Big Indie, Little Indie

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 2, 2013

It’s become increasingly clear even to the major players that indie games are no longer a tiny niche hobby, or a minor exception to the rule.

If you measure in terms of number of titles released, of course, the indie games outnumber those of the mainstream publishers by an overwhelming margin. I think you’d have to go back a long way (if ever) to find a time when this wasn’t the case, but today the ratio is bigger than ever, and people have actually heard about some of them. As I’ve often said, the war is over, and indie games won. I don’t know the actual numbers involved – I doubt the top ten indie game sales combined (excluding, perhaps, Minecraft) could match the revenue of a single AAA blockbuster in one year. Indies may not yet be the rule, but they are no longer a mere exception.

So now what?

One of the problems with a category growing so large is that fracturing is inevitable. There’s plenty of talk now about whether or not the term “indie” has outlived its usefulness, and there have neem calls to change our nomenclature so that only one subclass of what is now “indie” could actually lay claim to the title.  The wondrously inclusive term might have made sense when indies were a niche outside the mainstream, the argument goes. But today, the sheer variety of what falls under that umbrella makes the term useless.

The thing is, this argument is not new. It was being repeated even before the term “indie” had gained any traction.  Waaaay back in 2004, controversy erupted over the winner of the sixth annual Independent Games Festival, Savage: Battle for Newerth. With a development budget of  $1.5 million from outside investment (NOT from mainstream publishers, so it was still arguably “indie”), in an era where that kind of money wasn’t too far below what would be considered a mainstream games’ development cost, it was able to outclass the competition by simply outspending them. This violated one of the basic reasons the term “indie” had been coined – to set a differentiation in the audiences’ minds to combat decades of industry marketing convincing them that quality was directly correlated to expensive production values.

It went deeper than just budgets. There were questions of what constituted a mainstream publisher.  And whether or not “professional” indies (a stupid consideration, but it was in reference to AAA studios or former AAA developers) should be allowed to compete against the amateurs.

The problems haven’t changed today – other than becoming more prevalent. Technically, the big Kickstarter success stories are not very different from S2’s success with Savage. You have big-name AAA studios finding independent funding to the order of millions of dollars, making very professional games with full-time, experienced teams that are still, under most definitions of the term, “indie.”

Yet when my game Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath is released, made with a budget that is pocket change by comparison, I’ll be competing directly with Obsidian’s Project Eternity and InXile’s Wasteland 2. And some sixteen-year-old is going to be releasing an RPG made with almost literally pocket change to compete with me. Is it fair that we all have to compete with each other, all under the “indie” banner?

Maybe. Maybe not.

As I said, one major reason for the term – one which is still perfectly valid, if a lot fuzzier than it once was – is to level the playing field between major, big-budget studios and publishers and the smaller cousins. The separate category allows consumers to view indie games with a separate criteria than the big-budget AAA studios. It allows vendors and artists to offer separate licensing terms for mainstream studios versus “indies.” Is it fair that the big publishers and studios get a different set of rules than the indies? Maybe, maybe not. But when the deck is stacked against you from the get-go, you don’t have much choice but to change the rules of the game. What else are they supposed to do? Look at your latest income tax statements and offer you a price as a percentage of last year’s annual revenue? As if things weren’t complicated enough already.

Do we need to differentiate between “big” indie and “little” indie? Again, maybe, maybe not. It can be tough enough finding a clear, fully-acceptable definition for “indie” as it is, let alone trying to find dividing lines for sub-categories below that.

What constitutes a budget? If I can find a day job that would pay me $75k a year, and I donate a man-year of time to a game, does that mean the game had a budget of $75k? Or, if an “indie” team were to hire me full-time and pay all the required taxes, fees, and benefits associated with full-time employment, and even provided me with a desk and a computer for that year, it could easily cost them over $100k for that same job, so should that be $100k+ added to the “budget” for an indie game? Or do we count only the actual hard costs to the studio, and claim that their budget was $0?

The problem is that no matter what figure we use, the end result would theoretically be the same. If a bunch of us donated a combined effort of five man-years to a game, using our own professional tools and licenses to build it on a voluntary basis, would the budget be closer to “little indie” of $0 or “big indie” of a half-million?

And let’s say that we complete our voluntary, labor-of-love title exactly to our own specifications, with no outside influences. It’s completely indie, right? Just as we’re about to release it, Sony swoops in and offers to market and sponsor the game in exchange for a period of Playstation exclusivity. Does our game, which would have been completely “indie” one day, mysteriously convert to a non-indie status or some new subcategory of “indie” overnight because of this?

Should the term “indie” be abandoned now that it has finally achieved success? Has it become “sold out” because it has finally broken out of mere niche recognition?

Should a person who has ever participated in the development of a AAA game be forever banned from the “indie” categorization?

I’m not saying these questions cannot be answered, but I am suggesting that the answers are not easy.

One of the hallmarks of indie gaming for me has been the incredible variety – not just of the games, but of the developers themselves. I’ve always loved the inclusiveness of it – the incredibly broad tent encompassing dirt-cheap first-time hobby projects and slick, professional, products. Yes, it comes with some pretty major problems trying to make sense of it all. But the fact that it defied any easy definitions (in fact, it tends to rebel against such imposed boundaries) appeals to me. I like that “indie” defies easy definition.

Going back to my own situation – I’d love it if I could stack a ton of handicaps in my favor when people start comparing my upcoming game to those with budgets orders of magnitude above mine. I’ll certainly try. It’s what I do when I’m wearing my marketing hat.

But to me, as a gamer, what does it really matter? As a player, my desire is to have really awesome games to play.  The indie revolution has done that. Small-budget indies with really cool ideas now have access to really high-quality engines – engines capable of full-on, AAA games – so that technology is no longer as significant an obstacle. Distribution is no longer an obstacle. Discoverability – well, that’s always going to be a problem, but it is far better today than it was in the past – so now I actually have a chance of finding out about some of these awesome little gems. And while there’s no way that Super Meat Boy would compete directly with Medal of Honor: Warfighter, it didn’t need to… courtesy of the “indie” term allowing a wider range of expectations. Both games sold well relative to their expense and team size (although I suspect SMB enjoyed a far more impressive ROI).

“Indie” worked.  And I personally don’t think we’re done with it.

Should we define new subsets within indie? Based on what? And how? And what purpose will they serve?  People have had a tough enough time coming around to recognizing “indie” versus “mainstream” (especially with such a gray area between them); would further fracturing really make a difference? Would it help smaller and more “niche” indie games get discovered and played? That’s what it’s all about, right?

And if not, what more can we do?

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

Steampunked!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 1, 2013

So this is what I did last weekend… though the photo is more steam than punk.

Salt City Steamfest Photos

Gotta admit… I had a blast. Last year I only went to a single evening of it, and was overwhelmed by an over-full convention and underpowered air conditioning at the convention hall. This year, sadly, it seemed like attendance was down a little – possibly because they moved to a larger venue (with adequate air conditioning!) quite a bit further north.

It was totally worth it.

I’m not much of a convention-goer. And, to be fair, I’ve not been overwhelmingly into Steampunk, either, though I do get a kick out of it as a genre of speculative fiction (and, of course, games). I really enjoy the wild costumes, sensibilities, and inventions that go along with the “steampunks” as well… the whole “Victorian era as it should have been,” including the “gonzo” fantasy / science fiction elements. Particularly when it is given an appropriately broad definition (and it didn’t seem to me that steampunk “purists” are all that common or popular amongst this kind of crowd…)

There was plenty to do at the convention. My oldest daughter got deeply involved in the live-action role-playing and storyline running throughout the weekend. I tended to attend panels on fiction and gaming, and some of the more academic panels. My wife liked to attend the workshops, particularly involving dancing and costuming. And she was one of the panelists, telling Victorian ghost stories the first night. My youngest did a bit of everything. There were concerts in the evening, authors to chat with, and plenty of merchants to browse. The people were pretty awesome and friendly, the costumes were fantastic, and I met with plenty of old and new friends. It was easy to have a good time.

(For those curious… the concert picture is Vernian Process, with Unwoman perfoming with them…)

So if you aren’t familiar with Steampunk, it’s… well, here’s the Wikipedia entry on it, which doesn’t do it justice. To go with the broader definition… it’s basically speculative fiction (that’s fantasy / sci-fi / supernatural / “weird” ) set in an era that is more-or-less centered around the Victorian and Edwardian period, generally around the mid 1800s to about World War I. While it’s typically rooted in British culture, it’s not necessarily so… and is often inclusive of American “Weird West” stories as well. As I usually explain it, it’s a subgenre that was accidentally created far in advance by Jules Verne, Mary Shelly, and H. G. Wells. Now the steampunks have jumped off from there and turned it into its own thing, a weird alternate-history thing from 100+ years ago.

From a gaming perspective, if you’ve played Bioshock: Infinite, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Guns of Icarus, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness,  many of the older Final Fantasy titles, the Thief series, the Torchlight series, Dishonored, Wild Arms, or the Syberia series, then you have had some experience with the subgenre (or it’s close siblings, “Dieselpunk” and “Weird West”).

I figure it’s a fairly natural evolution of fantasy. I mean, by my understanding, the Arthurian legends kind of evolved in the medieval era as they applied their own culture and technology and fantasies onto a questionably historical figure of an earlier era. So the real King Arthur – if there was ever such a person – was probably some dark-age tribal chieftain. But the stories threw in all kinds of anachronisms, which is what we have today. Steampunk is sort of evolving the same way… we’re willfully tossing anachronisms and mythology of the modern era into fantasies of an era of the not quite so distant past.

And mainly, it’s just a lot of fun.

It’s that recency of the era that might make steampunk more than just a subgenre fad. Many people tire of medieval European style fantasy (I hope I never do!), and steampunk is an easy substitute. As that era is even better-remembered than medieval Europe, it provides an easy shortcut for world-building that doesn’t feel too alien to modern audiences. You don’t have to spend too much time explaining what a locomotive or an airship is, or describing clockwork mechanisms. Considering we nearly entered the age of computers nearly a hundred years earlier than we did (if only Charles Babbage had known to limit his scope!), the attribution of some of the elements of the information age aren’t quite as anachronistic as one might think they’d be set back in 1890 or so. And, as Arcanum showed, it can be a lot of fun to have a world populated by traditional fantasy races, monsters, and wizardry that has simply moved up a few hundred years in development to something analogous western society 100 or 150 years ago.

I suspect, due to its rising popularity, we’re going to see a lot more Steampunk-themed video games. At least I hope so.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Utah Indie Night, July 2013

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 31, 2013

We had our bi-monthly indie game developer meet-up last night at the University of Utah, courtesy of the Entertainment Arts & Engineering (EAE) program.

The formal presentation for the evening was by Lyle Cox, who spoke about increasing intrinsic motivation in games. Boiling the talk down to what I think was its essence, intrinsic motivation comes down to self-motivation to play a game – the desire to create, achieve mastery, explore, or to interact socially (where any of this may be “real” or illusionary). Extrinsic motivations – which studies have shown can actually decrease intrinsic motivation – consists of external rewards or systems. The most egregious are things like achievements. RPG mechanics were also pretty high on his list for offending extrinsic motivations.

While his talk provided food for thought, and providing opportunities for players to engage with their intrinsic motivations should be an important aspect of game design, I’m not entirely convinced as to the applicability (or the negatives of extrinsic motivation) within the context of games. Some of the confusion in the audience Q&A reflected this. The problem is the dividing line between player and their in-game character – their real-life experience versus the virtual experience of the game. For a player who is heavily engaged at an emotional level and “immersed” in the game, the intrinsic motivations within the game context can become (IMO) intrinsic motivations for the player. But without that, most of the game systems are extrinsic – you are simply making progress.

Anyway, if nothing else, it was thought-provoking. And that’s the point, right?

I only played a few of the games that were being shared. Again, I like spending half the time talking to friends. Curtis Mirci showed me his level editor for Siphon Spirit, and it’s pretty cool. I think Curtis inadvertently  reminded me of a truth to me about demoing level editors – or editing tools in general. It’s not the tool itself that is cool, but what you can do with it.  While I was clear he’d put a lot of effort into it, and I was amazed by the array of controls that could make vary the look and gameplay of a level, the truly exciting part was hitting the button to test it. Then, suddenly, things became far more interesting, and I discovered a bunch of “can you do X?” questions.

Chris Tart’s Bullet Train Hell was on display again… and while it didn’t occur to me at the time, I believe I saw it was running on a PC. A new version of the game?

Darius Ouderkirk had an untitled turn-based space combat game on display. While I was at first reminded of Flotilla, it looked like he was pushing more along the lines of a Wing Commander Privateer or something, as a continuous campaign. It’s not a 4x game, or is at least missing the “exploit” element. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

Brad (I forget his last name – sorry!) of Rainblade Studios had a game for handhelds called Equalize. It’s a math-based game, but only depends on basic arithmetic skills. I’m not sure I’d call it “educational” except for younger kids. The idea is to drop blocks with numbers such that the values of a row all sum up to a particular value. And yeah, the idea of adding numbers together does sound a lot like work, but the game is actually pretty fun.

Herb Flowers was showing off the latest dungeon in LinkRealms, a new area scheduled to be released on their servers in a week or so.

There was an iPad-based game called “Monster Pet Peeve” or something along those lines… I can’t remember for sure… that was a monster fighting game played on multiple iPads. The cool thing is that the tablets can be placed next to each other and the monster fight can move across the gap between them as one larger battlefield.

And that was probably a little under half of the games showing this month. If you spend ten minutes on a game (and talking to someone about it), then you only have about six games you can check out in the course of an hour – at which time some people start packing things up.

Oh – Paige of Tripleslash Studios also spoke briefly about having something along the lines of Utah Indie Night, but for the general public to see the indie games rather than just other developers. He was talking about having it in a month or two, so I’ll try and keep folks posted if any Utah denizens are interested in showing their new and upcoming games, or having a chance to come and play.

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: Read the First Comment

Matt Chat 203 – Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2013

For this week’s Matt Chat, professor and video game historian Matt Barton gives Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon a solid play-through and some opinions on the game, and also makes an announcement: He is working with me on some dungeon designs for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath!

Based on his getting bitten by a couple of bugs (and a typo), it seems Matt was using an unpatched, original-release version of the game. ARGH! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!

This is embarrassing, but that’s how it goes. That’s why you want the original release to be as bug-free as possible (and these rare bugs slipped through in spite of months and months of testing.  Because they were so rare and difficult to reproduce, it’s hard to even know for sure that they were well and truly dead).  I think I’d have been less forgiving than he is… 😛

(Incidentally, on the x999 thing… it’s because the merchant has an infinite supply of those potions  for sale – and others – which are mysteriously not appearing until he sells one first. I remember addressing that one, but I don’t remember why it was happening or how I fixed it…)

As always, Matt Chat runs on donations, so if you are so inclined, please drop something in the tip jar…

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

The Trolls Devour Fish

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 29, 2013

Crab mentality. It’s a thing. Individually, crabs could escape an open-top bucket. But if you add other crabs, and they’ll keep pulling each other down as soon as one rises, so that none can escape. Now, it drives me crazy when people brush off criticism by saying, “Oh, they’re just jealous.” Nine times out of ten, that’s nothing but B.S. However, there really are folks who feel they can best build themselves up by dragging others down.

Then there are those with an overdeveloped schadenfreude, who take pleasure in suffering of others. Like the bored girls in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, who used accusations of witchcraft to get at those they had feuds with or, eventually, anybody they weren’t fond of.  The bullies.

And then there are people whose world doesn’t seem to extend much further than five feet from their nose. The kind of people who not only voted for, but campaigned for EA to be voted the worst company in America. Twice. Seriously, guys? I mean, I will rant and rave about EAs practices all day, but does always-on DRM even compare to the way that some of these companies have ruined peoples’ lives and pillaged the economy?

These sorts of problems have always existed, but the immediacy and anonymity of the Internet has made it worse.

I’m not the kind of loudmouth Phil Fish is. This is probably one of many reasons why he’s sold something like 100x more copies of his game, Fez, than I have sold of mine. It’s also why I rarely see the kind of venom directed at me that he has had to put up with daily.  Being outspoken and self-promoting garners attention, and not always of the good kind.

This weekend, Phil Fish decided he’d had enough of the abuse, canceled development of Fez II, and has ostensibly left game development for good. The haters claimed their prize. A crippling loss to indie games? No, probably not. Was Fish guiltless in this? Also no, probably not. The guy loved attention, and made a number of controversial statements and actions that multiplied his publicity. And it worked to his benefit much of the time. The worst thing you can be as an indie is uninteresting. Fish is anything but.

But the negative aspects – the death threats, the constant hate, the verbal attacks – got to be too much. So he quit. Maybe forever, maybe just long enough for the hate to die down so he can settle back into just making games.

Sadly, this isn’t just about Phil Fish. It’s a problem throughout the industry. In fact, it’s a problem across all kinds of entertainment media. And I really, truly do not understand it.

The Penny Arcade Report talks about this disturbing phenomena at some length.

And yeah, it’s disturbing. It’s creepy. And it is wrong. Straight-up: it’s evil, and it’s wrong.

The only thing that’s gonna stop it is social stigma. When the trolls are shunned – when they no longer get the attention or the approval they seek by attacking whatever seems to be under the spotlight – then maybe things will change. Not entirely, but they may be better.

The weird thing is that the best tool to facilitate this may be the vector by which most of these attacks are delivered: transparency into the development process, and direct contact with the game creators.  For normal people – this is a great thing. If you are interested, there’s a face and personality to the game, there’s some insight into the design process, and while you may not agree with everything that gets done, you may at least understand. And if you don’t care, you don’t care. You may like the game and not care one bit about what went into making it, and that’s fine. You may enjoy the stories behind the game, but not care for the game itself… and that’s fine. You may not care about any of it… and that’s fine too. And for 95%+ of the folks out there, it works, life is good, and we get better games out of it (IMO) due to the two-way communication that takes place.

And I don’t have a problem with open, constructive criticism. That’s fine, too. That’s how things can improve. That’s the reason Microsoft backed off on some of their extremely shortsighted policies for new and upcoming products recently. There’s definitely a time and place for honest, passionate criticism. But there’s a wide gulf between criticism and out-and-out attack. There should be some boundaries ruthlessly enforced beyond which even passionate protests should never go.

And it goes both ways! Seriously. Just ‘cuz you are the creator of a game, or just because you’ve got a lot more followers on Twitter, or are the admin on some forum, does not give you some sort of divine right to be a jackass. Treat everybody with respect. Sure, you can ban / block / ignore those within your field of influence if they are perpetual trolls. But the respect needs to go both ways. If nothing else, because you are dealing with human beings (at least we assume so, though there are a minority that refuse to act like one). For another – these people may be ignorant of some of the aspect of game development or game fandom or whatnot, but that does not automatically make their opinion inferior to your own. Treat everybody like they might be your personal hero going incognito until they’ve proven themselves unworthy of such. And at such point, the best way to fight a troll is not to engage them, but to deprive them of oxygen (attention).

I don’t take any joy in seeing Fish’s retreat from online pressure. I really don’t. If anything, I worry that this will embolden the trolls, the bullies. We really don’t need this. We don’t need game developers hiding behind PR walls and ignoring all feedback from their audience because each hateful comment hurts enough to nullify twenty notes of praise. We don’t need toxic communities where those attempting rational discussion get threatened and banned because they are resisting the mob mentality. We don’t need virtual lynchings of developers that result in them losing their jobs over something stupid they said on Twitter. I say stupid things on Twitter all the time, so I’m really sensitive to this!

As communities of gamers, we need to have some basic empathy and respect for each other, and for the game developers. Why shouldn’t we? We have mutual love of these games. Sure, we have conflicting opinions, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to argue those opinions with each other, because we’re so passionate about these things! That’s great! But we need to do better as a community, and be able to do this without devolving into nothing more than a bucket full of crabs. Because ultimately it is all of us who are being dragged down to the bottom.

Update – GameZone.com: I’m Deeply Worried About Fez Creator Phil Fish, and You Should Be, Too.

Update – Cliffy B’s Open Letter to Phil Fish (Dynamite Fishing) (Some great advice on how to deal with the trolls).

 

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Shadowrun Returns – Impressions

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 26, 2013

Yesterday, Shadowrun Returns became available – the first, I think, of the “major” Kickstarter games to do so (ones over, what, a half-mil in funding?). I did not participate in the Kickstarter, but I did pre-order the game.  With the news of the delays in Wasteland 2 and Broken Age, it’s nice to have had one of these “success story” games actually deliver. Maybe not “on time” (I think the original release date was supposed to be in February, and it’s rescheduled June release date was moved back a month), but they delivered.

I am a few hours into it.  What do I think?

First off: It’s pretty linear. It uses checkpoints instead of allowing you to save your game whenever you want. If these are showstoppers for you, then consider the show stopped, and bemoan the fate of modern games. It also uses some conventions that I’m sure are intended to make it easier to use on tablets with minimal changes. While not terrible, they aren’t great either.

Okay, there’s my negatives. Beyond that, I’m having a great time playing it.

So what is it about? It’s fantasy-meets-cyberpunk, in a nutshell. I never played the dice & paper RPG back in the day because I preferred my Cyberpunk “pure.” While throwing elves and trolls and wizards into a dystopian future setting sounded fun, it just wasn’t my thing. I was totally into books like Neuromancer, When Gravity Fails, and Snow Crash, and it seemed like those kinds of settings were rich enough without cluttering them up with fantasy.

But that was a preference, not an objection. But I never played more than a few minutes of the Sega Genesis game, and was only familiar with the world in that I had friends who played. So I’m a little bit of a n00b when it comes to the game setting. Aside from being a fan of both cyberpunk and fantasy, this isn’t a familiar world that I’m coming back to or anything like that. However, it is a good ol’ fashioned turn-based RPG, and – done well – I’m always pleased about that. And the world is very well-presented in the game, full of visual detail and flavor.

 

The story has you following the trail of a serial killer who murdered an old comrade-at-arms. Naturally, things escalate, and you end up doing a lot of “favors” for people along the way which usually involve violence and shady actions.

Combat is turn-based tactical, with a premium on finding cover. As your party grows, you will want to avoid bunching them up where they can be easy targets for an enemy grenade.  So far, spells have proven more of an influence in combat, not really a main weapon in and of itself, but we’ll see. There’s also netrunning, where a character hooks their brain directly into the “Matrix” to hack any electronics in an area.

While the negatives really do bug me, I’m still enjoying the game. It doesn’t feel very big – I’ve heard that the whole main campaign can be completed in about a dozen hours (which is par for the course for AAA games with 20x the budget as this one), so I’m probably about a third of the way through at this point.The equipment lists are fairly scaled down from what I’ve seen so far. There’s … enough, but it’s not exactly dripping with choices.

The storyline is interesting, the characters are believable (for such a weird setting), and the combats are fun and challenging without (so far) being frustrating.

The big “win” with this game is that it is really focused on being a toolkit – like the Neverwinter Nights series. The original campaign is really intended to be more of a high-end sample of what is possible with the tools. Assuming some motivated, talented individuals take the ball and run with it, we should be seeing a ton of third party campaigns for this game over the coming months. Some of them actually good. While I feel that so far the original campaign seems to be worth the price of admission alone, the promise of future expansions by (hopefully) the developer and gamers out may be what really sends this game over the top.

Anyway – I’m pleased. While short on the frills, this is a “real” RPG with quality presentation that seemed an endangered species only a few years ago.

This is a dang good time to be a CRPG fan.

Filed Under: Impressions - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

The Xbox One Promises to Allow Indie Self-Publishing

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 25, 2013

This really shouldn’t be news. It’s kinda sad that it is, and represents a reversal of Microsoft’s previous position (along with many other changes to the Xbox One since their E3 unveiling). Really, it just takes us back to where we’ve been with the 360. But that is, and was, a pretty good thing…

Xbox One to Allow Indie Self-Publishing

The further news is that every retail system can be used as a dev box (just like the Ouya!). They’ve made some efforts to streamlined their infamous certification process (which only applied to some indies on the 360). There are hints of some possible improvements over how things have been done on the 360, with more details to come in the near future.

As I said – this is good news, but it shouldn’t be news. Sony shouldn’t have been able to make the kind of splash they did at E3 by simply staying the course (and offering slight improvements for indie devs). But, due to the contrast to Microsoft’s attempt to lock down the system on all fronts, they enjoyed a huge boost. By all rights, Microsoft – as really the pioneer of indie, downloadable gaming on the console – should have remained at the forefront.

But as they say, better late than never. Sony made some serious marketing / launch / indie dev missteps at the launch of the PS3, and it took them quite a while to turn the ship around. Microsoft’s about-face is happening only weeks after E3, prior to launch, so it’s cool they are reacting so quickly. I have no doubt that at this late date, the changes they are having to make on policy and the operating system to adapt to this change of direction is not in any way cheap. It’ll do a lot to salve public opinion.

But as this is clearly a change in position only driven by overwhelming public outcry, I remain concerned about their underlying direction.  I worry that they are only making a show of repentance because they got caught.  And I worry that they are completely out-of-touch with the modern gaming audience, as they had no idea that their policies would go over like  a lead balloon.

So that’s the wet blanket. But still, this is positive news, and I earnestly hope that Microsoft takes this opportunity to get a real clue not only about the Xbone, but for Windows and the market in general. It’s been known to happen.

And then the big question – would I, as an indie, consider supporting the Xbone now?

Maybe. I’m not much of a fan of what they did with XBLIG on the 360, but maybe now that they’ve gotten the indie religion, they’ll make some improvements. If indie support is more than just talk, I’ll definitely take it under consideration. This reversal has taken me from a “definitely not” back into the maybe zone.

And as a totally awesome side-note, I want to bring up this quote from a source article at GameInformer: “This puts them back in the game with independent developers, which was still a major weakness.” While I totally want to side with the author, I’m not completely sure that indies are quite the market driver that consoles have to please. But hey, if nothing else, we’re getting there, and it’s awesome that it’s getting recognized! GO INDIE!!!!

Filed Under: Biz, General, Indie Evangelism, News - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

The Final Brick (and Mortar) Wall Begins to Crumble…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 24, 2013

After decades of brick & mortar sales leading the way, of where fealty to game stores and Wal*Mart were paramount, I guess you can say that things have finally, officially reversed…

EA Reports Digital Revenues Outpace Brick-and-Mortar Sales

An online friend noted that a big chunk of that is probably due to DLC sales. I was wondering how much of that was PC game revenue – I still imagine it’s a pretty big chunk.  This has been the way of things for the PC games for a long time. EA is not a strong presence in the mobile markets, where it has always been about online sales But we’re talking AAA game publishers, principally console-dominant… the last bastion of brick-and-mortar based sales. While it’s not going away entirely (nor would I want it to), it does appear it is finally the secondary market.

There was a time when a I made a weekly pilgrimage to a Software Etc., Electronics Boutique, or Babbages. (What’s left of all three became GameStop). Between that and gaming magazines, I’d keep up with what was happening in the gaming world. I’d window shop like crazy, maybe buy a magazine. At the time, I could afford maybe one game every month or two, so it was always an agonizing decision over which one I’d get.  I’d review the screenshots and descriptions on the back of each box several times. I’d ask the clerks at the stores what they’d heard. And no matter what, the games I didn’t get would, in my mind, be amazing virtual adventures that were absolute gems of awesomeness…

Maybe that’s why I’m such a sucker for the big bundles and sales at gaming sites. I’m compensating for the past.

It’s been about a year and a half since I last bought a game at a store. It was Skyrim, for the PC. I bought it with some cash I’d been given for Christmas. I’m on DSL, so normally buying a new AAA game involves an overnight download. It was nice to be able to come home from the store and get the game installed and playing within an hour.

The next day, the game went on sale on Steam for something like $20 less than I’d paid for it…

I’m not buying many AAA console games (which – at least for the pathetic hard drive of my XBox 360 – are still disc-based for me). I’ve got a backlog of games to play as it is. And most the games I play these days are indie anyway, and so primarily or exclusively downloadable. And I’m primarily a PC gamer, so stores don’t usually stock what I want to play, anyway.

So… while it’s kinda interesting to see that the last wall is finally crumbling, it’s not something that I can say truly impacts me.  Not anymore. The only parts I miss are the ones that went away a long time ago.

Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games - Comments: Read the First Comment

How to Design Puzzles for Role-Playing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2013

I love puzzles in my RPGs – except when I hate them. I have a low threshold of tolerance for the kind of frustration they can yield, but I enjoy great satisfaction in solving them. It’s like having a sweet tooth and an allergy to sugar.

When Legend of Grimrock was released, I was ecstatic.  I loved the old puzzle-heavy RPGs that LoG was styled after. I found LoG to be even more puzzle-heavy than I expected.  It was fine for a few levels. But I’ve yet to finish the game, because at a certain point I just got tired of them – even when I had the option to hunt down a solution if I found myself “stumped.” But I wasn’t so much stumped as tired of memorizing patterns through trial and error. It was really fun up until the point where it wasn’t. Those represent what I’d call the “action puzzles.” These are the puzzles that require you to learn and then execute complicated sequences of actions.

I have always felt the same about platform-game levels… which is probably why I don’t really get into them very much. And why I haven’t been quite as excited about that particular trend in indie games. For people who were practically born with a Nintendo controller in their hand, it’s an awesome time, and I appreciate their fascination, though I don’t quite share it. Yeah, I got through more levels of Super Meat Boy than I thought I ever would, but it’s not something I truly embrace. But then there are times when they are just spectacularly well done, as in the Portal games.  If only all “action puzzles” were as brilliantly well-done as Portal!

Then there’s the adventure-game style puzzles… which generally fall into the category of “inventory puzzles”, although ‘inventory’ may mean much more than physical items in your TARDIS-sized pockets. Basically, you acquire something – knowledge, physical items, attributes, whatever – in one location that you can use or combine somehow with something else to gain access to something new – often new locations and new inventory items (which can then be used to solve more puzzles).

Now, these adventure-game puzzles are the kind of puzzles I can really sink my teeth into. I love them – right up to the point where I hate them. In the past, the problem might simply be because I was stumped. My least favorite puzzle of all time – which Tim Schaffer FINALLY admitted to being unfair – was the Monkey Island 2 puzzle where you are supposed to use JoJo the Monkey as a wrench – get it? Monkey Wrench? – to fix a pump. I quit the game for a year because of that one. There was always the supposition that somewhere I’d missed some item, its pixels hidden away in some scene that I’d failed to recognize.

Even with a solution a quick Internet search away, these kinds of things – in excess, or when poorly designed and not providing enough clues to the player – take me out of the game and can ruin my enjoyment. Still, sometimes I still enjoy a good adventure game (or even a bad one), and I like the occasional adventure-game style puzzle in my RPGs. For many years, they were a staple of the genre. Then – perhaps with the advent of Diablo – they became relatively scarce, replaced with more straight-up combat, other puzzle types, and of course “quests” that explicitly stated the items you needed to acquire to move forward. Recently, possibly because of the indie movement, they’ve been making a little bit of a comeback in RPGs.

Then there’s the “true puzzle.” These are obstacles that literally block progress until you solve some kind of puzzle or brain-teaser. You cannot take the battle to the evil overlord until you’ve solved this crossword puzzle! Or solved the Towers of Hanoi yet again! Unlike the action-game “platform puzzle” elements, these depend on more on logic (and sometimes outside knowledge) than trial-and-error, memorization and timing / execution.

Yes, these get irritating. And yes, I had a couple of those in Frayed Knights.  Used sparingly, I don’t have a problem with them, and I think they can help add pleasing variation to the gameplay of an RPG. But they can also get very frustrating, particularly when the end-user doesn’t “get it.” It’s very difficult to gauge the difficulty of the puzzle. While a “medium” difficulty Soduku puzzle (not that I’d ever recommend one in an RPG!) would be a piece of cake for an experienced Sodoku player in the middle of a game, a player who has never played anything like that before might find it completely impenetrable and unplayable. It will effectively shut down the game for him, probably forever. That’s not “adding variety” to the gameplay – it’s ruining the game.

That’s a very fine line to walk…

A fourth type of puzzle – and possibly the best of this list – is what I might term a “tactical puzzle.” This is a standard combat that provides some additional rules / exceptions that requires some logical problem solving to resolve. If the player doesn’t re-think their usual tactics, they’ll face a very difficult encounter.

These are very common in action games. In RPGs, they are either relatively rare or so “baked” into the system (as they should be, IMO)  that they aren’t quite so noticeable.  The nice thing about this is that in an RPG, there’s often an automatic “bypass” to the puzzle if the player can’t figure it out… they can usually just gain a few levels and buy a few magic items and brute force their way through the challenge if they can’t out-think it. It may even be a stretch to call these sorts of challenges a “puzzle,” but it’s one way of thinking about it.

The big problem here is that when players can customize (or optimize) their characters a particular way, there’s a chance that a boss or other encounter that changes the rules may invalidate that specialization, and result in a combat far more difficult than intended. Once again, this has the potential to be a game-wrecker.

So in the end – I love ’em and I hate ’em. I want my adventure games to use them sparingly – sprinkled about to add variety, the spice to the meat. While there are a very few games (like Grimrock) that perhaps overdo it for my personal tastes, there are far more role-playing games that could benefit from a healthy injection of more puzzle elements. So how does a designer walk that fine line between adding variety to the gameplay and ruining the role-playing game?

I suggest the following:

1. Err on the side of easy. The point is to provide an interesting additional activity for the players, not to stump them with a challenge. If a player finds it too easy, then it may be a useless or forgettable element. But if it’s too hard, it’s a game wrecker. It’s an RPG, not a puzzle game, so avoid the latter.

2. Make them optional or bypassable (is that even a word). Allow an alternative solution to the problem that doesn’t require solving the puzzle. Or – as in the case of “tactical puzzles” – don’t completely prohibit the “brute force” option.

3. Use tiered rewards with a puzzle that can be solved at different challenge levels. So an “easy” solution removed the obstacle, but if the player chooses greater challenge, they get that plus additional bonuses. This might help the more puzzle-oriented players keep up with the more action-oriented players in an action-RPG, for example – giving the puzzle-solvers an advantage.

4. Provide in-game hints. This way the player won’t feel quite as motivated to exit the game to look up solutions online. Whenever a player exits my game, I want them to leave happy or wanting more, not frustrated.

5. Don’t require too much trial-and-error to solve a challenge. And if you do, don’t penalize the “error” too heavily (if at all). Otherwise, it’s not a puzzle, it’s simply an exercise in frustration. Dumping the party into a pit of diseased monsters every time they choose imperfectly in a game of “mastermind” is really a bad idea.

No doubt there are plenty of additional puzzle types and suggestions for better implementation (feel free to add your own in the comments). And there are some people who may HATE any semblance of puzzle elements in their RPGs. I’m not one of them. I like ’em, I just want ’em done right.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 22, 2013

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

Many of these guidelines have been with me for a long time. They evolved even when I was designing dungeons on paper for friends to play through. They were certainly inspired by the early dice-and-paper RPG books and computer games I’ve played over the years. Some evolved from advice given to me by others, and many evolved as I developed the first game in the series – from personal experience, and from feedback.

For Frayed Knights 2 and 3, I’m getting a little bit of help designing some dungeons, and so I felt it necessary to put these guidelines down on paper. I jokingly refer to it as my “secret sauce,” but it’s really not secret. While some of it applies only to Frayed Knights, some of it can be applied (or stretched to apply) to other games. In the interest of encouraging discussion – which will hopefully improve the genre as a whole amongst indies – I’ve decided to share this information in the blog, a couple of principles at a time.

I’ve elaborated a little on them and edited them for the blog, but this is largely ‘design doc’ stuff. It’s not about how all RPGs should be made – just what we’re doing for Frayed Knights.  Also – as a warning – there are a few minor spoilers for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.

#3 – Multiple Approaches to Challenges

Where appropriate, provide multiple solutions or approaches to solving problems. If it’s part of the critical path, a puzzle should be able to be bypassed through cleverness or brute force. Really tough bosses (or other exceptional  encounters)  that are non-optional combat encounters may have ways to make the encounter less difficult. Some examples of this might be limiting reinforcements, or weakening their power (or allies). Or just bribing them.

In all cases, taking an alternative approach should yield similar (but not necessarily equal) rewards. Maybe there’s less loot with one approach but more XP or drama points, or something along those lines. In fact, it’s best if these rewards are not identical, and the player is given some hint as to the trade-off being made in advance.  The most interesting choices are ones where the player must sacrifice or forgo something desirable… but the game should offer at least some kind of compensation for that. It may not be of exactly equal value (it could be better!), but this provides the feeling that the game (and designers) acknowledge and respect the choice.

As examples from Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, the boss encounter in Pokmor Xang: You can bypass most of the dungeon and make a beeline for the boss, but he’ll have more reinforcements if you do. You can bribe the troll at the bridge in the central Caverns of Anarchy (and possibly haggle him down from his opening toll).  You can jury-rig the bridge puzzle in the Plane of Anarchy (although finding out how to jury-rig it may be a bigger challenge than solving the puzzle).

 

#4 – Tongue-in-cheek, but don’t overdo it

Frayed Knights is primarily character-based humor. While you should feel free to include some tongue-in-cheek or snarky descriptions (it’s a good thing), it should not descend to Mad Magazine levels of parody. That gets irritating very quickly.

Frayed Knights is more like a sitcom. One of my guiding principles was to imagine the world as a D&D campaign created by a particularly earnest 14-year-old (easy enough for me…), who doesn’t quite realize how cliche or nonsensical his adopted tropes and ‘clever’ ideas might be. The player’s party offers commentary somewhat as if they are being played by jaded players off at some invisible table somewhere, who are doing their best to play along and enjoy the game, but can’t help but let the player in on the joke. The text descriptions should follow somewhat the same pattern – sort of the voice of a third party offering the same jaded commentary with a touch of snark.

Again – this isn’t parody. While we make fun of it, we’re still reveling in it. Think “Knights of the Dinner Table” and “Order of the Stick.” With maybe a touch of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” This is the kind of humor we’re shooting for in dialog and descriptions.

One thing I tried to do in FK1 was offer ideas to explain (or at least lampshade) some of the classic tropes of fantasy and RPGs. Like why there were so many dungeons in the world. Or why there are lit torches in dungeons that have theoretically been abandoned for years. Part of the twist here is that many players are quite familiar with these tropes – sometimes to the point of exhaustion – and the game is somewhat self-aware of them. Things that would be wild and wonderful and shockingly unusual are almost painfully familiar to the adventurers in this world, and they treat it like a job.  While treating the fantastic as mundane isn’t all that humorous in itself, it can provide a pretty good basis for many jokes in the game.

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: Comments are off for this article

The Ouya Needs Exclusives – And How They Might Succeed in Getting Them

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 19, 2013

I love my Ouya. I’m the eternal optimist about it, and I definitely intend to release Frayed Knights 2 on the little cube.  Assuming I can get it to run well on the box, I don’t expect it to make much money, but I’m doing it because it’s cool. And because I’m building my game in Unity, which makes porting a lot less of a pain in the backside.

But the Ouya is facing real problems, none of which were unexpected.

The big deal of course is the need for exclusive content. In a world where most of their customers already have a tablet or smartphone, and a PC, and probably a few consoles, there’s a problem selling games that are already available everywhere else.  And while 60,000 units shipped to early backers of the project may sound like a lot to indie ears, it’s a very small install base. As of now, I don’t know how many more have sold in retail… but the reports are, unsurprisingly, that sales have been “light” for a console.

The game sales numbers are pretty much as predicted.  Towerfall, which has evolved to be the marquee title for the Ouya at launch, has sold about $30,000 so far (minus about 30% for the Ouya’s fees). That’s pretty decent for a small, 2D indie title, but even that is kind of an outlier. Overall, indies are making money on the console, but not a lot. Not enough to justify any exclusive “big games.” Yet that’s what it really needs. I know a few people who have bought an Ouya just for Towerfall. That’s a lot of money to spend on a $15 indie game. 🙂

But… Towerfall is definitely the kind of game the platform needs. It’s a “couch gaming” multiplayer game, designed for several people in the living room to play together. That’s the Ouya’s focus.

To that end, Ouya is doing something interesting – basically matching Kickstarter funds for Ouya exclusives, with an extra $100,000 prize kicked in.  This immediately drew some criticism, much of it along the lines of what a big risk it might be to indies, or how unfair it was that they were only rewarding Kickstarter projects that were already successful and thus didn’t really need the money.

I dunno – I  think it’s a decent idea, and it has nothing to do with fairness. For it to make sense, you have to look at it for what it is – a bribe. If you’ve been able to generate enough “buzz” on Kickstarter necessary to fund a game to a certain level – and that’s no small feat! – then you’ve got something that has the potential to sell consoles. They will bribe you to give them six months exclusivity.  This is a cash bonus to keep your team in pizza and ramen noodles for six months while you port to other platforms or whatnot.

I think this it’s a clever idea. But then, I’m one of those folks who bought Towerfall. My family loves it. It’s not particularly awesome to look at – it looks like a console title from twenty years ago – but it looks good enough to do its job and its very fun to play. I’d love to see more games like this, and it makes sense that the Ouya team would go back to Kickstarter and start mining it for killer games.

I like the box. I’d like to see them succeed. And while I’m no expert,  from my mouse-eye-view, if I was Kickstarter-inclined this would be pretty tempting. As a small indie, it wouldn’t be a home run all by itself, but it would be a reasonable incentive.

But will it be enough?

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

Checklists for Making Awesome Video Games, and for Making Game Development Awesome

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2013

Making video games has always been as much art as science. At times, chained to the oars of a ship chasing the bleeding-edge horizon of technology or constrained by massive budgets to make obsessively risk-averse design decisions, the industry has drifted further out on the “science” side. Perhaps now, with the rise of indie games, it’s drifted more to the “art” side. But it’s always required solid measures of both.

Either way, game development defies easy, repeatable recipes. A formula can take you only so far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use checklists and benchmarks to guide development – on both the “art” or technology sides.

And this is a particularly good one, from IndieGames.com:

The Essential Checklist for Making an Awesome Video Game, According to FuturLab

Yes, before you ask, yesterday’s post was in part me asking about “finding the toy.” Frayed Knights may have been critically acclaimed and a multiple award-winner (which just amazes and thrills me to no end), but I feel like I’m on a never-ending quest to truly grok RPG design, in an effort to make better and better games.  This article made me sit back and ponder.

But let’s not end with a single list, shall we? On the technology side, it may depend on what technology you are using. As Unity is a very popular choice (for good reason), here is a list of 50 “best practices” (according to one freelance developer). These tips are not applicable for every team or every project, but they are worth taking a look at if you are working in Unity:

50 Tips for Working With Unity (Best Practices)

Even if you don’t follow all or most of these practices, I found it pretty useful to get a feel for the thought processes behind them. Understanding the “why” is so much better than trying to commit 50 practices to memory or process. In particular, I noted two factors at work: One is generalized “best practices” and how they are best implemented via Unity. Another is simply taking advantage of the way Unity likes to do things.

 

 

Filed Under: Design, Links & Tidbits, Production - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

What Sets Off Your “Just One More Turn / Level / Match” Reflex?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2013

I’ve decided it’s not the same for everybody. Maybe it doesn’t exist for some people. But for the rest of us (maybe just those of us with low willpower – like the ones who keep buying games from the Steam Sale even though we have more games than we could play in a year of weekends), there are certain types of gameplay experiences that just keep encouraging us to play one more turn… one more level… one more match… whatever. Often until way past our self-imposed bedtimes or voluntarily applied session limits.

Some people talk about games like Battlefield <Whatever> or Team Fortress or fighting games or whatnot as just hooking them in for another match. You know, for those games, I am a rock. A bastion of willpower. Maybe it’s just that while I like those games, I don’t love them. I don’t know.

But I look back at how late I used to play Wing Commander games – pretty much up until the point where I failed a mission. That was usually the event that forced me to look at the clock, realize I was up way too late and it was time to go to bed.  Any game with relatively short missions and big storylines.

The ones that hit me the worst are the so-called “4x” style strategy games. As far as I’m concerned – those kinds of games are digital crack. I’m pretty sure that Rip Van Winkle was actually seduced by a beta version of Civilization.

I think for me, the things that will set me off and convince me to play through just one more turn or one more level or one more dungeon comes down to this:

1. It’ll be quick, I promise! 

If I am convinced the “just one more” won’t take much time, I can easily be hooked. If I don’t think it’ll take more than 5 minutes, I’ll convince myself that it won’t hurt. The problem is, I’ll end up playing a dozen more instead of just one more, and an hour will have gone by. But if I know the next level will be an ordeal, it’s easy for my logical brain to tell my lizard brain to shut the hell up, ‘cuz we do not have twenty more minutes to spare.

This may be why many modern RPGs don’t do it for me… but the old-school dungeons, where you would often make a “quick foray” and return, do it for me. So do the modern “Diablo-likes,” for the same reasons. Or a game like Knights of the Chalice, where every combat was a relatively quick but challenging tactical ordeal that formed a natural “stopping point” (since you could save anywhere), and the prizes were sometimes packed into a room like a piñata.

2. Unfinished Business.

The trick with the Wing Commander games as much as Galactic Civilizations II was the storyline – or the knowledge that there’d be progression of events at the end of the mission / turn. In Wing Commander, it was a constant set of cut-scenes advancing the story. They were the reward for completing a mission, and it was fun to see what happened next. In a 4x game, there’s likely several things happening at once, and you are frequently just a turn or two away from researching a new technology, or conquering a city / planet, or fully repulsing an attack. My mind, at least, is fully occupied with solving the tactical and strategic puzzles on the board, and I don’t want to wait another day to see how they resolve.

Incidentally, I’m the same way with TV shows. I prefer watching an entire season at once.

3. A Constant Trickle of Rewards

While story progression can be a very compelling reward, a constant trickle of small, progressive rewards (especially when they are not a perfectly known quantity) can be equally compelling to just push a little bit further. In that next chest, there could be an even better shield or rocket launcher. In one more turn, this planet will finish building my new Dreadnaught-class ship… but in two turns, my troop transports will land on the enemy planet and I may be able to take possession of it. And then on the third turn I should be done building this wonder on my home planet, and on the fourth turn I should finally finish research on Terraforming…

Anyway, these are the kinds of things that can and often will set me off, and leave me playing far into the wee hours of the night.  What about you? Do the same factors apply to you, or are there other aspects that make it very hard to put a game down?

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life, Strategy Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Indie Marketing / PR Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2013

Leigh Alexander has posted a set of five PR tips indies really need.

On the flip side, here are five  indie PR tips you really SHOULDN’T read. Or rather, five things you should not do, yet many indies do it anyway. Sadly, I’ve seen these very things thrown around certain forums as actual advice…

And here’s a video of Adam Ames of True PC Gaming speaking at the Utah Indie Games Meet-Up about four months ago talking about indie PR and Marketing. (I was sitting just to the left of the camera in this video).  I thought he did a fantastic job, especially when he was limited to only a half-hour. I would have preferred him to go a whole hour, but we recently had to start getting strict with limiting the formal presentation times. Most of his talk was about having confidence as indies to approach the press.

Sadly, I’ve made a lot of PR mistakes in the past. I expect I’ll make many more in the future. But hey, live and learn.

 

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2013

During the development of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, I evolved a set of informal philosophies or guidelines towards making adventuring areas (which I’ll just call “dungeons”, though some were outdoors). For the sequel, I actually wrote many of these guidelines down. At the risk of revealing a developing “secret formula” (hah!), but in hopes of helping out other aspiring computer RPG designers, I thought I’d share some of these principles.

Besides, they make it easy to come up with a topic for a blog post. 🙂

For the next few weeks, I’ll post articles covering two or three guidelines each, starting with the “general” guidelines and then moving more to the ones that are more specific to the way we build Frayed Knights dungeons.  Some of these won’t be new – I have frequently discussed these on the blog before.

UPDATE: Both the principles and the rules articles are now complete. You can read the principles –  part 1 here, part 2 here,  part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, and part 6 here. The more concrete “Rules” articles are about actionable items for a design checklist for a dungeon or adventure for Frayed Knights.  You can read part 1 of the dungeon creation rules here, part 2 can be found here,  part 3  here, and finally part 4 here.  And, as always, you can just read the entire category of Frayed Knights posts here.

General Guideline #1 – All dungeons should tell a story. Often more than one.

A dungeon should have clues that tell a story of why / how they were built, what happened there in antiquity, and what is currently happening within it.  If the dungeon was built recently, these may all be the same story. But as the player pokes around, he should be able to learn bits and pieces about these stories. Even if the player never understands the full story, the richness of the background (IMO) helps establish the dungeon as an interesting, believable place.

There should be several elements that speak to this story – dialog (interactive or overheard), documents, architecture, graphics, music and sound effects, combat encounters, interactive objects, whatever. It’s actually pretty important that this back-story not just be revealed through passive exposition sequences. These elements don’t need to be confined to the dungeon itself – it shouldn’t be entirely self-contained. It’s better if the dungeon’s place in the world and story is reinforced by elements outside of itself. Rumors, legends, cultural taboos – these are all the kinds of impacts a sinister dungeon might have on the people around it.

Ideally, aspects of the story should be meaningful to the player in some way – it could suggest some detail in the present that may be beneficial, like the solution to a puzzle, location of secret treasure, heads-up on a trap or monster encounter, or warning about what will happen when the player pulls that lever. But it’s quite likely that even after poking around the entire dungeon, the player won’t understand the “full story” behind it. That’s okay. If it’s not critical to the player’s story, then it’s background. The important thing is that is that by knowing the dungeon almost as if it was a character in the game, the designer can make it feel more “real” to the player, rather than just being some random collection of rooms and corridors that happened to be at some map position.

General Guideline #2 – Add Interactive Details. Lots of them.

Not everything that can be clicked on needs to yield some kind of shiny treasure. In fact, most of the time it should not. But text is cheap. Anything that looks interesting SHOULD be able to be clicked on. Sometimes it can have an amusing description. Sometimes it may invite party discussion. Sometimes it may offer more detailed interactions (as a puzzle). Sometimes it may yield treasure. Sometimes it may unlock a secret door. Provide plenty of interesting details that make sense in the context of the dungeon, it’s denizens, and the story – complete with the descriptions and events (when appropriate) that fire when the object is clicked on in the game.

A simple example from Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is the large entry hall in the Temple of Pokmor Xang. Give players lots of things to poke and prod. This is fun. It’s a little bit of exploration of the game space that can be rewarding simply by virtue of interesting interactions, like we had back in the days of text adventures.

Another rule-of-thumb is that if something looks interesting, it should be interactive. Period. Or if it’s too big to be interactive, it should be commented on when it comes into view. Like the mountain giving away to the giant skull temple entrance in FK1.

 

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

The Steam Sale

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 12, 2013

If you didn’t know already…

Steam’s Summer Sale Started Yesterday

I have more games than I can possibly play at this point, so naturally, I haven’t purchased anything. Oh, wait, that’s wrong…

I did. I really did. I regret nothing.

Actually, seeing how the prices of semi-recent games have come down, I guess I kinda regret buying them at full price when they first came out. For indie games, that’s one thing… the devs need the money. 🙂  But for mainstream games, it’s like… wait until the next sale and save yourself $20 or $30…

 

 

Filed Under: Deals - Comments: 5 Comments to Read



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