a next one. I really want to do a roguelike some day, and I’ve got about 2 or 3 ideas I’d want to experiment with.

But hey – now’s your chance. Feel like taking a stab at a “procedural death labyrinth?” Head on over to the official website:

Procedural Death Jam – March 8 through March 15th, 2014

There’s a little bit more commentary over at Gamasutra: Procedural Death Jam.

I can’t say I’m a super-fan of the term “Procedural Death Labyrinth” but I haven’t heard a better alternative.

 

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

The Reward

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 3, 2014

Apparently my wife and my daughter knew about this short film *months* ago, but didn’t bother to share it with me. I am saddened.

Warning, it is not entirely safe for work.

Another warning – be sure and watch to the end of the credits.

The Reward from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: Read the First Comment

Frayed Knights, New Price

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 28, 2014

The time has come, ladies and gentlemen.

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon has a new price, both direct and through Desura. Cheaper is good, right?

While the sequel is still a little further off than I expected at this point, this really is all part of my cunning plan to spread this game around far and wide. When the sequel comes out, as many people as possible to have played and loved the original, and be totally ready for more Frayed Knights. Yes, behold the majesty of my plan, for mine is an evil genius! Muhahahah!

If you have not played (and I am constantly surprised by how many new readers I have who aren’t familiar with the game), Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is something of a love-child between an old-school role-playing game and a sitcom, with many of the somewhat more modern amenities of a 3D indie game that doesn’t have to fit inside 640k anymore. 🙂  Frayed Knights is a little silly on the surface, with a party of misfit adventurers who provide their own little commentary on the story as it evolves. Underneath the surface, though, it is still a pretty “hardcore” old-school, turn-based RPG with tons of items, spells, special abilities (“feats”), puzzles, monsters, and places to explore. It’s got elements of both a parody and love-letter to old-school CRPGs and to tabletop role-playing.

One of the innovations of Frayed Knights is the “drama star” system. When you do something interesting, enjoy a victory, or especially suffer a setback, you gain points towards “drama stars.” The drama stars can be used to provide huge advantages in the game – from massive bonuses to your next task, to restoring your entire party to full health. The trick is that the drama stars are not saved in a normal save game (if you quit and come back, however, you’ll get ’em). The point is to give players who “play through” setbacks and challenges in the game won’t be at a disadvantage against players who prefer to reload and replay the same combat or events over and over again to “get it perfect.”

Along with that perspective of leveling the playing field for certain kinds of gamers, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is designed to not require a perfect optimization of your characters in order to succeed. There are a ton of customization opportunities for your characters, and I wanted people to have fun with it, rather than being so worried about picking the “wrong” choice. Experiment!

It’s a big game, representing an average of 30 hours for many people to play through to the conclusion, assuming they hit some or most of the optional content (there are quite a few completely optional quests and dungeons). I really did go overboard with the number of spells and feats in this game (if it’s a mistake, I am taking unbelievably further in the sequel…) It will keep you busy. And challenged. Just because the story is (usually) tongue-in-cheek doesn’t make it a cakewalk.

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is also on Steam Greenlight. If you are on Steam, please consider giving it an “upvote” and we’ll see if we can help more people discover this game!

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon on Steam Greenlight

And hey – if you are still on the fence, there’s even a free demo you can check out at the Frayed Knights site.

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Now on Kickstarter: Saga Heroes

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 27, 2014

King.com has dropped their trademark claim on the word “Candy,” at least in the U.S.  No word yet on the word, “Saga.” This could be pretty interesting for Eric Wiggins of Wasatch Games, as the Kickstarter he is launching today is for a game in a series of titles – both game and movie – that I’m pretty sure predates King.com’s existence.

Now, you know I’m often reluctant to do much with Kickstarters, but I do make exceptions for friends and people that I am really impressed with. In this case, I’ve worked directly across from Eric back when we were both programmers on the original Saga MMO. He later took over administration and development of the game, and has basically had one foot in that world for about the last seven years.

His game, Saga Heroes, is an action-RPG intended for the Ouya, Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobile platforms. He’s got his eye on some other consoles as well (and has console game dev experience, so it’s not a just talk…) I played an early build of it back in January at the Utah Indie Night, and it showed plenty of potential. The biggest problem was, naturally, the technical limitations of the Ouya (and mobile), but the desktop platforms will be enhanced.

I’ll let the KS page do the talkin’ from here.

Saga Heroes on Kickstarter

And, hey, a gameplay video!

 

 

And just because I don’t know where I’d link it again, here’s the trailer to the movie that takes place in the same world.  I gotta tell ya, as low-budget fantasy movies go, this is so much better than what we had to put up with in the 1980s…

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Game Design Lessons from Ken Rolston

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 26, 2014

Ken Rolston has quite a list of game design credentials, from working on two of the Elder Scrolls games, to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (which I hear is a good game, in spite of being tainted by its history), to experience working in the dice-and-paper RPG industry. His office-mate Alexander Horn from the 38 Studios / Big Huge Games years shares some of the wisdom he gained from Rolston while they worked together:

Gamasutra: Three design lessons from working with RPG legend Ken Rolston

My favorite “lesson” here – and the one that, surprisingly, can get hard to fulfill sometimes as a game developer, is to do “competitive research.” Play lots of games. Ken Rolston himself makes an appearance in the comments to expand on this piece of advice:

“An addition to the injunction to excel at competitive research: do it so you can have shared language and examples when attempting to explain original or exotic design ideas. Abstract presentations of even the greatest game design ideas may cause glazing of eyes, while a shared illustrating example selected from your archived research notes and web links gives speaker and listeners something concrete to swiftly compare notes on, discuss, and evolve.”

There’s good stuff for game makers of all stripes, but particularly for those of us with RPG leanings.

I thought it was interesting that Rolston considers exploration to be part of the “candy” or reward system for the game, and not part of the moment-to-moment gameplay. While I agree it’s part of the fun, I’m still not convinced it shouldn’t be integrated as part of the gameplay and challenge.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Roguelikes (PDLs) Vs RPGs?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 25, 2014

I’d like to enumerate what – to ME – amounts to the fundamental differences between roguelikes and RPGs:

…

Some folks may argue with me  – please do! I think it’s mainly certain roguelike fans who see a major distinction, or maybe some other folks who can’t squint hard enough to see the similarities between Nethack in all its ASCII glory and Dragon Age. But I’m of the opinion (which at least Wikipedia supports) that  roguelikes are a subset of computer role-playing games. Yes, of course, there are some additional constraints on a game for many people to qualify it as a roguelike, but the category has become increasingly flexible. And increasingly cool.

Lately – probably because they are well within the parameters of indie development and have had some notable success stories – there has been an explosion of roguelikes and roguelike-likes.This makes me happy, mostly. I mean, sure. There are plenty of pretty vanilla roguelikes out there. But there are others that really push the bounds of the genre, or go to great lengths to make the genre more accessible to new players, or strip the gameplay down to its most fundamental roots and really polish that.

Some people have taken issue with the name of the subgenre, and have proposed alternatives. It’s tempting, especially when you start getting into people using the term “roguelike-like.” That’s like “RPG Elements” in other games that really have nothing to do with RPGs. I mean, I am perfectly fine with game genres cross-pollinating. But adding procedural level design to an action game doesn’t make it a roguelike any more than a first-person perspective in Might & Magic X Legacy makes it a first-person shooter (thankfully!). And I kinda dig the term, “Procedural Death Labyrinth,” (PDL) although I think it’s still not very accurate for some of the fascinating directions roguelikes may be going.

Historically, many of the earliest computer RPGs (especially in the mainframe days) would more closely resemble roguelikes today. Saved games were kind of on the iffy side anyway back then, and the games were largely an attempt to recreate the table-top experience of the era… which had a high character mortality rate. Procedural content generation served the grand purpose of keeping the game interesting for their primary audience, which was often the creators and their friends.

One of the differences between roguelikes and “full-fledged” RPGs has been an emphasis on story and quests with the latter. But it’s not like all RPGs have had that much story (or direct questing). And the roguelikes? While FTL (Faster Than Light) lacked most of the trappings of your average roguelike, it has nevertheless been accepted by most people as part of the subgenre. The story snippets and quests are not interrelated and don’t come together to form an overarching plot, but they definitely drive the narrative in the player’s head. While Soldak’s games (Din’s Curse, Drox Operative, etc.)  may be more “Diablolike” than “Roguelike” (But Diablo kinda began life as a roguelike before going its own way, so there!), but they have clearly shown how dynamic quests can drive the overall theme of the game and “plot”, if you will.

FTL, Drox Operative, and Din’s Curse all scratch my roguelike and RPG “itch.” Mostly.

I guess my big contention is that I don’t really draw much of a line between roguelikes and RPGs, and I think the health of roguelikes is good for the health of computer RPGs. I’d like to see more games crossing the already-faint line in either direction, and taking the concepts both ways. I’ve always felt that commercial RPGs could get some pointers from some of the biggest, coolest roguelikes out there. I’d also like to see more “roguelikes” (or PDLs if you prefer) branch out in new directions, new settings, new styles, and new ideas. Will they cease to be roguelikes at that point? Maybe. But they’ll be some pretty awesome games.

Filed Under: Roguelikes - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Irrational and the “Death of AAA Games”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 24, 2014

By now, most of you have heard about the closing of Irrational Games (makers of the Bioshock series and… well, perhaps more importantly for me, their less-well-remembered but awesome Freedom Force series…). Now, the official reason is that founder Ken Levine wanted to switch gears and work on smaller games with a smaller team. That’s what I got from the official PR.

Unofficially – well, that’s a matter of speculation. There’s a strong implication that the sales for Bioshock Infinite – while certainly outstanding by an outside measure – hadn’t grown in appropriate proportion to its budget. When you see returns flattening out but budgets skyrocketing, especially for something that represents a huge company investment… well, that can force some difficult decisions to be made. And there are signs and rumors that the studio had plenty of other problems…

That’s all stuff we may never know for sure. I was really intrigued by a piece at Gamasutra last week by industry writer / journalist Leigh Alexander, who questions the rule of journalism in cases like this. In her case, she could see problems and heard rumors, but would digging deeper and reported on these problems been a service to either fans or the companies? It’s an interesting journalists-eye-view of the situation. There’s a lot to discuss, and a lot of issues highlighted.

But most people in the industry are seeing this as something of the writing on the wall. A major AAA studio is closing, in spite of having the perfect recipe for success: A proven hit franchise, a critically acclaimed game that sold respectable “hit” numbers that anyone in the industry should be happy with, etc.   What this really means to a lot of people is that we’re finally hitting the wall in terms of AAA budgets.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want or expect “AAA” gaming to “die.” Not at all. But the entire history of the video game industry has been one of rising budgets and dependence upon major technological innovation to improve the gaming “platform” and broaden the market. The latter has arguably already come to an end… each new generation of hardware may still be better by leaps and bounds than the one previous, but from the perspective of a relative, subjective gaming experience… the increment of change has slowed substantially. The growth of budgets (usually to deal with the advances in technology) is now hitting the same wall…. you have to spend twice as much for each incremental improvement.

That is, to use the popular term, “unsustainable.” People (like me) have been saying this for years, but it looks like its finally proving itself. It’s not like anybody has really been in denial about this – nobody thought that growth would go on indefinitely, or even that much further. I think many studio and publisher heads decided that they couldn’t predict when the music would stop, so they’d keep right on going, and cross that bridge when they came to it.

And now some of them are reaching the bridge.

I dunno. I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what the games biz will look like when it’s no longer a race to see who has the deepest pockets.

Gamasutra: Irrational Games, journalism, and the airing of dirty laundry, by Leigh Alexander

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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