Will Movie Theaters Go the Way of the Video Game Arcade?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 26, 2013

Once upon a time, arcades were a fixture in my life. This was so deeply ingrained that even to this day, on those (relatively rare) occasions I find myself inside a shopping mall, I still find myself looking for one. It was something of a surprise in the late 80s when I’d go to a mall and discover that there was not a “game room” of some kind. That was a rarity.

Now… well, not only are arcades rare, but shopping malls aren’t exactly commonplace either – nor are the bustling hubs they once were. Things change, and the stuff that was once a fixture of modern often does disappear with time. Not entirely, but mostly. I remember pull-tabs from soda cans littering the sides of convenience store parking lots – a common sight when I was little which had almost entirely disappeared by the time it was used as a plot point in the movie WarGames. And pay phones! Again, those aren’t gone entirely in this country, but they have become a rarity. What was unthinkable thirty years ago is just the way of things today.

So – next up: Movie Theaters?

New Republic: Hollywood Is in Trouble, and We’re All Going to Pay

Movie theaters have been an institution for longer than arcades (but only about as long as pay phones). But I see the same kind of forces at work here.

I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Hollywood. To be honest, it sounds to me like the whole industry has been screwed up from the beginning, and while things have improved for workers in the business over time (thankfully!), it has come at the cost of … well, cost. It’s extremely difficult to make things efficiently – partly because of a backlash from the excesses taken in the “golden era” by Hollywood moguls where “efficient” meant, “screwing over the workers so badly they bled from every orifice.”

But again, that’s just perception from a guy with a casual interest. As far as the current problems for me, as a consumer and “outsider” who just loves (good) movies, here’s what I think:

* There are too many bad, bad movies out there – many with huge budgets that attempt to be the next blockbuster. So – unless it’s a sequel to a movie I already love, I’m going to wait for the reviews before seeing it.

* In the case of sequels – it’s a case of “fool me once…” I’ll be part of that awesome opening weekend crowd (or maybe within the first two weeks, depending on scheduling) for a sequel to a movie I already love, without needing to see the reviews. Movie makers can laugh themselves all the way to the bank on my hard-earned money. But for the NEXT sequel after a crap-fest, I’m going to be a little more cautious, and wait for the reviews again. I expect the big Hollywood business types don’t understand that behavior. They see a lukewarm opening weekend for movie #3 and they say, “Oh, hey, audiences don’t like this movie!” That may be it in part, but part of it is because the audiences still have the bad taste in their mouth from the LAST movie.

* Crappy movies limit my willingness to take risks on movies in the theater. Which is partly due to the next point:

* Expense. Especially with the 3D surcharge that Hollywood until recently seemed to be trying to make mandatory (and to be honest, I don’t really like wearing 3D glasses during a film – the best use so far has been to make modiocre-to-bad movies a little more watchable, once), going to the movies is not an insignificant expense. You know how we complain about $60 video games? At my local megaplex, it’s $9.25, reserved seating… which means if you don’t want to drive to the theater hours before the show to reserve your seats, or take your chances at showtime, you’ll need to pay another $1 Internet surcharge to order your tickets, so that’s $10.25 per seat. So that’s $41 without buying popcorn or sodas for a film at the theater. While I’m okay with doing that occasionally for a pretty awesome film, we’re talking once-every-couple-of-months here, not every-weekend.

* Marketing: The TV networks are struggling, too. Newspapers are nearly dead. The days where you could advertise a movie on the “big three” networks and the major papers and connect with 90% of your target audience are long gone. I didn’t even know about RED 2 until I saw it in the “coming soon” list at Rotten Tomatoes – and I was immediately interested because (surprise!) I’d loved the original. I had to hunt down the trailer. Yes, I’m seeking advertising. Or at least seeking information, and good advertising is supposed to educate (IMO). I also heard that it was good by word-of-mouth. How does a movie studio reach me with advertising these days, so I can know a movie I’d be interested in is coming out?

* Audience fatigue / experience / education: I was actually excited about The Lone Ranger, even after hearing Johnny Depp was going to play Tonto. Then I saw the trailer. Everyone I know who watched the trailer expressed the same concern: It looked stupid. Lots of stunts, lots of explosions, zero brains. I held out hope that it wouldn’t suck, but the reviews quickly convinced me that my impression from the trailer was correct. I still haven’t seen it, and don’t have much desire to do so, even when it comes out on DVD.

* Alternatives. That $41 can buy me 5 months of Netflix streaming movies – or two and a half months of DVDs / BLU-Ray + streaming. And I’ve got a nice wide-screen HD TV now, with a decent sound system, so it’s not like I’m missing too much out of the “big screen” experience, particularly if I’m not a huge fan of 3D (We’ll see if the 3D TVs catch on…) So if I’m willing to wait six months for a film, what do I lose? This wasn’t the case in the golden and silver ages of Hollywood, where at best a show might come out on TV in a few years, with lots of edits and commercials.

If anything, I’d say this latter factor might be the biggest.

Let’s talk about the death of arcades for a minute. Why did the arcades go away?

Well, games of competitive quality could no longer be profitable at a quarter per play, so the expense went up. Audiences became fatigued with the same ol’ game styles (‘cuz, you know, those were the only ones that made money).  And the big killer was when home gaming systems caught up with the capabilities of the arcade machines. Again –  alternatives. You could rent a game for the weekend and get an almost identical experience as the arcade (sans fighting over the machine with other players – which in some cases was part of the fun) for a fraction of the cost. So what was the draw to the arcades?

Sure there were reasons, and people still came… in smaller numbers. Machines went idle a lot. Which meant they had to charge even more money to make them worthwhile, which meant even fewer people bothered. It was a vicious cycle, culminating with most arcade operators no longer able to sustain a business, and calling it quits.

I’m seeing a lot of parallels here with theaters. The theater screens have gotten smaller, home screens have gotten bigger. There are fewer “draws” to the theater experience. Assuming this is the case, the question then is – if the movies can’t make the kind of money they have grown to rely upon from box office returns, can they keep making the big-budget “blockbusters” anymore? Or is there something more that Hollywood and the theaters can do to stave off the grim reaper?

Filed Under: Geek Life, Movies - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

How to Evangelize Indie Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 23, 2013

I saw what was supposedly an ad on YouTube for the Ouya a couple of days ago, and really wanted to believe Ouya had nothing to do with it. But apparently, they did. I don’t even want to link to it directly. It was revolting and embarrassing.

Gamasutra: In the hardware messaging war, Ouya’s playing the wrong notes

I wish I could disagree with the article. I like Ouya. I want to see them succeed. But I really don’t get this. Who is going to look at something like this and say, “Oh, boy, that over-the-top cartoon vomit and gore inspires me to buy an Ouya!” I mean, seriously, who is your target audience for something like this?

So I’ve got some advice to Ouya and others out there looking to go commercial with the indie message. I’m offering these absolutely free, and I’m sure it’s worth every penny. If I’m so smart, why aren’t I rich?

All I can point out is what works for me – as a consumer. And that, well, indies are winning, so the “indie message” is somehow working. Finally. So while the message may be slow and not too sexy, it’s worked. Here are some things anyone marketing or evangelizing indie should consider.

#1 – Indie is a marketing term. I don’t think this is a “dirty little secret” or anything.  It’s just what it is, and why it came to be in the first place. The bottom line is that indie was there to help reset customer expectations. In a world where gamers had been bombarded with the glitzy marketing message that quality could be determined by polygon count and expensive production values, something had to be done to encourage gamers to give themselves permission to look at these low-budget, often retro-appearing titles.

Yes, it encouraged a double standard. It had to.  ‘Cuz the indies were entering a game that was rigged against them from the get-go. We had to change the rules. That was what indie did.

#2 – Indies (and indie game fans) don’t hate mainstream games, nor will mainstream gamers be convinced to hate them. Frustration, boredom, annoyance, sure. But most indie developers were inspired by mainstream games of the past. As gamers, we love great games, regardless of whether they were built by a major studio or a no-name in their basement. We love games. We’re about making more of the games that we love, not about restricting options or hating things with higher production values.

You don’t villainize mainstream games. It’s fun to dig at the creators or publishers sometimes, sure, but don’t go too far. In many ways, they are reacting to economic realities. We may not agree with their approach, but indies have to deal with the same economic realities.  You aren’t going to win may converts by convincing them to hate mainstream games.

#3 – Indies can’t automatically compete on price. So new mainstream games are too expensive? Even back when mainstream games were exclusively on physical media, it didn’t take horrendously long for many games to get discounted to price ranges competitive with indie titles. With digital distribution taking over in the mainstream side as well, indies no longer enjoy that cost advantage over mainstream games – they can release games on Steam or the console stores almost as cheaply as an indie. Even as indies have been suffering a price war to go cheaper and cheaper, mainstream games aren’t too far behind. Give it  a year or so, and the right sale on Steam, and those of us who tend to sit in the cheap seats can enjoy a AAA masterpiece for the same price as a quality indie title. There are lots of ways indies can compete against the big-budget blockbusters, but price is a weak strategy.

#4 – Indie games are cool. Mainstream games put their “cool” up-front with incredible graphics and awesome soundtracks and cut-scenes that seem designed specifically to put into a trailer video. For indie games, you have to dig a little deeper.  But there are plenty of awesome indie games out there with plenty of cool to be shared.

#5 – Indie games are innovative. That’s not saying that all indie games are innovative (most aren’t), or that mainstream games never innovate. But between the sheer quantity of indie games coming out, and the lower cost & risk of innovation that comes with indie development, indie games are where most of the innovation is taking place these days. It’s actually kind of amusing to see the big studios and publishers “borrowing” ideas first proven by successful indies. But for people who are getting bored with the same ol’, same ol’ pushed by the big publishers, the indie scene is an incredibly fresh drink of water. Even something as overdone as a first person shooter gets radically transformed in the hands of indies. This is awesome.

#6 – Indie games offer variety. It goes with the innovation thing, and also the huge number of indie games coming out all the time. There are simply tons of indie games out there covering all kinds of genres. There’s always something different in the indie scene. Yes, it sometimes gets a little overwhelmed by a particular popular genre (these days it’s puzzle-platformers; for a while it was match-three or hidden object games), but those games are the attention-grabbing, popular minority.

#7 – Indie games are niche. Sometimes. Again, with the variety – there are indie games covering all kinds of obscure genres and unique interests out there. Sometimes they are just web games or extremely low-budget mobile games, but they are out there. As an exercise at a Utah Indie Night a couple of years ago, an iPhone developer suggested that if you do a search on any “unique” idea you had for a game on the App Store, you would have a very tough time not finding at least one (often two or three) games that have already done something with that idea. We tried it, choosing topics that were relatively bizarre and tasteless. Sure enough, so long as it wasn’t an area that was prohibited by Apple.

#8 – Supporting indies supports individual developers in a way that buying mainstream games doesn’t. In the mainstream world, developer royalties only come into play once a game has sold far into “hit” (or these days, “mega hit”) levels.  With indies, who have usually self-funded development (and I consider things like Kickstarter, where the funds are delivered with no strings attached, a variation on self-funding), the money starts going to the developers with the very first dollar. A lot of players feel good about this.

#9 – They make ’em like they used to! Except when they don’t. But with all that variety out there, indie games are thriving in once-barren genres: Point and click adventures? Space combat? Turn-based RPGs? Wargames? Side-scrolling platformers? 2D shoot-em-ups? The indies are there and thriving. This has a nostalgia factor, but new gamers are discovering the joys of these old game styles now – with the advantage of some more modern conveniences. This is awesome!

#10 – Indies are approachable. A player can actually get in contact with most indie developers. Their feedback goes straight to the guys developing the game. So does most of the tech support questions. If you aren’t a dickweed about it, most indie developers love this kind of interaction, and players do, too. This direct communication benefits game development in numerous ways, as the developer gets to know who their audience is and what they want to a level that bigger developers logistically can’t.

#11 – Indies are the underdog. Everybody likes the underdog, right? Anybody who likes to see the little guy achieve their dreams can feel good about supporting indies.

#12 – Indie games have personality. Some mainstream games with a strong designer have this too, but with such huge teams the individual contributions tend to get suppressed, and much of the game ends up feeling like it was designed by committee. In the tiny teams creating indie games, the personalities and authorship of the developers can’t help but shine through. There’s true authorship there. In my opinion, it leads to a better connection between artist and audience that makes for a better game.

So – Ouya, Gamestick, Sony, Steam, all the rest of you guys out there capitalizing on the indie revolution – this is what you are offering. This is what you are supporting. Try not to screw it up too much, okay?

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Game Dev: Hitting the Brick Wall

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 22, 2013

I have met a few people in my career who seem to have the magical ability to “do it all.” They can code. They can design. They can draw. They can write. They can do sound design. They are the jacks of all trades, and IMO ideally suited to the indie scene.

They didn’t get there by waiting for somebody else to do the work for them, or by letting themselves be blocked by limitations to their own skills.

I also doubt it was the quickest way for them to get their game done.

One of the most frustrating things as a game developer is to be cruisin’ along, making something that resembles a game, and BAM! You hit a brick wall of your own limitations. Maybe you are getting to the point where you have to go from using default behaviors and very simple scripting to some honest-to-goodness coding. Maybe your old content pipeline can’t be used anymore for one reason or another, and you are confronted with a brand new tool (or a highly modified upgrade). Or maybe – as we programmers often find – no matter what we do, we can’t make it pretty enough to demo.

When confronted with a wall, you have a number of choices: Go around it, go over it, go through it, or… possibly being stopped by it. We may be able to skip it for now and come back to it later, but it will still be there.

Sometimes it may be best to admit defeat. If you are a new indie game developer, this may be nature’s way of telling you that you are in over your head, and really need to scope things down.  Maybe put the game on the back-burner for a while until you are better able to tackle its demands.

I liken “going around the wall” to simply coming up with a plan B that doesn’t require quite as much of a push outside of your comfort zone. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and maybe this is an opportunity to re-evaluate a feature or aspect of the game and do something else that is less demanding but provides equal or nearly equal benefit.

The next two are a little bit more of a stretch. Going over the wall may be analogous to getting help.  I’m sure even my excessively-talented acquaintances are completely without out gaps in their own skillsets. Sooner or later, we all need help. Sadly, there’s a whole ‘nother set of skills and knowledge necessary to find said help. It may not be all that easy, either.

Finally, there’s going through the wall – arming oneself with the tools and skills necessary to completely remove not only this wall, but all others similar to it that might appear in the future. As one might expect, this might be a costly and expensive option.  This would involve obtaining those skills necessary so that it isn’t an obstacle anymore.

That last one can be combined with another approach. Maybe you get help or find a work-around this time, but you use it as an opportunity to start learning for next time.

What it comes down to is this: I’ve been making games for a long time, and I am still faced with challenges all the time where I simply don’t have the necessary skills. Maybe it’s something small but highly technical, like understanding the formula for calculating the trajectory of a projectile.  Or larger, like knowing how to program in PHP. Or it could be something relatively huge, like doing halfway decent 2D art.

The important thing is not to let it stop you. As an indie (and as a human being, really), you should always be learning and growing. If you aren’t pushing yourself in some way with every project, what are you doing it for, anyway?

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GOG.COM Does Even More Indie Outreach

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 21, 2013

It’s not earth-shattering or anything. But GOG.COM is trying to make themselves more accessible to indies than their competition.

What that really comes down to is that they are making it a little easier for indies to submit games; they are promising “honest feedback” (telling you why your game was not accepted), and switching over to a more industry-standard 70/30 split.

Sounds nice, but not spectacular. The big thing here is that I worry they are opening themselves up to just getting flooded with sub-par, often unfinished and unpolished titles. They’ll need a whole staff for that one. I mean, it sounds cool, but then I wonder what the difference is between this and pre-Greenlight Steam. How much will change? How much can change?

But then, I consider Desura. Seriously, I ignore most of what comes out on Desura, but I have bought a lot of games through them (not all through Indie Royale bundles…), and I have been pretty impressed by some of the quirky, small titles to be found there… and nowhere else (except direct, if you can find them).

I like the idea of GOG.COM becoming a place where you can find quality indie games that you just can’t get elsewhere (*coughsteamcough*).

While I haven’t seen anything too concrete, GOG.COM is promising better discoverability and marketing – they’ll actually push your title instead of just dumping it into an ever-expanding back warehouse of titles. Again – I don’t know how far that goes.

It’s funny to see all of these “names” competing for indies these days. What a change!

 

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: Comments are off for this article

It’s About Communication

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 20, 2013

We drive my daughter to college today. This makes no sense to me. I’m barely out of college myself, right? Right? I don’t know if I can even begin to comment on all the weird thoughts going through my head at this time.  But I guess I captured a lot of them a few months ago when she graduated from high school.  Now it’s all that, and a bunch more emotions ‘cuz she’s moving out. It’s a good thing, and a necessary thing, but it’s going to be weird as anything not having her around.

It’s funny, though. I keep meeting men a few years senior to me – grandparents, in some cases – and they are gamers. I guess I find that a little weird, but cool, as they came through the formative years without the benefit of arcades & video games. Well, okay, I guess they had pinball games and maybe early video games like Pong. But they didn’t really grow up gaming. They came in too early to be part of the Atari or Nintendo generations. But they are gaming now. I certainly don’t hold that against them – I think it’s awesome.

And why do they game?

So they can spend time with their kids, who have moved away. That seems more important to me on a day like today than it might have a few weeks ago.

It’s like sports – you know, how fathers and sons bond over sports. Except in this case, it’s World of Warcraft instead of baseball, and it’s armor set stats instead of batting averages. But while these guys are doing it primarily to do things with their kids, they are bona fide gamers. They’ll talk about how their guild is doing in the Team Fortress competitions, or their latest epic raids, or what they are constructing in Minecraft. It’s something they can do on a regular basis. It’s something they can share, and talk about. In real time, in team chat, as they want.

Their kids may have moved across the continent, but they’ve got virtual worlds where they can share the same foxhole. A cartoon avatar is no substitute for a real, live person in the room, but it’s better than nothing.  A twenty minute phone call is still great, but how about supplementing that with a few hours each week of shooting up zombies? That’s awesome sauce.

There’s this struggle that even I have to overcome sometimes when I think about what it is that I do. I “just” make games.

No, I’m not making the games that are bringing families together in these examples. Yet. I make little niche indie titles. So what? There are some dang cool, awesome, and absolutely *good* aspects of this medium, and I’m a happy participant, both as a creator and a gamer. And we have barely explored the tip of the proverbial iceberg of the potential for this medium.

Games can be mindless entertainment, subversive presentation of ideas, idle escapism, educational tools, solo pastimes, group activities, a means to keep in touch with old friends, a venue to meet new friends, means to open up new vistas and opportunities, distractions from life’s priorities, shallow, deep, cool, lame, intense, relaxing, poignant, dumb, or any combination of these things. Gaming is about communication… and fun.

I’m glad to be here.

Filed Under: Geek Life, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Advice on Making an FPS

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 19, 2013

The 2013 7DFPS (7 Day FPS) ended this weekend, but here’s the keynote chock full of advice for making games in a single week.

Much of this advice is not unique to FPS games. And… well, some of it is just sarcastic. And funny. And even contradictory.

100% as it should be…

Best advice from several of the people here: Have fun with it.

My own advice: You don’t need to wait for a game jam.

Also, I know of at least one title from last year’s 7DFPS that went on to become a commercial title (Receiver).

 

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

The Humble EA, er, Origin Bundle

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 16, 2013

The Humble Bundle started as the “Humble Indie Bundle,” but hasn’t been purely indie for a while. The Humble THQ Bundle – sort of a last gasp from a dying publisher (but one of the better-liked ones) – was a clear signal that it wasn’t just about the indies anymore. I kind of looked at it a different way though. To me, it was the final flag of submission. The indies won. The big publishers were taking the, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach.

So yeah, I get a little annoyed that a venue that used to be reserved for indies was now being used by the guys who those venues were created specifically to thwart. But hey – be gracious in victory and all that. No, it’s not like victory is ever final, and the indies will always compete against their big-budget brethren, and yes I’m still a little bit annoyed… but I didn’t get too worked up about it.

Which is why I’m not getting too worked up about the latest “Humble” Bundle – the Humble Origin Bundle (briefly entitled, I hear rumor, the Humble EA Bundle, but I guess the oxymoron was a little too laughable). EA is going all out on this one, donating 100% of its proceeds to charity. That’s right, everything but the tip to the humble bundle guys goes to charity (something a lot of people opted for with the THQ bundle, after all…)

So is EA just feeling magnanimous this week? Actually, I’ll bet there are a lot of folks at EA corporate who are feeling pretty pleased with their charitable efforts right now, and they ought to be. But as a win-win opportunity, the business case for this is simply to get a whole lot more users on their Origin service. That’s no secret. I guess EA is seeing the writing on the wall, and figures this is a chance to jump-start Origin to compete with Steam.  They’ve got a long way to go, especially with a (relatively) limited presence of third-party titles.

I’m not particularly fond of Origin. We can start with its name – how’s that for a misuse of the brand name that once produced the Ultima and Wing Commander series? Just the fact that it is EA is a black mark. I don’t want to have fifty gazillion game clients running simultaneously on my machine, yet I do want Valve to face some serious competition… and I don’t know where it would come from if not from an organization that has deep pockets. Sure, a lot are trying, but it’ll take a lot of money and sustained effort to even threaten Valve’s dominance.

Go figure. I’m a paradox.

I’d suggest EA’s gamble paid off… they’ve sold well over a million copies of the bundle so far. I guess that’s a lot of new (or newly reactivated) Origin accounts. And it’s a lot of money to charity and the Humble Bundle guys. Maybe I’m just tired, but I just can’t generate much of a nerd-rage over this.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Mainstream Games - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Gamers: Hands of Fate

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 15, 2013

It looks like this Kickstarter-funded movie, the sequel to The Gamers and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is now available for streaming for about two weeks. This is the “festival cut”, so it is not the final, release version of the movie.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate

And hey, my name is in the credits! Along with literally thousands of others…

The Gamers: Hands of Fate follows the same characters from The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Their regular RPG sessions are not making much progress, as real life keeps interrupting. One of the interruptions (for Leo) is the growing popularity of a collectable card game (CCG), Romance of the Nine Empires, at his store. Cass, who despises CCGs, meets a girl who is a high-ranking tournament player, and begins to play in order to impress her. He finds himself embroiled in the politics of the tournament scene, where tournament winners are allowed to make choices for the storyline and rules for the entire game for the following year.

Overall, I liked the movie, but it’s too long and not as good (IMO) as Dorkness Rising.  I understand they are doing a hyperlinked make-your-own-movie interactive thing with it at some point on youtube, so we’ll see what happens. For the DVD, they’ll have a new, (hopefully) improved “extended cut” version in addition to this one. As I said, this one feels too long as it is, so I don’t know about the extended cut thing.

I wanted to see more Lodge and Joanna, really.  But I guess the last movie was more their story. This one is mostly about Cass. (UPDATE: The filmmakers just announced that the extended cut will feature much more Lodge and Joanna).

I gotta admit, the card game, “Romance of the Nine Empires” (based loosely on Legend of the Five Rings) sounds pretty cool. If convoluted. One of the stretch goals for the movie was for AEG to actually produce the game. It will probably just be a novelty thing, but it’d be funny if it’s successful and takes off.

For a taste, here’s one of the scenes that was cut…

Would I recommend it? To my gamer friends, especially those who have played CCGs, I’d say “definitely.” That would mean everybody regularly reading this blog.

To interested non-gamers, it may be a little too steeped in gamer lore and culture (not to mention CCG convention) to really get into. Dorkness Rising was a little better in this respect, as a non-gamer with a passing familiarity with Dungeons & Dragons could understand most of what was going on, and actually gain a bit of understanding of how RPGs work, and why players love them so much. Could this do the same for CCGs? I’m not sure. My daughter, who has at least been introduced to Magic: The Gathering, had a little bit of trouble following what was going on, but not so badly that she didn’t enjoy it.

 

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: Comments are off for this article

The Improv Rule for Role-Playing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 14, 2013

This one may be a bit focused on dice & paper gaming today. But hey, for me, it’s all connected.

One of the few “rules” adopted for improvisational acting (and for round-robin story writing exercises) is the “do not negate” rule. That means you can only build on what those before you have said, not contradict them (at least not directly).  Without this sort of rule, you could end up with players in an endless loop of “Is Too! / Is Not!” arguments. While that can be kind of entertaining by itself, the real fun comes from the different artists playing along and building upon each other’s contributions to the story.

When sitting around a table (or lounging around in the living room, which more accurately describes how we play) with dice and character sheets, a role-playing game has quite a bit in common with improvisational acting. While the game master is “in charge” and guides the adventure and has an outline to work from, it’s still an unscripted environment where everybody is trying to contribute to a story.

I believe the “do not negate” rule is not only applicable to RPGs (with some modifications), it’s pretty fundamental. What it really boils down to is that as a player, you cooperate with the shared storytelling efforts of the rest of your group.  So long as they are playing within the rules and playing within the bounds of their control, you play along. It’s okay to stop and negotiate (or, at many tables, kibitz, depending upon house rules), but you don’t negate unless there’s an emergency – things are really about to go off the rails.

One example (which I’m guilty of violating) is when a player has their character say or do something stupid. Now, it’s one thing if the player just wasn’t paying attention, or otherwise didn’t realize what they were doing. That’s the “negotiate” element. As a game master, I may say something like, “You realize you have five highly trained marksmen covering you right now. Are you sure you want to try and kick the commander in the nuts?” If another player has the ability to interrupt the action, they can try. But otherwise — roll with it.

We had an amusing experience the other night where a player’s character was about to blurt out a fact that she shouldn’t have been privy to in front of people we were interrogating (er, sorry, I mean interviewing). My first reaction was to say, “Wait, don’t say that! You were supposed to tell me, not them!” Yeah, I’m a control freak that way sometimes. The player’s response was, “Hey, I’ve got 8 charisma, I’m gonna be blunt and say exactly that.” Negotiation was concluded, and she was right.

Hilarity ensued as my character desperately tried to smooth things over. It was awesome.

This also applies to players and the game master. Within reason, it’s the player’s responsibility to “roll with” the adventure, and to figure out their character’s motivation. The subtle differences in motivation can be a rich source of story and roleplaying – for example, why a thief and a holy paladin might be working together for a common goal. There are times that their motivations might come into conflict, and have to be resolved (hopefully non-violently), but this adds nuance. But ultimately, unless the GM has really screwed up badly (like making an adventure that requires a party full of Lawful Good characters to engage in high-seas piracy), the “do not negate” rule is maintained. The GM has a story to tell, and the players find a place in it and a way to make it their own. And, in their own story, they are all the main characters.

The flip side is a pet peeve that annoyed a lot of us when we were roleplaying in online persistent worlds (or, waaaaay back in the old days, LARPing). A player would create a character that was – in my mind at least – really an NPC. They were not built to be an active participant in a story. They were the kind of character who would sit brooding in the corner of the tavern for hours at a time wondering why adventure never came to them, or why the other players never responded to their angsty emotes. In some cases, they were effectively negating the game masters – they refused to take up the adventure hook unless it was completely tailor-made to their character.

If the GM says, “There’s a commotion in the town square,” a good player will find some way to arrange for their character to be in the town square. Even if it is to negotiate with another player and say, “Call me on your cell phone when you get there!” Most of the universe will not show up – but they are not characters in this story.

In the end, it’s about cooperating and building on whatever has been set in motion, rather than tearing things down and negating them.

There are probably some life lessons to be learned from this, too.

Filed Under: Dice & Paper, Geek Life - Comments: 7 Comments to Read

The Challenge of an Episodic RPG

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 13, 2013

I’ve had an idea for an episodic RPG for a long time. A very long time, actually – since before Frayed Knights. I actually put a great deal of time and research into the design. One day, I plan to revisit it – with a vengeance. After Frayed Knights 2 and 3 are out the door.

The kicker is that it would be episodic. This is something that has never been properly solved, though we do have a several examples of larger RPGs broken into serial parts (ahem – Frayed Knights), and games called episodic that were really serial and sequential (like Siege of Avalon).

What I’m talking about here is an honest-to-goodness episodic RPG, loosely connected in perhaps a seasonal story arc. But, except for perhaps the final game of the ‘season,’ the episodes would be relatively stand-alone and playable in any order.

That’s the real trick of it. This is the part that flies in the face of traditional RPG mechanics, which are fundamentally based on character progression.

To really pull it off and to make the episodes really work in any order, a game would have to incorporate the oft-dreaded technique of scaling to the player’s level. This would be (in my old-school, dice-and-paper perspective) the equivalent of a gamemaster customizing an adventure for his existing party. The problem is that level scaling can really rob a game of a lot of any feeling of progression. It enforces the ‘treadmill’ feeling.

Another option would be to have each episode support a level range. If your party was outside of the level range, they’d be automatically boosted or reduced to fit. This is really just another version of level-scaling, and on top of that reinforces the feeling that the episodes are really intended to be played in a particular order. Also, it feels terrible to have your character robbed of their achievements, even if only for a little while.

A third option is to tightly limit progression, so a character at the beginning of the season isn’t too different from the same character at the end of a season, and make sure each episode can accommodate the full range of progression. This might be realistic, but is not very satisfying. Too much of this, and you really just have an adventure game with combat.

Then there are some other problems, like what objects should carry over between episodes. Would an artifact discovered in Episode 9 be able to resolve the entire quest line in episode 2 in five seconds? Careful writing and planning could resolve this, but it’s still a concern.

Another question is what to do if a player re-plays an episode with the same character. Is that even an option? If so, how would it work? Would the experience and items he or she obtained be cumulative, like a re-enterable dungeon in some RPGs? Or would the game track what you made on the previous run, and let you keep only what you accumulated in excess of your previous profits?

Again, from the writing perspective, how much should the continuity of the episodes be suggested?  Should the episodes be so completely stand-alone that nothing but a repeat of the introduction is necessary? Or should there be a “Previously on…” summary of the salient arc development points necessary to bring a player up to speed enough to understand the episode? Would that dissuade a player from wanting to play an episode until he or she has played all of the previous episodes (thus really undermining the effort to make them episodic in the first place, as opposed to serial)?

I had partial answers to these questions at one point, but I doubt there’s any single “right” answer. And while I’m a long way from revisiting the design (Frayed Knights is kinda all-consuming), it is still something I plan to address at some point. I figured I might as well poke the local experts here and see if you had any thoughts on the subject.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

X Rebirth

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 12, 2013

I’ve had a soft place in my heart for the entire X series. I discovered the first one – X: Beyond the Frontier, on accident, at a *gasp* game store one afternoon, and bought it on a whim. I’d never heard about it before. But it had several things going for it: It was a game in a favorite and poorly represented subgenre (space trading sim). The screenshots on the box looked cool. It said all the right things on the back of the box. And finally, it’s title hinted – I’ve never known if it was deliberate or not – that it was a spiritual descendent of the game Frontier: Elite 2.

Frontier had been one of my hardcore gaming addictions. Yeah, the combat was utter crap in it. With larger ships, you were better off just equipping the largest shield you could mount on your vessel and just let the enemy ships destroy themselves when they ran into you (which was, like, all the time…).  It was really one of the most complete and interesting “sandbox” universes of the era. The explorable galaxy was effectively infinite for all intents and purposes. Not all of it was inhabited, but it was huge. I discovered how huge after some hyperspace accidents left me far, far from inhabited space. There was this one time (One of the cool things about sandbox games with this level of depth is that players are always telling stories that begin, “There was this one time…”) that I tried to make it back to inhabited space the hard way, scooping off gas from the atmospheres of gas giants to be refined by my ship’s own built-in refinery systems. I think I spent two full nights trying to get home, ultimately failing as I realized just how far I was from even traces of civilization, and the various systems on my ship were failing from lack of maintenance.

Good times, good times.

As much as I enjoyed Wing Commander: Privateer, it lacked the open-world sandbox of Frontier, and so didn’t have quite the same level of awesomeness. It had way better combat, though.  The sequel to Frontier – Frontier: First Encounters – was a buggy mess that never worked with my joystick, so I never played more than 30 minutes of it.

I would call X: Beyond the Frontier “pretty good.” It lacked the scope of Frontier (although the combat still wasn’t a whole lot better), but it was a great start. It did have some very intriguing elements of supply and demand. I remember coming with a huge cargo of some trade good for a station that was suffering a shortage. I was almost there, when I saw a giant trade ship approaching. I couldn’t beat it in, but I was within range of guns. I very nearly pulled the trigger. But I let it dock, and sadly watched the shortage turn into a surplus. I made very little money on that run.

The sequels have expanded on the concept, and increased the scope and flexibility of the game world. It’s good stuff. It seems that they keep digging into the brain of fans like me to give us the kinds of things we always wanted to do in a game like this – since the early days of the first Elite. (Or in my case, Frontier, as I was a latecomer to Elite…) They were good enough to channel your inner Malcom Reynolds, Han Solo, or even Boba Fett (or in later installments, your inner Admiral Naismith of the Dendarii Mercenaries).

But deep down, I’ve always had this dream of a sandbox space-trading game that is just one gigantic uber-detailed galaxy simulation. Where you, as a powerful player in the universe (you know, eventually…) can do things and they’ll have a predictable impact on the galaxy. You can watch the game world react to what you do. And then, of course, there’s this hope – this dream – of being able to go from this star-spanning high level simulation and get a close-in view of what’s going on. Even to the point of actually visiting those space stations you had a hand in building. I guess that’s the power fantasy of this kind of game.

It sounds a little like X: Rebirth is really pushing harder in this direction. I hope it is as cool as it sounds. For those of us who enjoy single-player space sandbox experiences, this looks like it could be a winner.

In the interest of fairness, while once upon a time the X series was something of an oasis in a desert of the genre, today there are lots of indie games catering to different variations on the theme. Dang it’s a good time to be a gamer. Two more that you can play right now are Drox Operative, sort of a top-down take on the concept with a very dynamic and interactive universe, and Evochron Mercenary,which was recently greatly expanded with version 2. Both games are pretty dang cool. They are the ones I’m most familiar with, but there are others (and plenty of older titles). The Open-Source  Vega Strike also comes to mind, but I haven’t had much success getting into that one. And there are several other interesting titles also on the radar: From David Braben’s return to the game that started it all with Elite: Dangerous, to Chris Roberts big multi-player & single-player offering with Star Citizen.

I’m delighted that it is no longer quite as barren a field as it was back in 1999.

I don’t think you can call the EgoSoft series a “AAA” game – they’ve always been a little weird, niche, and quirky. But they are the currently the biggest-budget entry in the genre. While I doubt that X: Rebirth will prove to be the holy grail of the genre, it does look very promising. Could it be the one that sucks me in like the old classics did so long ago? I don’t know, but right now it’s one of the very few “big” games on the horizon that I’m really looking forward to and considering grabbing on release day.

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Old-School vs. New-School – The Literary vs. the Cinematic

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 9, 2013

Weird thought for the day…

Dungeons & Dragons came into existence before the era of the “Hollywood Blockbuster.” Which generally means pre-Star Wars. Reading the old Dragon magazines (yes, I do that) of that era, and the references mentioned in the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons manuals, it struck me that the vast majority of the references in that old game were literary. The original game – and the players that made up what counted for the culture surrounding the game – were brought up on the works of Fritz Lieber, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance,  Robert E. Howard, Lloyd Alexander, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, and many others.

This does make sense. I’ve seen some of the old fantasy movies of that time, and with a few shining exceptions, they suck. I’m sure there were people inspired by Burt I. Gordon’s The Magic Sword for their fantasies of adventure, perhaps as kids, but I don’t expect there were many.

Now, I’m sure there’s an argument to be made that nothing has changed in the modern era – the majority of fantasy movies still suck, but if it weren’t for their appearance on Netflix category lists, I’d never know they existed. But today, we live in an era where our fantasies are informed by the spectacle of cinema. Our modern vision of knights leap around with lightsabers pulling kendo moves. We’ve had the full palette  of visual imagery from stop-motion skeletons to CGI dragons – with muppet goblins, latex demons, hand-animated horrors, and everything in-between.

So while there’s no dearth of fantasy literature these days, I think the modern gamer is probably informed far more by cinematic experiences than literary ones. I don’t know if many people would argue with me on this point. Nor would they argue that the two aren’t fundamentally different. While there have been a few excellent movies based on fantasy novels, they are pretty different beasts, and it’s challenging to bridge that gap.

But the odd thought that comes back to me is how this may have impacted game design. Is part of the hard-to-define “feel” of old-school RPGs (the ones that tended to more consciously imitate dice-and-paper gaming) because they were (indirectly) following the lead of print media – to bring literary-inspired fantasies to life.

Whereas in the mid 1990s, the industry was pushing hard to become the “new Hollywood.” Today’s game designers (and the gamers to whom they cater) are far more likely to have watch the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter movies than to have read the novels they were based on. While I don’t think the Hollywood-Wannabe-ism is quite as strong as it was a decade or so ago in the mainstream videogame industry, the game experience still tends to be modeled after cinema. Just look at all the effort that gets devoted to camera angles, quick-time events, lip-synching, and borrowing vocal talent from Hollywood today.

How much has that influenced the “feel” of computer role-playing games?

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

(Kickstarter) – Steampunk Dice

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 8, 2013

Okay, as many of you know, I’m a little reluctant to advertise Kickstarter campaigns too often around here. I’ve got enough friends, acquaintances, friends-of-friends, and community members running Kickstarter campaigns these days that I could probably fill half my posts with announcements. And I’ll still feel guilty if and when these projects fail to deliver.

After all – Broken Age, the original big video game Kickstarter “hit” success story, is facing problems even with (or because of) gobs of KS funds.

But I’m making an exception. It’s not the first, and probably not the last. This is from a long-standing community member. And I have an ulterior motive. And it’s not videogame related.

This campaign is for dice – for, like, dice-and-paper role-playing games. Or just having some really cool dice to play Monopoly or something. But done in a steampunk style.

Tinker / Gearpunk Dice – Steampunk Metal Dice

My ulterior motive, of course, is that I really want a full suite of gamer dice for D&D / Pathfinder, but that requires hitting the stretch goal. Tesh is about 2/3rds of the way to the final stretch goal now, so it looks likely.  But I figured I’d make mention of it here in case anybody else is interested.

Now we just need to play a Steampunk-themed Pathfinder campaign… 🙂  But I’m looking forward to rolling some sweet nat-20s regardless.

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

Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 3

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 7, 2013

This is a multi-part series describing my level-design guidelines for Frayed Knights.  You can read part 1 here, and part 2 here.

These are just a series of guidelines I actually put to (virtual paper) for designing adventures for the Frayed Knights series.  While they primarily apply to Frayed Knights, I think most of them are applicable (or at least bendable) to many other modern computer role-playing games (indie or not).  I did it for the benefit of others who were helping me with dungeon design, but I figured I’d share ’em with the community at large.

#5 – Understand each room / area

You should have a clear idea of the context of each room (or area) in the map – how it’s being used, why it was built, etc. That way, even if it’s not fully explained, there’ll still be some feeling to the player that things make some kind of sense – it’s not just random rooms and random encounters.

Granted, this is very much a “guideline” rather than a rule. When I design maps, I’m often more worried about game flow and cool encounters than an attempt to create a practical, believable dungeon. But I think just like having a clear view of the purpose and history of the dungeon / adventuring area as a whole, it’s good to have a pretty clear idea of the hows and whys of each of the parts. This kind of information can suggest encounters, details, descriptions, and – most importantly – gameplay!

#6 – Take Advantage of Vertical Elements

Even with the tiled approach to building dungeons, we have the capability of introducing slopes, ledges, chasms, and pits that span multiple levels. While it’s hard to do with 2D graph paper, try to build cool spaces that take advantage of the vertical element. After all, this is a 3D, first-person game, so we need to take advantage of it. Give them a feeling of vertical space. It doesn’t need to be as extreme as the Pit O’ Doom in FK1 , but do what you can.

Try and think of how vertical layout could improve gameplay and flow through the dungeon. One common element in Skyrim is to have an exit that opened above the entrance. If the game lacks a special means of ascent, this means quick egress but doesn’t allow a “short cut” to the end of the dungeon. Another common technique is to show a goal separated by vertical space that can’t be directly crossed.

#7 – Take Advantage of the trap / lock system

I’m kinda proud of the trap-disarming / lockpicking system in Frayed Knights. Don’t neglect locks and traps! They provide a variation in gameplay from combat. While they may not be appropriate in EVERY dungeon, apply them liberally.

To move this one outside the realm of Frayed Knights to other games… it’s important to take advantage of whatever non-combat, repeatable systems exist within the game. This is especially true if there are skills / items / classes in your game that are specialized for dealing with these systems. For example, a cyberpunk-style game that allows you to be a netrunner or hacker should have lots and lots of opportunities for your character to “go digital” and hack security systems or whatnot – otherwise it’s a wasted specialization.

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: Read the First Comment

What Tower Defense and RPGs Have In Common

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2013

What? Another tower defense game? Seriously? That genre isn’t dead yet?

Yes, of course, I bought it.  Stupid bundles.

Seriously, I need another tower defense (TD) game like I need another hole in my head.  And yet…

Gah. Maybe I should admit that I have a problem.

I suspect there’s some kind of emotional correlation between whatever psychological rewards I get from playing RPGs as I get from TDs. In both cases, you are building something that must stand against a variety of opposition and emerge victorious. As in RPGs (at least the ones I prefer), there’s a layer of indirection in facing enemies. It is not (usually) your direct efforts that lead to victory, but preparation, well-chosen tactics, resource management, and a few well-timed actions.

Tower defense is a bit more unforgiving of mistakes, often requiring you to start over from scratch with a level to fix mistakes you made early on. I’m not super-keen on this aspect of the genre, but I do enjoy trying different strategies and approaches to problems. Just like RPGs.

This is probably why Defender’s Quest was a little like digital crack for me.

It also makes me muse. We’re seeing a lot of variations on TD these days, as it’s become a pretty crowded genre (or subgenre, if you consider it a subset of real-time strategy). But if my guesses about the psychological similarities of the gameplay – the stuff deep beneath the surface – there could be a ton of possibilities for other game styles that don’t resemble either TDs or RPGs. In fact, if you look at the “life sim” games (made most famous by The Sims), it has quite a few similarities with those same aspects. You build something up to see how it fares against the environment. Life-sims tend to be even more forgiving of “builds” than RPGs, to the extent of The Sims where it is more of a toy to play with than a game to win.

And yeah. Life sims can be just as addictive for me.

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Whadayamean, “Turn-Based?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2013

It seems to me that the last couple of years have brought something of a resurgence of turn-based gaming. Now, it was never truly dead or completely niche – Civilization remains one of the best-selling games on the planet, and it has (thankfully!) remained comfortably turn-based for all of this time. Meanwhile, most other “strategy” games and role-playing games went real-time (“action!”) around the mid 90’s and never looked back…

Until now.  Mostly driven from the indie front, but also in part from the new XCom: Enemy Unknown (also created by the makers of Civilization). While it’s still a long way from becoming the “norm,” it is at least getting a second look. And, among the indie-set, advertising a game as turn-based can actually be a selling point.

But what does “turn-based” actually mean? At it’s heart, it means players take turns taking their actions. It is normally imagined as the polar opposite of real-time or action-based combat, where the game progresses at a fixed pace and players can issue orders to their avatar or units as quickly as they want (but said units also act at their own pace, and can’t do everything at once).

Turn-based, on the other hand, doesn’t depend upon the player’s reaction speed. The game waits for the player to declare their move(s), as in a game of chess. This provides more thoughtful game pacing, but has a pretty significant downside in a multiplayer setting, as inevitably one player must end up waiting for the other player to complete their move. Even in single-player games, there may be stretches where the player is watching the action unfold rather than actually playing the game, which is not generally considered a good thing.

But when we speak of “turn-based,” there are actually lots of different variations on the theme. Many variants exist specifically to address the weaknesses of turn-based play, to keep it engaging for all players throughout the game. When you hear that a strategy game is “turn-based,” or that an RPG has “turn-based combat,” it can actually mean a great number of different things. Here are some of the more common variants:

Classical Turn Based (“IGoUGo”):
First up, we have the classic turn-based systems. In wargaming circles, this is referred to as “I Go, You Go” (or “IGoUGo”). This is the simplest form of turn-based system, used in Chess, Tic-Tac-Toe, Civilization V.  In a nutshell, one player takes his complete turn, and then the other player takes his. Repeat. In Chess, when an entire move consists of moving a single piece, this is not such a big deal. In a game like Civilization (and I confess I’ve never played the Civs in multiplayer mode), the turns can be pretty big, particularly in late-game.

Timed Turn-Based:
I think of this one as the counterpart to Real-Time With Pause (see below). In this variant, a player has a time limit in which to complete her move. This time limit can be fixed per turn, or be some sort of cumulative value (30 minutes for the whole game), a combination of both, or even a certain amount of time after the first player completes his turn (leading to a whole ‘nother strategy of gaming the clock…) This variant is pretty straightforward, but the time pressure keeps the game moving, and can also impose a bit of a handicap against a player who is ahead in the game (and thus has more to manage) – which could be considered a feature.

Turn-Based With Reactions:
This is another variant that behaves very much like a classical turn-based system, but the “non-active” players are able to react to the active player’s moves under certain condition. This could be as simple as automatic “reaction fire” taking place when a unit breaks cover in front of an enemy unit, or a more complicated reaction requiring the inactive player to make a decision (if only to choose “do I take this attack of opportunity or not”).  The major advantage of this kind of system is more realistic rules to limit the gaming of turn-based limitations, but it can also help keep inactive players engaged when it is not their turn.

Phase-Based:
This variant breaks a turn into distinct phases that resolve independently. Players alternate actions at the phase level, rather than at the turn level. For example, a game might have a movement phase separate from a fighting phase, so that all players move first, and only then do they resolve attacks. This approach can reduce the advantage of going first (or last, in some game systems), and it shrinks the individual stretches during which a player is inactive. In at least one game I’ve played (Supremacy, a board-game from the 1980s), players could only choose to participate in some of the phases, skipping the rest. This usually meant that a player actively engaged in warfare with another country couldn’t fully participate in the economic development phases. Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale (original) games are often described as phase-based games, with a command phase followed by a resolution phase, though these could also be considered a variation of Simultaneous Resolution (see below).

Activation-Based:
In this variant players take turns moving (activating) units (usually one at a time or two at a time), until all units have had their turn. Players can choose which units go at which time, which can present all kinds of interesting tactical opportunities. It provides somewhat more realism than classic turn-based systems — and keeps the players engaged with very short rounds. However, said “tactical opportunities” can also lead to “gaming the system.”

As a point of personal interest, Frayed Knights 1: The Skull of S’makh-Daon uses a Unit Initiative based system, while Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath is using something far closer to an Activation based system.

Unit Initiative-Based:
This variation of turn-based also has players moving units individually and alternating actions during the course of a turn, the order is determined by an initiative system for the individual units, rather than letting the player decide over the course of a complete turn. In other words, during the course of a turn, all units on all sides have an order in which they become active and can be moved. This is the classic approach of Dungeons & Dragons and older, party-based games either directly licensing or inspired by the system.

Simultaneous Resolution:
This can be viewed as a special case of a phase-based system. It works best with computer moderation or with very simple actions. In this variant, all players provide their moves more-or-less simultaneously and then these actions are resolved independently –  all at once, using a real-time system, or by unit initiative.  The trick with this kind of system is that some of the player’s intended moves may be invalidated during the resolution phase, in which case some sort of automated fallback is chosen (for example, attacking the next closest enemy if the chosen target is already dead). I really consider the Wizardry games (and many 16-bit era JRPGs) to fall into this category, as well as wargames like the Combat Mission series, and the most excellent Frozen Synapse.  It’s also used in the boardgame (as I recall) Robo Rally, which I never liked too much because it felt too much like my day job programming. 🙂

Real-Time With Pause:
This is more of a variant of real-time / action systems, but they keep a toe in the turn-based side of the line by allowing full input of player moves while paused. In theory, the player can get the best of both worlds. With regular pausing, the gameplay is a lot like Simultaneous Resolution games.  In fact, the Baldur’s Gate and other Infinity Engine games (which are credited with popularizing this approach), players could actually trigger pauses to occur automatically under certain conditions, forcing the issue.

The Meaning of “Turn-Based”

Clearly, there are more variations than I listed here, but I think these covers the most popular, most broad categories. Naturally, many games have mixed and matched and provided their own unique spin on each of these categories.

While it works well enough as a high-level “catch-all” to describe games that do not depend heavily on player reaction speed for success, the term “turn-based” really has a huge variety of meanings. Each variation has a dramatic impact on gameplay, and may work best in different types of games or circumstances. They are not all created equal.

And then players may have their own favorites…

Filed Under: Design, Dice & Paper - Comments: 17 Comments to Read



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