Something Old, Something New… And Everything Else!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 24, 2012

I recently confessed that I really don’t know what “old-school RPG” really means, mainly because it’s something that represents different things to different people. In the latest issue of Knights of the Dinner Table, comic creator Jolly Blackburn confessed the same kind of quandary in an editorial about the “old-school” mentality of dice-and-paper gamers.

He notes that a lot of the people of the “old-school” are resistant to new ideas… if it was published after 1990 (or 1977, or 1986, or whatever), they aren’t interested. Plastic miniatures, digital game aids, or PDF game manuals all come under fire from these folks. He says:

“I guess my idea of old school IS different from some of my fellow gamers. As memory serves, back in the day WE were the ones who were embracing new ideas. The guys who piled in my AMC Gremlin one weekend to seek out these new-fangled things called ‘polyhedrons,’ (had to go to a teacher supply store to find them). The cash-strapped college students who chipped in to buy the AD&D GMG after only dabling with Basic for a few weeks. The guys who scrambled to pick up Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and a plethora of new game innovations in the following years.

“It was an exciting era – rife with new ideas and gamers exchanging ideas and exploring the possibilities of these new things called role-playing games. For me that era has never really ended. Gaming still excited me and one of the things that fuels my passion for role-playing is the fact that I’m constantly learning and experiencing new things.

“My idea of ‘Old-School’ is taking what works from the past and bringing it with me as I move into the future – not stubbornly clinging to the past and shooing away anything that smacks of innovation or change.”

If you’ve read my past comments on the subject, you’ll know this resonates with me.

Judging on the reactions of players of XCom: Enemy Unknown who are actually veterans of the original game, it seems this probably resonates pretty well with most old-school gamers, as well.  There are of course many reviews that proudly proclaim the new game to be absolutely superior to the original in every way, damn-aint-modern-gaming-so-much-better, and there are a handful of opinions that express disappointment in the new game being a dumbing-down of the awesomeness of the original. It seems that by far the majority of opinions (at least that I’m seeing) from veteran gamers is that the the new XCom is great modern game, and does a fantastic job of borrowing from past and capturing the flavor of the original. But it is a different game and a different experience from the original. There is no clear winner between the two for many of us. Maybe what I’m seeing represents a selection bias on my part. To me, XCom is like a fun, fast-paced card game based on a much more in-depth but equally fun board game. They feel a lot a like, sometimes play kind of alike, use similar strategies and contexts but approach them differently.

While part of me just wants to whoop and holler and fist-pump at the success of XCom: Enemy Unknown because its success demonstrates to a world of thick-headed journalists that TURN-BASED GAMING IS STILL RELEVANT AND FUN IN 2012 (and beyond!), it’s still not everything I want in a tactical strategy game. But then, no game ever was or will be. That’s the beauty of it. We’re never “done.” There’s still room for games like Xenonauts, guys! And a hell of a lot more. And if I really feel nostalgic, a trip to the original X-Com games is only a DOSBOX launch away. Life is good.

What really bugs me is the attitude that old-school ‘style’ and genres are primitive and no longer relevant in modern gaming. Ridiculous! I hope the success of games like XCom: Enemy Unknown, Legend of Grimrock, and lots of high-profile Kickstarter projects start curing this. I’m definitely seeing the glimmers of understanding from more mainstream gaming websites that, hey, maybe these games that glued a legion of gamers to the screen for hours at a time back when half our staff was still in training pants were actually really fun, and weren’t just fascinating for their novelty like flame to neanderthals. Through much of the last decade, it seemed like there was a time horizon oddly matching most journalist’s coming-of-age-in-gaming before which any game – with certain exceptions carved out only for legendary figures like Miyamoto, Suzuki, Meier, etc. – could be summarily rejected in its entirety as being unworthy of the modern gamer.

But as Jolly notes, the opposite mentality – putting the ‘classics’ on such a pedestal that anything new is instantly rejected – doesn’t make much sense either.  Guys, I was there, too. I remember hearing you complain about the same things, too. These games weren’t perfect.  Journalists griped about the same kinds of things.  There was lots of room for improvement.  And we, the gamers, were quick to jump onto whatever was new and shiny back then.

There’s a much bigger world out there beyond the limited borders of both Old Schoolburg and New Hotnessville.

Filed Under: Design, Mainstream Games, Retro - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Links from Behind the Scenes of Game Development

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 23, 2012

Some stories of game devopment, from AAA to indie, some good, some horrible, all informative:
As terrible as I know the games biz often can be, I still really, really want this to be a fictional story:

Have a Great Time!

Starcraft – the untold story. Except I guess it’s told now. And why a lame game from Ion Storm ultimately proved to be one of the most influential games of all time…

Tough Times on the Road to Starcraft

Starcraft: How Orcs in Space Went Down in Flames
We have been talking about what happens when the higher-profile Kickstarter-funded projects fail. I don’t mean fail to achieve funding – I mean fail after they’ve been funded. Well, it’s nowhere close to the million-dollar club (or six-figure club), but we’ve now had at least one with a high enough profile to rate an article in Forbes about its demise….

Fully Funded Kickstarter Game Goes Belly Up – ‘Haunts: The Manse Macabre’ Is Out Of Money As Programmers Call It Quits
Someone with plenty of experience in games media still has some surprises in store when releasing his first indie game:

Toiling in Obscurity: Post-Mortem of an Indie PC Game Launch
Another tale of inspirational woe from an indie:

Congratulations! Your First Indie Game is a Flop.
Some hard-earned lessons from indies in the trenches – with an emphasis on the lessons learned, less on the experiences that taught them…

How Long Should I Work On My Game?

Indie GameDevs: You’re (Probably) Doing It Wrong.
And, because I can’t find any other place to share this – a friend sent me this one. The ten strangest video games in history. Lemme tell you, these games are definitely weird, but the author has a limited vantage point. He’s managed to get a couple of higher-profile indie games on the list, but the indie world has been the scene of some pretty dang funky stuff over the years, which could give ANY of these titles a run for their money…

Ten of the Weirdest Games You’ll Ever Play

Filed Under: Links & Tidbits - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Picture: Worth 1000 Words, Costs 5000

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 22, 2012

My favorite death in the original Zork adventure game came from my attempt to brush my teeth using a tube of what appeared (according to the description) to be toothpaste.  Apparently, it was actually “All-Purpose Gunk,” a kind of fast-acting glue. The result was… well, it was actually hilarious, and not entirely unexpected. But one of the fun things about text adventure games in those days was how you could explore the possibility space with the text parser. Sadly, most of the time it only ended in irritation as the game refused to recognize a seemingly obvious approach to solve a problem. But occasionally, particularly Infocom games, your more bizarre actions would be rewarded with some amusing text, or at least recognition that the game was responding to your request.

Is this doable with graphics? Maybe not at the time, with 48k computers, but eventually. The Space Quest games were somewhat notorious with their graphical death-scenes. No doubt each of those death scenes cost considerably more than the quick two or three sentences it took to describe my demise in Zork. Actually, said death scenes were frequently re-used, and included a sentence or two of captions to give the animations a stronger context and more amusing.

But here’s the problem: As graphics get more realistic, we naturally tend to represent all interactions with graphics and animations. But as the realism goes up, so does the expense.

Therefore… interactions are getting more expensive.  ‘Cuz of realistic graphics.

When faced with budgetary concerns (and we always are), game producers / project managers are therefore encouraged to cut interactions.

Without breaking too many rules of predicate logic, we can suggest here that more realistic graphics has had a chilling effect on the level of interactivity. I hesitate to equate “gameplay” (game mechanics) with the level of interactivity – as great gameplay is not necessarily sacrificed as interactivity goes down (often the opposite), but certain kinds of games are potentially negatively affected.  In particular, RPGs and adventure games, which have a greater emphasis on experimentation and exploration than most other genres.

As an example – let’s say there’s a spell that in an RPG causes characters to “hulk out” and go on a rampage. Naturally, you’d want to see that (Heck, I’d LOVE to see Chloe “Hulk Out” in Frayed Knights).  But this would result in serious model changes and new animations for every potential target of the spell in the game.  We then have three choices: Suck up the cost, simplify the representation, or cut the feature. Simplifying the representation might mean doing the old trick of throwing a particle cloud or icon over a character (a la “Berserk” in many Final Fantasy games) to abstractly represent this state. It’d be nowhere near as cool as seeing a realistic hulk-out effect, but may be the best compromise.

Or not. Video games remain a visual medium, and short-changing the visuals is not often a recipe for success, particularly in the highly competitive, hit-driven AAA side of the fence.

Another option that occurred to me just after writing this article (while thinking about the above Final Fantasy shortcut) is to tightly constrain the interaction – reduce it to a (repeatable?) cut-scene. This allows a scaled-down version of the interaction without all the messy variables of different contexts.

I think this is one reason why I’m remain excited about the “retro” trend in indie games. Yeah, sure, they aren’t quite as viscerally satisfying as their more graphically over-the-top cousins, but by being liberated somewhat from the need to show every interaction in exacting detail, they have potential access to a larger library of interactions beyond “Buy,” “Shoot,” and “Destroy.”

Is there a fifth option? More? Another way to compromise?

Filed Under: Adventure Games, Art, Retro - Comments: 6 Comments to Read

Loot Drop’s “Old School” RPG(s) Canceled

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 20, 2012

Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall have announced that they are canceling their Kickstarter for the Old School RPG which had since been renamed “Shaker.” While they did get an impressive amount of money pledged to the Kickstarter, it clearly wasn’t enough of a trajectory to get to the minimum amount, let alone double that as they’d hoped.

I guess I should be bummed about this, but I’m not really. My personal hope is that they keep the core concept, but launch a new Kickstarter in a couple of months with a far better pitch.

The thing is – DoubleFine got away with the whole “We’re gonna make an old-school adventure game and we have no freaking clue what it is we’re gonna make.” The reason that worked was because of A) Star Power, and B) They were making a documentary of the entire process which Kickstarter donors would also get. The promise was to see the process from start-to-finish. The explanation was that even if the entire game ended in fiasco, donors would get to see the whole thing melt down in a documentary to keep forever.

Not that anybody truly expected it to melt down.  Because DoubleFine was something of a known quantity – as were the people involved – they were able to get away with something a little more loose.

Loot Drop wasn’t given quite as much leeway. They don’t have quite as stellar a pedegree in the genre is Schaffer and Gilbert had in the adventure game space. And there was no documentary. And the stretch goal of making a second game with the same project funding sounded like it spooked a lot of people – as it sounded like they were only semi-committed to making the first game.

In their cancellation notice they state, ” it made more sense to kill it and come back with something stronger.” Hopefully that something stronger is something of a similar vein – an old-school RPG with a stronger pitch from the get-go. We’ll see.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

My Former Boss Goes to Jail

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 19, 2012

In the news today:

Utah Game Developer Jailed for Not Paying Wages

This was where I worked for a while. It was a period of time when Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon received precious little work, because I was working from 9 in the morning until midnight, one, two, occasionally even  four in the morning, and on weekends. I mentioned some issues on this blog back when I left, but still not many details. But there are a few interesting ones here.

You wanna know why I don’t feel a pressing desire to ever return to the non-indie videogame industry, unless it’s on my own terms? This is why. I can say that this was one of the more egregious examples of bad game company management, but I can tell you it is absolutely not unique.  Seriously, by comparison to other places that I’ve worked, and places I’ve heard about from former employees (not an unbiased source, admittedly),  Wahoo / NinjaBee practically walks on water by comparison. But half their titles are self-funded indie titles, which maybe tells you something right there… 🙂

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

Rocksmith vs. Rock Band 3 Pro Guitar

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 18, 2012

I have waited a while for Rocksmith. Specifically,  for the PC version, which was finally released Tuesday, about a year after the console version. I was looking forward to it when it was first announced. I was waiting for it even longer than that – since I heard about the never-released Guitar Rising, which also allowed a real guitar to be used to play music as a game.

So now I am a couple of days (and thicker callouses) into it, and I thought I’d share some thoughts.

A few things: I’m a long-term beginner. When I was seventeen, I decided to pick up the guitar, bought a really crappy used electric and cheap-o practice amp, and a beat-up beginner’s acoustic, and got to the point where I would (barely) be in the “intermediate” category. I had some friends who played who have me a few impromptu lessons, and I had several books and songbooks to help me on my way.

And then I stopped. I pick it back up every once in a while, usually just long enough to get callouses back and to remember what I’d forgotten since the last time I tried to pick it up, and then I’d forget about it again for another year or two.

Rock Band 3 – with pro mode – was a pretty big deal. I bought the (now discontinued) Squier guitar controller for it, so that it was as much of a “real guitar” experience as possible. It was – and still is – pretty awesome. Effectively, Pro Mode was the ultimate evolution of the music rhythm game genre. After years of dorks saying things like, “You know, if you put as much effort  into playing the real guitar as you put into playing the game with the plastic guitar, you’d be a real rock star by now,” Harmonix did just that. Ditto for the other instruments.

But there were some problems (for me), a couple of which had nothing to do with the game itself. First of all, Pro mode was a fundamentally different experience than the “air guitar” of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. At least for me, as a perma-newbie, I couldn’t just jump in and play a song cold except in Beginner mode. Playing a song requires a lot of practice.  Rock Band 3 makes practice a little more fun, but the game itself was designed around a different kind of experience. In Rock Band 3 Pro Mode, you try and play the game by using a (more-or-less) real musical instrument. It’s not a game built around playing (or learning to play) that instrument. And since it’s really part of a multiplayer game and has to represent a lot of data in a small area of the screen, some things (like chord representation) are poorly handled. Though at least they do have the chord name off to the side, which helps a lot.

There are some additional limitations related to the controller. Things like string bends and so forth are simply not part of the package. Nor is muting, pick scrapes, etc. There are some parts of songs that actually call for certain techniques that the game and controller cannot detect – it simply gives you points for approximating it. This isn’t too big of a deal, as most players going through the trouble of using a realistic guitar controller would still try and do it “right.” But it does limit the range of techniques used on songs.

A couple of additional problems specific to me: #1 – My family and I had a lot of fun playing Rock Band in the past. Since RB3 is in our living room, when I’m sitting down to practice, my family wants to play with me. I would love to. But it pretty much ends my practice session right there, and if I don’t swap things out with a plastic guitar, we’re either limited to only some of the songs, or I have to sit some songs out. And I’m stuck in beginner mode unless we play the few songs that I have practiced on a higher difficulty level. So there’s the social issue of me playing the game all by myself. Or the problem of the living room being used for other things by the family – watching TV, practicing the piano or voice lessons, etc.   Or the third problem, which is that if I want to play late at night, it becomes quite problematic, as the noise would filter up to the bedrooms. Even playing with headphones still has me running a pick over strings in a way that might wake family members up, or keep them from falling asleep. So playing late at night is out.

Now, that’s okay, as if I really feel the need, I still have the basement, several guitars that I can play (poorly), and practice”for real.” If my fingers aren’t too sore from playing Rock Band, actively playing the game encourages me to do traditional practice, and vice-versa.  It works.  Playing RB3 pro mode really improved. I found things coming to me more easily. This was great. But as usual, enthusiasm waned, or between work, family, and being a part-time indie I’d find myself not playing for weeks at a time, and then not picking it back up for long time.

Then there is still a fundamental issue with Rock Band 3 as a game for aspiring (or experienced) guitarists, IMO: The brilliance of the game (and Guitar Hero, its predecessor) was that it was a game about faking it, not playing an instrument. The games are about hitting accurate rhythm marks done while pretending to play the instrument in cool venues. You get to pretend to be a rock star, rocking out to great music, but it is really more about music appreciation and fantasy fulfillment, not playing an instrument.  This was a good thing, and the reason for its success. So things like using Star Power (or Overdrive) were a big part of the game – purely tactical game decisions that had was really a tactical decision based on the music, contextualized as showmanship.  It’s great stuff, but as it had little to do with actual musicianship, the pro mode – for all the effort they put into it – still feels a little clumsily tacked on.

Problems aside, I love Rock Band 3‘s pro guitar mode, and – from my relative (but lengthy) inexperience, it seems like a really good supplement to traditional training and practice. It helps.

So now there’s Rocksmith. Unlike RB3, it uses a real guitar rather than a proprietary controller – any guitar with a pickup that can be plugged into a USB port with their custom cable. I wanted it on the PC so I wouldn’t be tied to the living room. And I wanted to see how different it was from Rock Band 3, and whether it might offer (A) a different way to help me improve and maybe actually break out of perma-beginner mode, and (B) a more fun (and enticing) way to practice, (C)  a chance to use my real guitar(s) in the game, which is both cool and can allow a more natural play style, and (D) new songs to play (never really a problem in RB3, with regular weekly song releases, but it’s still cool).

While I only have about three or four hours of play-time in, so far it seems like a success. I cannot get it to run on my beefier desktop machine, which is still running Windows XP (I’m adding a dual-boot to Windows 7 soon, so hopefully this problem will go away). On the laptop, there is a pretty significant lag  (about a tenth or eighth of a second) between playing something on the guitar and hearing it on the computer (and having it register). This is encouraging me to hit my notes a little early, which is probably a bad habit. This may just be that the hardware (with on-board everything) on the laptop is just not up to the task.  Still, I love the idea of taking the game on the road with the guitar for practice whenever. The game also features an Amp mode with effects and customizations that you can earn in-game, so you can just plug your guitar in and play with whatever sound you want. I already have an “all-in-one” digital effects pedal that does that, but it’s still a cool feature.

Rocksmith is not nearly as polished as Rock Band 3 – which makes sense, as RB3 was effectively the fifth generation of a game series that began with the original Guitar Hero – which was itself pretty stylized in it’s rough, unpolished glory. But part of the reason for this is that Rocksmith is a fundamentally different game from other “music rhythm games.” I cannot stress this one enough. I was pretty surprised by how different it was. But, after getting over the shock of having no clue what I was doing, the surprise turned pleasant.

Rocksmith is built from the ground-up with a focus on turning guitar training into a game. At this point, I cannot say how successful it is, but considering I only ended my sessions over the last two days because my fingers (which have their callouses back; I have been practicing again prior to the game’s release, I’m happy to say) couldn’t take any more of it, I’d say that at least initially, the novelty is working.

For one thing – there are arcade mini-games that you unlock that are designed around helping you practice your technique and accuracy – complete with high-score tables so you can see how much you are improving.  There are technique training lessons that are not static pass / fail exercises, but instead have scores and ratings that you can keep improving on.

Like RB 3 pro mode, you go from learning or practicing a song to performing on a virtual stage (once again encouraging the idea that the whole point of learning to play music is to share it with others), but in Rocksmith it’s all seamlessly part of your progression. Once you can play the songs needed for a set to performance-quality level, the game pushes you up on a virtual stage – where you are looking at the people rather than looking at yourself – to perform.

There may be more similarities, but at this point the differences really shine. No longer worried about sharing the screen with three other performers using different instruments (though you can play with one other player on another guitar), the presentation is completely different, offering the player a great deal more information on what to do, where his or her fingers are supposed to be, chord patterns, etc. In addition, if you screw up, the game offers helpful iconic hints to let you know how you are screwing up – like if you are playing on the wrong string, or on the wrong fret. The virtual on-screen fretboard pans and moves with suggestions on where your anchor point should be, and overall provides you with a ton of real-time information on what you should be playing next.

Then, in another magical improvement, Rocksmith has a dynamic difficulty level.  I know, I hate this kind of thing in most games, but for a game that is supposed to act as a training tool, it’s really outstanding. In Rock Band 3, you have four difficulty levels to choose from, and certain songs are far more challenging than others.  You practice until you get good enough to keep up in a performance without failing.  In Rocksmith, the game keeps up with you, instead. As far as I can tell, there’s really no failure. A song starts out very simple, requiring you to play only a few notes on one or two strings to keep up.  As you succeed, it ramps up the difficulty level accordingly, throwing in more notes, chords, etc. until (I assume) you are eventually playing the entire arrangement. If you start running into trouble, you literally see upcoming notes dropping off the screen as the game scales back. Until you master the song, the game tries to keep things just a tiny bit above your comfort zone.

This means there’s always a little bit of pressure, but never frustration. While your performance may be flawed, you are always playing along with real music, and more-or-less “keeping up” – even when the game moves you to a performance (and throws a new song at you as an encore which you’ve never played before). If you already have some experience with the guitar, things ramp up much more quickly.  And when you go back and play a song again, it remembers where you were when you left off, starting off at your previous skill level. This is potentially very, very important – instead of having you master a simplified arrangement of a particular song, as happens in Rock Band, the game is always progressing you to a goal of being able to play full songs… from memory.

There’s probably a lot more to it that I haven’t experienced yet. But so far, hardware issues aside, I’m really pleased with it. I’m still going to be playing Rock Band 3 pro mode (possibly with renewed enthusiasm), but I think Rocksmith may be a far better game if you intend to use it to help you play guitar – even if you discount the necessity to buy a proprietary controller for RB3. In my view, Rock Band 3 pro mode is a really cool interactive song book. Rocksmith is more of a training tool, virtual jam session, and … well, song book.

We’ll see how much I improve from this game, but from what I’ve seen – and from what I’ve heard from other players – it sounds like between this game and some disciplined lessons & practicing from JustinGuitar.com, a beginner could go really pretty far and have a very fun time doing it.

Filed Under: Impressions, Mainstream Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

What “Non-Open” Looks Like

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 17, 2012

Do not mock Apple or the current marketing buzzwords, or you will be denied!

By itself, it’s a pretty minor thing, and Terry removed the offending comment and has since been accepted for the app store.

But I do think this serves as a reminder of the inherent risk of building a business whose existence is dependent upon the sufferance of another company. Not that I’m saying you shouldn’t make games for the App Store, or for the upcoming Microsoft Store, or for consoles…  I’m just saying it’d be wise for a company to make sure they don’t have all their eggs in a basket that they ultimately don’t have enough control to safeguard.

Plus, I’m a little worried about the video game business ending up in a chilled state where we have to always make sure we don’t offend our “hosts” – hosts meaning the people who control the underlying platform, not the actual customers / gamers. The latter are who is important. I don’t like seeing these middlemen finding new ways of re-seizing control and dominance.

 

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Parlay?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 16, 2012

You know what few RPGs have anymore?

Or really, what few RPGs ever had, the D&D Gold Box games by SSI being one of the more prominant counterexamples?

The ability to talk yourself out of a general encounter. Or to parlay, in general.

Nowadays, you may get the option as a special, ‘canned’ option. But in general, you are expected to fight your way out of pretty much any encounter. Sometimes, you are allowed to flee.

If I might speculate a little bit:

From what I can gather, talking to (or bribing) an encounter to avoid combat was a less-popular but somewhat common option in pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons back in the pre-1st edition era, and continued through somewhat through the first edition era. After all, back then characters were relatively weak (and disposable), and there was no such thing as a saved game or respawning if combat went poorly… except for the possibility of a permanently Constitution-damaging raise dead, with a chance of failure and perma-death.

But as the pirates of the Black Pearl suggest, parlay is not nearly as much fun as combat. And, particularly with CRPGs, generally less profitable.  I mean, with D&D rules, if you win a fight, you get XP and loot. If you flee a fight, you might take some damage and have to heal up, but you are otherwise out very little other than time. But if you parlay, as I recall (it’s been a long time since I played Pool of Radiance & its sequels), you tend to get disadvantaged in the next combat. The failure rate (as I recall) was high. In games that let you bribe monsters, they tend to require a pretty significant chunk of change to leave you alone… unless they’d be a trivially easy encounter that you could win without breaking a sweat (and so why would you bother bribing them, or even talking to them?).

In Knights of the Chalice, it seems that most of the encounters that allowed you a chance to talk (again, these were ‘canned’) did not go well for the party if they gave the bad guy a chance to talk. They’d use the extra time to let more forces move into position or something.  Again, not much encouragement to talk.

With so little to gain, Charisma ends up becoming a dump stat, which makes the success (or likelihood of the attempt) even more remote, which makes parlay a useless option, and thus it gets removed in an effort to streamline RPGs.

And yeah, with more ‘realistic’ dungeons… would I expect a group of guards of even a rudimentary organized resistance to take the time to negotiate while I’m in the process of invading their home and slaughtering their bandit clan? No, not really. Back in the old days with mega-dungeons filled with unaligned – and often hostile (to each other) monsters, it might make more sense. The ogre might be more than happy to rat out the orcs if he thought he could profit from it, and vice versa.

It’s a pity, though. It would be interesting if some games brought back this option as a more general-purpose tool.  It would have to be reasonably useful, common, and provide some (potential) advantages over straight-up combat and looting.  And of course, it would only be available to intelligent enemies that have a language in common with you, and who might be more interested in survival than carnage.

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

The Next Great Desktop Gaming Platform?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 15, 2012

It’s no secret to regular readers that I am a desktop gaming junkie. Computer games have always held a higher place in my heart than console games, even when I was a full-time professional making the latter.  That’s not to say I disliked the latter — I was jealous of my friends’ Ataris and Colecovisions, played plenty of NES, and really loved my Playstation. Still do. I still have quite the collection of old consoles (and emulators) that I still actively play.

One of the reasons I preferred desktop gaming was that even though they had their share of arcade game ports – and in the early days, these ports were often much closer to the arcade experience than the consoles – you did get much deeper games intended for audiences with a longer attention span. In the 8-bit world, computer RPGs were far superior (IMO) to their console cousins, for example. Later, as Nintendo and Sega still emphasized “twitch” gaming and level repetition in most of their games (but with some fabulous exceptions), I was happily playing games that just did not translate well to the consoles, like Civilization, X-Com, Ultima 7, Wizardry 7,  and early RTS titles (not that these didn’t borrow from console inspiration…). And nowadays, the boundaries are getting about as smudged as they ever were. Consoles are as much for grown-ups as for kids, high-definition TV makes text readable (even though games tend to use as little text as possible), and aside from input devices are today just as capable as their desktop counterparts for gaming. But I still prefer the mouse to the thumbstick (especially for making headshots…)  If given the choice, I’ll usually* take the PC version of a game over its XBox 360 counterpart.

So while many consoles have come and gone, I still consider my “primary” gaming platforms to be three desktop environments: The Commodore 64, DOS, and Windows.

Commodore was awesome, and this was where I spent my formative years gaming. I’d have spent more time in the arcades if I could have afforded it, and I spent plenty of time gaming on friend’s consoles and computers, but the good ol’ C-64 was my gaming “home” for much the the 1980s. But I left it behind when I left for college, and it was plenty obsolete when I went shopping for a new computer again.  While I was enticed by the Amiga, most of the games I wanted to play were on DOS. I went where the games were.

Microsoft was already beginning to deprecate DOS by this time, and was in their third major revision of Windows.  But Windows sucked for gaming. It wasn’t until Chris Hecker and the “skunkworks” of Microsoft produced the WinG API, with a port of Doom, that the gaming world began to believe that Windows could be a viable gaming platform for high-performance gaming. Then, with Windows 95, everything shifted. There were still a few legacy games in development that still released DOS-only. Windows 95, which was no longer built on DOS, still supported them – but their days were extremely numbered by then. Windows 95 not only allowed high-performance gaming, but they made a real effort to improve upon it, getting rid of (most of) the configuration woes and massive hardware support needs that DOS games had been saddled with. It was still not quite “plug & play” the way console gaming is, but it was a massive improvement for both gamers and game developers.

Once again, I went where the games were. Now I was a Windows gamer. And that’s been where I’ve been ever since. Again, I go where the games (and other software I want to use) are, and I prefer the desktop. Windows has been the clear choice.  It’s generally been a pretty comfortable transition from upgrade to upgrade – at least every-other upgrade – as a developer and as a gamer. It’s gotten tough on the compatibility front from time to time. My main desktop system is still running Windows XP, simply because it’s easier to get some older software & drivers to run on XP than on Windows 7.  But overall, as a desktop gamer, Windows is where I’ve wanted to be.

At least until now.

In a couple of weeks, Windows 8 is hitting the market.  And it looks like it is trying to be as big a change as Windows 95. Or Windows 3.0. While the desktop experience will still be there, much like DOS was still there in Windows in the 1990s, it’s clearly getting deprecated. And unlike Windows 95 (but a lot like Windows 3.0 and 3.1), I really can’t see much that will be of benefit to gamers.

Gabe Newell, head of Valve,  stated, “I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space.”

Rob Pardo, chief creative officer at Blizzard, has publicly admitted that its “not awesome for Blizzard either.” Many other developers have expressed similar concerns, publicly and in private.

Many older games are incompatible with Windows 8 with the final release version. As a complete non-surprise, games protected by certain kinds of copy protection schemes (like Starforce) are frequently broken under Windows 8, with no available fixes. Except getting a “crack,” I guess. Which is all kinds of dangerous.

Gaming under the new interface – in fact all software, period – is restricted to the Microsoft Store. They want a piece of Apple’s “App Store” action. And this is the default interface. This is where Microsoft believes the non-power-users should live. The desktop is still there, but it seems to me it’s really there as a “legacy” platform. Like DOS. Oh, and it’s got even more invasive warnings if you try to install anything that’s not digitally signed and recognized by Microsoft – which will delete unapproved software by default.

Ugly. Particularly for indies. Making software as a small, independent developer just became a little more complicated and expensive. Not that this is a new problem. Just… a little bigger.

It was this article by Casey Muratori that really drove it home. Open, desktop gaming under Windows, as we’ve known it, is dead. Or at least, Microsoft wants it dead right now. Dead like DOS. Microsoft is positioning itself to be all-powerful gatekeeping middleman for the new, online world. And it sees the future in mobile devices, and a shrinking world for desktops.  Windows 8 is not only an expression of belief in that trend, but a way to help fulfill that prophecy to Microsoft’s advantage.

Are the correct? Will they succeed?  Who knows. Will Windows 8 be an immediate game-changer for gamers? No, doomsaying notwithstanding… I suspect it will be closer to a Windows 3.x event than a Windows 95 event in this respect. But the writing may be on the wall. Especially for indies. As TechRadar puts it, the real threat is not in Windows 8, but Windows 9.

And, more interestingly, I believe it may provide an opening for other operating system vendors to exploit that hasn’t really been there for seventeen years. In effect, Microsoft is moving on to fight new battles – something it will have to devote most of its attention on, if it wants to challenge the imposing lead that iOS and Android currently enjoy. Could this be an opportunity for Mac? For a major Linux vendor? For … hey, for Android?

As a gamer, I go where the games are. For PC gaming, for the future… I can no longer assume that’s going to mean Windows.

As a game developer, I’ve assumed that multiple platforms are “nice to have” but not a priority. I was pissed off that after all this effort working with a game engine that I chose in significant part for its promise of an easy port to Mac that the port was no longer at all easy, and has proved in fact to be incredibly frustrating. But lacking a Mac port hasn’t – until now – caused me to lose any sleep. I’ve been doubtful that the cost of the port would be worth it in sales. Ditto for Linux.

Now that I’ve changed engines to something that is inherently multiplatform (Unity), with a promise of Linux support on the near horizon, this makes my new focus a lot easier to implement. To you, as a gamer, it may be of trivial importance. But as a developer, it feels like a big deal.

In short – I’m with Gabe Newell on this one. As a gamer and game developer, I’m going to have to plan for an alternative. While I won’t call Windows 8 a catastrophe (yet), it’s clearly a fork in the road that I don’t feel I can commit to following. But if I want alternatives to be there, I’m going to have to commit to supporting them. Gamers will go where the games are. So I’m going to try and make sure my games are there.

Windows will no longer be a primary platform for me.  While I doubt I’m going to lose my emphasis on “desktop” gaming anytime soon, that no longer means Windows. Inasmuch as it is possible / reasonable, I’m going to be shooting for simultaneous release on Windows, Mac, and Linux from here on out. I’m exploring web-based, console, and mobile gaming options too. But if somebody is going to be gaming on a desktop environment, I want my games to be there.

I know. In the words of John McCain, “Welcome to the party, pal.” I’m late. All the Mac guys and Linux guys who have been trying to recruit me to their camp – you’ve finally succeeded. I’ve been content in my own little world, making and playing games and assuming a level of persistence that may or may not be valid. But as a child of the 80s, I remember all too clearly when it seemed like there was no way in hell that a tiny upstart company like Microsoft could ever topple giants like IBM and Apple. But it happened. It may happen again. Or it may not. But as a game developer, I can no longer feel safe “banking” on Windows. I expect that for the kinds of games I play and make, Windows may remain a viable platform for many years.

But will it remain the dominant one?  I’m becoming doubtful.

 

* Unless said PC game has really ugly DRM, in which case I’ll either not get the game at all, or get the console version and further contribute to the marketing belief that gamers “prefer” console gaming.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

Interview with Driftmoon developer Ville Mönkkönen, Part 2

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 12, 2012

Here is the continuation of Ruber Eaglenest’s interview with Driftmoon and Notrium developer Ville Mönkkönen from yesterday. Today they discuss more of the nuts and bolts of developing the game, influences, and a little about the “indie scene.” Enjoy!

Ruber: Let’s talk about the graphics. Driftmoon’s graphics feels indie, in the sense of being a little humble, and screenshots do not do it justice. I think the game looks beautiful in movement, you must see it in action to appreciate it. And the world, including darker areas, is full of colour. Tell us something about this, influences, hard work, limitations, inspirations, etc.

Ville: I’ve always loved graphics design, I even wanted to be a painter as a kid. We debated long over the graphics style in Driftmoon, eventually going for the current fairly realistic look. This way we can more easily use our photographs as source material, especially for the environment. At one point Anne got so eager at photographing new textures for the game, that I barely got to talk with her on our walks, she was always pointing her camera somewhere. Most of Driftmoon‘s plants come from our own neighborhood, which is a bit funny considering we live near the arctic, and a lot of the game happens in jungles.

This year we’ve joined forces with Johanna Sundström, who is training to be a graphics designer. She has the arduous job of drawing the face portraits for the game. There are nearly a hundred characters in the game, so she is definitely getting a crash-course in portrait drawing. But more than getting an enormous amount of amazing portraits into the game, we’ve loved her company, and her insights into the game’s characters.

Ruber: What about the technical point of view of the graphics? How do you made them and implement them into the game. The game is a weird 2.5 D – 3D Hybrid. What parts are 3D, and what parts not?

Ville: I’ve always loved sprite-based animations, so from the start we decided to make the characters and most objects by drawing them on a tablet or photographing them. I don’t feel it’s a limiting factor, but it’s definitely a great way to speed up development – we can usually make a new character in a matter hours. We chose to make the terrain fully 3D, because it gives a great sense of depth. The visual look is pretty different from most games, and that’s always a good thing.

Ruber: Speaking of collaborations: Anne, your wife, is the other half of your little company. Does she mainly contribute plot and text? Dialogs in the game are really great. This is a game FULL of text. Dialogs have plenty of options, some optional, some not, some funny, but none boring.  I like having a lot options in conversations, as it feels a little like the exploration component of the game. Tell us something about all this, and about how Anne approaches her role in developing the game.

Ville: Being indie game developers we both wear many hats, from testing to all game development tasks. Pretty much the only thing Anne doesn’t do is program C++, although she sometimes uses the in-game scripting language. Anne started out by mainly taking photographs and working with the sound effects, but she’s surprised me by being an excellent writer and level designer.

We write most of the plot and the dialogues together, taking turns to refine each of our texts until we’re fully satisfied. Sometimes we end up in edit wars over some minor details, but as a married couple we have the benefit of each respecting the other’s opinion. It’s a good thing that we have two people working on writing the text of the game, since it’s easily the most time-consuming part of the development process. We haven’t counted the amount of text in the game, but there’s easily enough to keep you reading for hours. As an interesting side-note: we can only work together late in the night, when the kids are sleeping.

Ruber: I was amazed by the soundtrack. It is really really good. I recommend to all who likes epic soundtracks of medieval fantasy to go to the official bandcamp of Gareth Meek and listen to this excellent music. Tell us something about Gareth and the collaboration for the game.

Ville: We got a surprise one day when Gareth suddenly sent us a music track for our trailer video. We immediately knew we had found our man, so we immediately nabbed him. Early on we decided we don’t want to fill each minute of the game with music, that would make it way too repetitive. So we had Gareth make us tracks that fade in and out of the background seamlessly without the player noticing anything. Gareth has been a great addition to our team, and working with him has been extremely effortless and quick – we just sent him the description of each level, and within a couple of days he came up with suitable pieces for each level.

Ruber: Given the emphasis on realistic art in Driftmoon,  it struck me as off as to how colorful it is – even in dark areas. Although you have realistic textures, the world exudes fantasy with every pixel. Tell us something about your art and color decisions.

Ville: In reality, we haven’t used a single photo straight from the camera. So there’s always at least some editing involved in making photograph-based pictures that actually fit well in the world of Driftmoon. I’m very careful about keeping up the overall look of the game. We made a conscious decision about using photographs as starting points as much as we can, because (1) Anne is good at taking photos, and likes to do it, and (2) it saves us a lot of work to not have to start from scratch with each and every little bush we add in the game. If we hadn’t had the help of photographs, we wouldn’t be nearly as far in the development as we are now – so, not a bad choice, I’d say! Even with the help of the photographs I’ve had to draw a lot of pictures by hand, especially the humans and other NPC characters – it’s nearly impossible to get the Rakan lizard warriors to be still long enough to be photographed. 😉

Ruber: So… about the use of color..?

Ville: We didn’t want to make Driftmoon a gray, gloomy game; we want to have plenty of color. We also wanted to give the game a lot of variability, and create different moods for different areas. As a matter of fact maybe it’s not as much a matter of choosing a general style for the game, rather I’ve been looking for a specific style for each map. If you look closely, each map and dungeon has a slightly different feel to them. To make this easier, I actually made a tool that’s, for example, able to paint a wintery landscape, or a dungeon landscape, and now we can easily use those predefined styles when creating new areas.

Ruber: On the technical side of taking that photographs… you know, you said you get a lot of textures around your neighbour, but all elements in the game are view as a zenith camera. Did you must acquire some weird photo material to take zenith photos?

Ville: It’s easy, being as tall as we are! 🙂 Nah, in reality it does take some work taking good pictures for a top-down game such as Driftmoon. We use chairs or anything that’ll allow us to take a picture from higher above, but we have just a regular digital camera to take the pictures with. At some point I was tempted to learn to fly a kite to photograph trees for us, but in the end it was easier to use houseplants as trees. You’ll notice that most Driftmoonian trees are actually tiny plants from our world.

Ruber: You said that you love sprite based animation…

Ville: My previous game Notrium used long sprite sheets, where each frame of an animation had to be drawn. When starting Driftmoon we decided that it was impossible to do that for our nearly hundred different character types, so we opted to make the characters out of small parts like hands, legs and head that could be animated by moving, scaling and rotating them using the ingame animations editor. What’s more, our modders don’t need to learn 3D modeling either, all they need to make new characters is a program to paint the individual parts of the character, the legs, hands and so on. I think the system works fantastically for Driftmoon, it gives a very fluid style to the game: Being able to animate anything within the game editor itself has made us, well, animate pretty much everything.

Ruber: Let’s talk about the indie scene. How do you see the indie scene right now? Do you follow it?

Ville: I’ve managed to befriend some indie developers, and we always love playing indie games. Ever since we started making Driftmoon we’ve been eager to see where the indie RPG scene is going. It’s great to see indie RPG’s finally starting to get the kind of respect they deserve. Though I’ve yet to see any one RPG break out big, I’m fairly certain that Driftmoon will be an exceptional success. 🙂

Ruber: What differences are between this time and when you began to make free games?

Ville: I started in 1998, of course a lot of things have happened during that time. The Internet happened, mobile gaming happened. Back in 1998 the way to get your game out there was to get it on magazine cover discs. That was the time of 3D, when all you had to do to be famous was to make a 3D game. In a lot of ways it’s easier to be an indie developer these days, there are great tools to get your ideas developed, great ways to get people to play your games. These days you don’t even have to know how to program to be able to make a game, all you need is to make a mod using the Driftmoon editor. 🙂

Ruber: What roleplaying games do you like, or want to recommend?

Ville: I did enjoy the previous Bethesda bunch, Oblivion, Fallout 3. I’ve yet to try Skyrim, but I will as soon as we finish Driftmoon. I like modern RPG’s, but they somehow feel bland to me when compared to the ones from my childhood. I’ve heard this from a lot of people, I guess it’s not that today’s games are any worse, it’s just different to play games when you don’t have unlimited time to play. I’m a huge fan of the golden age of about a decade ago. Games like Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Fallout 2. Also games from two decades ago, like Star Control II, and especially Ultima VII. I think Ultima VII is still one of the best RPGs that exist, it’s still fully playable using Exult or Dosbox.

Ruber: And what about indies?

Ville: I’ve had some fun times with Mount and Blade, and Torchlight. But I like my RPGs a bit more story-heavy, and I haven’t really found that many good story-oriented indie roleplaying games. I can never get the hang of combat in jRPG’s, and both the Spiderweb games and the Eschalon series require so much time investment in the user interface and the combat mechanics that it’s a bit hard to get into them (and at the moment, I don’t have that much time to spare). But once you learn the ropes, I’m pretty confident they’re great games.

Since I myself have this experience of being too pressed for time to get a good grasp of many interesting games, we’ve tried to put a lot of thought into making Driftmoon easily approachable. But you’ll have to tell me how well we’ve succeeded in that. 😉

Ruber: There are a lot of ways to monetize one game, I’m sure, thanks to indies and groundbreaking games like Minecraft, a lot of ways to pay the bills has appear around in the later years. Indeed, one could say that you have used alphafunding or betafunding. Right now (correct me if I’m wrong) there is a catchy discount in your website to buy the game early. It is in beta, and it serves as a pre-order with access right to the game. And it allows to you to receive feedback from buyers and to receive support of your fans; in sum, a great way to support your development. So what do you think of alphafunding, crowdfunding, and all those errrfunding things? How important have the pre-orders been for the development?

Ville: Alphafunding has worked fantastically for Driftmoon! More important than paying the bills, is that it keeps us motivated. Every time we release a new version we get tons of feedback and encouragement, and that keeps us going. It’s a lot of work too, we have to make sure each version we release is fit for actual players. And we have to make sure people playing one version can continue with the next version. But it’s well worth it, if only for the useful (and very motivating) feedback we’ve received, and the new friends we’ve made from our players.

Ruber: As we’re finishing up here, what awaits in the future for Instant Kingdom after you release the game? Maybe a port for tablets? I think the game would fit great in Ipads and such.

Ville: After Driftmoon is released, we’re definitely considering an iPad port, as well as porting to Linux and Mac. After that, the time might finally be right for Notrium 2… 🙂

Ruber: Ville, It has been a pleasure to meet you and I wish the best for you, your family and your children (game included) Thank you. In conclusion, would you like to say anything about your overall goals or hopes for Driftmoon?

Ville: Thank you for the interview, Ruber! I think one of the most important goals for Driftmoon is that we have wanted the game to have both lighter, more humorous sides, and also a lot of depth. So, we hope Driftmoon will surprise you and give you lots of smiles, but it will also present you with deep and interesting stories, and some food for thought. So, since you’ve read this far, why don’t you go download the Driftmoon demo? We’re hoping Driftmoon will take you on a fantastic, unconventional adventure that you will not soon forget!

————–

Notes:

You can grab the demo at http://www.instantkingdom.com/

Take now the discount of 20% here: http://www.instantkingdom.com/discountcode/
The basic price of the game is 14,99 €.  (Ed. Note – About $19.50 in U.S. Dollars – R.C.).

Note that you can take the discount now, and use later, forever and ever. Use it when you want.

Also, Driftmoon – like so many other games – is now on Steam’s Greenlight and can use votes.

 

About the Interviewer

Ruber Eaglenest is a wannabe indie author, that is, he is trying to start his career creating graphics games. He comes from the Spanish Interactive Fiction scene where he was known as El Clérigo Urbatain. He has three remarkable games: El Extraño Caso de Randolph Dwight, Por la Necedad Humana, and the remake of the Spectrum classic Rod Pike’s Dracula. He has a wide experience writing for Spanish e-zines and blogs, his most recent collaboration has been in Game Under.

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Interviews - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

Interview with Driftmoon developer Ville Mönkkönen, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 11, 2012

It’s Guest Post time!

Ruber Eaglenest, a regular community member, recently interviewed Finnish indie developer Ville Mönkkönen of Instant Kingdom, and offered to share the interview here at Tales of the Rampant Coyote. Driftmoon is an RPG that’s been in development for a long time (kinda like Frayed Knights…), but has some pretty exciting potential and seems to be getting very near release. In this interview, they make a lot of comparisons between Driftmoon and Ville’s previous game, Notrium, discuss turn-based combat versus real-time, and open-world gaming in an RPG (and why it’s not always such a good idea).

Ruber is apparently like me in that he does long interviews, so I’ve broken this up into two parts. Come by tomorrow for the rest of the interview! (Update: You can read it here!)

Ruber: Ville, for the people that don’t know you and haven’t yet heard about your game: What is Driftmoon?

Ville: Driftmoon is a roleplaying game that’s filled up to the brim with quests, adventure and strange little creatures. We’re aiming on giving you an adventure that’ll surprise you and make you smile, but that will also take you deeper than most others do. If you’ve always wanted a game where you can leave glowing footprints, or solve a mystery of treason, murder and theft, or ride Steamie the Steam Whale submarine, or find a little fly who wants to take over the world, then this is the game for you.

Ruber: It’s been 10 years since the previous game. What has Ville Mönkkönen been about since the release of your previous most important game, Notrium? It has been a lot of time.

Ville: Ten years? You’re greatly exaggerating ;), it’s only been nine years so far. 🙂 In a way, I’ve been working on Driftmoon throughout the years: I started work on the game engine behind Driftmoon in 2005, as well as the level editor that comes with the game (yeah, everyone can play the mods, and try the editor themselves!). The work on the game itself started in 2009, so you could also say that we’ve been working on Driftmoon for three years now. As my day job, I’ve been making educational games – and perhaps most importantly, I’ve also been raising our two little kids with my wife Anne, who is the other half of our indie game studio Instant Kingdom.

Ruber: Oh yes, sorry, almost 9 years ;). That sounds fine to me. It was a relief to me to stump upon the news that you were working on Driftmoon. You know, I remember Notrium in a time where freeware indie games were beginning to rise in quality and they were having a lot of influence in future indies devs. I’m talking of games like Cave Story; Cloud by Jenova Chen (and later Flow); and in shareware/commercial games: Wik and the Fable of Souls; or Gish by Edmund McMillen… There was a lot of more great games, but I remember those fondly, Notrium included. You know, that bunch of really great games between 2003 and 2005 actually forged the actual scene of indie games. How do you remember that time, who was Ville back then, and what philosophy did he have about freeware games?

Ville: My philosophy back then was simply to get my name out there, and get a job in the game industry. It worked, there’s no substitute for having some real game development experience under your belt when you go asking for a job. I sort of got more than I bargained for with that philosophy, I had to turn down many good offers because I still wanted to finish my studies.

I was in my teens when I released Notrium, and I had a lot more free time than nowadays, so I’d been working long hours each day to get Notrium done. I’m still the same man, but my life is quite different. I’m very grateful for all the things I now have, especially my wife and kids, but obviously having a family means I actually have a lot of other important things to do with my time – and thus I can’t slave away with Driftmoon hours on end. While that has made the game progress a little bit slower, it has also forced us (me and my wife) to think about which features we really want to implement in the game. Driftmoon is a much more matured game than Notrium, both in terms of gameplay and storytelling.

Ruber: Good, that explain why the 9 years. I think your plan to “professionalize” yourself  to become a good game dev/designer was a good one. The world of Driftmoon feels more mature and solid than Notrium. Although it is sword-and-sorcery fantasy, the universe feels pretty solid, and includes tangible environments, credible characters and good dialog. What sources of inspiration did you use for all that?

 Ville: Mostly it’s just our wild imagination. When Anne and I start tossing around ideas, we usually end up with quite a few (both good and bad ones) – and then we just pick those that we like best. 🙂 But, naturally great games like Baldur’s Gate, movies, and good books are also a nice source of inspiration. As funny as it sounds, Anne often gets Driftmoon ideas while she’s reading children’s books to our kids – and (in addition to the compulsory children’s books) I like to read fantasy books, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Discworld and so on. We’ve also liked watching Star Trek and Hercule Poirot -movies every once in a while, to name a few recent ones.

Ruber: Notrium was a survival/RPG/top down camera/action game. It was your most important game to date. How you evaluate its success as game, and system  for doing mods? How far it reached the community built around, if any?

Ville: I never realized how popular Notrium was until later. Millions of downloads was a huge number back then. I’ve replayed Notrium a few times since then, and every time I get killed ten times before I can get anywhere in the game, and it’s easily possibly to get stuck in the game with so few resources that it’s impossible to get back on your feet. With Driftmoon we’ve learned from those errors. Driftmoon is much easier to approach, while being just difficult enough to keep the combat interesting.

The modding system for Notrium was inspired by a couple of eager fans who started tweaking the game, and I was keen on giving them more things to tweak. It was a great success, I don’t even know the exact figures of how many mods there were, but I must have played some twenty Notrium mods through the years. But the modding system in Notrium had its weaknesses. Firstly modding the game was so difficult that most mods ended up never being finished, and secondly there was no easy way to get access to the mods that did get finished. Driftmoon has been made with modding in mind from the start, there’s an easy editor to make levels, even an easy but powerful scripting language. And most importantly, you can install any Driftmoon mod with just one click from within the game. It’s a sort of free RPG maker for top-down games.

Ruber: Notrium and Driftmoon, as most of your games, share the top down camera. Why are you especially fond of that point of view?

Ville: It’s mostly because I want my games to have some element of exploration and surprise. With top-down you can’t see too far what’s ahead of you, so you’re always surprised when you find something. I want to give that special feeling to my players. The feeling of: Look, I found something! And there are a lot of things to find in Driftmoon. 🙂

Ruber: Notrium, as said, was a remarkable hybrid between RPG and action game, and was pretty fun.  But in Driftmoon you opted for a turn based combat, instead of a real time action game like before. Why?

Ville: We actually prototyped Driftmoon with Notrium-like fast action combat. But we found that a turn-based combat system works much better for this particular game. With Driftmoon we wanted to focus more on the storytelling and exploration parts – we wanted to make the player feel like he has all the time in the world to explore this place. While the combat in Driftmoon is pretty fast and requires a lot of thinking, you’re always free to pause it, and you usually have the option to retreat. I love the combat system, it requires just the right amount of thinking and strategy to get through the harder enemies. Once you develop your character a bit, and equip him with some new combat skills, you have a whole bunch of interesting in-combat choices to make. And there’s a great amount of variety in the difficulty levels, on the Adventurer level you can very nearly play it as an adventure game, and the last level, Guardian, really gives hard-core RPG players a challenge.

Ruber: However, the companions felt not being complete in combat, I miss some features like command them, or that they have a variety of AI behaviour a-la Baldur’s Gate, or a basic feature like they could die or being incapacitated in any way. Do you have future plans to improve this aspect of the combat?

Ville: As you suspect, this is something that we’re still debating over. On one hand, adding more controls to player followers would add more strategical options to combat. On the other hand, we don’t want to complicate the interface or the combat system too much. We’re still open to feedback on this issue, as well as others.

Ruber: One thing about Notrium that was great at that time was how alive the world felt, particularly with the plants and palm trees swaying with the wind. In what aspects the build of the world has been improved in Driftmoon, since Notrium?

Ville: With Driftmoon we’ve actually continued where Notrium left off, and made the trees and rocks 3D, added visible breath in cold areas, water, ants, cockroaches, jumbo bees, pretty floating seeds, mist, fog, treasure chests, glowing mushrooms, fake skeletons, and of course the Snatcher holes, to name a few. There’s actually a whole background story of a long-gone Snatcher empire whose remnants are still active, protecting their treasures. My favourites are the silver feathers, hidden throughout Driftmoon – and rest assured, there will be a use for all the feathers later in the game.

Ruber: After having played Skyrim, I felt a little disappointed to find myself going between playable zones and the map, and that all of the world represented in the game’s fiction isn’t playable. Well ‘disappointed’ is not the right word.  But the first time playing, I really just wanted to travel straight from each of these important places to another, following the paths and crossing rivers and mountains. Of course I imagine that for a team of two, this is just an too expensive to develop… So this is not a complaint, it is a just the feeling that the game feels so good to explore that we want more.

Ville: Actually we originally tried making Driftmoon as an open world game, but that didn’t feel right. We realized that if the player has to walk for ten seconds without seeing anything interesting, there’s something wrong. So we cut back on the total area, and decided to focus on smaller but better locations. Basically, we decided that we won’t add empty content in Driftmoon – we want our players to have a lot of things to do, and fun details to discover in each location. Based on the tons of positive feedback we’ve gotten, I think we made the right decision. 🙂

Ruber: I suppose this approach to “chapters” or “islands” allows you to concentrate and pack each section with a lot of really good extras and optional quests.

Ville: That’s definitely one of the big benefits, we can actually show the player how many quests an area still has left to complete. I myself really like the feeling of knowing that I’ve completed an area.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Incidentally, if this has sparked any interest, you can play the Driftmoon demo here.

Also, Driftmoon – like so many other games – is now on Steam’s Greenlight and can use votes.

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Interviews - Comments: Read the First Comment

Matt Chat: Josh Sawyer and Project Eternity

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 10, 2012

I wanted to point you folks to this week’s Matt Chat. With only six days to go on the Kickstarter, Project Eternity, which is already at over double its goal, it’s worth taking a look at if you want to take the potential risk to get in early on this one. Because the game is still early, what Josh talks about is mainly design philosophy for making the kind of PC-based RPGs that he’s known for developing. Even if you have no interest in the game, the designer’s-eye-view into past games is pretty intriguing.

One interesting thing about this is the implication about how stretch goals can be used to manage the expectations of potential backers. The stretch goal can illustrate the kinds of things that are NOT planned for the base game. Because people tend to assume that any game of style X will incorporate every feature ever implemented by any game of style X, and then some.  (Hey, in spite of myself, I’m often one of those people).

Filed Under: Design, Interviews - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Halftime Show Tribute to Video Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 9, 2012

Back when I was a kid, video games were not something that most people at a college football game would have had any familiarity with. It wasn’t that the jocks didn’t play video games or that geeks didn’t watch or play football, but except for a brief period in the early 80’s, it was just horribly confusing to people if you confronted them with a clear violation of the stereotype.

Fortunately, that erroneous social boundary didn’t last too long. And video games have been a part of the mainstream experience for so long that this sort of thing could happen:

 

 

I dunno about you, but I’m pretty dang impressed.

Filed Under: General - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Indie Games: Competition and Authorship

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 8, 2012

One of the complaints about the “Old-School RPG(s)” proposed by Brenda Brathwaite and Tom Hall was about “celebrity designers” and how they can command so much more Kickstarter backing than other, worthy indies working on similar projects. I thought I’d take some time to address it here.

As an aside, there was a complaint that it wasn’t  a very good Kickstarter campaign, and that it was relying upon the celebrity draw power of Brenda, Tom, and John Romero. That much I’ll agree to – it was weak. It’s improved over the last few days, but the pitch was definitely lacking (and, I think, hurt it – being only 20% to goal makes it sound unlikely that the “two RPGs” stretch goal will be reached).

Having worked in mid-sized (and larger) studios before, I also dismiss the “bigger studios don’t need the money like the tiny ones do” side of the argument. In my experience, the wolf being far from the door of any game studio is an aberration that rarely lasts long. (Keep that in mind, Mojang…) I do have some concerns – noted last week – about the ability of larger studios to handle small budgets as well as tiny indie teams with virtual offices. But I don’t consider one more worthy or needy than the other.

One aspect of this complaint is rooted in zero-sum thinking – money going to project X will means it won’t go to project Y or Z. To an extent this is true, in the same vein that somebody buying one of the other games I recommend here might do so instead of purchasing my own little old-school-ish indie RPG, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.  In fact, I could be in direct competition with Loot Drop’s RPG in a couple of years! The horror!

It’s true that on a small (but growing) level, we indies are in competition with each other. The economy pretty much still stinks everywhere, and games aren’t quite as “recession-proof” as originally thought. Indie RPGs have gone from being all but unheard-of to being a pretty exciting field that even I have trouble keeping track of – even if I generally focus on PC games.  But in my opinion, the zero-sum thing really doesn’t kick in until a market is really saturated. Maybe it is there already on mobile devices, but it certainly isn’t yet in our niche. Right now, growing the pie is a much bigger task than squabbling over the pieces, and IMO anybody who purchases one of Basilisk’s or Amaranth’s or Spiderweb’s or Soldak’s or Iron Tower’s or Aldorlea’s or Sinister Design’s or Olderbyte’s games – and has a good experience – is more likely to buy & play more indie RPGs in the future. Including mine.

While it’s certainly possible that I might say, “Oh, crap, I spent too much money on games this month between Kickstarter and purchases, so I cannot (yet) buy this really cool gaming that’s coming out this week!” But it’s not a direct, zero-sum relationship. I’ve had months where I’ve bought no games at all, and months – like this one – where I’ve gone overboard. There are a lot of variables involved. So while there is competition, it is not zero-sum, and money allocated to one title is not directly harming the sales of another.

Which brings me to one big variable:

Authorship.

It’s not so much “celebrity designers” as it is authorship. Authorship is something that has lost a lot of ground (by necessity and by design) in the AAA world. When you have a development team measured in triple digits, it’s going to be very hard for anybody’s contribution – even the lead designer’s – to really exert a powerful influence on the game. Really, it takes a commitment on the part of the studio and publisher to make sure that happens – and to give the responsible parties credit. Publishers have very little motivation to do so, as they can own a property, but they can’t own a designer. A designer who becomes too much of a ‘celebrity’ can very easily leave a former studio and franchise and do their own thing with all kinds of support coming from their “cred,”  and cast doubt as to the future of a company or franchise trying to soldier on without them – much like a rock band replacing its lead singer.

We used to have it in the old days, before publishers began dominating the industry like they did in the early 90s. That’s where a lot of these names came from. Or they came from the “indie” realm (like Tom Hall and John Romero), even before it was called “indie.” With tiny teams, no middleman, no external controlling influences, and the reality of ownership over their products, indie creators can’t help but infuse their creations with their own voice and personality. They own it, warts and all. In that way, they are more like authors of a book.

And it means I can have favorite game-creators again. If you read this blog a lot (or note the list above, where I referred to the sometimes lone-wolf team names rather than their games), you know some of my favorites.

Maybe all indies are created equal, but they don’t stay that way.  While I love to take chances on unknowns (and pleased often enough to continue the habit), I’ll still favor an indie who has earned his or her clout through consistent delivery of games that I really enjoy, that strike the right chords with me, that have a “personality” that I like and an acceptable level of quality. This is as it should be. Frankly, we’re getting enough “old school RPGs” (especially of the 16-bit console style) that we have to be a little discerning. There is (gasp!) some competition out there. What sets these games apart for me is authorship.

Again, I want to give the unknowns a chance – several chances, really – and I recognize that fame and success beget themselves beyond what might be justified from the quality of a product. I get kind of annoyed at “indie darlings” too. But relatively speaking, it’s the right kind of problem to have.

Developers should not be interchangeable commodities, as they have become in the AAA field. I want games from Thomas Riegsecker to have a different personality from those of Jeff Vogel. I don’t want the homogeneity that has afflicted the AAA side of the business. I want developer’s personalities to come through in their games. I want their imprint to be personal and distinguishable as any authors. It should be their competitive advantage, the reason why their games are distinctive and exciting over other titles that sound the same on paper.

We need games with personality and quirks. We need games that reflect the image of their creators. We need authorship. This is why indie gaming – in all its sizes and varieties – is so important.

Filed Under: Biz, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 4 Comments to Read

Retro Required!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 5, 2012

We game developers are ALWAYS copying past games. We have to. There’s simply far too much that has gone before for us to even be capable of reinventing the wheel.  Even the most innovative games out there borrow from tried-and-true examples. We always build upon a foundation of what has come before us.  Anything else would be akin to us creating a new alphabet and language in order to write a book (Okay, Tolkien notwithstanding). This is a good thing. Sometimes we take a giant leap of innovation, but most of the time we mix and match, we borrow ideas from here and there, and we make small refinements and innovations. That’s the way everything else in the world works, so I don’t see why games should be different.

So here’s the question: Would you rather have games built upon exclusively upon the examples of the top games of the last couple of years,  or would you rather they be built upon the 40+ year legacy of the entire medium? Which would provide a greater variety and push more boundaries?

To me, it’s a no-brainer.

I realize I’m forcing a dichotomy, but the former may not define but does exemplify how the mainstream game publishing works. There’s really big money taking a very risk-averse approach, which means following the “trend” and trying to duplicate the biggest, most recent successes.

Then there’s the indies. And there’s some concern that instead of indies going wild with incredibly innovative new ideas and games that all create new genres, we have a whole bunch of non-publisher-funded folks going… retro.  Cashing in on hits from a couple decades ago. Some folks are yelping, “WTF?” Now, I will admit that John Walker has a point, but I think his “ideal version of events” is not so much an outside chance as en inevitability – although he doesn’t take far enough. He writes:

“Perhaps an ideal version of events is that what we’re seeing now is the establishing of a new timeline. A comic-book-style reboot of the gaming world to 1993, to see what direction things would have gone in if the internet had been ubiquitous two decades earlier. The first round will be all these games made in the style of their 20 year old forefathers, but the next stage will be new innovation from them? Maybe in seeing RPGs and RTSs and adventures rebooted, we’ll then see what other possible directions they could have taken, evolved in, and innovated toward without a publisher model requiring homogenization? Two parallel gaming worlds, Publisher Gaming and Ultimate Gaming?”

Here’s my view, as both a gamer and a game developer:

Indie gaming – and all the cool things that make it possible (digital distribution, virtual offices, crowdfunding, etc.) – has unleashed the freakin’ horde.  We’ve got new talent (and old) pouring into the field all going nuts trying to find a niche in this brave, new world. Many aren’t going to survive. But they are exploring the market, the technology, and the limits of their own abilities simultaneously. In many (most?) cases, these folks are getting back to their roots – the core intersection of what is possible within their limitations (esp. budget and skill), what is likely to pay the bills, and what really love about gaming.

That intersection tends towards retro.  It’s the common answer to four questions new indies with aspirations towards survival as a business must ask themselves:

#1 – What’s possible with a small team and a small budget? Naturally, older game styles – which were completed with smaller teams and smaller budgets using less advanced tools than we have today – become obvious choices.

#2 – What’s familiar enough that we have a chance of making an executing on a plan? Going indie is unfamiliar territory, whether you are new to game development or just new to going at it on your own. It’s helpful to have some kind of familiar foundation to anchor yourself so you aren’t completely reinventing the wheel, and you are able to work with SOME known quantities (and make reasonable projections, which is critical when you know there’s no real chance of asking a publisher for more time / money near the end of the project). Retro gives new game developers a comfortable design template, and gives old-school developers a chance to work in well-known former territory.

#3 – What has a decent chance of success (meaning: what will sell)? Gamers have been clamoring for certain kinds of “old-school” games for years – ever since they were abandoned by the mainstream publishers years ago. Nobody really knows how big this market is (though we’re starting to get some reasonable guesses), but it’s clear there’s an underserved need.  This is another little pocket of relative safety for new indies.

#4 – What can the team feel passionate about making? If you are a game developer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to go indie, chances are you are doing it out of a love for the genre. And the games that probably inspired you to take the plunge are likely to be a decade or so old. Retro.

This doesn’t preclude the possibility of high-concept, totally out-there innovation. And we get some of that. But we’re talking about a whole hell of a lot of people out there working on their first or second generation of games, learning the ropes while re-learning the lessons of the past.  Everybody’s got to re-establish a baseline, and re-learn the art their own way.

This is not where it ends, people. Yeah, we’re gonna get a huge crop of retreads, and I doubt that will ever stop. New developers are always going to be making My First Platformer, and while they are introducing absolutely nothing new to the genre, it’s going to be a magical game for them. They are learning their art. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

But eventually My First Platformer is going to become – three or four games down the road (if they stick with it) something different. That’s where this all leads.  Once they’ve had a chance to gain some mastery over the craft, they are going to explore. Revisit old assumptions. And they are going to do some amazing things.

They already are.  Some commercial projects. Lots of not quite prime–time stuff.  But the horde has been loosed, and this new era of gaming is still in the oven.

Ditto for the old-school professional developer crews who are now Kickstarting retro projects.  First of all, I do not believe for a second that all they will be doing is a clone of one of their past hits. I do not believe they are approaching this with the view that, in hindsight, everything they’ve learned over the last 15-20 years is bunk and they had it 100% correct in 1997.  That’s silly. But I think they are recognizing that there’s a certain flavor, certain feelings, certain style that has been lost, and they are working to regain it with modern technology, with their more seasoned skills, and take it to newer audiences.  I will personally be quite disappointed if all that comes out of these “big name” projects are games I feel like I already played fifteen years ago treated with a new coat of paint.

I think the revival of retro is a great thing, because to me it’s a sign of the maturing of the medium. It’s no longer just about newer, bigger, better, more shocking spectacles. We’re starting to explore our legacy, and ask questions about it. I don’t see any reason to fear that we may get mired in the past. In all honesty, eventually both gamers and game developers will get bored with that.  We’ll move on, with plenty of new indies taking revisiting the territory as we go. It won’t be, as Walker suggests, two parallel gaming worlds, but a whole continuum.

So let’s enjoy the moments, shall we?

Filed Under: Biz, Design, Indie Evangelism - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

A Disturbing Kickstarter Prediction

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 4, 2012

Next week, my former boss at a video game company will be sentenced. It was going to be this week, but the judge decided that he wanted more evidence to determine if said former boss was consciously and willfully screwing people over, or if he was simply a guy who got caught in a bad situation and made some stupid decisions out of desperation. From the rumors I hear, the difference could be one to fifteen years’ jail time. That’s about all I’m gonna say about that, as I really don’t know enough or care enough to talk about it, but I wanted to use it as an illustration.

See, when things get hairy, people do some pretty strange things to try and preserve their business. Money that’s supposed to be allocated to X get allocated to Y. And then money that’s supposed to go to Z gets allocated to X to cover over the deficit. People do this. And so long as the money keeps flowing in, people can get away with it. Do it the right way, at the right time, and its creative accounting which pays off. Do it the wrong way, and you could be facing several years in federal prison.

When things are hitting a rough patch, the search for money to cover the gap between payments can get pretty desperate – especially when the economy is in a funk and banks aren’t making bridge loans anymore.

I’m not suggesting anybody is doing this right now, but with these larger companies doing Kickstarters now, imagine this: Contracts are getting a little slim, and your last self-produced “indie” title did not bring in the cash you expected. You are a small company, and have some small projects currently going, but it’s not enough to keep you solvent. You are looking at a horizon getting awfully close, and you are going to have to start letting people go if you can’t get some money in the door within the next 60 days. But how can you get that kind of cash?

Kickstarter.

With a talented group, whipping up a decent Kickstarter presentation within a week would look pretty easy. You have your design team and a couple of idle artists generate a pitch that sounds like a sure winner. You leave it vague enough that any viewer can insert their own idea of what the promised game is going to be. Then let the money roll in.

I’m sure that this would be done with the full intention of making good on the promises as best as possible. But when half the cash obtained ends up going to pay off the landlord, paying the part of the team that’s running late and has delayed a milestone payment, and paid off a few other obligations, there won’t be quite so much left to make a game. But with the critical money paid off in advance… well, it might not really matter so much if the resulting product is not up to par.

And with Kickstarter, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you have near-zero accountability to Peter. It could damage your reputation, but legally there’s not much the Kickstarter backers can do.

And so Kickstarter becomes the go-to place to stave off bankruptcy. A quick hit for a couple hundred grand, and whatever is left over goes to fund a skeleton crew – if they aren’t too busy on other projects – to throw together something to show for it.

When it’s that or bankruptcy (or worse, jail time), don’t think for a second that it won’t happen.

I can’t say for sure it hasn’t happened, or isn’t happening right now.

 

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 7 Comments to Read



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