How Fast Should Characters Level Up?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 7, 2012

Back in the (somewhat) earlier dice & paper RPG days, one of the key differences between skill-based RPG systems and class/level based systems (which have now married and have had lots of hybrid babies) was the pace of character progression.  In a skill-based system, you typically gained abilities, or points to spend on abilities, after every session / adventure. In the case of point-buy systems, you could often spend the points immediately on small gains, or save them up for more impressive abilities.

Class / Level based systems – of which Dungeons & Dragons was the role-model – were generally slower, with intermediate gains usually in the form of improved equipment. But then you got all of your gains as one package of bonuses, which felt great. In skill-based systems, the incremental improvements were not as noticeable, but suddenly being able to cast 3rd level spells in D&D was huge – on top of extra hit points, better chances of hitting, better saving throws, and more spells overall. Instead of a constant slope, you had a staircase, where each step felt like a significant increase. Unless you were playing a fighter, I guess…

But in earlier editions of D&D, those levels (if the DM was playing by the rules *) came pretty quickly early on, but came progressively slower. It was not uncommon to hit 2nd level after a single adventure, but going from 7th to 8th level might take months of weekly sessions.  One might argue that this was really too slow and would make characters feel stale and drag the game, and that would not be entirely incorrect. However, up through the 1st edition of Advanced D&D there was something of a “soft cap” around 9th level (closer to 6th level in the original), after which non-spellcasting class progression became really kind of meaningless. So around 7th or 8th level you were really entering the “end game” area, and at that point progression really became more about acquisition of equipment (and sometimes followers, and eventually even castles).

A few CRPGs (particularly those most closely adhering to D&D style rules, whether informally or via license) followed this slower progression rate. The Ultima games started with unbounded, frequent level gains, and then capped them at lower progression for the middle saga. The later games went more towards the skill-based progression.

One interesting approach (IMO) was Dungeons & Dragons Online, which by license used a system based on 3rd edition D&D,  but due to the limited level ranges really slowed down progression. In exchange, they offered small advancements in the form of ranks between levels – a more skill-based form of minor improvements.

But most CRPGs nowadays tend to keep progression at a pretty steady, rapid pace, slowing gradually.  For MMOs, I’m sure teams have it down to a mathematical abstraction of something like a level per 20 hours of average, active play or something along those lines. For action-RPGs, it seems like it averages closer to a level every hour or two. My own game, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, slowed things down a little bit with only around 10 levels of progression for an approximately 30 hour game.

Obviously, there’s no magic number for an “optimal” progression rate.  There are way too many variables. The player should be having a good time throughout the game, and whether that’s because of treasure hunting, achieving new levels, having a blast running through levels or being riveted to the plot – or any / all of the above, is immaterial. But it does seem that there’s an expectation of a more rapid pace of leveling in modern CRPGs than there was in previous eras.  Then again, people generally have less patience for the length of the older games, but I hesitate to make that any kind of blanket statement considering the length of some of my modern favorites.

Does slower character progression frustrate you, as a player? Or is that merely a symptom of a game being too slow as a whole? On the flip side, do you ever feel progression is too fast, and you don’t have the ability to fully understand or master your character’s new abilities before the next ones come in?

 

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 14 Comments to Read

Hah? Thought you could LEAVE Facebook? Think again!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 6, 2012

Game developers trying to wean themselves away from Facebook after enjoying the perks of that “platform” are finding it not so easy after all…

New Facebook Rules Aim to Force Developers Back Onto the Social Network

In fairness, these rules changes were announced over three months ago, so they are only really “new” in the sense that they are now in effect. People had warning. Companies were using Facebook to leverage their own businesses, to avoid being completely dependent upon Facebook. Facebook, which has been facing all kinds of business troubles of its own, didn’t like that, and thus came up with these rules to tighten things down. While there’s a whiff of desperation about it, I wouldn’t say they are wrong.

However, to quote Princess Leia: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Sometimes I’m really, really glad I’m a part-timer. It makes me slow, but it also means I don’t HAVE to be fast and keep up with the changes in the games biz.  It changes a lot, and rapidly, and I’d hate to be in a position right now where I’d have to choose whether to lash my livelihood to a possibly sinking ship in hopes of both of us staying afloat, or abandoning ship without a flotation device. Many indie studios are pretty dang nimble, however, and have already been working on parallel plans.

Bottom line: Being indie often requires a real effort at staying independent. ‘Cuz as sweet as the deal looks at the beginning, the big guys will do what they can to make sure you are serving THEM. That’s where their interest lay.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Just Some Things to Make You Go “Hmmm”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 5, 2012

The 13+ hour days at ye olde Day Job continue. It’s almost like working in the mainstream games biz again!

So here are some interesting, vaguely indie-gaming / game development related links for your entertainment and edification.

First off – the toll of piracy: When Pirates Outnumber Paying Customers 10 to 1, Online Games Die Very Quickly. Yeah, the devs should have put better security in their game from the get-go, but that’s kinda like blaming the homeowner for allowing himself to get burglarized (“he was asking for it!”) because he only had one lock on his door. And if you hate “in-game purchases” with the heat of a thousand suns, I humbly suggest that the target of your fury shouldn’t be the developers, publishers, or websites, but rather the people doing so much to limit the viability of other models. Thank you.

Succinct and practical, and I wish every game developer using procedural content would take heed: 5 Tips for Using Procedural Content in Your Games.  As a bonus, Ichiro Lamb’s article from the summer on the same topic, Procedural Content Generation: Thinking With Modules. Both cover some of the same territory – which is how procedural content is NOT a simple solution to content generation woes. It doesn’t mean you can fire your level designers.  Procedural content done right can make your game always seem fairly fresh and surprising, particularly for replayability. Done wrong, and your game can feel stale and lame before the second level.

Joost offers a very long, meaty article on indie game marketing. Stuff I should commit to memory, ‘cuz I still suck at it: The Indie Marketing Plan. Packed with ideas and details!

You know, I want more diversity in the games marketplace – which doesn’t necessarily mean making games that are more “gender neutral.” I want to see more niches being addressed. I have no problem with testosterone-heavy shoot-em-ups that assume the player is a guy. Nor do I have a problem with games geared for a decidedly female audience (I remain a fan of Hanako’s games, after all!) If it’s too heavy on the assumptions, then I may not care for it. But here’s a (sadly large) niche that I really wish marketers would quit going after, and assuming that the majority of gamers are of this category: The juvenile-minded male dickweed population. Case in point: Marketers, Start Caring About Video Games, Please. Who ARE these people???

Matt Barton goes back to his excellent book Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games and attempts to substantiate a comment made in the introduction about about how CRPGs could be the greatest learning tools ever invented. So here’s his lengthy but intriguing explanation: CRPGs as Learning Tools.

If you haven’t seen it, Soldak’s Drox Operative has been released. I’ve enjoyed every one of Soldak’s games, with two of them becoming all-time favorites of the action-RPG genre and examples I like to cite for how awesome indie RPGs can be. I haven’t had a chance to play this one yet (see above, 13+ – hour workdays and a game of my own that needs any ounce of attention I can give to it), but it look right up my alley.

Greg Squire (the guy who runs the Utah Indie Game Night) pointed this one out to me the other day: Green Throttle Games. While not exactly a competitor to the Ouya, the idea is adding hardware and software to your smart phone to turn it into a “set-top” gaming console that plugs into your TV.   The particular benefit is being able to play with friends in the living room, and to use real controllers instead of touch-screen interfaces (which are great for some kinds of games, and suck horribly for others).  As this system is already compatible with Unity and other development systems, it won’t be too hard to target this one. My advice would be for developers to target as many platforms as possible, and “let the gods of gaming sort ’em out.”

This is a weird, wild time to be a gamer and to be a game developer. One day we’ll look back on all this and reminisce about how cool it was.

Filed Under: Links & Tidbits - Comments: Read the First Comment

XCOM: Will it RPG?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 4, 2012

XCom: Enemy Unknown – Could it be classified as an RPG? Maybe as a hybrid? Why, or why not?

Previously, I dismissed its predecessor on the (admittedly weak) criteria that the game didn’t encourage you to identify with your group of squaddies. That hasn’t changed much in the remake, but I also think that it feels more “RPG-like” than its predecessor. I mean, many earlier titles (mainly Wizardry and its spiritual descendants, like Might & Magic and The Bard’s Tale) let you maintain a roster of  player characters that could be rotated in and out (or even go on rescue missions to recover the remains of your previous party).

XCom has an interesting (short, but reasonable for the length of a campaign) leveling system, loot, equipment, narrative, and even some very interesting non-combat decision-making.  If you were to throw fantasy trappings around it, convert battlefields into dungeon levels and the home base as a home town, would it be clearly distinguishable from all of the other rich and varied legacy of titles that have been considered straight-up role-playing games?

I’m not so sure. It feels like it’s only a matter of emphasis.  What’s your take?

Filed Under: Mainstream Games - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Games as Art, Round 33…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 3, 2012

A substitute drama teacher once told me about an experience he had seeing a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. As the play progressed, his laughter apparently annoyed a couple of older women behind him – who had not even chuckled once. Finally one of the women leaned forward and hissed at him. “Young man, would you mind not laughing? We are trying to appreciate the play.”

He answered, “Ma’am, if you aren’t laughing, you are not appreciating the play.”

I sometimes worry that people – like the old ladies in the story – react to art in a particular way because they are supposed to, as told by the gatekeepers of the medium, unable to penetrate the layers of criticism and commentary to really get to the core of the experience – the communication of the artist to his audience. We’ve built up this huge *thing* surrounding art, filled with mystique and expert opinion (and, frankly, snobbishness) and history that we fail to realize the simplicity at the heart. We fail to appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it is supposed to be.

I also sometimes wonder if the “greats” of art were truly, objectively great, or if we’ve just set them up as cultural gods that are unattainably perfect simply because nobody can be Shakespeare except, well, Shakespeare, and he’s been gone for hundreds of years. If somebody truly of Shakespeare’s stature and skill were alive today, he’d likely be some lead writer in the writer’s pool for a TV series being dictated the beats by a manager. Don’t think so? I don’t know if this was too far from how he operated back in 1592. He was blasted and (more frequently) ignored by critics in his day.  I like to imagine that the common conversation in London might go, “Well, Shakespeare certainly writes a popular play that appeals to the groundlings and can be enjoyed as casual entertainment by the upper class, but he certainly does not create art.”

Vincent Van Gogh’s artistic genius was only beginning to be recognized by the time he died, and his fame grew in the early 20th century. Now, his skill undoubtedly grew over his troubled lifetime, but it seems to me that a lot of the view of what makes “art” (or great capital-A Art) is simply dictated by some gatekeepers who brand themselves as experts. But getting that recognition – just like getting recognition for anything else – takes a combination of skill, hard work, time, marketing (on somebody’s part), and just pure luck. Probably all in more-or-less equal measure. And in the capital-A Art world, it usually takes being dead, too.

I finally had the opportunity to visit the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay Museum in Paris the last summer, and see some of the original greats (including Van Gogh). And… okay, I ain’t gonna lie. I was pretty surprised at how moved I was by many of the pieces. Not necessarily the ones I expected (though Van Gogh’s originals in the Dorsay Museum were among them). I was impressed by the Mona Lisa, but it was far from the most impressive piece (to me) there. It was an absolutely amazing experience, and I don’t think it some sort of self-induced endorphin rush caused because I subconsciously thought I was supposed to be moved. Really, some of the most moving pieces there for me were some statues and busts from the Roman Empire. It really drove home the fact that these were real people, people who I might meet on the street today, save for the minor fact that they haven’t been around for two thousand years.

The thing that was driven home to me was that art is about communication. Communication of ideas. Reflections of the real world, or visions of other worlds,  from other people’s perspective. Paintings may be purely representational – shooting for what we now think of photographic quality – or not, but regardless the artist uses a mastery of skill to present symbolic shorthand to communicate to our brains. Up close and magnified, a beautiful portrait may appear as little more than splashes of color (Van Gogh slathered the oils on pretty thick), but at appropriate distance our brain makes the cognitive leap and sees not only the represented images, but meaning. The viewer or audience is invited to fill in the blanks with their imagination.

It’s this last part that makes art, like any other form of communication, a two-way process. One might even say that it makes all art… interactive.  A skilled artist – of any medium – is both craftsman and communicator. But the person on the other side receives it in their own way, and makes their own interpretation based on their own life experiences, tastes, values, and even their own familiarity with the medium.

I look at the painting above (Starry Night Over the Rhone), and I see a lot that is not literally in the painting.  I even hear noises – the sound of the water lapping at the river bank, perhaps the echo of laughter carried over the water from one of the many lit buildings, perhaps the boat scraping up against the mud of the bank as the waves push at it. I put myself into the scene, and it is the talent of the artist that invites me to do this. I get a feeling of time and place. I’m transported.

Is it really so different from this?

 

Or, for that matter, this?

As I suspect the kind of presumption that allows one to become a gatekeeper for the Art world likewise precludes one from becoming an expert in the video games world, I doubt we can expect a definitive answer on this in our lifetimes. Or, really, ever… because I think there’s way too much subjectivity (and job-protection / justification) taking place to allow it.

Comparing a painting you pick up at a local art festival to the Mona Lisa isn’t really gonna fly. Again – the gatekeepers have deemed the latter perfect, so nothing can exceed or even equal it by definition. But it doesn’t mean that a local artist’s efforts isn’t art.  Or that the person creating magazine ads for Campbell’s Soup isn’t an artist. It’s comparing apples to oranges.  And comparing the Mona Lisa to Dwarf Fortress? That’d be comparing apples to lawn chairs. Sophie Houlden, over the weekend, wrote an amusing parody of some of these arguments.

An ivory tower erected around certain established art forms, and while it’s fun to argue the points, it’s going to take a generation or two of such arguing before gatekeepers might allow it to accommodate a new medium.  Just the way it is. But that’s largely an academic matter. In the meantime, how much does it matter? Do we have artists whose self-worth is dictated by whether or not what they do is deemed “worthy” by certain critics? Perhaps. All I can say is that I don’t know when I’m ever going to have the chance to visit the Louvre again, and take in those brilliant masterpieces. But I’m going to be playing brilliant masterpieces of game development for the rest of my life. And as much of a jaded veteran of the gaming scene as I am, I do still know how to appreciate them.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Some Mainstream Games, an Indie, and a Hybrid… and Victory of the Indies

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 30, 2012

Lotsa things to cover today, so this is a topic-laden post. We’ve got a really cool tactics game on Kickstarter, the return of an RPG classic all new-and-improved, and a mainstream publisher trying to emulate the indies (!!!!). Wow.

Telepath Tactics

Okay, first things first – I wanna talk more about this one later, but Craig Stern, the dude behind Sinister Design and Telepath RPG: Servants of God, is doing a Kickstarter for Telepath Tactics.  Like me, the day job is killing him and his development time, so he’s seeking funding so he can cut loose. But since time’s a-wastin’, I want to point you towards it. He’s a proven developer with several titles to his credit, which makes him lower-risk in my mind, and the amount seems pretty reasonable. If turn-based, tactical combat gives you a thrill, please consider backing this one:

Smart AI, destructable / interactive environments… Cool stuff. Seriously. At least as far as a strategy geek like myself can be a reasonable arbiter of “cool.”

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition

So on to something kinda different… a classic of the mainstream industry, now revisited through decidedly non-mainstream routes, the Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition has released. You know, I bought the game when it was new, I bought the expansion, I bought it yet again via GOG.COM, and now I have purchased it one more time for the enhanced edition. Is any game worth all that? ABSOLUTELY. I haven’t played the Enhanced Edition yet, due to time constraints in the evening, but back in the spring (I think), just before the EE was announced, I’d started up a new Baldur’s Gate game, and was having an absolute blast with it.  I was literally just a few days into it when BG:EE was announced, and I decided to scrap my game and wait (for what was supposed to be a late-summer release, IIRC).  IMO, the original game still holds up pretty well, if a little on the low-res side – which the enhanced edition is supposed to correct. Hopefully I’ll find some time this weekend to start up this new incarnation.

Is this the last time we’re going to see some funky mainstream / indie hybridization? Don’t count on it. If the next topic is any indicator, the line is gonna just keep getting even blurrier!

The Humble THQ Bundle and How Indies Have Won

Finally – remember the Humble Indie Bundle? Remember how they took some hits over not being so indie when they included some less-indie titles, like Psychonauts? Well, now they’ve truly gone not-so-indie with the Humble THQ Bundle.  This has generated some serious nerd-rage, and I admit my initial response wasn’t all that enthusiastic. It still isn’t (though that didn’t stop me from picking up the bundle — however, it’s the highest contribution to charity I’ve done, as I usually consider the indies a very worthy charity…)  But even though the Humble Bundle thing is usually worth quite a bit of money to developers, it’s still a cool charitable opportunity. And when I realized that effectively THQ was donating a potentially unlimited number of copies of the game for charity at pay-what-you-want levels… well, that’s actually a pretty cool thing, isn’t it?

I mean, yeah, I selfishly really liked the Humble Bundle being an “indie thing” – but it’s not my indie thing, I have no ownership over it.  They can do whatever they want with it.  And I have no doubt that they’ll continue offering indie games in bundles in the future. It just felt like the big publishers (and economic woes notwithstanding, THQ is definitely in the “big publishers”, not-indie-by-definition category) were stealing a bit of indie thunder.

Mike Kasprzak on Twitter noted the following (after venting a bit over this bundle): “Hey I’ve got a positive spin for the Humble THQ thing: We won. Remember the fight to gain acceptance as indies? Now the pubs bow down to us. ”

He’s definitely right here. It’s funny that indies have thunder to steal. While individually the vast majority of us are as much the underdogs as we ever were, the whole collective “indie” thing has completely transformed over the last decade. I first started paying attention to it nine years ago, and it was hard to even dream of the kinds of accomplishments we’ve had in that time.

Consoles? No way. The only way indie games would be on consoles were through hacked consoles played by tiny underground communities of mostly other game-makers.

Minecraft? Sorry, those numbers were completely unattainable by indies, and there’s no way an indie game could get that much penetration.

Steam? There were game portals at this time, but they were mainly places like Real Arcade and Big Fish Games. And they were pretty exclusive to indie games, as I recall. The idea that indie games would be sold shoulder-to-shoulder with major mainstream releases online was a pipe dream, and the idea that digital distribution would become the dominant source of games (as it has for the PC) seemed likely but distant.

iOS and Android? Everybody kept talking about “mobile gaming,” but until the iPhone it was an unrealized vision. And now, suddenly, this is where it’s at – and the indies (so far) dominate it. The freaking consoles are losing out to these things.

Hey, we even have a movie available on Netflix kinda-sorta about “us”.

So yeah. The mainstream game publishers are now trying to compete with us. They are trying to emulate us. They totally want a piece of some of that sweet indie action (in spite of the fact that indie is defined by little else other than their exclusion).

So yeah. We’ve won. This is the world we wanted to live in, warts and all. Go indie!

 

Filed Under: Game Announcements - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 29, 2012

Now, as an excuse, with the Thanksgiving break over, I’ve been back to working 11-ish hour days for The Day Job, and so game development has slowed to a crawl again. Sadly, this has been the case most of this year. 2012’s been rough, but still not as bad as when I was working at Sensory Sweep. But for a couple of days I’d been plagued by a bug I just could not figure out. I’d spent maybe an hour each night for the last couple of nights working on the game, and pretty much banging my head against the same wall. When you only have an hour to work, you end up spending a chunk of that time remembering where you were, what you’d already tried, and so forth. After two days of this, I was getting pretty frustrated. Nobody else online seemed to have this problem – which suggested the problem was in my code, not in the libraries.

But HOW? The code was pretty dang simple, and I’d looked at the values many times in the debugger, and they looked fine (at least, I thought they did… because I’d focused on the wrong parts).

Fortunately, I still have somewhat of a partner-in-crime on Frayed Knights – Kevin, who mostly does level building but is also a programmer and often plays the role of devil’s advocate for me. Within five minutes of explaining the problem to him, I’d had the solution (which I wasn’t able to actually try and make sure it was the solution until much later that night). There are a lot of things that he and I disagree about – game engines, RPG design, etc. – but that’s actually beneficial a lot of times as he can help me see things in a different light. After a few minutes of chatting with him, I realized my problem.

It’s not that he’d offered any useful suggestions – he tried, but ultimately it came down to a bone-headed mistake on my part that seemed obvious once I knew what to look for.  When I explained, “It’s almost like it’s not taking the Z value into consideration at all!” it became clear where I needed to look in my own code to see if a value was getting dropped or overwritten. Sure enough, it was.

This happens a lot.

One of my discoveries when I graduated from college and started my career as a “real” programmer, working in an office and everything (making GAMES!) was the social element of software development. I’d always held the traditional view until that point of a programmer being someone who stays in his cubicle and bangs out code all day, coming out occasionally for meals, bathroom breaks, and talking about Star Trek.  In school, even on group projects I still kinda took that role.  We’d discussed what areas we were working on, maybe work out some kind of interface, and that was it for communication. As my skill level in programming was rarely less than my peers, I really didn’t see the value in having someone else “look at my code” to help me solve a problem. What could they possibly offer?

As it turns out – and pretty much every programmer who has worked on a team knows this – this is not usually the point of “asking for help”. 80% of the time, simply the process of explaining the problem to someone else reveals or at least leads to the solution. It helps if the someone else knows enough about what you are doing to ask some intelligent questions, but it’s not strictly necessary. Whatever the case is, breaking down the problem to a level where it can be communicated to someone else, and then the act of explaining it (and answering said intelligent questions) can often make puzzling bugs or problems obvious.

This isn’t limited to programming.  I’ve found the same applies to game design. Having a sounding board – especially one with skills of their own who can again ask intelligent, probing questions, and venture suggestions and opinions – can be invaluable. Even if you are doing all the heavy mental lifting yourself, the effort of packaging thoughts into a communicable form can be highly revealing.  It can also reveal where priorities should be. Sometimes what seemed a crucial problem will, after talking about it with someone else, show itself to be pretty trivial. And some things which you totally glossed over in your head turn out to be potential train wrecks once you discuss it.

Incidentally, this is perhaps the strongest argument for putting together some kind of design document – a “paper prototype” – in advance, too. I’m not an advocate of big, exhaustive design docs – quite to the contrary. But writing crap down to keep track of it is always a good idea, and going through the process of explaining your core gameplay to even an imaginary audience can help reveal problems in advance.

Even on the art front, having another pair of eyes looking things over at various stages can also help identify problems before they become costly to fix.

So what’s my point? A lot of indies either lone-wolf it, or work alone with geographical separation from other team members. While chat, Twitter, and forums can be massive time-sinks if you aren’t careful, they can also be extremely valuable tools if you have a network of friends and team-members off whom you can bounce problems and ideas.  It needs to work both ways – you need to be a good listener to help them, too, when they need the ear. But it’s important to take time out to socialize. Otherwise, although it sounds counter-intuitive, your productivity could falter as you waste too much time trying to work out your problems alone.

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

Ichiro Lambe on 9 Common Indie Mistakes

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 28, 2012

Have I made every single one of these? Hmmm… No! No, I don’t think I’ve done #3 yet, at least not as an indie. But all of the rest of ’em, yeas, I think I have. Even the ones I am careful to tell other people not to make.

The 9 Common Mistakes Every Indie Studio Should Avoid

Like indie games, it’s a small but really cool article.

My own commentary may only be gilding the lily, but…

Do thou as I say, not as I do. Do not make big games! 🙂  Make a small game, and trust me, it WILL grow! Items #1, #2, and #9 all really speak to the same thing… the tendency for an indie to make THE GAME, the one they have their heart set on, which is inevitably impossible within indie constraints.Even with Frayed Knights, after I thought I’d aggressively scoped everything, AND chopped it into three pieces, it still ended up being something a lot larger and more complex than I’d imagined.  RPGs have a tendency to do that.

It’s hard. Unless you are falling prey to #3 – a completely mercenary project – game development is about passion. And if you are passionate about something, it’s hard to accept anything less than perfect.  But if perfection is unattainable, then this means you are always going to fall short and fail in one way or another.  It’s just the way it works, in any medium, any artistic endeavor.  Best to learn to live with it early, acknowledge that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and get cracking on the next game.

Points 4,5, and 8 are all about the need to juggle, as an indie.  Indie game development – unless you are just tinkering in your bedroom for a game you never intend to release – is about far, far more than making a game. Frustrating, but true. There are always a zillion other things you should be doing to give your game a prayer of actually being played outside your own circle of friends, and most of the time we’d rather be making games.  And there’s a zillion other things you have to know in order to do the zillion things you need to do. Just acknowledge this,  and add those tasks to your already lengthy list, and do what you can.

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

Too Much

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 27, 2012

I picked up Dead Island during the Steam Autumn sale. I finally tried to play it. My wife was in the room. I watched part of the intro. The music and the dialog, was pretty laden with profanity. As the f-bombs continued at a rate of one every three seconds, my wife expressed disgust at the intro, and then left the room in anger. I stopped the intro, and quit the game. Still haven’t played it.

She hadn’t been watching the screen. She assumed I was playing an indie game that was trying to be “edgy.” When she heard it was a mainstream  game, she was even more disgusted.

My personal feeling is that it’s marketing. Now that the average gamer age 30, games addressing the (much larger) adult population may try to draw attention to how “adult” they are, and how much they earn that M or PEGI-16 rating. I dunno. As always, there’s a line where it becomes gratuitous where it bugs me. Maybe I’m less sensitive to it than my wife, but it does bug me. It’s too much.

Can we, as an industry, be satisfied with the fact that games are as much for grown-ups as they are for kids now? The only people who aren’t yet convinced aren’t gamers, and represent a diminishing minority.  Do we really feel the need to prove it by going over-the-top on sex, violence, and language? Sure, you have your freedom to make what you want, to play what you want (as it should be), but sheesh, guys. When I feel like I can’t play a game with my wife in the room, I’ve got a problem. I’m now regretting that I bought the game and “voted with my wallet.”

And sadly, I’m getting a few too many games in my library that are like that.

When will the industry leaders calling the shots realize that “adult” doesn’t just mean, “filled with stuff that isn’t allowed in a non-M-rated game?” A lot of indies have figured it out. I’ve got several indie titles that – while they may not shy away from those elements – at least use them in the context of a game actually geared towards actual adults.

Filed Under: Biz, Geek Life - Comments: 16 Comments to Read

It’s All Done Except For….

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 26, 2012

A comment over the weekend led to a short conversation about where all the development time goes. I joked (though it’s not really a joke) that if I’d chosen to use a text-based interface, Frayed Knights 2 would be done by now. Lars Doucet (Defender’s Quest) and Craig Stern (Telepath RPG) and others quickly chimed in with full agreement. Craig noted that the game logic for his latest game (Telepath Tactics) has been done for months – it’s all been UI and polishing. Lars noted that his “famous last words” were, “It’s all done but the UI and Content,” in other words, everything.

I remember some conversations with Jason Compton over The Broken Hourglass a few years ago, before it was canceled. According to him, the game engine was largely complete and functional, but even with explicit instructions to the art team, he was having a difficult time getting completed, appropriate-quality artwork in a timely fashion and a usable format. Problems abounded, which is what I assume ultimately led to the game’s cancellation. It’s sad knowing what could have been.

The “alpha” for Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon took a lot longer than I’d anticipated. While it was technically playable (though perhaps not start-to-finish) and the content was *mostly* there, there was still approximately a year of development / polishing / tweaking / revamping / playtesting remaining to the game. Yes, some new content made its way into the game during that year, and by the time we were done with the project we were getting pretty good at the process (one of the pains of moving to the Unity engine is that we’ve lost that familiarity with the pipeline). While I hold out hopes that the sequel will go far more smoothly than the first… I realistically can only anticipate small improvements.

I’ve been at this for years, and I still underestimate how much effort is involved in UI / Content / Polishing. I fall into the same trap of seeing a cool technical demo and thinking that it’s “almost done” (although by this time, I at least temper my immediate reaction with some hard-won wisdom of experience). I know I’m not the only one. I know a lot of people wondered what the hold-up was with Super Meat Boy, which is at first glance to the uninitiated “just” an upgrade of a Flash game.

I guess one could suggest that this is why the AAA games biz now requires seven-digit budgets and over a hundred people to make games that are largely just graphical overhauls of a game cobbled together by a handful of people in Mesquite, Texas in the early 1990’s. And it may also explain why there’s such a surge in “retro” among indies,  allowing much more reasonable development times for content, UI, and polish no matter how complex and modern the underlying engine and game mechanics might be.

Filed Under: Production - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Game Design: Decisions and Execution

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 23, 2012

Just some random musings for your Friday’s entertainment.

I posit that “gameplay” is a combination of interesting decisions and challenging execution. In a game like Rock Band or Dance Dance Revolution, it’s almost all about the execution. You may need to consider when to go into overcharge mode, or how to move to hit those steps, both of which are pretty significant decisions but neither deep or complicated. In a game like Go or Chess, it’s mainly decision-making. Execution may come down to how well you implement your plan and adapt to your opponent’s moves, but even those may be chalked up more to decision-making than execution. Adventure games – unless there’s a real-time component (which I usually resent) – are all on the decision-making side.

If you do not have enough execution challenge and decision making, the game becomes boring, and therefore less fun. If you have too much of both at the same time, the game becomes frustrating and less fun. The optimum mix may vary from player to player, but there’s probably an optimum “sweet spot” or two along that curve.

Diablo-style games usually have a pretty good mix of both, but lean more heavily on the execution side. Timing potion consumption and special ability usage, not to mention deciding to unleash that little-used special ability, are the most significant decision points in real-time, while deciding on upgrades (equipment and skills) are equally important choices usually made without the distraction of immediate threats.

Then there’s Portal and its sequel. One really interesting aspect of the Portal games is how the decision-making and execution occur in two distinct stages. The gameplay loop starts with the player analyzing the environment, the geography, available resources and obstacles, and end-goal. Then there’s decision-making process, where you decide on an approach to solving the puzzle. And then comes the execution, where you must time your maneuvers, aim your portals, and everything in real-time. Then repeat the process if you fail.

I wonder if part of the success (and addictive fun) of Portal is due to how it distinctly breaks out the decision-making and execution into distinct phases. When the action is heavy and execution is demanding, the decision-making goes way down — as in DDR or Rock Band. But you have all the time in the world for planning and decision-making during that phase. While less distinct, Diablo and its neighbors are fairly similar, where the more broad, interesting decision-making can be made at your leisure, but during execution you are focused on maybe five options at a time.

So does breaking up the decision-making and the execution into distinct stages lead to better gameplay?

Filed Under: Design - Comments: Read the First Comment

Three Days of Slinging Dice and Raising Hell, AKA Thanksgiving

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 22, 2012

While I’ve always appreciated the “giving thanks” aspect of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., and was never ungrateful for having the days off of school and work, I’ve not always been a fan of the holiday. When I was a kid, it was actually pretty boring, and often involved people I didn’t really know and spending the day with football on the TV screen when I’ve never been a big fan of the game. It was just kind of a drag.

It came to a head my freshman year of college. I couldn’t afford to fly back to the east coast to be with my family during the weekend, especially when just three weeks later I’d be heading back for the Christmas break. My roommate was in a similar boat, and invited me spend Thanksgiving with him and some relatives who lived not too far away.

It was… terrible. The family made my own family seem “normal,” which was quite a feat. It started out with his uncle accusing me of trying to smuggle booze into the house, because, as he said at least twice, “I KNOW you college kids are always trying to do that.” My explanation that I don’t drink never seemed to satisfy him. And things got progressively weirder from there. I was pretty uncomfortable the whole weekend, though it was salvaged when another friend who was going to school in California came to town.

Many other friends at school – unable to return home due to distance and expense – shared similar stories of woe and boredom. So the following year, we decided to spend it together, instead of imposing upon whatever distant relatives might live within a fifty mile radius. As we were all gamers, we spent the entire weekend playing board games and RPGs, and eating Thanksgiving leftovers. Until Saturday night, when the leftovers were mostly gone or no longer looking so edible, where we’d order pizza… and keep gaming.

It was awesome.

We’ve been doing that ever since, and Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite holidays.

It’s morphed a bit over the years, especially as most of us started families of our own. As I got into the games industry, console games grew to replace some of the dice-slinging, especially on Thanksgiving Day itself. But it remains a day about good times with loved ones, good fun, good food, and being thankful for what we’ve got. And we’ve got a lot.

This year, between having relatives come to *us* from out of town and my wife having had surgery yesterday, it’s changed a little bit more this year. But it’s still a great day and a great weekend, and we’re still planning on spending at least one full day slinging dice and raising hell. 🙂

Good times. For which I am thankful.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Wreck-It Ralph

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 21, 2012

We finally went to see Wreck-It Ralph last night. I was told I’d love it, but seriously we haven’t had a night free in the last three weeks. It’s been that crazy here on the home front.

I am utterly incapable of objectively reviewing this movie. It was like watching Tron as a kid… any flaws are completely forgotten in the whole coolness of a movie all about the video games I love. Okay, that’s not strictly true – there have been movies with significant video game elements that I couldn’t even watch because they were so terrible. I do not believe Wreck-It Ralph was terrible. Pixar’s worst movies are generally head-and-shoulders above the average major film release. (UPDATE: This is a Disney film, not a Pixar film – same company, different studios. Guess I was unsure on account of all the Pixar stuff thrown around in the trailers).

So  how would it rank in the Pixar spectrum? If I’m honest with myself, I’d probably have to rank it below Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and The Incredibles. But if it weren’t for The Avengers, this would have been my favorite movie of the year. It’s only an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a very good score, but perhaps a little below average for a Pixar movie. I personally think it leaves Cars and Finding Nemo in the dust, but that’s me…  And the short animated film that comes at the beginning of the movie? Paperman, I think it was called? Best one ever.

Seriously. If you are a video game fan, you have to see it. The movie is full of inside jokes and references that would be lost on the average viewer, but which are aimed specifically to give you a chuckle or a feeling of “COOL!” I don’t think I caught them all, to be honest – sometimes they flashed by pretty quickly.

I’ll just leave you with the trailer, on the chance that you haven’t seen it. It should tell you about all you need to know:

Filed Under: Movies - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

GOG.COM Pick 5 Pay $10 Sale

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 20, 2012

Twenty indie games (does Alan Wake American Nightmare count as indie?). Pick 5 and pay only $10 for the lot of ’em.

My problem? I already own all the games I’d be interested in. Not that I can really call that a “problem.” In college I’d dream about having that kind of problem….

GOG.COM Pick 5 for 10 Sale

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

Nine Game Production Lessons Learned from the Arcades

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 19, 2012

Many game developers of the modern era have begged that the industry transcend its arcade roots. And I cannot disagree with them, as far as they go. The arcade machines were patterned after a different amusement than what games are now (or should be). The old arcade games were designed to maximize quarter revenue, for one thing. And the whole death / three lives (or “tries”) thing was exactly patterned after carnival games where you’d get, say, three rings to toss or three darts to throw at balloons. As much as I love the heritage and love the games, if there’s a place for that kind of design in today’s gaming environment, I’m not involved with it.  Yet many game designers – inspired by the games that were inspired by these arcade systems of the old days – still carry along some vestigial baggage of that era, game elements that serve little purpose (if not actually detrimental) in today’s gaming environment.

HOWEVER – as usual, I believe that there is a lot of value to be mined from the  past. Many of the game developers of the “golden age” of the arcades earned lessons in game design and production the hard way, in an environment that was just as competitive and perhaps even more unforgiving than it is today. The goals may have changed (although in an era where “Free to Play” is such a popular monetization method, there’s perhaps as many similarities as differences), the technology is almost incomparably improved, and the audiences grown more jaded, but a lot of the fundamentals are still there. Humans are still humans, and fun is still fun.

So what can we learn from “golden age” arcade machines? Now, I was only a kid back then, so my perspective is mostly that of the target audience, with a tiny bit of second- or third-hand tales from the development side of things. But here are some things I believe still apply:

#1 – Be Novel

Make no mistake, the arcades (or more particularly, the convenience stores, K-Marts, and other locations where arcade games might share space with bubblegum machines) had their share of clones. I mean, you take the worst cloning of today, and it was twice as bad back then… in some cases in the earliest days and foreign games, out-and-out piracy.  But the most successful games (in the U.S., at least) were the ones that innovated, or at least expanded upon the gameplay mechanics of their predecessors. That’s why Dig Dug became a hit, while nobody remembers even playing one of dozens of Space Invaders clones (“Space Attack“, “Spectral Invaders“, “Space Intruders“,etc…)

Galaxian was a game that did it right. Not content with simply cloning the gameplay of Taito’s hit, they expanded upon it. While it never achieved the success of the original (no other game but Pac-Man pulled that off, to my knowledge), it was a still a major hit. Likewise, it’d be hard to really point out any game released after 1980 that could truly be 100% original in gameplay or presentation – they all borrowed from each other – but the best-selling (and best-remembered) games of the era were always far more than “me, too” products.

Note that novelty alone isn’t enough – it’s simply one (important) ingredient. There were plenty of experimental failures back then, too. But the take-away for game developers should be to add something significantly new to the genre. Or maybe multiple things. Make Q*Bert or Centipede, not Hangly-Man.

#2 – Have Fun Immediately

Arcade game designers had to hook the player in approximately 90 seconds. If they failed, so would the game. This meant the controls couldn’t take too long to learn. In later generations of games, they could build (somewhat) upon skillsets developed by by gamers, but even that presented their own problems — like challenging a player (and keeping the quarter-flow going) that is already skilled at a similar game. (One more reason to be novel… then and now).

Ninety seconds is not a lot of time. In today’s world, new games can be downloaded and tried in that same ninety seconds.  It’s not much more difficult than moving on to a nearby machine at the arcade.

This is an issue with games that have lengthy tutorials. The tutorials had better be pretty fun on their own, or simply adapt to the player’s own progress. This also calls into focus the need for the game to be entertaining with the smallest possible subset of controls – the ones the players will be using right from the get-go.  The designer should never feel like they have to beg a player to “stick with it” for several minutes (or hours) “until it gets fun.” Sure, some games succeed in spite of this (and some genres are really, really hard to get the player into the core gameplay loop within 90 seconds or less), but it’s an important goal.

#3 – Adapt to the Hardware and the Environment

The arcade systems often ran on somewhat proprietary (and always limited) hardware.  They were played in a particular environment. There were a small handful of games that tried to be something they weren’t — to provide a different gameplay experience — and they didn’t do very well at all.  Yes, sometimes experimentation and attempting to push the boundaries fail. I don’t think the designers were (usually) ignorant of the setting limitations… but in some cases, they might have been.

Likewise, straight-up ports of games from console, PC, or iPhone onto other platforms usually do poorly, for the same reasons. There’s been a bit more of a convergence in the PC and TV-based console space, which has made conversion easier, but games must still be adapted to the hardware and environment.  If you are making a web-based game, you’ll need to consider a number of use factors that are different from, say, an iPhone game. Likewise, there will be technological limitations as well. Controls are a huge deal – the touch screen and tilt sensor is vastly different from a gamepad, which is in turn vastly different from a mouse and keyboard.  Playing on a big screen is different from playing on a little screen, even if the pixel resolution is similar. Playing on the bus on the way to work is very different from playing in your living room or on your computer in a web-browser when the boss isn’t looking.

Designers or publishers ignore these differences at their peril.

#4 – Attract Mode Should Be Attractive

In order to draw attention in a crowded room, arcade games had to use vibrant “attract mode” sequences. In the modern world, we can rely on game trailers and and the like, but the focus must still be on how a game can attract attention to itself. The attract mode was specific to the arcades – the game was there, turned on, running, in a crowd. Today, the possibilities for about everything BUT that are wide.  How many different ways can a game attract attention to itself? Or work with the player to draw attention? Some clever ideas – like posting updates on social media – have gotten overused to the point that they are almost useless, but that may simply mean that they need a brighter, more interesting “attract mode.”

The point of the attract mode was to advertise the fun – to show the player how much fun he or she would be having after they put the quarter in. They also provided an easy-to-understand demonstration of gameplay so the player could follow the modeled behavior – learning by example without putting in a quarter. Kinda like “Let’s Play” videos, maybe?

#5 – Being Good and Fast is Better than Being Perfect

As I recall, the market rewarded those who could get a good product to market quickly.  It was all about being able to get a game “good enough” in time for the big Amusements Operators Show or whatnot.  Some things have changed in this respect: For example, in a hit-driven console world, the big numbers tend to go to the biggest, baddest, most produced titles. However, none of these games have the “return on investment” of Minecraft (or many other indie titles), which was originally released in a freebie alpha form.

#6 – Nothing Beats Real Gameplay Feedback, as Soon as Possible

As I have heard, arcade game development at places like Atari tended to attract lots of play (and feedback) from other employees, which was invaluable to the developers. “Beta” systems were placed in test arcades, where actual players could be observed. There’s really nothing quite as effective as directly watching someone else play your game, seeing where they are struggling.  Every time you feel the need to explain something or apologize for something, you know you’ve got a problem.  Getting feedback early and often on your game is critical.

#7 – Do More With Less

With a few exceptions *cough*Defender*cough*, more successful arcade machines made the most of simple gameplay mechanics and simple controls.  They replaced breadth with depth. Yes, I prefer games with lots of breadth, personally, but the further you go in this direction, the more niche your game becomes. The fighting games that rules the arcades in the mid-90’s were this principle in action, where a few button presses could result in a dizzying array of moves. Too dizzying for my tastes, actually… which is why I was never very good at them (let this be another lesson…) But there was a nice middle ground in there where some excellent games managed to turn a few commands plus context plus mechanics into pure fun. Designers would do well strive for this goal.

#8 – Adapt to Change

The arcade market changed a lot during the era that it was significant.  The games and companies that survived (and are still producing coin-op games today) were able to adapt to those changes, and come up with inventive ways to make the arcade experience exciting and fun in spite of no longer having a technological advantage over consoles. It’s been a while, but I remember Dance Dance Revolution variants kicking butt and drawing crowds long after the ‘death’ of the arcades.

#9 – A Saturated Market Leads to the Doom of the Low-End

The arcade crash of the early 80s in the U.S. hurt everybody, but there was nothing fair about it.  The weaker games and manufacturers  – the ones simply cashing in on the “fad” – were the hardest hit. The same thing happens every time a bubble bursts and a market matures. If all you are doing is cashing in on the fad, your days are numbered.

 

Filed Under: Production, Retro - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Utah Indie Night, November 2012

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 16, 2012

This month’s indie night was held at the University of Utah. I can’t say this is my favorite venue, particularly as parking is such a nightmare. But the EAE (Electronic Arts & Engineering) department was kind enough to volunteer the space, and we got a few student indies from the department joining us for the evening, so that was good.

At this point, I have very little interest in developing games in Flash, but that didn’t make Tom Beatty’s talk on the new Stage3D stuff any less fascinating. Two or three years ago, I’d have been all over this, and probably not given Unity a second thought. But now…  I’m not so sure. The future is murky, though if it has any chance at all of weathering the competition from HTML5 and whatnot, by the end of the talk I was pretty convinced that Stage 3D is the reason. As Tom put it, it has “Changed what Flash is.”

Well, anyway, I’d recommend anybody interested in game development to take a serious look at it.  For 2D gaming, there’s the Starling library (open source), which takes advantage of graphics acceleration and makes Flash powerful enough to do things like particle systems. For 3D gaming, the free options include Away 3D and Alternativa 3D (Tom’s flavor of choice). There’s also the rather pricey Flare 3D which is a popular option for established companies, but maybe not for an indie just starting out.  (And Tom pointed out earlier – for traditional Flash development, indies should consider Flash Develop and Flex SDK for *free* development tools).

After the talk, we broke out into our usual game presentations & general meeting. Steve Taylor of NinjaBee showed off his (or rather, his company’s) new Microsoft Surface. With detachable keyboard. Gotta admit, it was pretty impressive. They keyboard and “real computer” status might be enough to convince me of having it as an alternative to an iPad or Android tablet.

Curtis (Califer Games) showed the current state of his Japanese teaching game. There was another game that was written in — I think it was Shoshone — with a grant from the tribe? I only caught a few details, on the periphery of another discussion, but it was interesting. A student game, “The Great Mouse Escape,” illustrated some of the efforts from the students at the U of U in the EAE department. There was another game called “Converse,” which was something of a (digital) card game to play out a dinner conversation which looked interesting, but I never got around to playing that one. Greg Squire also showed me his new incarnation of his game Antibody, made in the latest version of GameMaker.  It’s a SHMUP. As a child of the 80’s and the arcade scene, I have a soft place in my heart for SHMUPs.

I should write a SHMUP. Actually, I should continue my port of Apocalypse Cow into Unity. I spent a Saturday doing it a few weeks ago, and really only got the main menu done, which was primarily an exercise in learning NGUI.

But that’s always how I feel at the end of a Utah Indie Night… inspired to get cracking and make… and complete… more games. Just gotta get FK2 done…

Hopefully Greg will weigh in today with a complete list of games that were shown during the evening. I’ll post an update then.

UPDATE:

Ah, here’s Greg’s report on the evening…

and here’s a report from Rainblade Studios.

Filed Under: Utah Indie Game Night - Comments: 4 Comments to Read



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